Free Travel: 01/15/11 ~ freeTravel247

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Marji Lang: Gujarat

Photo © Marji Lang-All Rights Reserved

Marji Lang is a French travel and documentary photographer, whose color-full photographs in her India galleries just jump at you.

She's fallen in love with India and has already traveled there four times. Over the past 10 years, Marji traveled in South East Asia, and was influenced by Henri Cartier Bresson and more recently by the work of her compatriot and Indiaphile Claude Renault.

She rarely plans ahead her trips, and just takes it a day at a time. No specific hotel reservations nor fixed itineraries. She prefers making her photographs with a human presence...but is not against making a few that are devoid of people (such as the one above). Marji only uses a 24-70mm lens.

I was interested in her Gujarat gallery as some of her photographs are of Jain female pilgrims (sadhvi) in Palitana, one of our stops during my forthcoming photo expedition In Search of Gujarat's Sufis next month.

Katharina Hesse: Human Negotiations (& Interview)

Katharina Hesse is a photographer who currently works in China and Asia, and has been based in Beijing for the past 17 years. She graduated in Chinese and Japanese studies from the Institut National des Langues et Civilizations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris.

She has recently uploaded some of her gripping photographs of Bangkok's sex industry unto a 6 minutes-movie which she titled Human Negotiations (above), and during which she also talks about her project in a Skype-interview with Elisabetta Tripodi, and which appeared on the blog e-photoreview.

Human Negotiations is an experimental two-year collaboration between Katharina and writer Lara Day, using images and text to explore the lives of a community of Bangkok sex workers. I cannot begin to fathom how Katharina managed to gain the trust and confidence of her subjects to such a degree...and she says as such in her interview, and that the most important task in her project was to gain the trust of the sex workers and their clients. All serious photographers agree with her advice, since only full and complete mutual trust gained over months and months can make such intimate projects possible.

Katharina's has an impressive background. Not only is she a self-taught photographer (always a huge plus for me), but she initially worked as an assistant for German TV (ZDF) and then freelanced for Newsweek from 1996 to 2002. In 2003 and 2004 she covered China for Getty's news service. Her images were featured in numerous publications such as Courrier International, Der Spiegel, D della Repubblica, EYEmazing, Zeit Magazin, Glamour (Germany), IO Donna, Die Zeit, Marie-Claire, Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique, Neon, Newsweek, 100Eyes.org , Reporters without borders(yearbook 2010, Germany), Stern, Time Asia, Vanity Fair (Italy/Germany), and Wired (Italy) among others.

Katharina's photographs of Xinjiang, Kashgar and Urumqi are probably the best I've seen of that region....so go to her website after you watch the above movie.

Four Photographers Document Cockfights

Here's a feature which groups individual photo essays of cockfighting by four photographers. I thought of grouping these essays, and also mention my own. Two of the cockfights occur in the Philippines, one in Haiti and the fourth occurs in Bali.

Photo © Julie Batula-All Rights Reserved

The first photo essay is Julie Batula's One Way Out; a photo essay of black & white photographs of cockfighting or sabong as it's called in the Philippines, where it's one of the oldest and most popular sports.

As Julie says: "Roosters continue fighting because they cannot escape, regardless of how exhausted or injured they become. It is a routine where they are forced to fight or die, and where death is the only way out."

Julie Batula is a Manila-based artist and documentary photographer, who is influenced by the works of Sally Mann and Nan Goldin.

Photo © Mitchell Kanashkevich-All Rights Reserved

The second photo essay (it's more of a multi-photo blog post) is by one of my favorite travel photographers: Mitchell Kanashkevich. He tells us he was riding a motorcycle to the city of Dumaguette in the Philippines and came by an area where cockfights were from morning till midnight everyday for a few days.

Mitchell Kanashkevich is a travel/documentary photographer, and is represented by Getty Images. He's been featured on this blog a number of times.

Photo © Swoan Parker-All Rights Reserved

The third photo essay is by Swoan Parker who features a 16 color photographs in a photo essay titled "Place Your Bets" of cockfights in Haiti.

