Foreign Policy Magazine has featured an interesting photo/graphical essay on the war in Afghanistan. It's titled Inside Talibanistan, and effectively makes the point that our "enemies" are not a monolithic entity, but a combination of disjointed groups with different agendas and ideologies.
According to our media and politicians, who have the talent of diminishing everything down to simplistic terms in the hope of further dumbing down its viewers, listeners, constituents and readers, we are fighting against the "Taliban"...the problem is that the Taliban (as defined by our talking heads, politicians and their cronies) doesn't exist as such.
In FP's feature, I've counted 10 groups ranging from Al-Qaeda to some group called Haqqani Network, and added up the estimated members of these groups. Most of them are obviously estimates, but a total of 100,000 seems to be a reasonable one. Possibly included in these numbers are insurgents fighting against an occupying foreign force propping up a deeply unpopular corrupt government....and others who want nothing but power.
To put this in perspective, here's Cost of War which runs a counter for how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us. It's an estimated $1.1 trillion to date.
We would have been so much better off by creating jobs, building modern infrastructure, state of the art trains and airports, new schools, invest in medical research, in alternative energy sources...and taking on China's growing economic power. My politics are diametrically opposed to the Republican Party and its legitimate and illegitimate spawns, but this ad by one of its affiliated group did strike a chord with me....yes, it's obviously over the top but there's still a kernel of truth in it. We are losing ground very quickly to China. (The video is via FP).
For the week starting Monday November 1, the following posts are in the pipeline:
1. A photographer's lovely portraits of Sadhus attending the Kumbh Mela earlier this year. 2. A interesting web documentary (multimedia) on the drought conditions facing East Africa. 3. The work of a photographer documenting musicians of the Mississippi Delta...with my kind of music...really hard core Blues. It was promised for the past week. 4. Another interesting web documentary (multimedia) on Women.
This is a delightful short documentary featuring Mariachis musicians in East Los Angeles produced by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari. The piece features Mariachi musicians who gather on corners of the streets of East Los Angeles looking for work, whether in birthday parties, in cafes, restaurants, quinceañeras, weddings and the like.
To my delight, the main singer belts outs out the famous Mexican song "Volver Volver", initially without the accompaniment of musical instruments. I used to hear it played often in the zocalo of Oaxaca...just delightful.
According to Wikipedia, the term "Mariachi" is said to be an adaptation of the French word for marriage or wedding "mariage" as this type of musical formation plays at these events.
Here's a superb multimedia presentation guaranteed to knock your socks off.
It's part of a collection of 24 multimedia documentaries produced by France Télévisions. Portraits Of A New World is a narrative of the world of the 21st century, and the upheavals which transform and influence our destinies.
Unfortunately, it's only in French with no subtitles, which sadly reduces its internationalization and its appreciation by non-French speaking audience.
Having said that, take a look nevertheless at Journal of A Concubine which, in my view, is the segment that most beautifully merges the techniques of photojournalism and videojournalism.
In the era of pre-Communist China, wives and concubines lived under the same roof; in full sight and knowledge of everyone. The practice was legal and widely accepted. In 1949, it was made illegal by Mao as being a relic of feudalism, but has reappeared with a modern twist in the 1990s with the economic resurgence of China. Concubines are now viewed as a sign of wealth especially in business circles.
This being a French production, the nuanced difference between concubines and mistresses is explained. The latter do not expect gifts nor monetary rewards. Concubines do.
I've decided to self-publish a book of my photographs of Bali. I've hesitated for a long time, since I have no patience to fiddle endlessly with layouts, fonts and the myriad of other variables necessary to produce a book, but I recently discovered that Blurb has introduced a new interface called Bookify. This is essentially a tool for people like me who don't have the mindset to spend hours on a project of that nature.
Lo and behold, I received my mock-up book a few days ago. The book is large landscape (13x11 inches) format, with an image wrap hardcover and the photographs are black & white. The mock-up revealed some slight variations in tone, a few photographs were reproduced "soft" and others were "muddy" requiring some more adjustment in Levels.
But I am pleased by what I saw, and I'll work on refining the current photographs, add some meaningful text, and add a few dozen more photographs. These will probably be from my 2005, 2007 and 2010 trips to Bali.
Masr is the Arabic word for Egypt...and it's also colloquially used for Cairo. So in Arabic, Egyptians are called Masr'yeen...which is confusing for non-Arabic speakers, but that's how it is. Egypt was borrowed from the Latin Aegyptus and from the ancient Greek Aígyptos.
Javier Morgade was filming in Egypt for an airline company, and was left with surplus footage for this short movie. It's a documentary made with a Canon 5d Mark II and a Glidetrack HD. It was edited in Final Cut Pro and graded with After Effects. The song is by a contemporary Egyptian singer and is titled ah men al forak, which loosely translated means "lamenting separation".
In my view (and I should know), Javier managed to capture in this short movie the essence of the Egyptian character, the kindness, humor, hospitality and generosity...even their occasional legendary intrusiveness. It saddens me to see the poverty in the alleys of old Cairo, but as always, it's mitigated by the Egyptian talent for being able to share setbacks, poverty, sorrows, and life troubles. No Egyptian is an island...and while they find enormous solace in their extended families and friends, neighbors and even casual acquaintances...they deserve better.
