2:00 AM
"Durga Puja is a celebration of the Mother Goddess, and the victory of the revered warrior Goddess Durga over the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura."
Kris Bailey recently sent me her audio slideshow made during my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop which took place a little over a year ago (how time flies!!!).
It's Durga Puja time right now in the wonderful city of Kolkata. Kolkata, the city that to my mind epitomizes India more than any other city in India.
You ought to watch it as it encapsulate very well the tradition of this annual religious event and its rituals, especially as it is the most important observance in West Bangal. I had encouraged the participants in this workshop to produce monochrome photo essays, and Kris's work is unquestionably one of the...
Showing posts with label Festivals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Festivals. Show all posts
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Anthony Pond: Faith, Frenzy...
Readers interested in unique religious and cultural events will like this. I guarantee it. Not the faint-hearted though.
Following his participation in my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop in March, Anthony Pond has been a frequent contributor to The Travel Photographer blog, and his Faith, Frenzy multimedia essay is the most recent of his many audio slideshows I've already featured.
Not only is it his most recent, but I wager it's his best production so far. Tony used a Canon 5DMk2, audio recordings were made with a Zoom H1, and was edited in Lightroom, Audacity, and Final Cut Pro. I'm not a huge fan of merging stills with video footage, but Tony succeeded in merging these two mediums quite seamlessly.
The Oracles of Kodungallur celebrate their festival in the Bhagawati...
Friday, February 10, 2012
Tony Smith: Kolkata's Cult of Durga (In Motion)
I'm glad Tony Smith has now produced an audio slideshow of his work during the Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo Expedition/Workshop. The software he used to produce it is ProShow Producer, rather than SoundSlides that I normally use on my workshops. His audio slideshow is divided into chapters or segments which coincied with the different phases of the Durga Puja festival.Tony is an Associate member of the Royal Photographic Society, and he traveled to Nepal, Bhutan, India, France, China, Spain, Morocco the USA and Canada and the West Coast of Ireland. He has attended Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Gypsy religious and secular festivals.. He worked quite hard during the Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo Expedition/Workshop to produce his audio slideshow on the festival; however and much...
Monday, February 6, 2012
It's Thaipusam Time...
"The Hindu festival of Thaipusam is about faith, endurance and penance."Thaipusam is to occur today 13 kilometres outside the Malaysian capital city, Kuala Lumpur in a sacred Hindu shrine called the Batu Caves...and if my network intelligence is accurate, a group of Asian photographers, such as Mervyn Leong, Maika Elan and Hai Thanh (to mention only a few) are already in place to document it..The festival of Thaipusam was brought to Malaysia in the 1800s, when Indian immigrants started to work on the Malaysian rubber estates and the government offices. The festival is celebrated mostly by the Tamil community, and commemorates the occasion when Parvati gave Murugan a spear to vanquish the evil demon Soorapadam.On the day of the festival, devotees shave their heads and undertake...
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Frame: The Magh Mela
Photo AP / Rajesh Kumar Singh- All Rights Reserved
The Sacramento Bee's The Frame brings us more than 30 large sized photographs of the Magh Mela.
The Magh Mela is one of the greatest annual religious pilgrimages for Hindus. In Hindu mythology, the Magh Mela's origin is said to be the beginning of the universe. It's held every year on the banks of Triveni Sangam (the confluence of the three great rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati) in Allahabad (UP).
The holy pilgrimage and festival is organized every year during the Hindu month of Magh (mid January - mid February), and is a smaller version of Kumbh Mela.
One of the photographs...
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Year Of The Dragon: Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Photo Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images-Courtesy Al Jazeera
Ethnic Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese across Asia are ringing in the Year of the Dragon with fireworks, festivals and family reunions. Legend has it that Chinese people descended from a dragon, and it's believed the powerful creature is auspicious. The tradition dictates that those born in Dragon years tend to be brave, innovative and highly driven, regularly making it to the top of their profession. In China, the holiday is known as ??, the Spring Festival, and kicks off 15 days of celebration.
Al Jazeera's In Pictures, The Atlantic's In Focus, The Boston...
