Incredible India (Director Cut)

I saw this a few days ago on Facebook. It's guaranteed to bring a smile to your faces, especially if you're an Indophile.  It's a commercial for the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India's 'Incredible India 2013' campaign directed by Prakash Varma and produced by Nirvana Films. Lots of humor, some tongue in cheek, incredible color (of course) and a very cute main character who tries the Indian head "wobble", but (in my opinion) fail...

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American Tintype

American Tintype from Matt Morris Films on Vimeo.Checking in my Vimeo channel, I noticed this wonderful short documentary picked by its staff about Harry Taylor who discovered a passion for the 150-year-old craft of tintype photography.There are also remarkable samples of his craft on his tintype gallery, which I urge you to visit.The ICP website describes tintype as: "One of the most intriguing and little studied forms of nineteenth-century photography. Introduced in 1856 as a low-cost alternative to the daguerreotype and the albumen print, the tintype was widely marketed from the 1860s through the first decades of the twentieth century as the cheapest and most popular photographic medium." And Wikipedia defines it as a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a sheet of iron metal...

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Kris Bailey's Durga Puja: The Spirit of Kolkata

"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...

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The Travel Photographer's "Cafe Dao (& Love)"

"No one in our village was as beautiful as she was...we liked each other since we were 12 years old..." A foreign stranger suddenly walks up to you while you're relaxing on your front porch, with cameras dangling off his shoulders, asking to document your daily life. What would your reaction be? Well, Thai Truang Dao happily said yes. Of course, Maika Elan was there to explain my purpose, but Mr Dao's hospitality went beyond the inherent politeness shown to a foreign guest. Allowing me into his home (and his life)...and at one point, gesturing me to go up the creaky stairs to photograph a now little used second floor, where...

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Abdul Waheed, The Music "Doctor"

Here's a delightful "human interest" audio slideshow featured on CityFM89 (a FM station in Pakistan, which promotes the rich musical heritage of the region while offering a wide variety from pop to world music, from jazz to house music) about Abdul Waheed, the owner of Waheed Music Shop in Karachi.Waheed Music Shop is tiny store full of musical instruments; acoustic guitars, tablas, flutes and banjos are crammed on the floor, waiting to be sold or repaired. The piece tells us that Abdul Waheed has been doing this work for over 40 years, and has had renowned artists visit his shop for all their musical needs. I'm certain that the Pakistani qawwali musicians have found their way to his shop.It can also be viewed on Vimeo.While I can't speak Urdu as such, it...

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Ehrin Macksey: Hanoi, Calm After The Storm

As my readers know, I was in Hanoi about two weeks ago, and one of my favorite street photography haunts was the Hoan Kiem district, especially in the streets where vendors sold toys, lanterns, masks, and other gaudy decorations in anticipation of the mid-Autumn festival in early October.  The crowds were simply overwhelming in the late evening when young people congregated there to have fun.Ehrin Macksey, a photojournalist/photographer and filmaker living in Hanoi, decided to photograph the streets of Hanoi the first morning of Tet, another huge festival in Vietnam...after the chaos and bustle at the end of each January or beginning of February that characterize the period leading to Tet.As you'll see from Ehrin's video of his stills, the calm that replaces...

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The Lady From Hanoi

"I miss the quiet streets of Hanoi..."Here's a vignette of a story produced by Humanity.tv which caught my eye, especially as I've just returned from Hanoi and loved its people, its overall buzz, its incredible food, and most certainly the slaloming scooters and motorcycles that whizzed past me as I crossed the streets.The short movie clip is about Ms Nahm, who seems to be longing for the calmer days in Hanoi. I say 'seems' because there's no dialogue (only a musical soundtrack and some ambient sound) to explain who Ms Nahm is. All we get to know is what we see...and that she appears to be an artist (or sells artwork), lives with an elderly person (possibly her husband) and likes to dance.It would've been wonderful to hear Ms Nahm's voice, and some of her narration...and get to...