Charlotte Rush Bailey joined my Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo-Expedition ™ earlier this year, and has just published her photo book titled Kutch Classic: Portraits from Northern Gujarat of her photographs made on that trip, which is a wonderful visual compendium of this magnificent region of India.
The book is full of photographs of Kutch tribals; most are portraits, some processed in the photographer-author's signature style. Charlotte chose purple as the predominant color for her book, basing it on the lovely woman's veil on its cover. I also happen to think that Charlotte will follow up with another book, possibly titled Portraits from Southern Gujarat, on her return from another photo expedition next January. We'll see....
Published and available through Blurb, the link above provides a preview of some of the book's pages.
I really wish that many more of photographers who join my photo~expeditions publish their work in book form. That would be so gratifying! I may be mistaken but I only know of one other photographer-participant who does that. It's not an easy task to prep and publish a book, but the eventual satisfaction is just sublime.
One of the accessories I decided to get for both my Canon 5D Mark II and the new Canon 7D is a LCD viewer. which would be handy whenever I wanted to shoot video on either of these cameras.
Having looked at the B&H et al, I had the choice between the LCDVF at $170 or the much more expensive Zacuto Jr at $252, but thought these prices were too high for an add-on I would not use frequently. Some quick research led me to a post on the delightful Cheesycam website and another one here which suggested a much cheaper LCDVF clone ($59 including shipping et al) from eBay.
I deliberated for about 2 minutes, and ordered the clone from the vendor. Within less than half a day, I got an email with an acknowledgment, and a USPS tracking number. It was shipped from the vendor in Guangzhou (China) on October 20, and delivered to my door on October 26. Not bad, eh?
The amusing thing is it took 3 days to get from Guangzhou to Queens (more than 8,000 miles), and another 3 days from Queens to Lower Manhattan (less than 4 miles) where I live. Yes, I looked the distances up.
The boxed Meike LCD viewfinder and its accessories were well wrapped in a thick envelope, and the mailing address was perfectly labeled. The vendor is clearly professional and was understandably well recommended on eBay. I affixed the metal frames to both my cameras, and will test it soon. My immediate impression was that the camera was much steadier when videotaping with the viewfinder on. It steadies it against one's face.
I examined the LCD viewfinder for signs of poor workmanship but found none, and it comes with a useful pouch and a cleaning cloth as well. Oh, and there's a red plastic thingie around the top part of the viewfinder that matches the red line on Canon's L lenses...color-coordination!
One thing I know for certain: I'll never be a product or still life photographer....ever.
Christian Bobst is a Swiss photographer based in Zürich who originally studied graphic design, and became interested in documentary photography. While working for advertising agencies, he won several national and international advertising awards. At this time, he works as a freelance art and creative director as well as a documentary photographer.
Dharamsala, or more accurately Mcleod Ganj, is the home of the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan government. The Tibetan settlement of Dharamsala began in 1959, when the Dalai Lama had to flee Tibet, and was allowed to settle in Upper Dharamsala or McLeod Ganj. It's sometimes known as 'Little Lhasa' after the Tibetan capital city.
Christian's photo gallery of the transplanted Tibetans who live in Dharamsala explores the Tibetans' way of life in this small town in north India in their homes, stores, at the doctor and their places of worship. Even if you've never been to Dharamsala, these photographs will give you an excellent insight on the small Tibet enclave in north India.
The above photograph is a classic street photography gem. The Indian woman in the traditional shalwar kameez eying the passing Tibetan in her own dress.
Here's an environmental portrait of a Tibetan matriarch in one of the alleys of Dharmasala in northern India. It's been over 5 years ago since I've been to Dharamsala, and my photographic style has evolved noticeably.
I would have photographed this woman differently now. She would have been most certainly less rigid, and I would have spent much more time making her more comfortable before any photographs were made. I occasionally revisit my photographs of a few years back to trace back my photographic evolution; a gradual evolution moving from simple portraits to more complex scenes...moving from travel "pretty pictures" to the less pretty ones, towards more of a documentary style.
I am always attracted to interesting physiognomies...what photographer isn't?...but I now see them more in the context of their environment, of their surroundings and of the story they emanate just by their being there .
Here's somewhat of a change of gear from the norm for The Travel Photographer blog, and is about Laamb, which is Senegalese wrestling and a type of folk wrestling practiced in Senegal. It allows blows with the hands, the only of the West African wrestling traditions to do so.
Beatrix Jourdan (Bea Mészöly) is a Hungarian-born photographer currently based in Dakar, Senegal. She's a freelance graphic designer and photographer, and produced catalogs for the Museum of Modern Art in Gent, photomosaics in Budapest and Hajduszoboszlo, numerous posters, book and magazine covers, and brochures. She also She was one of the winners of the André Kertész international photo contest.
