Shooting From The Hip On LK Road

Photo Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Whilst teaching at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop the past week or so, I've also managed to set aside some time to fit some of my favorite style of photography, and shooting from the hip with the Fuji X Pro-1 has been high on my list to do, especially at night.

Here's LK Road, a collection of street photography scenes made in one of the grittiest mainstream streets in Chiang Mai; Loi Kroh Road. The photographs are grouped under the title page of Katoey Or Not?, but I chose not to title this post with that particular name to avoid having visitors being referred to it by search engines for purposes other than photography.

Loi Kroh in Thai means "washing one's troubles away", and it's one of Chiang Mai haunts for tourists principally for the preponderance of girlie bars on its approximately one-mile length...some of these bars are staffed by young women, and/or ladyboys known as katoeys.

Apart from the bars, Loi Kroh Road hosts some restaurants, massage parlors for tourists with aching legs and feet, and tattoo shops. That said, I found its ambiance a little sad and melancholic despite the blaring large screen television sets then showing some Olympics sport event, the occasional clicks of billiard balls, the forced laughter of the young women (or ladyboys) working the bars and the ubiquitous and hopeful "sawasadee...massage?" yells at every corner.

The areas seemed to me to be way past its prime...perhaps it was the off-season as well...but the bars were less than half-empty, even when there were muay thai fights held at the seedy boxing ring. Most of the fights seemed (at least to me) to be staged, with spectators generally consisting of drunken middle-aged European men.

I was asked why I chose to shoot from the hip on Loi Kroh Road, and if it was because it was risky. Not at all...although I imagine some of the bar clients wouldn't relish being photographed. The real reason is the same as whenever I choose to shoot from the hip: it allows me to capture the subjects unawares with natural expressions.

Lastly, the ladyboy in the above photograph, extroverted and very "sociable", reminded me of Ru Paul. I was super prompt in buying her a drink to get rid of her unwanted and rather heavy-handed attentions.

Finally, the Fuji X Pro1 performed extremely well at night, and I have nothing but praise for its performance. Its auto-focus let me down a few times, but its overall performance at high and very high iso is nothing short of spectacular.

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My Work: The Art of Kathakali

One of the highlights of my Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop this past March was spending half a day at a Kathakali school near Thrissur, and documenting the preparations and performance of this ancient art. It was totally distinct from the usual superficial performances shown at the various tourist hotels, and the professionalism of the performers was breathtaking. Apart from the talent of the performers, I was especially struck by the singing which you hear on this "photo-film".

Kathakali is one of the oldest theatre forms in the world, and originated in Kerala. It's a group production, in which actors-dancers take various roles in performances based on themes from Hindu mythology, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

The elaborate make up sessions often take longer than the performances themselves, and follow a certain ritual.

I chose to process the photographs in sepia (DxO Labs), which were made with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Leica M9, with the ambient audio recording on a Tascam DR40.

You can also watch it in HD on Vimeo.

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The Travel Photographer's The Vedic Disciples

This is the second of my multimedia (audio slideshows) projects of stills, audio and video made during my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop. It's of the activities at an ancient Vedic 'gurukul' (or training/boarding school; very similar to the Buddhist monasteries for novitiates), where we were treated to a demonstration of this way of teaching sacred Vedic scriptures.

It is an ancient Indian educational system, which is currently being rejuvenated with the assistance of the Indian government. The young boys who populate the Vedic school usually belong to a caste of Keralan Brahmins, who are responsible to carry on the age-old tradition of chanting Vedas during religious rituals or functions. The chanting is learned by practice, and nothing is written down.

The rhythm of the Vedic chants is followed by the young boys' moving their bodies in cadence to the verses, which reminded me how the Buddhist novices recite their mantras, or how the Islamic students recite the Qur'an at their madrasas.

You can watch The Vedic Disciples on Vimeo as well.

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The Travel Photographer Is On Cowbird!

I've just uploaded my first Cowbird story titled The Sufi Itinerant of Qutb Uddin.

While working on the photograph of Miskine, the Sufi in my post of yesterday, I realized I had a recording of him briefly telling me his life story. Coincidentally, I was invited to join 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."

Cowbird seeks to feature incredible stories by some of the world's finest storytellers, and present them in the most beautiful storytelling environment on the Web. Its community consists of journalists, photographers, writers, artists, filmmakers, designers, explorers, and many others.

"incredible stories by some of the world's finest storytellers"

It allows members of its community to produce multimedia stories, incorporating text, photos, sound, subtitles, roles, relationships, maps, tags, timelines, dedications, and characters, thus mixing elements of traditional storytelling with elements of technology.

I'm excited to have joined Cowbird, and will upload new single image stories as time permits. I've seen that Aaron Huey, a fantastic photographer has also joined Cowbird, and already has a number of stories on it. This one of Zahoor is especially wonderful!

Readers of this blog who feel, as I do, that this is an exciting venue to display their storytelling talents, request an invite from Cowbird...as I did.

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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 which start from the production of effigies, building of the pandals, offerings of flower and worship, and then finally immersion of the effigies in the Ganges.