Swoan Parker is a freelance photojournalist based in New York City available for global assignment. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, TIME, and National Geographic Traveler among others.

The final photo essay is mine, and is titled Tajen. It was photographed on the island of Bali last August.

The 1000th Google Follower

Photo © Haleh Bryan-All Rights Reserved

I was glad to see my Google followers have reached the 1000th mark yesterday, auguring well for The Travel Photographer's blog in 2011.

The 1000th Google Follower is Haleh Bryan who publishes her own blog Haleh Bryan Photography which showcases her talented personal work. Apart from her art photography, she has a gallery of Egypt which the above image is from.

End Of Year Photograph

Photo © Muhammed Muheisen/AP

This is my 2116th post since I started The Travel Photographer blog, and with it I'd like to close 2010 with this lovely photograph by the very talented Muhammed Muheisen.

It appeared on the LENS blog of the New York Times a few days ago, and it shows three young refugee girls; two from Afghanistan and the third from Pakistan, attending a Qur'an class in a mosque in Islamabad. You may want to click on it to enlarge it.

The expression of the cute middle one is just sublime...especially that her cloth prayer book is upside down. Not very attentive are we now? And the "I Love NY" hoodie worn by the third girl kept a smile on my face for a while.

I hope it does the same to my readers.

Till next year!

Next Week On The Travel Photographer

What's on tap for the week starting Monday, January 3? Take a look:

1. The work of a French photographer/photojournalist featuring Tibet and Kilimanjaro.
2. A photomovie by a Scottish photographer...on the Coal Wallahs of India.
3. The work of an emerging photographer on the Durga Puja.
4. An interview with an award-winning photojournalist, along with his tips and techniques.

Plus potential "shooting from the hip" posts....who knows what the first week of 2011 may bring!

As a footnote: a reader wrote me the other day complaining that the Next Week On The Travel Photographer posts were a waste...saying that he would much prefer if I was to post daily, including Sundays!!!

Tough crowd my readers!

January? Must Be TTP's 4th Year!!!

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

As I'll be traveling on January 24 when it's officially The Travel Photographer blog's fourth birthday, I thought why not observe it today...?

I started this blog on January 24, 2007 with a post on the Ardh Kumbh Mela, which was being held in Allahabad in that year. Since then, I've posted over 2116 posts, posted about no less than 900 photographers and ranted, pontificated, expressed considered and unconsidered opinions on issues, important and trivial....gleefully aroused the ire of a dogmatic few and provoked the generous compliments of many.

I learned of new and interesting things about photography, world history, geopolitics, culture, religious and non religious traditions...I was influenced by the work of those I featured here...I was taught a few life lessons that I would never would have known otherwise....my name became synonymous in some circles with The Travel Photographer; what a case study in real-life marketing and branding this is!...and, because of the reach and popularity of this blog, my photo~expeditions got such that I had to reduce the number of allowable participants.

I made friends in the photography industry...many new acquaintances and a number of good friends across the globe...through my photo~expeditions, during my involvement in the Foundry Photojournalism Workshops, and elsewhere... I am glad to have more than 1000 "followers" on this blog, thousands of newsletter subscribers, and a thousand or so more on the social networking sites such as Facebook plus Twitter. My two self-published books have sold more copies than I expected...so life's good.

What else is there to say? I could go on and on...but I 'll summarize it by saying I look forward to the continuation of this blog's delightful journey into 2011...and I'll continue to encourage emerging photographers and photojournalists, especially those from the non-Western world...and hope to see more of them on The Travel Photographer's blog!

Elizabeth Herman: Durga Puja

Photo © Elizabeth Herman-All Rights Reserved

Elizabeth Herman is a photographer and a recent graduate of Tufts University. She's currently residing in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she is a Fulbright Fellow. At Tufts, Elizabeth intertwined her studies with her passion for photography through "Exposure", the Tufts' student-led documentary studies group.