Beatrix informs us that Laamb is also a spiritual activity, and wrestlers must engage in various rituals before the contests. No wrestler, regardless of strength, physical or technical abilities, would ever dare to enter the ring, much less fight, without his "marabout" or JuJu Man.
via African Lens (larger photographs available on its website)
The reason I go out onto the streets with my camera is simple: I want to tell people's stories in an intimate way through powerful imagery. -Roberto Cruz
Rodrigo Cruz is a freelance photographer with a particular interest in abuses of human rights, especially against women and children in his native Mexico. His work was published by National Geographic and The Washington Post, and by NGOs such as Amnesty International. He was shortlisted for the 2010 Anthropographia Award for Photography and Human Rights; received an honorary mention in the photo contest ‘Global World: through the lens of human rights’; and was selected last year to participate in PhotoEspaña’s Descubrimientos in Guatemala City.
I met Roberto at the inaugural Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico City in 2008, and he was one of the indispensable members that made it such a success. Many of the photojournalists, whether instructors or students, relied on his knowledge, contacts and assistance for their projects and classes.
Have a look at Rodrigo's Women Warriors and Dance of Mice; these are two unusual traditions practiced in Guerrero in southern Mexico. One of his audio-slideshow projects especially relevant at this time when illegal immigration is being targeted in our southern states is The Promised Land.
For further details on Rodrigo, his projects and talent, drop by Canon Pro Network.
For the week starting Monday October 25, I planned posts on:
1. A photo essay on the Tibetans living in India, that was supposed to be on last week. 2. A remarkable web documentary (multimedia) on China that will leave you speechless. 3. A short movie on Egypt made on a Canon 5D MarkII...very well done. 4. The work of a photographer documenting musicians of the Mississippi Delta...with my kind of music...really hard core Blues. 5. The work of a photojournalist documenting African wrestlers.
I've blogged a couple of times about the H1, the new handheld audio recorder from Samson Audio, and what seemed to be a handy portable stereo recorder at an unheard-of $99 price.
I haven't bought the H1 (as I already have a Marantz PMD 620 which I'm happy with), but a number of my readers have expressed their interest in seeing a review...so the above movie by Shawn Harrel will do just that.
As I expected, the H1 seems to feel a little flimsy, it has a few quirks, but does the job quite well. The price can't be beaten, so I predict I'll see it used by emerging photojournalists on a budget testing multimedia waters.
Speaking of multimedia: I have my new Canon 7D next to me as I'm writing this, but I have yet to really test it. I've ignored the manual as always, fiddled with it and so far it's quite intuitive, especially to a long time Canon user like I am. I'll be putting up some photographs as soon as I can...but one thing for sure: the 8fps is great!
In the meantime, I've added this cheap rig to my 5D Mark II. It's my Marantz audio-recorder attached to a standard mounting plate from Home Depot, which in turn is attached to the camera's tripod socket. From my Mamiya medium-format years, I had an old Hama grip that I also attached to the tripod socket, and it gives me much better control over the camera when I'm filming video.
Khaled Hasan is a Bangladeshi freelance photographer, whose work appeared in several daily newspapers in Bangladesh and international Magazines, such as Sunday Times Magazine, American Photo, National Geographic Society, Better Photography, Saudi Aramco World Magazine, Guardian, Telegraph, The Independent and The New Internationalist.
He was awarded the 2008 All Roads Photography Program of National Geographic Society, as well as the Alexia Foundation Student Award (Award of Excellence). He has been recognized with several awards including the Humanity Photo Documentary Award.
Khaled believes in immersion photography, and listens, observes and talks with his subjects over an extended period of time. In Death of Dreams, he focused on Dhaka's largest old-age home called Boshipuk, and followed the daily lives of the residents for two years.
His photo essay documents the effect of modernization on the traditional structure of Bangla families, and which leads to old ways and values being discarded. Elderly parents are now forced to live out their old age alone, and face living the remaining of their lives in impersonal surroundings.
Following my earlier post on my handwritten storyboard doodles I used for one of my audio-slideshows, I thought I'd prep one that looked a little more sophisticated, and could serve as a template. The templates I found on the internets were not exactly what I wanted, so I basically created one using an existing Excel template.
So here's The Travel Photographer's exclusive storyboard template (PDF) available as a free download to anyone who needs it. I hope you'll find it useful to plan and set up your slideshows.
Hands in Chinese Hakka culture are often a metaphor for the ability to work and survive; a symbol for diligence. "If you have hands, you never beg" the Hakka say.
And so reads a caption under one of Xiaomei Chen's photographs in her Puzhu gallery.
Xiaomei Chen had to choose between a Phd and a camera, and the camera won. Since 2006, she has been documenting human lives with it, using her background in anthropology. She's currently living in the US, and works as a contractor at The Washington Post. Having been a teacher in south China, she's fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka.
She embarked on a visual project documenting Puzhu, an obscure and shrinking village of 45 people in south China which mirrors what China has been going through in the past century. Farmers are leaving their land to earn better pay in the big cities such as Shanghai, leaving their centuries-old houses and way of life.
Puzhu In Transition was produced in partial fulfillment of a Masters of Art degree requirement for the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University. It consist of stills, video and a book.
Here's a statement which could irk all the Libertarians and Tea-Party grumblers: I had an excellent experience with the US State Department's Passport renewal process! Yes, a government office!