The Durga Puja event is celebrated over no less than ten days, but it's the last four days  Saptami, Ashtami, Navami and Dashami  that are celebrated with considerable joy and fanfare when the ten armed goddess riding the lion and slaying evil is worshipped with immense zeal and devotion.

This documentary audio slideshow starts with the fashioning of the effigies of Durga which is supervised by certain rites and rules, which include that the clay used for these effigies must be collected from the banks of the Ganges. It then follows the transport of the effigies to the pandals and homes. I also photographed the dhakis, the traditional drummers who accompany the effigies to the pandals, then it was the "kala-bau" snan processions to the Ganges where banana plants are cleaned and draped in a cloth along with nine types of leaves, and on to the last day of the festival when the Durga effigies are brought back to the river for their final immersions symbolizing the goddess' return to her abode in the Himalayas.

And for those who are interested in that kind of stuff, I used a Leica M9, a 5D Mark II and a 7D. The audio was recorded with a Marantz PMD 620.

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The Rickshaw Wallahs of Kolkata

Following my two weeks Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop, I have now completed two photo essays centering on the rickshaw pullers of that quintessential Indian megapolis. About half of the photographs were made using a Leica M9, while the rest with a Canon 5d Mark II. The audio was recorded with a Marantz 620PMD.

The first photo essay is an audio slideshow of about 30 black & white photographs of rickshaw pullers, supplemented by a soundtrack made up of Kolkata's traffic sounds, short narrative clips by the pullers themselves and live instrumental music played by Satyananda Das, a traditional Baul musician.

It can be seen either as a Vimeo movie (above) or as a regular SoundSlides multimedia, which is recommended because the quality of the photographs are much better, and are much larger.

The second photo essay is a gallery of still photographs... essentially the same as those in the multimedia products above, but the gallery is better suited for those who prefer to view them without any multimedia influence.

Documenting the rickshaw pullers was a secondary objective of the workshop, but was an important one. The government of Bengal had announced plans to completely ban the rickshaws, saying that the grueling work violates the pullers human rights, the argument was rejected by the rickshaw pullers with huge protests. Almost all of the pullers I spoke to were from the state of Bihar, one of Indias poorest states. Mohammed was one of those...an older man, a Muslim from Bihar with a dark bunion on his forehead from genuflecting five times a day. Past his prime, he said that he made about 400 rupees a day...the equivalent of $9 or so.

Having experienced first hand Kolkata's incredible 24-hour traffic jams, I believe those who claim that rickshaws are the only mode of transport who can circulate its narrow streets and alleys. The rickshaws carry business people, live poultry, school children, the sick to the hospitals, fruit to the markets, and even prostitutes. Without them, Kolkata could risk coming to a standstill, especially during the monsoon rains when roads can be impassable...and let's face it, Kolkata without the rickshaw pullers wouldn't be the same.

Many Kolkata intellectuals have said that while we can refuse on moral grounds to be carried by another human being, we have no right to take away their livelihood. There's also the hope that rickshaw pullers can be provided with an alternative employment.

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Khari Baoli: The Porters of Spice

Khari Baoli is a street that runs from the Fatehpuri Mosque on Chandni Chowk to the western edge of the old city of Delhi, and is its wholesale spice market. Little has changed there for centuries. Enormous jute sacks of herbs and spices are brought to the wholesalers on long, narrow barrows or carried by porters. From ginger to chilies, from lentils and rice to jars of chutneys, pickles, nuts and tea...all kinds of spices and hers can be found here.

The market itself is on the south side of Khari Baoli, and was built by wealthy merchants in 1920s. It is now Asias largest wholesale spice market. It's an important and busy commercial district, and caters to the vast spice market of North India, including states of Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan and even as far as Madhya Pradesh, making it perpetually crowded with traders, and shoppers.

However, my focus was on the porters who carry the loads of spices from and to the market. Mostly from Rajasthan and Bihar, they're extraordinarily tough and strong.

Khari Baoli: The Porters of Spice can either be seen on Vimeo (above) or as an audio-slideshow (much better quality).

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My Work: The Bali Trilogy

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:

Bali: Melasti Purification Ceremony
Bali: Ngaben Cremation Ceremony
Bali: Tajen Cockfighting Event

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 Stanmeyer and 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.

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Bali: Odalan at Pura Desa Sapat

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Here's the first gallery of my own work whilst I was leading the Bali: Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition™ last month.

It's a linear photo gallery of about 20 large color photographs made during an important anniversary of a Balinese Hindu temple, and it's titled Odalan: Pura Desa Sapat. It's more photo journalistic in style than travel, and there are graphic photographs of animals being sacrificed, which may be disturbing to some.

This was one of the two most intense photo-shoots during the whole photo~expedition...not only because of the time spent photographing, but also because of the unending kaleidoscope of movements, rituals, rites and activities.

Every temple in Bali has a scheduled festival, an odalan, to celebrate the anniversary of temple dedication. The timing of the anniversaries are either based on the lunar calendar or on a 210-day ceremonial cycle. Depending on the importance of the anniversary and on the wealth of its community, animals are occasionally sacrificed.

These anniversary events are important for the communal harmony of the Balinese, where villages will join other villages to pray at their odalan, adding their blessings for the success of the occasion.