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The Frame: The Virgin Of Guadalupe
Photo Anita Baca-All Rights Reserved
Did I realize that the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe on 14th Street (not far from where I live in New York City) would commemorate one of Mexico's most important religious holidays this past Monday? Of course not. I only find out stuff like that after the fact.
However, The Frame of The Sacramento Bee has featured 17 photographs of the celebration of this popular religious festival in Mexico City when millions make the pilgrimage to honor the dark-skinned virgin, said to have appeared to an Indian peasant on Dec. 12, 1531.
According to the captions accopmpanying the images, an estimated 5 million...
Monday, December 12, 2011
Kolkata's The Cult of Durga
My main project that came to be from the Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop which I led and organized is The Cult of Durga.
In contrast to my previous audio slideshows that on average are 3 minutes in length, The Cult of Durga is long...it's just over 5 minutes. I also broke a few of my own rules with it. Using the Ken Burns effect on a couple of occasions is one of the most obvious. I decided against a tighter edit, thinking that reducing the number of photographs would've eliminated some important components. So I left it as I produced it in Kolkata.
Durga Puja is an annual Hindu festival in South Asia that celebrates worship of the Hindu goddess Durga. It's the most important religious and social event in Kolkata. It involves a series of rituals...
Friday, September 23, 2011
In Focus: Hindu Festivals
Photo Dibyangshu SarkarAFP/Getty Images
Photo Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri
Photo AP Photo/Manish Swarup
What an incredible but timely coincidence!
In Focus, the photo blog of The Atlantic, has just featured 39 photographs of Hindu festivals...and yes, you guessed it, 3 of those are of the preparations for the Durga Puja in Kolkata.
I am traveling this evening from London to Delhi, where I'll spend a couple of nights, then on to Kolkata to for my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo Expedition/Workshop.
The expedition/workshop will involve a lot of street photography, and at its core is the Durga Puja festivities. We...
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Frame Does Ramadan
Photo AP/Mohammed Zaatari-All Rights Reserved
The Frame, The Sacramento Bee's photo blog has featured 33 magnificent photographs of Muslims around the world are observing the holy month of Ramadan which runs this year from Aug. 1 to Aug. 30. During that period, observant Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and having sex from dawn to dusk.
It was a tough choice as there are many images from photographers such as Kevin Frayer in India, Altaf Qadri in Srinagar, and Achmad Ibrahim in Jakarta which captured the many facets of Islam during Ramadan all over the globe.
However for the blog, I chose the photograph of Lebanese...
Friday, June 10, 2011
Delhi Photo Festival: Nazar Foundation
The Nazar Foundation, in partnership with the India Habitat Centre, is organizing the Delhi Photo Festival on 15 to 28 October 2011. The Delhi Photo Festival is a non-commercial venture, and entry will be free to ensure popular and wide-reaching participation. Through Nazar Foundation, the festival is the brainchild of Prashant Panjiar and Dinesh Khanna, both well known photographers, and for mentoring young photographers and propagating photography. Nazar Foundation was launched with the aim of institutionalizing what these two photographers are already been doing so on an informal basis.The core attraction of the festival will be exhibitions...
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Angkor Photo Workshops 2011
Now in its 7th year, the free 2011 Angkor Photo Workshops is now officially accepting applications from all young Asian photographers.
To get started, photographers can download and read through the application guidelines and the application form below:
APWS 2011 Application Guidelines
APWS 2011 Application Form
The guidelines and form contains all the information needed on how to apply for this years workshops. However for clarifications and or questions, the Angkor Photo Workshops can be contacted email at angkorworkshop [at] gmail.com .
The workshop will be held from November 17 23, 2011 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. As per the...
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Thaipusam: Kevin WY Lee
Here's a well done video of the festival of Thaipusam (some graphic scenes) by Singapore-based Kevin WY Lee. Kevin WY Lee is a street and documentary photographer and founder of Invisible Ph t grapher Asia, which is not only a collective of photographers in Asia specializing in street photography and visual journalism, but is also a platform, blog, showcase and library archive of street photography and visual journalism in that important part of the world.I have already posted work by one of their photographers, and I'm consistently impressed by IPA's features...so bookmark it.It was made using a Panasonic GH2 and Pentax 25mm F/1.4 lens.Thaipusam is an important festival observed by the Hindus of southern India during the Tamil month of Thai (January - February). Outside of India, it is celebrated...