I had to renew my soon-to-expire passport, and I decided to jump the gun a month or two earlier than necessary.
I wanted my old one back as it still has a number of valid visas....and as I suffer from acute separation anxiety if I don't have my passport within reach (no, I'm not making this up nor is it hyperbole), I chose the expedited route to speed up the process, and downloaded/filled the necessary application, and included a note saying that I needed the old passport back.
As I also wanted extra pages, I spoke to a State Department employee to clarify whether I needed to pay extra. She checked and responded affirmatively. I enclosed the fees required, and sent it off by Priority mail.
A few days later, I get a call from the State Department informing me that I had overpaid. We resolved the snafu in a couple of minutes, and within a few days, the new passport arrived along with the old one.
Easy, simple and very efficient.
Of course, my passport photograph looks like a mug shot...but that's a different matter.
Well, Apple's announcement that it added two MacBook Air laptops is immensely welcome as it provides an embarrassment of choices to its ever expanding fan base.
I am especially excited by the 11-inch MacBook Air, which measures 11.8 inches by 7.56 inches, and weighs only 2.3 lbs. The 64gb flash memory model starts at $999 and would be ideal as a travel laptop for photographers. Couple it with an external hard drive of whatever storage capacity works for you, and you've got a winner.
And it's $300 more expensive than the iPad (the one sans WiFi)....that's really intelligent pricing.
I guess it isn't really a netbook..or is it? Although Steve Jobs assertion they wouldn't do netbooks, I do think this is a posh netbook...and what I do know for sure is that I'll have to hide my credit cards before Xmas.
Robert van Koesveld is a retired psychotherapist living in Perth, Australia. His biography tells us that he delights in meeting with people from all walks of life, and describes as travel's best moments as those in which he encounters these people.
Robert is also about to publish his book Bhutan Heartland, (Fremantle Press, October 2010) which he produced with his wife, Libby Lloyd.
You can also watch the Bhutan Circumambulation video in large QT format here. Some nice bokeh in the movie.
Circumambulation of temples is an important Hindu ritual, and is similarly performed in most religious traditions; from Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I like how circumambulation sounds when it's uttered...but it's a word I can never spell it correctly.
Andrea Johnson is a photojournalist specializing in documenting the wine and spirits, food, and travel industries. Her photographs regularly appear in related publications such as Wine Spectator, Food and Wine, VIA, Northwest Palate, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Additionally, Andrea has photographed three books: Passion for Pinot (Ten Speed Press, 2008), Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest, (Workman Press, 2010), and Luscious – 100 recipes and Insider Stories from Oregon Fruit Growers, Artisans, and Chefs (Arnica, 2011).
Take a look at her photographs of Burma in the above movie, which she made in February 2010. The fabulous Shwedagon Pagoda, the famed fishermen of Inle Lake, the monasteries with the Buddhist novices and nunneries with the pink-clad nuns, the Shin Laung initiates having their heads shaved, and the ageless U-Bein bridge are all captured by Andrea's lenses....and naturally, the Burmese smiling faces with thanaka paste.
I would have used a different transition between the photographs...I found the zoom-in too distractingly repetitive. The simple (and most common) cut transition is always the best, as it's the way we "see".
Theodore Kaye grew up in China, India and Indonesia. While majoring in Film, he studied also Uzbek and Farsi and worked as a newspaper editor and mountain guide in Central Asia.
Subsequently he was a staff photographer at Rhythms Monthly, a Chinese-language geographic magazine, and covered stories in India, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Japan, Ireland and Great Britain. His work has been featured by the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Asahi Shimbun and the National Film Board of Canada.
I was particularly attracted to his Theyyam Dancers of North Kerala for the vibrancy of his photographs. Interestingly, it seems that Theodore was guided to these performances by a contact who lives in Dubai, and organized his Keralite relatives and neighbors to provide him with all the support he needed to document these dances.
Theyyam is a unique ritual which is performed only in Northern Kerala. After a complex preparatory ritual involving elaborate make-up and meditation, the performers are incarnated as deities, and dispense advice and counseling to the throngs of devotees who attend these rituals. It's a living cult of several thousand-year-old traditions, rituals and customs, and is observed by all the castes and classes in this region.
My own gallery of Theyyam Incarnate Deities is here.
I've converted a number of my audio slideshows to mp4 movies, which are also iPad-compatible, and grouped them in a Vimeo channel. The channel is (obviously) called The Travel Photographer Channel....so this is a heads-up for TTP's readers to drop by and comment or "like" or whatever.
I prefer Vimeo to YouTube...I think its quality is better, and it seems to be more "serious" in its inventory of movies.
The 2010 Angkor Photo Festival is to be held between November 20 to November 27 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The event is a unique photo festival in South East Asia, and it's now in its 6th iteration, having had its inaugural gathering in 2005.
In 2010, 110 photographers including 50 Asian photographers are showcasing their work, in keeping with festival’s mission of highlighting emerging Southeast Asian photographers. These works are curated by well-known figures in photography, Yumi Goto, Antoine d’Agata, and Françoise Callier .
