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 Photographers: Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photographers: Travel. 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...
Monday, August 6, 2012
Ahmed Shajee Aijazi: Under The Ramadan Moon
Photo Ahmed Shajee Aijazi-All Rights Reserved
Ahmed Shajee Aijazi is another graduate of my Multimedia For Photographers class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop held in Chiang Mai. Titled Under The Ramadan Moon, it's Ahmed's personal take on how the Muslim community in Chiang Mai observe and experience the month-long fast during Ramadan.
This is one of the three multimedia projects that were made in color, and Ahmed exerted much effort to gather its image and audio files despite fasting himself. Difficult under any circumstance, but Ahmed persevered, and completed a worthwhile project he ought to be very proud of.
Ahmed Shajee...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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...
Friday, June 22, 2012
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...
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Rasha Yousif: At The Madrasa
As Rasha Yousif writes on her Vimeo page, Islam is the second-most practiced religion in India following Hinduism, while 24% of Kerala's population is Muslim. Muslims of Kerala believe that their origins in the area started in the 7th century AD when Islam originated in Arabia.During my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop, Rasha worked on a number of multimedia photo projects and one of her Soundslides (now converted to video) photo films is her At The Madrasa, whose still photographs and audio were taken at the madrasa of Cheraman Perumal Juma Masjid. The photographs are in monochrome, and Rasha has done very well in merging the various audio tracks that include the students voices, and religious chants. You will see these Muslim children learning the Qur'anic texts...
Saturday, June 2, 2012
New: One Image One Sound Stories
Photo Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
I am a member of Cowbird which describes itself as "...a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than youre likely to find anywhere else on the Web."
I occasionally upload some of my photographs along with a short audio clip to it, and now have 9 stories under my name. The latest two are The Sufis of Cairo which I photographed (and recorded) a couple of years ago in one of the impoverished neighborhoods of Old Cairo.
Photo Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
I also uploaded another photograph of The Shadow...
Friday, May 25, 2012
Anthony Pond: Ginger Godowns (Mattencherry)
Anthony Pond is certainly prolific. His multimedia piece Ginger Godowns is the fourth audio slideshow I feature on my blog, and the second of his photographs and audio recordings made during The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop.
And I know he's got a few more up his sleeve.
This time, he focuses on the area of Mattencherry with its ancient warehouses, or godowns, of ginger, pepper, turmeric, rice and other spices which are hand-sifted, bagged and marketed, filling the air with pungent, sharp aromas, which you can almost smell from this audio-slideshow.
The area of Mattencherry dates back to the Arab, Portuguese and Dutch traders before British colonial times, and its streets are lined with old dilapidated warehouses which can be easily imagined as having been in use...
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
My Work: The Spice People of Mattencherry
Here's a short audio slideshow which I produced in under an hour yesterday of some stills I made on Mattencherry's main street during my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop.
Mattencherry, part of Kochi, was once a bustling centre of trade, particularly in spices but is now but a shadow of its historical vibrancy, however godowns of ginger, basmati rice and other spices can still found on its main street. It is there that traders and porters work from the same small stores occupied by their forefathers.
All the stills are with a Leica M9 and post processed in Lightroom using my own split tone preset.
I, like many others, am at loss at what to call an audio slideshow. It seems to me that audio slideshow is cumbersome and old fashioned. Some like Benjamin Chesterton...
Monday, April 30, 2012
Charlotte Rush-Bailey: Blood & Turmeric
Charlotte Rush-Bailey is a photographer who migrated to the world of photography from a corporate career that covered three decades of marketing and communications positions in a variety of global industries including energy, financial services, media, conservation, technology and professional services. This gave her opportunities to work with people all over the world, and to learn to appreciate cultural nuances and the influences of socio-political forces.
She has just produced her audio-slideshow Blood And Turmeric of her stills and ambient sound recordings made during the festival of the Oracles in Kodungallur whilst participating in my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop.
So hold on to your seats, you'll get sweaty palms perhaps...but I'm certain you'll be bowled over...
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Oracles Of Kodungallur
The Oracles of Kodungallur celebrate their festival in the Bhagawati temple, which usually occurs between the months of March and April. It involves sacrifice of cocks and shedding of the Oracles own blood, to appease the goddess Kali and her demons who are said to relish blood offerings.
"It was one of the most intense photographic experience I've had in a long while."
The festival is overseen by the aging King of Kodungallur where hordes of Oracles (Vellichapads in local Malayalam) stampede around the temple waving their curved swords while chanting abuse at the goddess.
This 4 minutes movie (using SoundSlides for the still photographs...