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The Travel Photographer's "Hilltribes In The Mist"

Following my Vietnam: North of the 16th Parallel Photo-Expedition/Workshop, here's a short audio-slideshow documenting some of the hill tribes of North Western Vietnam in Sa Pa and Bac Ha. Mostly Hmong and Dzao, and a handful from over 10 other tribes, they attend Bac Ha's famous Sunday market to buy, sell, barter and eat. There are 10 Montagnard groups that live around Bac Ha: the Flower Hmong are the most visible (and seen in the slideshow), but other groups include Dzao, Giay (Nhang), Han (Hoa), Xa Fang, Lachi, Nung, Phula, Thai and Thula. The still photographs were made with a Leica M9, Canon 5D Mark II and the Fuji X Pro-1. When using the latter, I mostly shot from the hip. The audio was recorded on a Tascam DR-40. The images were post-processed using Alien Skin...

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Amy Helene Johansson: A Lost Revolution?

"My heart is beating for this project and it would be wonderful if as many people as possible see it and get enlightened about the situation. " -Amy Helene Johansson Prior to the boom in the garment industry, almost no women in Bangladesh worked outside of their family or marital homes, and had few opportunities to earn money. However today, the female garment workers are the backbone of the Bangladeshi economy in an industry that generates billions of dollars each year. It should be a womens revolution, but is it? While academics and economists agree to some extent that Bangladeshi women are in the midst of a revolution, they are still not empowered financially or socially. And are not strong enough to demand a fair remuneration. Multinational companies such as Nike, Levi Strauss...

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Roger Anis: The First Stone

"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." Roger Anis is a photojournalist at the Egyptian daily newspaper Al Shorouk, and is based in Cairo. He graduated with a degree in Fine Arts, and was awarded a scholarship for the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, during whch he attended Hemrik Kastenkov's Storytelling For An Online Audience class. His project is titled The First Stone, inspired by the passage in the Bible in which Jesus confronts the Pharisees over whether an adulterous woman ought to be stoned. The project was filmed and photographed in Loi Kroh Road, a well known area in Chiang Mai where bar girls can be seen plying their occupation, providing company (and more) to Western tourists. The story is of Un, a 36 year old bar girl, who agrees to...

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Ian Terry: Bangkok Offerings

Here's Bangkok Offerings, a short movie (with very nice time lapses) by Ian Terry, a Seattle-based documentary photographer and journalist, as well as an alum of Henrik Kastenkov's multimedia class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop*.Alms giving ceremonies around Bangkok involving thousands of monks are held to celebrate certain auspicious dates in the Buddhist calendar. However, on regular days monks take to walk along the streets of towns and villages on their alms round. This is done throughout the year whatever the weather. You may also want to view Ian's photographs of a cockfight in Mae Khue, a small town in rural Thailand. According to his entry, the fights he witnessed were not to the finish, and ended when one of the roosters either lost interest or was too exhausted to continue...

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Multimedia Or Make Up Your Own Audio In Your Mind?

As my readers know, I've been privileged to attend the annual Foundry Photojournalism Workshop for the fifth consecutive time, every year teaching Multimedia For Photographers class. But for those who don't know; the purpose and aim of this class is to show photojournalists how to make quick work of slide show production, using their own images and audio generated in the field, to produce cogent photo stories under the simulation of publishing deadlines, rivaling other multimedia forms in terms of quality.At the end of Workshop, the instructors and staff gathered to discuss and suggest ways to improve it. The length of the multimedia presentations...

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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...

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Narratively: Stories Of New York

Living and photographing in New York City when I'm not traveling means that projects such as Narratively never fail to turn me on. Narratively describes itself as a digital platform devoted to original, true, and in-depth storytelling about New York, through writing, photography, documentary video, animation and interactive media. And the best is that Narratively is on the lookout for interesting stories and talented contributors. And this sounds especially compelling: Each week, well explore a different theme about New York and publish a series of connected stories  just one a day  told in the most appropriate medium for each piece. We might feature a longform article with portrait photos on a Monday, followed by an animated documentary on Tuesday, then a photo essay, an...