This promises to be a real cornucopia of established and emerging photographic talent, with the participation of Olivia Arthur, Munem Wasif, Paolo Pellegrin, Shiho Fukada, Sohrab Hura, Rony Zakaria, Palani Mohan, Agnes Dherbeys and John Stanmeyer, amongst many others.
To keep up with developments, you can also drop by Angkor Photo Festival's Facebook Page
Phew! I got Walter Astrada's Undesired in after all! I'm glad I did...what a compelling piece of multimedia!!!
For the week starting Monday October 18, I have posts on:
1. A movie by a travel photographer on religious circumbulation in Bhutan. 2. The work of a Mexican photographer featuring photo essays on Women Warriors and La Santa Muerte. 3. A short movie by a travel photographer on her travel in Burma. 4. A photo essay on the Tibetans living in India, that was supposed to be on last week. 5. A photo gallery by a travel photographer on Theyyam, the South Indian Deity worship.
"Fear is contagious, but courage is also contagious" - Ruchira Gupta
Here's an extremely well done production (click the image) by MediaStorm of the remarkable work by photojournalist Walter Astrada. It deals with the issue of Indian women having to face immense cultural pressures to bear a son. This arises from the belief that males earn money while females do not, and are financial burdens on their families due to the tradition of dowry payment.
The multimedia reportage informs us that "The numbers are staggering. Since 1980, an estimated 40 million women are 'missing,' by way of abortion, neglect or murder. 7,000 female fetuses are aborted every day according to the U.N., aborted solely because they are girls. One dowry death is reported every 77 minutes. Countless others are never known."
Although the Indian government has declared dowry and sex selective abortions illegal, these practices are still followed because of cultural prejudices, and traditions.
I've noticed that Walter Astrada photographed in Vrindavan, the so-called City of Widows where I photographed as well a couple of years back. In that particular segment, it seems to me that there's somewhat of an inaccuracy. One of the text panels suggests that widows in traditional families are not allowed to remarry, and are abandoned by their husbands' family. Since the following photographs are of a widows' ashram in Vrinadavan, it could be construed that all widows of traditional families in India are sent to live the rest of their lives in these refuges.
That's not the case.
Only those women of extreme poverty with no other means of personal or extended support will come to Vrindavan and other places like it.
Gary Knight has recently launched his personal website, appropriately titled Gary Knight Photography which features his portfolios, workshops, multimedia (soon) and his current academic involvement in Tufts and Harvard universities.
Gary Knight started working as a photographer in Southeast Asia during the 1980s at at the time when its countries were slowly recovering from bitter wars. He then moved to Europe when Yugoslavia was collapsing, and where he documented the siege of Sarajevo through the fall of Kosovo. Following 9/11, he worked in Afghanistan and two years later independently followed U.S. troops into Iraq. Notwithstanding his conflict photography involvement, his focus is on the survival of the world’s poor and human rights issues.
Knight is founding director of VII Photo Agency. He established the Angkor Photo Festival, is a board member of the Crimes of War Foundation, a trustee of the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation and Vice President of the Pierre & Alexandra Boulat Foundation.
All this is public knowledge, but I also have a personal connection with Gary. In 2005, I attended a workshop in Bali with him and John Stanmeyer at the latter's lovely home and studio in Cannggu. At the time, I was keen to move away from the traditional travel photography (stock images et al) and wanted to get involved in more story-telling and documentary/editorial photography...so I jumped at the chance of getting guidance from these two top photojournalists. And when I look back at where I was then and where I am now...I clearly see their fingerprints.
Here are work samples from Alia Refaat, the final participant in the Bali: Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition ™ . It is Alia's second travel photography expedition, and she plans a series of exhibitions in Cairo of her photographs.
Alia is a commercial photographer from Cairo, Egypt. Alia studied Mass Communications, and trained at Spéos Paris in commercial, portrait and studio photography.
The above photograph is of Balinese devotees returning from the ocean having purified their temple's deities. The all day ceremony was performed near the famous temple of Goah Lawah.
The above intriguing photograph is of Balinese playing Kocokan. This is a sort of roulette in which the players put some money on a vinyl mat decorated with six different pictures of cartoon version of Hindu gods, demons or animals. Surprisingly, this gambling is allowed during a temple odalan.
Cremations are one of the most sacred events in Balinese culture. In this photography, Alia was quick to notice the rather macabre juxtaposing of the body's exhumation and the t-shirt worn by one of the cremation's attendees.
Khari Baoli is reputed to be one of Asia's largest wholesale spice market, and is accessible from Chandni Chowk Road in the heart of Old Delhi. It's one of my favorite haunts whenever I'm in Delhi, and it's a wonderful area for some serious street photography. Of course, going there is also an excuse to stop by Kareem's for its famed kebabs.
The area is full of explorable narrow alleys, while porters hurry with massive jute bags of spices jostle passer-bys. The atmosphere is almost medieval, with the spice and rice traders carrying on the business of their ancestors. Nothing has changed much over the years.
In a small cubicle under a store, one of the area's chai-wallahs is straining the concoction into glasses. Chai or masala chai is a blend of cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and black pepper, mixed with a rich black tea, milk, and a sweetener.
