Here are some of my students´ podcasts related to topics linked to tourism: reasons to travel, opinions on tipping, flying, etc. These podcasts are produced by my students through a voice forum in which they participate on a regular basis. Thanks to all of them for their participation and their interesting opinions.Saturday, March 21, 2009
PODCASTING
Here are some of my students´ podcasts related to topics linked to tourism: reasons to travel, opinions on tipping, flying, etc. These podcasts are produced by my students through a voice forum in which they participate on a regular basis. Thanks to all of them for their participation and their interesting opinions.
New Canon 500D?
1001 Noisy Cameras reports of rumors/buzz that a new Canon 500D Digital Rebel will probably be announced on March 25. The specs are a 15-megapixel sensor, full high definition video recording, ISO 12800, DiGiC 4, and 900k+ dots LCD.
Do I care? Not really. I've had such great results from my new Canon 5D Mark II that I'm deliberating whether to buy a second body, relegating my venerable Canon 1D Mark II to an assisted living home (aka my closet). I'm still angry at Canon for not having supplied enough LP-E6 Rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries for the 5D Mark II, but having experienced how long my battery lasted in the field, I've calmed down a bit.
POV: Simple or Flash?
I recently read an interesting article on Photopreneur which deals with what catches the eyes of photo editors.
The point made by the article reaffirms my belief that the simpler the website the better. With photographers' websites so easy and cheap to create, how do photo editors choose which online portfolio to spend time looking at, and decide to contact its owner? The answer? The simplest. I'd also add to that that the images have to be large...as large as those on the Boston Globe's The Big Picture (which, in my view, will revolutionize the way images are displayed on the web).
The Photopreneur article says it very clearly: "Despite the whiz-bang features and slick animation offered on so many sites, simple is usually best. Editors are short of time, and faced with a large number of images they want to gain an understanding quickly of what the photographer can do. They’re less interested in what the photographer’s Web developer can do."
A great example for a photographer's online travel portfolio is by Anna Wolf. Large images and clean scans of articles with Anna's images to show how her images fit in an editorial context is the perfect example of what photo editors are attracted to.
Flash? Fuggetaboutit
British Museum: Between Assam & Tibet
I neglected to mention that during my visit to the British Museum a few weeks ago, I dropped by its exhibit Between Assam & Tibet, which displayed a collection of cultural artifacts and photographs of two tribes from the remote Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, the Apatani and the Monpa.
The Apatani live in the hills of Arunachal Pradesh, and are animists. Their economy depends on growing rice in a unique way which maximizes the yield in their enclosed upland valley. The Monpa live on the Bhutan-Tibet-India border at high altitude. They are ethnically different from the Apatani and are Buddhists, in the past more closely linked to Lhasa in Tibet, than India to the south.
The photographs are by Michael Aram Tarr, an anthropologist and photographer, who has just spent the last five years living and working in Arunachal Pradesh, which is still pretty much an isolated region.
An interesting interview with Michael is here.
Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland are regions of India which I haven't seen yet, and I wonder whether 2010 will see me leading a photo-expedition there.
Friday, March 20, 2009
NY Times: Inside Peru's Cocaine War
In a very well produced slideshow (but non multimedia), the New York Times featured Moises Saman's photographs of the Peruvian military's war against drug producing and trafficking in Inside Peru's Cocaine War.
In a remote corners of the Andes, Peru's army is battling a resurgent rebel faction of the Shining Path, taking a page from Colombia’s rebels, which reinvented itself as an illicit drug enterprise, rebuilding on the profits of Peru’s thriving cocaine trade. The region is Peru’s largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine and, as in Bolivia, coca, a hallowed symbol of indigenous pride, is ubiquitous here. The mildly stimulating leaf chewed raw here since before the Spanish conquest, is largely legal; cocaine is not.
liveBooks: Art Wolfe: New Business Model
liveBooks, the company which provides custom photography websites has featured an interview with Art Wolfe, described as a conservation and fine art photographer, who is reinventing his business model by selling his stock images directly through his liveBooks website and a Photoshelter account linked to it.
The quality of the recording is not that good, as it's recorded in the open air but one gets the sense how Art Wolfe decided a few years ago that he had to diversify away from his stock photography, and enter the world of television through his Travels to the Edge series. Click the above image to take a listen.
(via The Click)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Theyyams: Incarnate Deities
As the regulars readers of this blog know, the Theyyams of Malabar Photo Expedition was a resounding success in terms of both imagery and logistics, but who (or what) are really the Theyyams?