Whilst in Dhaka, Elizabeth documented the annual Durga Puja. The annual event is an Hindu festival in South Asia that celebrates worship of the Hindu goddess Durga. As far as Bangladesh is concerned, Durga Puja is its largest religious festival for Bengali Hindus.

As an aside, Durga Puja will be the objective of my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo-Expedition/Workshop in early October 2011.It's sold out but a standby/waiting list is available.

While logged on to Elizabeth's website, be sure not to miss her Women Warriors, a visual project focusing on Vietnamese women who fought in the war with the United States.

Nagore Sessions: Sufi Song

A recent article appearing in The New York Times on music used in some of the city's yoga centers led me to the Nagore Sessions. These are Sufi chants accompanied by percussion from the Middle East and contemporary Western instruments.

While the musicians are from many different nationalities, faiths and backgrounds and came together to produce the Nagore Sessions, the singers (Abdul Ghani, Ajah Maideen and Sabur Maideen Babha Sabeer) are Sufis from India. They usually perform at religious and social ceremonies at the Sufi shrine of Nagore Dargah in coastal Tamil Nadu.

This song follows the qawwali style as it includes verses praising God, but I'm also told that it's sung in Tamil. Traditional Qawwali songs are mostly sung in Urdu and Punjabi, and a few in Persian.

Finding this is timely, as one of the highlights of my forthcoming In Search of the Sufis of Gujarat Photo Expedition™ is to document the Gujarati Siddis who have retained their Sufi heritage.

One of my long-term projects involves the various Sufi traditions in the Middle East and South Asia, and the Nagore Sessions reminds me of my work with the Gnawa (aka Gnaoua) of Morocco. These are also traditional Sufi music performers, albeit with African roots. During the Essaouira Gnawa festival, a number of international performers played fusion music alongside the Gnawa musicians....incredible mind-blowing stuff!!

I've produced a multimedia photomovie Gnawa: The Sufis of Africa of some of the performers at the 2009 festival.

Voice-Over Artist

Photographers who produce multimedia photo essays are notoriously voice-over calamities...flat, unfunny...you name it. I ought to know...I break into a cold sweat whenever I have to do a voice-over (which is rare).

Audio will make or break a multimedia photo essay, so a lifeless or unattractive voice-over (when needed) will doom one's product.

But here's a natural talent who ought to be employed as a voice-over artist by photographers, in radio or even on television. So here's a chance to do good and employ this man!

Via Duckrabbit.

BBC's Human Planet

The BBC's Human Planet is a landmark series that marvels at mankind's incredible relationship with nature in the world today. Each episode takes you to the extremes of the planet: the arctic, mountains, oceans, jungles, grasslands, deserts, rivers and even the urban jungle.

A word of caution...exploring the Human Planet website will take you a while. I've barely scratched its surface so far.

Human Planet crews have filmed in around 80 locations, bringing us stories that have never been told on television before. The team has trekked with HD cameras and state of the art gear to film from the air, from the ground and underwater.

For more on Human Planet offerings, check Human Planet Explorer Collections

One of the forces behind Human Planet is Timothy Allen. Timothy's work focus is on the remaining indigenous societies, and he devotes his time to documenting the diversity of humanity's cultural heritage. He writes a blog for the BBC documenting his photographic work around the world for Human Planet.

In case you're interested to see what the cameras used by Timothy look like, here they are:

Photo Courtesy Timothy Allen

Frederic Lemalet: Tibet

Photo © Frederic Lemalet-All Rights Reserved

Frederic Lemalet is a French travel photographer who, evidenced by his focus on Tibet, is in love with that region. He traveled to Alaska, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, China, and Nepal...but it's Tibet that seduced him

Between 2003 and 2009, Frederic spent 3 years in Tibet, documenting its culture which may soon disappear. Distributing his time between his native France and Tibet, he's currently working on publishing books, and displaying his images in exhibitions. The last exhibition was "Himalaya" and held in Montier-en-Der (north-eastern France).

His Tibet gallery has 44 photographs, with a number of lovely portraits like the one I chose above...but don't miss those of the famous Tibetan wide open spaces, and of the Tibetan pilgrim praying in a sort of crude shelter made of stones. The photographs span the four seasons; a testament to Frederic's dedication to the region.