The spice market's feverish activity of carrying or unloading of huge sacks of spices and goods from manual trolleys is occasionally interspersed by laborers resting and smoking their sweet-smelling bidis .
I am definitely in the midst of a black & white phase. When I was producing my Bali: The Trilogy audio slideshows, I thought it was a contrarian reaction to the surfeit of color I've witnessed in Bali. Perhaps it was...but I looked at the above photographs in color, and sensed they'd look better in monochromatic tones. Perhaps I wanted to convey the grittiness of Khari Baoli, and black & white does that better.
Here's Crisis Guide: Pakistan (click on image), a magisterial multimedia production featured by The Council of Foreign Relations and produced by MediaStorm.
As we all know, Pakistan is critical, if not the most critical country, to the national interests of the United States, and yet it's misunderstood and viewed through a prism of apprehension and, from some quarters, of distrust.
The concern over its stability with the current escalation of drone attacks on its tribal areas, the horrific human toll following the recent floods and its geographical and ideological positioning underscore its importance. The New York Times reported last night that international lenders estimate that the floods in Pakistan caused $9.5 billion in damage to its infrastructure, agriculture and other sectors.
According to MediaStorm's web page on the project, it was challenged to create an immersive website, which allowed the user to focus on the complex history of Pakistan and the issues facing the country.
One of the CFR interviewees makes the point that Pakistanis fault the United States' support of Afghan insurgents to battle the Soviet in the 1980s, who fled to neighboring Pakistan when the US invaded Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9.11.2001 Al Qaeda attacks.
I found this is a production that cannot be assimilated, nor reflected on, in a single sitting...it's best viewed over time...bookmark it....it's worth keeping it and returning to it every now and then. Having said that, no production (whether immersive or not) can really explain the complex intricacies that are at play in Pakistan. It's facile for pundits (whatever their political and ideological agendas) to postulate their views...but these will still fall short of reality.
I've uploaded around two dozen of new photographs unto a still gallery titled Traversing The Kachchh Part Two. These photographs were made during my Tribes of South Rajasthan & Kutch Photo~Expedition ™ earlier this year.
As the title suggests, this is the second of my still galleries of photographs made in that area; the first was Traversing The Kachchh.
Both galleries are precursors to my forthcoming photo-expedition In Search of Gujarat's Sufis to south Gujarat and the Kutch.
The In Search of Sufis Photo~Expedition ™ was sold out a week or so from its being announced.
Rich-Joseph Facun is a documentary, lifestyle, travel, commercial, editorial and portrait photographer based in the United Arab Emirates.
He recently published a personal project titled Darshana Ganga which documents the daily life, culture and heritage along the Ganges River over a number of trips to India. The latest trip saw him in Haridwar, an important pilgrimage city, Rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world and Devprayag, where two rivers converge to form the Ganga.
Darshana is a Sanskrit term signifying "visions of the divine", and is the central act of Hindu worship, and Rich built his photo essay around the reverence that all Hindus have to the Ganges. He also interspersed it with some excellent photographs of street life scenes in Varanasi...have a look of the one titled Shiva Music House.
It's been quite a while I haven't been to Devaprayag. It's there that the confluence of the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi forms the Ganges, and where the river is as translucent as a California swimming pool. I know it's hard to believe that when one encounters the Ganges' toxic waters in Varanasi, but it is emerald green in Devaprayag and beyond.
I've finally decided to replace my trusted and loyal (but ageing) Canon 1D Mark II with a Canon 7D. I hummed and hawed about whether to get the Canon 1D Mark IV, but balked at its price ($4900ish) and its weight....I thought of getting a second Canon 5D Mark II but wanted a much faster fps rate...and seeing a Canon instant rebate of $100 on the 7D, I jumped at it and now have it.
Well, I should say I almost have it, since although it's physically here I can't touch it for another few days. It's technically a birthday gift so it's in the no-touch zone until then.
I think I took the right decision in choosing the 7D. It's light in comparison to the 1D models, and its smaller sensor doesn't really bother me, especially since I have the 5D Mark II's full frame when I need it. The fast fps rate of the 7D will come in handy during festivals, religious rituals, ethnic celebrations...wherever there's action.
Next step? It might be either the Zacuto Optical Viewfinder or the more affordable LCD Viewfinder LCDVF. Santa will decide.
Hamid Sardar-Afkhami is a photographer and a scholar of Tibetan and Mongol languages with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After moving to Nepal in the late 1980’s and exploring Tibet and the Himalayas for more than a decade, he traveled to Outer Mongolia, and determined to document its nomadic culture by setting a mobile studio ger camp in Mongolia. With his arsenal of cameras and different formats, he mounts yearly expeditions into the Mongolian outback to document her nomadic traditions.
Apart from the two movie documentaries (these are not short, and run for almost an hour), take a look at Hamid's photographic gallery titled Dark Heavens, which has color and platinum portfolios.
Planning a multimedia photo essay or audio slideshow needs a sort of bird's eye view of the project as a whole, and that's what storyboards are essentially supposed to do. Storyboards help to pre-visualizing the photo essay's sequencing, and act as blueprints for the project.
