India: Holi Festival

Image Copyright Steve McCurry
Holi, also called the Festival of Colors, is an annual and popular Hindu spring festival, and takes place over two days in the later part of February or early March. This year, as per the Hindu calendar, it falls on March 3.

The festival’s main highlight is when people throw colored powder and water at each other, at passerbys, strangers, tourists, etc. This period, during which the weather changes, is prone to cause viral fever and cold, and it is said that this playful throwing of the colored powders has a medicinal significance, as these are made of medicinal herbs prescribed by Ayurvedic doctors. It is very popular all over India, especially in Rajasthan.

To the Indian readers of TTP, Holi hai!

Photoshop On-Line & Free?

CNET reports that Adobe Systems plans to release a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing application within six months. This is to counter competition from Google and others.

The online service is part of a larger move to introduce ad-supported online services to complement its existing products and broaden the company reach into the consumer market.

The hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe's more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Books: Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk's "The Great War For Civilization : The Conquest of the Middle East" has now been published in paperback. Fisk is one of Britain's most respected journalist, who has covered (and lived in) the Middle East for a long time. This book runs 1000 pages, and in my view is a must read for anyone interested in the truth about the Middle East and the West's meddling. While it has no direct bearing on photography per se, it's an important enough book to include in TTP, as it describes Fisk's travels to dangerous places to report on conflicts, and wars.

I'm thrilled to read in a reviewer's commentary that in his book, Fisk heaps scorn at the US mainstream media (press and television) "for what he sees as their abject failure to challenge the lies, distortions and cover-ups of U.S. policymakers. The mendacity and bland pomposity of the suits and talking heads, both Western and Middle Eastern, are infuriating to anyone who has any direct knowledge of what is going on there."

I've have just started to read this book. His notes on his interviews and meetings with Usama Bin Laden (pre 2001) are riveting in their prescience. I expect nothing less than more brilliance from Mr Fisk as I continue reading.

John Isaac: Kashmir

Fisherman In Dal Lake-Image Copyright John Isaac
From 1969 to 1998, John Isaac worked for the United Nations and traveled to more that 100 countries while capturing on film a changing world. During his career, he received many awards from Nikon International Photo Contests, as well as the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Photographic Council.

He authored books including a series called Children in Crisis. Through this series, John gives a first hand account of the daily life of children and their families in troubled regions around the world. He co-authored "Endangered Peoples" with Art Davidson and Art Wolffe for the Sierra club.

His photographs are testament to his professionalism, however his main website disappoints from an 'architectural' standpoint. It's clunky and doesn't seem to have been updated in quite a while. I chose another website to showcase John's superb images of Kashmir. I particularly liked the images of the insides of homes in Srinagar. One of them is of a family portrait in a blue room, with posters of Ayatollah Khomeni...denoting that the family is Shia.

The above photograph of the fisherman throwing his net is most probably pre-arranged...but it certainly doesn't diminish the beauty of the composition.

I just can't wait to visit Kashmir and experience its famous houseboats on Dal Lake, its trekking and its people. An incredibly gorgeous area...and if the political situation calms down further, maybe I will lead a photo tour there next year.

John Isaac's Kashmir

John Isaac's Website

Audio: Soundtracks

I use the M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 to record either interviews or ambient sound from the field, to soundtrack any slideshows I plan on doing on my return. Although I've used commercial CDs or mp3 downloads to also add music to some of these soundtracks, I found them to lack authenticity and sound 'too canned'.

So here's a tip: Bring along a cheap transistor radio bought from Radio Shack -or even better, from wherever you're going...it'll be cheaper- and tune in to local stations until you hear typical/traditional music or songs you feel are appropriate to accompany your slideshow, press the record button on your audio recorder and you've got yourself an authentic musical soundtrack that is most probably not available commercially here! And if you're documenting a political event, a snippet of local news would add aural 'authenticity' to your photo project.

Veronique de Viguerie: Afghanistan

Image Copyright Véronique de Viguerie
In 2006, French photographer Véronique de Viguerie was the sixth woman to win the Canon Female Photojournalist Award, for her project on Communist Militiawomen in Nepal.