The term Theyyam is the corruption of the Malayalam word Daivam or deity. It may also be derived from the Sanskrit word for deity which is "deva". It's an indigenous religious dance practiced only in North Kerala, and a cult predominant amongst rural areas, consisting of several thousand-year-old traditions, rituals and customs. It involves virtually all castes and classes of the Hindu religion in the area, and its adherents consider the Theyyams as incarnations of various deities, and seek their blessings and counsel.
There are nearly 400 Theyyams representing various local deities, as well as legendary and mythological characters. For instance, one of the Theyyam is named Moovalamkuzhi Chamundi, another is Puliyoor Kali and Padinhave Chamundi. I was also told by Vinay, our fixer, that only members of a specific sub caste can become Theyyams, and this privilege is passed on from generation to generation.
A fundamental component of the Theyyam performances is the make-up which involves intricate face-painting and various body decorations. During one of the rituals, we witnessed a Theyyam whose body was covered with cotton-like tufts to symbolize a tiger. Different costumes like an armor, complex headdress and other body decorations are prepared by artists members of the same caste. Some of the costumes are made of of coconut leaves, while headdresses and masks are made of more solid materials, while bracelets and anklets are heirlooms, passed on from father to son. Male and female deities are represented by Theyyam performers, and it's rather easy to differentiate between the two, since the performers incarnated as goddesses wear bras made out of two halves of a dried-out coconut shell!
(the widest circulated newspaper in the world!)
of February 25 on our photo-expedition.
The Theyyam prepares his performance by meditating while being made up, and enters in a sort of a trance, whereupon he walks (aided by assistants) over to the temple's shrine and gradually morphs into the shrine's deity. The Theyyam follows the accompanying cacophonous music and its furious drum beats by going further and further into a trance. At the appropriate time, the Theyyam is seated on a stool and devotees approach him with donations and solicit its advice, which he provides in a raucous voice. I was also told that the Theyyams' advice is provided in a mixture of Sanskrit, Old Malayalam and Tamil. I also found it interesting that both Theyyams and Kathakali performers use similar eye movements to convey emotions.
There's no question that the stage-practice of Theyyams and its intriguing rituals make it one of the most fascinating religious performances of India...and is the reason for it to have been the underpinning of my photo expedition in Kerala.
Documenting such unusual indigenous rituals and festivals by combining photojournalism and travel photography techniques is what makes my photo expeditions-workshops different than the rest...and what makes me enjoy them. Setting up photo tours based on itineraries copied from travel brochures is not what I believe photo expeditions should be.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Theyyams of Malabar: Victoria Olson
A sand bagger on the shores of Mangalore, Karanataka
The Theyyam of Malabar Photo Expedition was joined by a number of talented full-time and part time photographers, whose primary objective was to photograph the Theyyam religious rituals as well as the Kathakali dance-drama, both indigenous to Kerala.
This is the fourth of a series of posts which showcase a sample of the work of the photographers who joined the expedition. The fourth post features four photographs by Victoria (Torie) Olson, a contributing editor at Wild Fibers Magazine, and author based in Vermont. Another peripatetic globetrotter, Torie traveled to Bhutan, Morocco, India and Thailand among other countries, to document indigenous traditions including textile arts and fiber farming.
Instead of Theyyam and Kathakali images, Torie provided these images made near the shores of Mangalore where, during our photo expedition, she spent time documenting a number of fishing communities. I would guess that based on the jewelry, these women are from Gujarat. She uses a Nikon D90 with a 18-200 lens.
Hauling the daily catch on the shores of Mangalore, Karanataka
A worker on the shores of Mangalore, Karanataka
Repairing fishing nets on the shores of Mangalore, Karanataka
William Dalrymple: Nine Lives
By pure chance I landed on the website of one of my favorite authors, William Dalrymple, whose new book – Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India – will be published by Bloomsbury in October.
I've copied this excerpt of the accompanying blurb from the Amazon UK website:
"Nine people, nine lives. Each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. Exquisite and mesmerizing, and told with an almost biblical simplicity, William Dalrymple's first travel book in a decade explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the vortex of the region's rapid change. Nine Lives is a distillation of twenty-five years of exploring India and writing about its religious traditions, taking you deep into worlds that you would never have imagined even existed."
This promises to be a cracker of a book, and if you want to get a taste for its contents, you can read this article on the devadasis in the New Yorker magazine.