Friday, April 15, 2011
Angkor Photo Festival 2011: Submissions Open!
It was just announced that the 7th Angkor Photo Festival will take place from November 19 to November 26, 2011 in Siem Reap (Cambodia). Details on the venue, programs and workshops, invited curators and other details will be shortly announced.During the 2010 festival, 110 photographers (including 60 Asian photographers) presented their work, which was curated by Francoise Callier (also Program Coordinator), Antoine d'Agata and Yumi Goto.The call for submission for the 2011 Angkor Photo Festival is now open. There is no imposed theme on the submissions, but single image submissions will not be accepted. Submissions have to be projects, and should...
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
SacBee's The Frame: Holi Festival
Photo Manan Vatsyayana/AFPGetty-All Rights Reserved
Photo Kevin Frayer/AP-All Rights Reserved
The Sacramento Bee's photo blog The Frame is featuring 45 remarkable photographs of Holi, the colorful (to say the least) festival which is currently being celebrated all over India. I know we'll soon see much more from travel photographers and photojournalists who are covering this annual festival...but The Sacramento Bee's spread is the first I've seen so far.
Holi is known as the Hindu festival of colors, and is celebrated in Spring by people throwing colored powder and colored water at each other. The tradition is based on the...
Thursday, February 17, 2011
In Focus Does Lantern Festival
Photo Jason Lee-Courtesy In Focus-All Rights Reserved
The new photo blog In Focus by Alan Taylor for The Atlantic featured about 33 photographs of the festivities on the occasion of the Lunar New Year. The Lantern Festival (known as Yuan Xiao Jie) was observed yesterday in China and wherever there are Chinese communities. It's the last day of the Chinese Lunar New Year festivities.
The blurb accompanying the photographs informs us that it's the most important annual celebration in China, and welcomes the Year of the Rabbit...which is a year of caution and calm.
Calm and caution? I guess the Arab nations revolting for their freedom...
Friday, January 21, 2011
MSNBC's Does Thaipusam
Photo Stephen Morrison/EPA-All Rights Reserved
MSNBC's Photo blog featured Thaipusam, which was observed a few days ago by thousands of Hindus in both Malaysia and Singapore, and who subjected themselves to painful rituals. These included rituals involving self-piercing with hooks, skewers and small blades. Some devotees pull chariots and heavy objects using hooks attached to their bodies. Others pierce their tongues and cheek to impede speech, while others enter into a trance during the self-mortification as a result of the incessant drumming and chanting.
The Asia Society in New York is also featuring Thaipusam on its Photo of the Day...
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Ashura: Photos In "The Big Ones"
Photo REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (Courtesy Reuters Photo Blog)
Photographs of the Day of Ashura are carried by a number of the newspaper large picture blogs, largely because of its graphic nature, and while I initially thought it might have been because it reinforces the stereotype of Islamic fervor being violent, I've reconsidered and I'm quite certain that this is not the case. I recall seeing lovely peaceful scenes of Muslims celebrating Ramadan on The Big Picture blog.
Photo Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images (Courtesy WSJ Photo Journal)
Be it what it may, the photographs are graphic because the acts of self mortification and...
Sunday, November 14, 2010
LATimes' Framework: Chhath Festival
Photo Narendra Shrestha/EPA
The Los Angeles ' Times large image photoblog Framework has featured a number of lovely photographs from around the world this past week. I liked this one by EPA photographer Narendra Shrestha of a Nepali woman staring while offering fruits and coconuts to the setting sun during the Chhath festival in Kathmandu.
The Chhath festival is observed by Hindus in India and Nepal, and it's performed in order to thank the Sun god Surya for sustaining life on earth, and to ask for the granting of wishes. The rituals include bathing, fasting and abstaining from drinking water, standing in water for long periods...
Monday, October 18, 2010
Angkor Photo Festival 2010
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 festivals mission of highlighting emerging Southeast Asian photographers. These works are curated by well-known figures in photography, Yumi Goto, Antoine dAgata, and Franoise Callier .
This promises to be a real cornucopia of established and emerging photographic talent, with the participation...