Véronique de Viguerie is 28 years old. French by birth, she studied photography in England before becoming a freelance photojournalist in 2004. Her work includes reports from Pakistan, and a number of in-depth reports on Afghanistan, a country she first visited for a newspaper assignment in 2003. In 2005 she narrowly escaped death in a suicide bombing on a Kabul café – the man sitting next to her was killed outright. Her work has been published in Newsweek, The New York Times, LIFE, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Le Monde and Libération.

I haven't found her website, but some of Véronique's brilliant photographs appear in a World Press Network slideshow whose link is at the end of this post. I want to highlight the remarkable photograph (above) of Bibi Zorak and her husband Zahir Khan. The story behind this picture (it's #10 in the slideshow) is incredibly touching. It underscores how Afghan-Islamic tribal culture can be compassionate to widows (getting married to one's brother-in-law after the death of the husband, ensures the survival of widows), and humanizes people whom we know very little of.

Another stunning photograph in the slideshow is a close-up of an Afghan woman's face covered in a burqa. The eyes appear through the burqa's mesh, and tell the whole story...don't they?

No question about it, de Viguerie is an enormously talented and sensitive photojournalist, with a stellar career ahead of her.

Véronique de Viguerie's Afghanistan

Canon: EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens

Canon's website has announced a new addition to their lens list:

A new EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens succeeds the versatile EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM Lens as a high-performance L-series wide-angle zoom lens, specifically designed for improved peripheral image quality. Compatible with all EOS SLRs past and present, it uses three high-precision aspherical lens elements and two Ultra Low Dispersion (UD) lens elements to minimize lateral chromatic aberration and to produce superb image quality with excellent resolution and contrast. New coatings minimize ghosting and flare. It is an internal focus design, so the front element does not rotate during focusing and zooming, a convenience for users of circular polarizer filters. The lens is also fully gasketed and sealed for dust and moisture resistance, and it features an electronic diaphragm with circular blades for natural-looking background blur effects.

Canon's spin on this new lens is that its engineers have completely redesigned the optics on this lens to deliver higher contrast levels and improved resolving power.

So is it time to get rid of your 'old' EF 16-35mm f/2.8L? Of course not!

Richard Van Le: Cao Dai

Balian in Canggu-Image Copyright Tewfic El-Sawy
Richard Van Le is a New York City photographer, with impressive images from Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.

His website has a handful of galleries, and his images of the Balians (Balinese rural healers) managed to capture the mystical elements of these healers' profession. I documented Balians during my stay in Bali, and I recognize some of them in his gallery. However, it is his work on the Cao Dai in Vietnam which I recommend on TTP.

Cao Dai was established in the Southern regions of Vietnam in the early 1920's as an attempt to create a perfect synthesis of world religions. It is a combination of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism, Geniism, and Taoism.

Van Le's website is Flash-based and you can visit his Cao Dai and other galleries here

Complexities of Conflict Photography

On February 23, The International Center of Photography held an event titled Taking Sides in Conflict Photography, and three of the panel joined Leonard Lopate of WNYC to discuss the challenges of covering the conflicts there, and the ethical questions of photographing events in the region. They also talk about whether their own backgrounds and ethnicities factor into their work. Isa Freij was born and lives in Palestine.

Isa Freij, a cameraman for CBS and a documentary filmmaker, Shaul Schwartz of Getty Images, and Heidi Levine of Sipa Agency are all currently working in the Middle East. Isa Freij was born and lives in Palestine. Shaul Schwartz was born in Israel and lives in US. Heidi Levine was born in Boston and has lived in Israel for 20 years. I wouldn't describe any of these three people as particulalry articulate. There's some stumbling and hesitation in their replies, but on the other hand I also think that it's refreshing to hear unrehearsed/unprepared responses on major media outlets.

This is the first podcast on TTP. Click on the icon to download the WNYC mp3 to your iTunes: 


Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Turkey Cinemascope

Baker Boy in Urfa-Image Copyright Nuri Bilge Ceylan
While scouting locations for his latest film, the award-winning Turkish film maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan has photographed superb panoramic monochrome scenes all over Turkey during the past five years. These superb photographs were exhibited in international venues, and gleaned clamorous praise from critics and the public.