Jashim Salam: Celestial Devotion

Photo © Jashim Salam-All Rights Reserved

Jashim Salam is a Bangladeshi photographer, who's currently working for Driknews international photo agency. He was recognized with a Jury Special Award in the 6th Humanity Photo Awards 2009 Contest, sponsored by the China Folklore Photographic Association, the Guangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee and UNESCO. He also received awards in the 69th International Photographic Salon of Japan (Asahi Shimbun) in 2008, a honorable mention in the USA Legatum Center Photo Contest in 2009, a special award in the People & Planet photo contest 2009 in Australia, and otjers.

Jashim's atmospheric photo essay Celestial Devotion is featured by the website SocialDocumentary.net, and is about an an orphanage and Islamic school in Chittagong. The orphanage/school claims to have mentored thousands of youngsters to memorize the Qu'ran since it was established in 1970. It currently hosts some 200 orphans who share very basic facilities. According to UN statistics, 6 million students are enrolled in the madrasa system in Bangladesh.

Madrasas have received (some deservedly) a bad reputation in the West, and being synonymous with fundamentalist teachings. Some are just that, but the larger majority seem to be nothing more than institutions providing social assistance to orphans and the poor. This is not a novel concept, but one that is shared by many other religious traditions such as Buddhism, and Hindu Vedic schools as an example.

Ed Kashi's Interview (Silber Studios TV)

Screen Capture Courtesy Silber Studios

Ed Kashi is of course a well known photojournalist with a list of awards and achievements as long a man's arm, and then some. I thought his interview with Marc Silber would be of interest to my readers if they haven't caught it before I did.

In this video-interview, Ed shares some ideas (tips if you prefer) on advancing one's photography. He makes many interesting points such as describing himself as a long form visual storyteller, and uses the phrase "candid intimacy" to describe his work.

The blurb accompanying the video interview mentions that when a photograph achieves that look, then its viewers can see into the soul of the subject...perhaps a little hyperbolic, but one that some of us travel photographers (and certainly the majority of photojournalists) relate to.

I'm not talking about "pretty pictures" here, but as far as I'm concerned, it's about what I like to call "travel photography meets photojournalism". ...a phrase I use to describe my photo~expeditions. I wasn't surprised at all to hear Ed say that more and more of his work is being shot from his hip or his shoulder, to avoid provoking people who are not comfortable with having a lens poked in their direction. I also smiled when I heard Marc Silber mention Morocco as being a difficult place to photograph people, as they disliked being photographed...it brought back my few photographic ventures to that part of the world.

Ed (and others like him) shooting more and more from his hip or his shoulder is something that camera manufacturers ought to keep in mind. Perhaps that's one of the benefits of owning and using an EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) camera which can be used like an inoffensive point & shoot. The Panasonic GF1 (now GF2) and Olympus E-PL1 are such cameras. I have the former with a 20mm f1.7, and have a lot of respect for what it can do.

POV: More Branding For Free

I think I knew very early on in life that one of the most critical and fundamental factors in any business, whether online or not, was branding. As I entered the online world for my photography business, I realized that online personal branding was key to generate a distinctive internet personality/presence, and that's how I snagged The Travel Photographer label...for my blog, a backup blog, website(s), social media such as Twitter, Facebook and everything in between including an email address, business cards, and even items of my own clothing.

If I had a penny for each time I hear other travel photographers how clever I was in snagging The Travel Photographer label/brand before they did, it'd pay for a new Canon 5D Mark II...I exaggerate of course, but I heard that said a lot.

I also knew that my name was not the easiest to pronounce (at least for Americans...it's no problem with other nationalities), so an alias was the smart thing to do. It always gives me a kick when I'm in a photography function and I'm introduced as "Tewfic...y'know, The Travel Photographer".

All right, I rambled enough about personal branding. Through one of my Twitter followers, I learned of About.me which is a free website (technically still in beta) that allows anyone to build a an attractive personal profile that points users to one's content from around the web.

