Chris Willson Photography

08/03/2026

The full interview with Matsuda Sensei is now available on YouTube! Please share with your friends so that as many people see it as possible. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel, like the video and comment so YouTube shares it with others too.

If you have feedback that you'd like to give directly, just send me a message! Have a great weekend.

Series 3 Episode 1 A fascinating interview with Okinawa Kenpo Karate Master Matsuda Tatsunori Sensei!In the comments, please let us know your favorite part...

07/03/2026

Final checks are complete, and we have the thumbs-up from Matsuda Sensei to release the full 50-minute interview. It should go live on Sunday March 8th 2026. I'd like to say a huge thank you to those who have decided to become sponsors and supporters of Series Three even before the first episode has gone out. Couldn't do it without you!

SERIES THREE SPONSORS
Martin Pinto - Essex Goju Ryu Karate
Fred Mansfield Jr. - Beikoku Shidokan / RBKD

Series Three - Key Supporters
Josh Simmers - Okinawa Karate Podcast
Ervin Tong - Shin Shi Kan

Series Three - Supporters
Artur Carballo
Justin Sheehy
Olaf Steinbrecher
Masaru Hoshi
K.R. Ruiz
Matthew Apsokardu

If you, your dojo, or your organization can help us document and archive Okinawa's martial arts heritage, then please get in touch!
https://travel67.com/the-karate-masters-portrait-project/sensei-documentary/

06/03/2026

Full interview with Matsuda Tatsunori Sensei coming soon.

05/03/2026

Matsuda Sensei demonstrates on of martial arts most dangerous kata. Full interview on YouTube coming soon.

04/03/2026

Karate begins and ends with kata. Full interview with Matsuda Sensei is now on YouTube!

17/02/2026

Couldn't finish the day without a little bit of eku action at the beach. Although it is February, and he's in his 70s, Matsuda Sensei was happy to stand in the cold water and perform sections of the kata. I also filmed the full eku kata, and it will be part of the S3 E1 interview that will be released in March!

More details on the project can be found here: https://travel67.com/the-karate.../sensei-documentary/

16/02/2026

The Yanbaru michiba is a three-pronged hoe that can be very effective in combat. Matsuda demonstrated how this little-known kobudo weapon can be used not just to throw dirt, but by separating the prongs from the shaft you had a short staff, and a metal three-pronged tonfa. Fascinating stuff. All explained in Episode 1.

I'd like to thank those who have already become Sponsors, Key Supporters, and Supporters. If you'd like to help, and have your name in the credits to the Series Three interviews that would be fantastic. Please check on the following link, and reach out! https://travel67.com/the-karate-masters-portrait-project/sensei-documentary/

15/02/2026

Another pic taken while filming with Matsuda Sensei.

The 50 minutes interview, Episode 1 of the Series Three, will hopefully be released in March. More details on the project can be found here: https://travel67.com/the-karate.../sensei-documentary/

14/02/2026

Spent a fantastic day with Matsuda Sensei shooting some B-roll for his interview. After putting in subtitles I realized I needed extra footage of his family tomb, and ideally the iconic, and extremely dangerous, kata Itogama no Te that involves swinging two k**a on ropes around your body and face...

Here are a few pics, the 50 minutes interview, Episode 1 of the Series Three, will hopefully be released in March. More details on the project can be found here: https://travel67.com/the-karate-masters-portrait-project/sensei-documentary/

09/01/2026

Make 2026 the year you start backing up your data!!!

If your laptop, iPad, or phone suddenly dies, what happens to your data, and your cherished family photos? Physical prints of birthdays, weddings, and vacations used to be stored in albums, the very things that many would try to save from a burning building. If your data is only in one place, when that spinning hard drive fails (and it will), those cherished images and videos will vanish.

You need to back up your data. You need redundancy. Two is one, one is none.

Cloud backups are fantastic. I use Dropbox for documents, and Backblaze as a last resort off-site backup for all my data.

If you've got an Apple laptop or desktop, then please use Time Machine and an external drive to do regular backups.

If you have a lot of data, then you'll have to find a system to do your best to protect it. When I started the Karate Masters Portrait Project, and then the Sensei: Masters of Okinawan Karate video series, I started having to wrangle terrabytes of data that were important to me, but needed to be kept safe as a historical archive.

Under my desktop, I have three big G-tech Thunderbolt drives (28TB, 24TB and 20TB) storing all my data that are fast enough to edit video off. Another 4TB SSD external drive is running Time Machine for the internal data on the desktop. All the data on the Thunderbolt drives is also copied to more economical, but slower, Western Digital USB external hard disks, which are then stored in a waterproof Pelican case.

There are many other options, and if you work in this field, I'd love to hear from you, but this is what I'm going with at the moment.

If you'd like to learn more about the portrait project, or the karate documentary series, you can check it out here. Thank you to all the sponsors of Series One, Two and Three who have helped with the purchase of many of these drives. https://travel67.com/the-karate-masters-portrait-project/sensei-documentary/

06/12/2025

Here is a great example of why societies need to archive traditional cultures carefully before A.I. is normalized as a way to generate images.

If you look at the hands of the child on the bo, you can see that A.I. is not sure what to do. It guesses, and it mangles the image. I'm sure an experienced karateka would be able to point out various other errors in the image with stance, and hand position, etc. If these images go viral, or they are used by official organizations, very soon, people will not be sure what is correct or even real, even worse they may not even care.

My concern is that soon AI-generated images like this may be more commonly used than photography or real people. Reality, and cultural heritage, will be replaced by whatever vision is produced by AI.

Photographers can start using systems such as Sony's Camera Authenticity Solution to verify images, but will real images, and real culture, be drowned by a flood of AI-generated slop.

15/11/2025

Portraits of Tuari, a master of Māori martial arts. He is holding a patu, which was made by his father-in-law.

It was a real honor and a delight to photograph Tuari, and I am so pleased he could make his way up to my studio in Motobu. My goal is to visit him in New Zealand, as Tuari has offered me the opportunity to document Māori martial arts on location in beautiful Aotearoa.

Here's a short video I made with Tuari last year. https://youtu.be/EqFl865EFFU