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Ulises Baque: Oui Nan, 93 Years Riding

As per my latest blog post, the presentation evening ending the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop showcased all of the students' work, and I highlighted three projects which I thought were the best. Two of the three were multimedia, and here's one of these. Extremely well made and edited, this short multimedia piece elicited much praise from the audience.The project was made and edited by Ulises Baque, a videographer based in Thailand. It was made for Henrik Kastenskov's multimedia class, and is about the oldest samlaw cyclist in Chiang Mai.I intend to write a bit further about this, but the dichotomy of the multimedia and the non-multimedia projects during the Foundry's evening presentation could not have been more stark. Although some of the non-multimedia were interesting and compelling,...

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Cheryl Nemazie: Night At The Naga

Here's the multimedia work of Cheryl Nemazie, a photographer who attended my Multimedia For Photographers class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Chiang Mai.She singlehandedly produced this impressive audio slideshow and spent hours, not only photographing at the Naga Tattoo parlor on Loi Kroh Road, but also with her laptop in class and elsewhere, adjusting the linear sequence of her photographs, syncing her multi layered audio track to the photographs, and preparing her photographs as best she could to preserve their integrity. During her first visit, since the tattoo parlor 's music system played the music of Johnny Cash, the employees obliged her during her subsequent photo shoots by playing it again, so as to have the same soundtrack for her project. During the project's various...

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Presentation Night: Foundry Photojournalism Workshop

Well, the Saturday evening presentations of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop were held at the Chiang Mai University, and I can confirm that the evening was a total success.My Multimedia For Photographers class presentations started with Near Sky, a monochromatic photo essay documenting the production of the Chaw Fah (symbols atop the spires of temples) by Alycia Down,  followed by Close Encounters of the Foundry Kind by Amean J...consisting of clips of Foundry students expressing their expectations from the Workshop, then followed by Loun Steve, a personal insight into the life of an American expatriate living in Chiang Mai, afflicted...

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SAMSARA

Many are familiar with the breathtaking movie Baraka... but now its film makers have produced Samsara. Samsara is the new non verbal documentary film by the creators of "Baraka". It took five years to make, and was shot in over 100 locations in 25 countries. It is one of only a handful of films to be shot on 70mm film in the last forty years. The documentary takes us to sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial sites, and natural wonders. It was photographed entirely in 70mm film utilizing both standard frame rates and with a motion control time-lapse camera designed specifically for this project.It will be shown on August 23 in New York...

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Anthony Pond: Kathakali, The Story Dance

Anthony Pond is hardly a stranger to The Travel Photographer blog, as Kathakali, The Story Dance of Kerala is the newest one of his many audio slideshows I've already featured. In this latest one, Tony has very ably merged stills, ambient audio with video clips to produce a 3 minute multimedia look into the backstage preparations for a Kathakali performance, and then the performance itself. Tony was a participant in The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop during which I had arranged a private photo shoot involving the performers of this ancient art form. The 3 hours make-up session, and the 2-1/2 hours performance took place at the Kalatharangini Kathakali School near Cheruthuruthy. The performers' intensity was incredible, and I recall mentioning that earlier on this blog that...

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Kris Bailey: Red Rivulets (The Oracles of Kodungallur)

Apart from being an attorney in Northern California, Kris Bailey is a photographer who's keenly interested in South and South East Asia, and is particularly attracted to unusual rituals and religious festivals. She joined my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop, which was her second expedition-workshop with me; the first being Kolkata's Durga Puja. On her blog and Vimeo page, Kris describes herself as "Inspired by the stories of a young adventurer with a french accent and a cheap wooden guitar, Kris ran home from school one day and announced that she was going to live in Europe. Eight months later, wearing a cowboy hat and white bell-bottom jeans, Kris boarded a DC-10 bound for Brussels. She was 15 years old." No longer with a hat and white jeans, she has just produced her...

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