The above photo shows my rather elementary storyboard for one my recent Bali audio slideshowNgaben: Cremation Ceremony, which has the sequencing of images and audio clips, timing, etc.
Naturally, it would have been more professional/efficient to use a proper storyboard template downloaded from the web, but where's the fun in that!?
Amira Al-Sharif was born in Saudi Arabia and currently lives in Yemen. Both of these are extremely conservative societies, and being a female photojournalist is practically unheard of. Amira has had to struggle for an education, and is the first person in her family to graduate from university.
She attended The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul last June, and was the only representative of her native Yemen to be there. She not only loves photography and photojournalism, but is a talented photographer. She attended Stephanie Sinclair's class...possibly one the toughest of the workshop, and did well.
She has just been accepted at the International Center of Photography in New York City, and will soon begin a photography project there documenting lives of young American women seen from her perspective.
An email newsletter from The Empty Quarter Gallery introduced me to Reem Al-Faisal who's a Saudi photographer. She started her career in 1994, and has exhibited her work in various galleries in Saudi Arabia, showcased at the Opera House in Cairo and at the University of Art and Design in Beijing. She also showed her works in various galleries in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands, and in exhibitions at the Arab World Institute and the Galerie Agathe Gaillard in Paris.
Her photographs are in various public and corporate collections such as The National Museum of Seoul, Korea, and Sakakin Center in Ram Allah, Palestine.
Interestingly, Al-Faisal is also one of the first women to be granted permission to photograph in the holy cities of Makkah and Al-Medinah. This is certainly an unusual privilege.
Many of us involved in the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop lament the dearth of Arab female photographers, and being introduced to the work of Reem Al-Faisal is very welcome.
Luminous Lint also has many of Al-Faisal's photographs.
Cathy Scholl is a photographer and a participant in my Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo~Expedition, which took place earlier this year between January 23 and February 7, 2010. She has traveled to India no less than 13 times, as well as to Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma.
Her photographs were exhibited in galleries throughout Southern California. In addition to winning awards, her work was selected to hang in juried exhibitions curated by leading experts in the field of photography, such as Arthur Ollman, founding director of the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.Cathy is also an active member in the Burn magazine community, which is curated by David Alan Harvey
Following her participation in my photo~expedition, Cathy continued to Haridwar where she also photographed at the Kumbh Mela. I chose these photographs made during the photo~expedition from her blog More Than Just A Pretty Picture...an appropriate title as Cathy's style is more inclined towards documentary travel photography, and she eschews cookie-cutter travel photographs.
The top photograph is of a Gujarati villager and her child, made in one of the countless villages we visited during the photo~expedition. The middle photograph was made in Baneshwar, during a pind daan ceremony which extends for about a week, and during which the tribal people of Rajasthan and Gujarat come to remember their dead....notice how Cathy framed the characters in this photograph.
The third photograph was made in a grain distribution room in the village of Poshina, where tribals and villagers receive their subsidized rations.
I had to rejig my posts this past week to diversify the posts a bit, so I omitted some I had originally planned to feature.
For the week starting Monday October 11, I have posts on:
1. A poignant multimedia project involving the treatment of Women In India, which I planned to post last week. 2. The work of a documentary photographer featuring daily life along the Ganges, that I also wanted to post last week. 3. The work of a Saudi Arabian female photographer, whose work (and herself) shatters all stereotypes. 4. The very interesting work of a photographer and a scholar of Tibetan and Mongol languages on Mongolian cultures. 5. A photo essay on the Tibetans living in India.
This interview is really worth watching and reflecting on.
In July 2010, British photo-journalist Alixandra Fazzina was awarded the annual UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award as a recognition of her work documenting the often overlooked consequences of war. In this video by UNCHR, she speaks about the plight of the uprooted. She traveled to some of the worst hit areas in Pakistan where she saw first hand the devastation caused by the floods, and reminds us that refugees are human beings too.
UNHCR cares for more than 40 million uprooted people.
Alixandra Fazzina, who's based in Pakistan, is a member of the NOOR foundation and photo agency.
Western Digital announced a free photo viewing application called WD Photos for the iPad that works with its line of external storage products like the My Book World Edition, My Book Live, and WD ShareSpace. The app is said to allow the user to access up to 285,000 images placed in a shared folder. The advantage in this is that saved images can be accessed using the app from anywhere through a web connection. The benefits to photographers are obvious...for instance, while traveling I could show my portfolio to anyone in the world on my iPad using this app. The app has pinch and zoom functionality, and the images can be viewed in 1024 x 768 resolution on the iPad.
However, wouldn't it be phenomenal if the iPad could connect to a portable external drive, on which I could download my travel photographs as I made them in the field? Once the photographs were saved on the portable drive, I could then use this app to access them (at least the jpegs) through a web connection.
NPR's The Picture Show recently reported that a part of Tibet's history recorded through old photographs was auctioned in London. The photographs (consisting of 70 platinum prints and 2 folding panoramas) were taken by British political officer John Claude White during a 1903 British mission to Tibet, and were sold for £38,400 (or about $60,000).