Naturally, I snagged The Travel Photographer and now have my very own personal profile. Will it be useful? I don't know yet but at the very least I appropriated and protected my brand by doing so.

If you have a personal brand, you may want to do the same.

The Coptic Man on "Tiananmen Square"?

Photo © Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

A photograph by Amr Abdallah Dalsh, a Reuters photographer, stopped me in my tracks. It shows an Egyptian young man (presumably a Christian Copt) menacing or hurling a piece of iron at the cowering Egyptian police. This came about as a consequence of the heinous bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve which killed 23 and injured 100.

Egypt is still reeling from the violence, and its government has quickly blamed external Islamist terrorism, promising to bring the perpetrators to justice. I'm not holding my breath on that eventuality, and neither are the Copts, who have been subject to discrimination at all levels in their very own country.

High on the Copts' grievance list is Egypt's policy to make it extremely difficult for them to build churches. The country's prime minister recently rejected demands for Copts to be free to build churches, claiming that the government will make sure that there are enough worship places for both Muslims and Christians. A joke.

And this is one of our so-called stalwart allies in the Middle East. Another joke.

But let's go back to the photograph for a minute. A half-naked man confronting a phalanx of well armed, well protected security forces...and seemingly single-highhandedly making them cower like rats. This is truly an example of a picture being worth a thousand words.

Photograph courtesy Reuters Full Focus Blog

Joey Lawrence: Omo Valley Portraits

Photo © Joey Lawrence-All Rights Reserved

There's no question that Joey Lawrence (aka Joey L) is one heck of a photographer...travel photographer, ethno-photographer and portrait photographer as well. He recently added more photographs of Lower Omo Valley tribes to his blog that are breathtaking in their simplicity.

These are different than what we come to expect to see from Joey, who had accustomed us to environmental portraits of endangered tribes people, whether in Ethiopia or Indonesia. This latest crop of incredibly beautiful photographs have been posed, and the subjects set against a simple black background. According to Joey, these will be part of a fine art book with all his work from the Omo Valley.

The tribes depicted in this series are the Karo, the Nyangatom, the Mursi, the Daasanac. the Hamer and the Arbore.

Joey used a PhaseOne/Mamiya 646 with a 80mm prime lens, a light setup and a collapsible reflector. The combination of the medium format and the lighting technique produced these remarkable results.

Photo Matters: An Educational Resource

Jon Sachs is the creator of Photo Matters, an educational resource for photographers who want to learn about creative photographic variables. Most of my readers are professional and semi-professional, and may consider an educational website such as this one to be for beginners...but that would be a mistake. Photo Matters is different, and aims at all levels of photography proficiency.

It's true what Sachs says on his website. Many times, we reach for a lens, or adjust the shutter speed/aperture value without even thinking...and can't explain it. We just know...or just feel it. However, Photo Matters explains it visually.

Trust me...you'll like this website. A lot.

Eirini Vourloumis: Latino Muslims

Photo © Eirini Vourloumis-All Rights Reserved

Eirini Vourloumis is a freelance photographer who has recently been featured on The New York Times' LENS blog for her photo essay on Islamic communities in the United States. She is a graduate of Parsons and the Columbia Journalism School, and her work has been published on Lens and in The New York Times, New York Magazine, FT magazine and The Village Voice. She also attended the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul where I met her this past summer.

There are an estimated 200,000 Latinos in the United States who have converted to Islam. Most of them live and work in New Jersey and in New York City. They represent a unique fusion of religious and cultural identity, as they're attracted by Islam's simplicity and the absence of a clergy...in direct contrast to Catholicism.

Eirini has a couple of photo essays on her website featuring Muslim communities in the United States; the Great Muslim Adventure Day and the Indonesian Community Mosque in NYC. She managed to present an insight in a small community, but part of a larger community which has been -and still is- unfairly maligned in this country.