Ceylan's website offers us 70 panoramic images of exceptional quality and composition. The size of his images is 17x46 inches, and are of archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper. My favorite is the one above, entitled Baker Boy in Urfa. There are many others that I single out, such as Man in Mardin, Mothers & Daughters, Village in Cappadocia and Street in Birgi.

An excerpt from the Evening Standard in London: "Nuri Bilge Ceylan possesses an exceptional sense of composition, and often shot where an arcing road gives views in two directions: Curved Street in Winter, Istanbul, opening onto a hill framed with old houses, and Baker Boy in Urfa, posed between the receding arms of a cobbled alley."

Here's Nuri's website: Turkey: Cinemascope

India: The Holy Caves of Ajanta

Image Copyright Sam Hollenshead/Polaris for The New York Times
One of the objectives of TTP is to blog about worldwide sites that are of interest to travel photographers; preferably uncommon sites that are off the beaten path. However, travel photographers are also interested in popular travel destinations so that they can sell their photographs of such places to travel catalogues, to accompany travel essays in magazines, and/or to publish in guidebooks or travel books.

The Ajanta Caves is one of those sites. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated as such back in 1983 as one of India’s first, along with the Taj Mahal. It consists of a series of 29 caves that have been carved deep into this sheer face of a horseshoe-shaped cliff a few miles from the old walled town of Ajanta, hidden away in the deep gorge gouged in the high Deccan plains by the Waghora River about 300 miles inland from Mumbai.

The New York Times has published a slideshow of photographs on the Ajanta Caves by Sam Hollenshead/Polaris, and accompanied by a terrific narration by Simon Winchester.

The Holy Caves of Ajanta

Beyond The Frame: Tattooing Monks

From The Tattooing Monks of Wat Bang Phro-Copyright 2005 Tewfic El-Sawy
For this week's Beyond The Frame feature, I chose my image of a Thai being tattooed, his skin being pulled tautly by his friends.

I had heard of a monastery not far from Bangkok that specialized that had the best tattooing artists in Thailand. These artists were Buddhist monks who worked virtually around the clock, tattooing religious designs on Thais and the occasional foreigner.

With a taxi driver who seemed to know how to get to Wat Bang Phro, and about half an hour of frenetic driving, we got to the monastery. Before allowed in, I was first interviewed by a senior monk who wanted to be reassured that I did not intend to defame the practice in any way. Allowed then to photograph as I pleased, I walked in a room where two monks were busy. They used long metal rods, sharpened to a fine point, and had uncanny precision in their work. I watched in disbelief how fast the monk's hand moved...it was just a blur. Here, antiseptics range from regular rubbing alcohol to a local rice wine, and toilet paper paper to blot any blood. I was told that the ink was made from snake venom, herbs, and cigarette ashes. The monks' talents as tattoo artists are available for an offering of orchids, a carton of Thai cigarettes (preferably menthol-flavored) or perhaps a few Bhats towards the upkeep of the Wat.

The tattoos, as inscribed by these Buddhist monks, are defensive in purpose since they are to protect the wearer from any harm. Here in Thailand, tattoos are considered by many to have powerful powers, and to prevent bad luck in general.

It was quite difficult to find a good spot to photograph in this room. The sunlight came through two windows, but the corners of the room were dark, and I couldn't ask the monks and their 'clients' to hold a pose. This was purely a situation where one photographs as one can, irrespective of angles. I was on top of them, to their side...anywhere I could find some space.

EXIF: shutter speed 1/13 sec.- fstop 5.6 - iso 200 - focal length 28mm - no flash fired.

Tyler Hicks: POYi Award

Image Copyright Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
I'm glad that New York Times' photographer Tyler Hicks got the POYi's Newspaper Photographer Of The Year award. His photography is superlative and incisive. His images of last summer's war in the Lebanon (as the one above of Lebanese women at a hospital with their children after their village was destroyed) brought the conflict to life on the NYT's pages.

This award is apt recognition of Hicks' professional integrity which came under attack from agenda-driven bloggers because of his work in the Lebanon.

More photographs from Hicks' of the Israel/Lebanon conflict are here: POYi