I love news like that because it fuses history (military), Asia, adventurism and photography. John Claude White was part of the British expedition led by Francis Younghusband who, under orders from George Curzon, was to settle disputes over the Sikkim-Tibet border. In reality, the expedition was to establish British hegemony in Tibet, and morphed into an invasion and occupation of Tibet. This was one of the many chess pieces in The Great Game between Great Britain and Russia to control Central Asia.
Younghusband is subject of a well-documented biography by Patrick French, titled The Last Imperial Adventurer. A fascinating man (comparable in my view to Sir Richard Francis Burton...another incredible adventurer), Younghusband is said to have experienced revelatory visions in the mountains of Tibet, toyed with telepathy in Kashmir, and eventually espoused a sort of atheism, even though he was brought up as an Evangelical Christian.
I always think photojournalists (especially those who work in Iraq and Afghanistan) to read up on history instead of believing the crap we see on television...they'll have a better grasp of what's still going on. The Last Imperial Adventurer is one of those books.
Jean-Marc Giboux started his photographic career in 1988 in Los Angeles where he was a correspondent for the Gamma-Liaison photo agency covering news, social issues and cultural trends for European publications.
In 1997, Giboux was awarded a grant from Rotary International to cover the progress of the worldwide polio eradication programs, traveling in India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Yemen, Mali, Niger, to name but a few. He also covered the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan for Doctors without Borders, and this was featured in an exhibition touring the USA and Europe from 2004 to 2006.
Currently residing in Chicago, Jean-Marc continues to collaborate with Doctors Without Borders, CARE, WHO, UNDP and the Rotary Foundation.
In an interview with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jean-Marc told the interviewer that funding was the most difficult part of his photography career. Outside of a major grant he got from Rotary to shoot the polio project and a couple of excursions with Doctors Without Borders, his projects are mostly self-funded.
Among his many humanitarian photo galleries, Jean-Marc has a gallery of portraits devoted to Hindu holy men...or sadhus. I assume that these were made while covering the Aardh Kumbh Mela in Hardiwar earlier this year. Have a look...they're made in sepia and in a square format.
I just read in WIRED's Gadget Lab that Zoom will launch a new Flip-like recorder that records beautiful audio for about $300. Stores expect it soon.
Zoom is the Japanese company that manufactures the various audio recorders that are popular with many multimedia producers, and which recently announced the affordable H1 Handy Recorder that I posted about here.
The plethora of useful (and others not so useful) products and gear aimed at multimedia producers, photographers, and videographers is incredible...but how do we carry and operate all this stuff?
And in the WTF? Department, here comes the Leica M9 Neiman Marcus Edition limited to a only 50 units. Engadget reports that it's "wrapped in a brown ostrich leather trim this time around, and it comes paired with a chrome-finished Summicron-M 35mm f2.0 ASPH lens", and costs $17,500.
A bargain. A trifle. A bagatelle.
I used to say (tongue-in-cheek like) that only orthodontists could afford the high end Leicas...but for this one, only hedge funds honchos need apply.
I'm glad to present Bali: The Trilogy; a three-part audio-slideshow (based on a chaptered SoundSlides platform), which consists of black & white documentaries of Balinese ceremonies.
The Melasti ceremony is an all important Balinese tradition of purifying temple deities in the waters of the ocean, the Ngaben is the Balinese tradition of cremating the dead, while the third is Tajen, the ancient tradition of cockfighting, technically illegal but still practiced on the island (and elsewhere in Indonesia).
This above link will not work on iPads (by the way, about 6-7% of my daily readers view this blog on their iPads, and I think this percentage is growing every day), however the following links will allow iPad owners to watch the individual audio-slideshows on their devices:
A word about the choice of black & white; I'm not sure if I'm entering a sort of black & white phase in my photography work, and this is its manifestation...or whether I've been influenced by the likes of John Stanmeyerand others...or whether it's a contrarian reaction to the surfeit of color I've witnessed when attending these ceremonies last month...or whether it's because the Balinese believe these ceremonies inherently involve spirits and dark forces...I don't know. It just felt better.
Let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy these audio-slideshows.
Justin Guariglia has had a lifelong passion for documentary photography and Leica M cameras that eventually led to a distinguished career as a magazine and travel photographer.
"Of course, one cannot travel without money, and that is how I discovered photojournalism. Even back in the late 1990s, unlike today, there was still a good amount of work available—a shoot here, a story there, a portrait needed…so magazine work became the way to pay my bills and to travel and see the world, but I always came back with lots of personal images that editors usually never saw. At that stage National Geographic Traveler and Smithsonian magazines ran short stories on distant countries, and that helped pay my way to see the world."
Naturally the interview lauds the qualities of Leica versus other brands of cameras, and highlights how unobtrusive it is in comparison to the large DSLRS currently used by many other photographers. Justin's lenses consist of a 24mm f/2.8, a 35mm f/2, and a 50mm f/2, although he tries to only carry the 35mm f/2 Summicron.
For Leica fans, there's also a Leica contest with the grandiose name of In The Footsteps of the Great Explorers, which calls for adventurers and travel blog writers to submit their entries, and travel with Leica from mid-January 2011. A very fancy website!!!