As Eirini says in her interview with James Estrin:

"It is challenging to live in the U.S as a Muslim. There is a heightened sense of Islamophobia, which can be aggravated by the general portrayal of Muslims in the media. Negative images of Islam — drawn from associations with fundamentalism and terrorism — have begun to marginalize Islamic communities, accentuating the prejudice that many Muslims face in their daily lives."

Good work!

Cropping...What's That?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Photographers who've accompanied me on my photo~expeditions, have photographed alongside me and perhaps those who've seen my galleries, know that I don't crop my images except in-camera. I don't know if that qualifies me as a purist or not, but in general terms, I'm loath to remove what is already in the frames I've captured.

Naturally, if there's an offending finger creeping in the side of a frame, I'd crop a few pixels out of the frame to remove it (or very very rarely use the clone tool instead)...however depending on the subject/scene and its intended purpose, if it's a whole hand, arm or face that intrude, I'd still leave the frame intact. In a moving situation, there's always the possibility that I can't (or if I'm not quick enough) alter my position to exclude what I don't want from my frames. If I have the luxury of a few seconds, then I crop in-camera.

I also photograph what I call "pretty pictures"...the smiling posed faces...the like you see in stock libraries and on covers of travel/geographical magazines. In those, an extraneous object would be certainly be...well, extraneous. However, as I take as many photographs of the same person as I can, I rarely resort to cropping unless the expression/body posture in a particular frame is one of a kind.

Having said all that, I thought the photograph above of the three Balinese rice farmers was perfect for a panoramic crop, which works much better than the original frame. (I've added my copyright symbol in its center since it occurred to me that it'd look very nice as a blog header for some travel blog). Click it to enlarge.

So do I crop outside of the camera? Sure, although 99.9% of the time I don't.

Books: Robert Van Koesveld's Bhutan Heartland

Robert Van Koesveld has published a wonderful book on Bhutan, and entitled it Bhutan Heartland. The details of the book are available on a sub-section of Robert's website.

When I got it, I experienced a twinge of envy at Robert's talents as a photographer, and how well produced this book was. Joining Robert in the task of putting this book together is his wife Libby Lloyd.

Bhutan Heartland explores the culture, history, beliefs and dazzling Himalayan landscapes of this wonderful country, known as Druk Yul...and where smoking in public places is against the law!

Nine chapters make up this hardback book of 210 pages. Robert and Libby have taken their readers from Paro in the west of the country to its east, traveling through the high passes of Dochu La and others, meeting monks, nuns, lamas...stopping at Ogyen Choling and documenting the various exuberant tsechu festivals...and end up with silk weavers and yak herders.

If you decide to visit Bhutan (and you must!!!), this is the book you ought to read. It's not a guidebook, but the amount of informed research in it was new to me, informative and interesting...and I've already been to Bhutan about 4 times!!!

Well recommended. You can buy it from Robert's website or order it from major booksellers such as B&N.

Palani Mohan: Kolkata's Rickshaw Pullers

Courtesy Getty Images' Reportage

Palani Mohan describes the rickshaw pullers of Kolkata as "human horses" who work for 18 hours a day, hand pulling/carrying people and goods for a pittance. There are over 18,000 rickshaw wallahs in Kolkata, and although the state government declared this "inhuman" and "barbaric", and tried to ban rickshaws from the city's streets. This was rejected by the pullers themselves, and huge protests ensued.

Most of the rickshaw pullers are impoverished Biharis, who come to Kolkata to earn money to feed their families back in Bihar. Some describe their lives as "cursed". with most of their earnings going to rent the rickshaw itself, leaving almost nothing for their families.

I love these black & white environmental portraits, and as documenting rickshaw pullers will be one of the aims of my Kolkata Photo~Expedition/Workshop, I'll be providing this post's link to its participants.

Palani Mohan was born in Chennai, India, and moved to Australia as a child. His photographic career started at the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, and since then he has been based in London, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and now Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia.

His work has been published by many of the world's leading magazines and newspapers including National Geographic, Stern, Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. He also published three photographic books. His work has been recognized with awards from World Press Photo, Picture of the Year, National Press Photographers Association, American Photo and Communication Arts. He is represented by Getty Images' Reportage Group in New York.