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The Travel Photographer's Motion

I set up The Travel Photographer's Motion as a parallel portal (using the F8 Graph Paper Press theme) for my audio slideshows, which are originally produced in the SoundSlides format, and subsequently converted to mp4s, then uploaded to Vimeo. I have no real preference between Vimeo or YouTube, and I'll eventually have these mp4s uploaded on both.

The current line-up consists of Baneshwar: Pind Daan (the annual rite of remembrance for Rajasthan tribals), White Shadows (my favorite! The sad life of the widows of Vrindavan), Debates at the Sangha (Buddhist debates in a Bhutanese monastery...much more animated than those in our Senate), Gnawa (the rhythmic Sufis of Morocco), The Street Chinese Opera (intense musical cacophony in NYC's Chinatown) and Cham! (the tsechus of Bhutan).

More of my audio-slideshows converted to mp4s are in the works.

Both Vimeo and YouTubes have adopted the HTML5 video element (although the former is restricted and the latter is in beta), which permits most browsers (not Firefox, I think) to bypass the Flash plug-in and use video native to the browsers player. That will prove useful for such movies to be seen on the iPad.

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Recent Kudos To The Travel Photographer

I think the British are great...read on and you'll know why I say this.

Adam Westbrook is a freelance multimedia journalist, blogger & lecturer with several years experience in television, radio and online. His blog is one the best multimedia-biased on the internet, and if you haven't bookmarked yet, you should.

He recently published a free e-book titled 66, wich is a series of six blog posts giving advice to the budding multimedia journalists. This is a must-read e-book for anyone who's interested in getting started into journalistic multimedia, and one that I shall use in my own teachings of the subject.

In his Best of the Blogs 2009, Adam kindly lists The Travel Photographer in the Photojournalism category saying "Tewfic El- Sawy niftily picks up the best photojournalism from around the world and showcases it. A forward thinking blog, the Travel Photographer also presents new multimedia from photogs." It shares this recognition with Livebooks' RESOLVE and The New York Times' LENS...an august company indeed.

Also from Great Britain is Ian Furniss, a photographer whose website showcases his remarkably luminous landscape work of the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe. Despite having faced sad personal circumstances in 2009, he wrote an uplifting blog post titled The Inspirational World, which lists a number of his favorite photographers. I am one of those, and I'm indebted to him for writing such a generous opinion about my work.

"I should emphasise that there is no particular order to this list but the next photographer id like to introduce you to, if you havent been already, is Tewfic El-Sawy, otherwise known as The Travel Photographer. I came across his work through his blog which in turn I came to through Gavins site. His blog was a revelation for me at the time because I was so wrapped up in learning about photography, that I had no idea it could be anything other than serious work. Tewfic El-Sawy manages to put humanity back into photography in a way that ive yet to come across anywhere else. His photography is nothing short of stunning and each image is captured with the same honesty & humanity you feel reading the words of his blogs. Im sure there are many who could tell you all about the technical skill, but for me what is important is the feel of an image and these are images you feel right through to your bones."

As I said...the Brits are great.

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Sunday Break: Chinatown's Columbus Park

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
I thought New York City's weather on Sunday was just perfect for a few hours of street photography on Chinatown's Mulberry Street, but ended up spending an interesting time at Columbus Park (Mulberry and Bayard). This is the only park in Chinatown, and is built on what was in the 19th century the most dangerous slum area of immigrant New York.


Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Now, it's the venue of choice for hundreds of Chinese residents, a few of whom I saw were practicing tai chi, while others (mostly women) were playing mahjong and card games, and groups of men were engaged in numerous games of xiangqi. Many more occupy the benches, socializing with their neighbors or with strangers, listening to the songs of birds in their cages.


Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
At the corner of Mulberry & Bayard, there was a large band of traditional musicians accompanying a handful of elderly Chinese opera singers, surrounded by an appreciative audience. I had come prepared...and brought my audio recorder to capture its unmistakable sounds. The musicians used a panoply of Chinese traditional musical instruments, such as the yangqin, a sort of dulcimer with a near-squared soundboard, and played with two bamboo sticks, as well as the jinghu, a small two string fiddle, a circular bodied plucked lute called the yueqin and the recognizable gu and ban, a drum and clapper.

I was racking my brains all evening trying to remember the title of the movie that featured Beijing opera characters, and which won the Cannes Palme d'Or. It's Farewell My Concubine, the 1993 Chinese film directed by Chen Kaige, and adapted from the novel by Lilian Lee.

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Sunday Break: Gansevoort Street Fair

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved
New York City's Meatpacking District is alive this weekend for the Target High Line Street Festival, a free celebration of the opening of the High Line, New York's newest and most innovative green space. Aside from the gigantic lemonade stand, there's performances by various musical bands such Hungry March Band, Zona Del Barrio, and Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra, among others.

Naturally, crowd-pleasers such as pretty girls and magicians were also on hand to entertain the crowds.

The High Line is a 1.5-mile-long historic elevated rail structure on the West Side of Manhattan, and is the newest addition to New York City's parks.

Here are some of the photographs:


Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved

Photo  Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved

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