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Anthony Pond: 10,000 Verses
Anthony Pond has just produced another audio slideshow of black and white photographs made at the Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam Vedic Institute in Thrissur, Kerela, India where young novices spend five years learning Vedic chants.
It was made during my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop when I arranged a photo shoot at this ancient Vedic gurukul (a training and boarding school very similar to Buddhist monasteries for its novitiates, or Muslim madrasas) in Thrissur, where we were allowed to attend demonstrations of this way of teaching and reciting sacred Vedic scriptures.
One of the suggestions I make during my workshops was that essays produced by its participants ought to have intriguing titles. I certainly think Anthony did well with his...
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Verdict: The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop
Photo Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
"...the uniqueness of this photo expedition-workshop..."
That's how one of the group members started to express his satisfaction in having attended The Oracles Of Kerala Photo-Expedition-Workshop while bidding goodbye to me and the rest of the group.
Uniqueness! It's precisely what I strive for when I structure my itineraries and programs for my photo expeditions/workshops. Are all of those based on unique itineraries? Of course not...but most of them are. The Oracles Of Kerala Photo-Expedition-Workshop was based on two main Hindu religious festivals: Thirunakkara...
Friday, February 24, 2012
POV: The Dove Whisperer & Storytelling
Photo Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Regular readers know that I've joined a new storytelling website called Cowbird, and have already posted a couple of mini-stories.
I've just started a few days ago, and I've realized a couple of interesting things. First off, the community of Cowbird are not professional photographers...there are some, but the majority describe themselves as storytellers not as photographers. Secondly, haphazardly eyeballing members' pages, tells me that the majority of them reside in the United States, and by definition tell local stories.
But here's what's interesting as far as I'm concerned....
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Anthony Pond: The Ring Train of Yangon
Whether in Myanmar (Burma), India, China, Viet Nam or elsewhere, trains or trams are wonderful to meet local people, and photograph them.
In Yangon (Rangoon), a local railway line does a loop from the citys main station through the inner city, suburbs and outlying villages, before returning to the station some 3 hours later. The "circular" is a train for local people, offering hard (and worn) wooden seats, sputtering fans, and with occasionally stuck windows, but it's a fascinating insight into local life.
Anthony Pond has just produced another audio slideshow of black and white (toned with Silver Efex Pro 2) photographs, and which were made during a ride on the circular train of Yangon. My very favorite is the one of the elderly nun.
Anthony worked for more than two decades in the...
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Teerayut Chaisarn: In Search of Sufis Movie
Teerayut Chaisarn is an emerging photojournalist/photographer from Chiang Mai in Thailand, and participated in my In Search of the Sufis of Gujarat Photo Expedition in January 2011. He recently completed a 14 minutes movie of his experience during the photo expedition, and posted it on YouTube.
Teerayut started photographing about 5 years ago, and is largely self-taught. He started work as a photographer on the magazine staff of his hometown, but preferred to become a freelance photographer. He also applied his Photoshop post processing expertise to assist various Thai professional photographers, and processes their portfolio...
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...
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Mark Carey: Viet Nam In Black & White
Photo Mark Carey-All Rights Reserved
"My photographic heart lies in documentary, showing things as they really are, not as someone has contrived them to be..."
Here's a photographer who shares my own photographic credo.
Mark Carey is a London-based documentary photographer, and who tells us he never had an interest in photographing posed or set-up shots, whether for his wedding photography or during his travels. I suggest you view his wedding portfolio, and see this documentary/photojournalism style applied to the weddings he covered.
His travel portfolio consists of three main galleries; Rajasthan, Varanasi and...
Monday, January 16, 2012
Anthony Pond: On Yangon's Wharf
Here's an audio slideshow of black & white stills by Anthony Pond on the porters at Yangon's wharf. It's his first attempt to use SoundSlides and Audacity, and I am impressed.
Anthony Pond worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defenders Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he traveled repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture.
His photography website has galleries of his work from Laos, Nepal, India, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cuba, Mexico and Cambodia, as well as others.
Anthony is joining me on my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop this coming March, and I certainly look forward to be working with him during i...
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
David Hagerman: The Ferry Boats of Istanbul
Photo David Hagerman-All Rights Reserved
David Hagerman attended The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul and produced an evocative audio slideshow titled The Ferry Boats of Istanbul, which he just published on his blog.
Yes, Istanbul is the city of Sultanahmet Camii, the Aya Sofya, the Kapali arsi, but it's also the Bosphorus ferries that characterize it. These ferries provide vital links between different areas of that magnificent city, connecting the European and the Asian coastline. The first steam ferries appeared on the Bosphorus in 1837, were operated by private sector companies and currently carry approximately 61...