These are the kind of books that ought to be read by all established and aspiring travel-documentary photographers, since they provide ideas for photo-documentary projects, and intellectual/historical texture to successfully develop such projects.
Just before traveling last month to India, I recently re-read parts of Dalrymple's City of Djinns; parts dealing with the Sufi dargahs in Delhi, and this enhanced my appreciation of these sites while I visited them.
2009 Sony World Photography Awards
The Independent featured winners of the 2009 Sony World Photography Awards as revealed yesterday. Each of the photographers on the list, along with the runners-up in the professional categories, will be exhibited at the Sony World Photography Awards ceremony at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, on Thursday 16 April.
Of the 12 professional category winners, one photographer will be the recipient of the L’Iris D'Or, the Sony World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year. On the night they will be awarded $25,000. The winning amateur photographer, selected from the eight category finalists, will receive a $5,000 cash prize.
Wojciech Grzedzinski of Poland won the award for Professional Photojournalism and Documentary - Current Affairs, with his photograph of a Catholic priest blessing a soldier in full combat gear. Since time immemorial, religion has been used to absolve the sins of war...and why not, since most religions were, and are, the cause for violent conflict.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Theyyams of Malabar: Rosemary Sheel
After the ritual, this Theyyam is no longer inhabited
by the goddess. Pullikunnu, Kerala
The Theyyam of Malabar Photo Expedition was joined by a number of talented full-time and part time photographers, whose primary objective was to photograph the Theyyam religious rituals as well as the Kathakali dance-drama, both indigenous to Kerala.
This is the third of a series of posts which showcase some of the work of the photographers who joined the expedition. The third post features four photographs by Rosemary Sheel, a travel photographer based on the West Coast. Rosemary is a peripatetic globetrotter, who traveled to Tibet, Turkey, Mali, Morocco, China, Laos, Cambodia Egypt and India, and she regaled us with stories of her adventures. She used a Nikon D300 with 28-105 Tamron (f 2.8) and a D200 with a 12-24 Tokina (f 4).
A somnolent Theyyam has his face painted in traditional patterns, Pullikunnu, Kasaragode, North Kerala
Part of the Theyyam ceremony involves the Theyyam
circumnavigating the temple. Pullikunnu, Kerala.
Layers of orange silk cover starched muslin underskirts
for a bouffant look necessary for a Kathakali performance.
Thrissur, Kerala
Smithsonian 6th Annual Photo Contest
The Smithsonian Magazine selected the finalists from their 6th Annual Photo Contest. There are ten for each of the five categories; People, Americana, Altered Imnages, Natural World and Travel. From these 50, five category winners and a grand prize winner will be chosen.
Viewers can determine the winners by voting for their choice. The winning entries, including the chosen winner, will be published in the print edition of Smithsonian magazine during summer 2009.
My choice is the above photograph by Wahid Adnan of Chittagong in Bangladesh. Not to take away anything from Wahid, but G M B Akash won first place in the 2007 Gordon Parks International Photo Competition with a similar photograph of a young girl riding a train in Bangaldesh.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Theyyams of Malabar: Alia Refaat
Final makeup touches on a Theyyam, Thrikannad Temple, North Kerala
The Theyyam of Malabar Photo Expedition was joined by a number of talented full-time and part time photographers, whose primary objective was to photograph the Theyyam religious rituals as well as the Kathakali dance-drama, both indigenous to Kerala.
This is the second of a series of posts which showcase some of the work of the photographers who joined the expedition. The second post features four photographs by Alia (Coucla) Refaat, a commercial photographer from Cairo, Egypt. Alia studied Mass Communications, and trained at Spéos Paris in commercial, portrait and studio photography. She used a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-70mm 2.8 on most of her photo shoots during the expedition. It is Alia's first travel photography expedition, and she plans a series of exhibitions in Cairo of her photographs.
A Theyyam ensconced in his costume, Pullikunnu, Kasaragode, North Kerala
A Kathakali performer carefully applying his makeup, Thrissur, Kerala
A Kathakali performer being assisted in his costume, Thrissur, Kerala
Sunday, March 15, 2009
New Blog: Photocrati
I've just joined Photocrati, a unique photographers’ blog consisting of a group of professional photographers from diverse fields; wedding, corporate, travel, humanitarian, nature and wildlife, and specialized studio.
Photocrati is the brainchild of Erick Danzer, who is both its founder and editor, and along with him are Steve Buchanan, John E. Marriott, Bill Millios, Booray Perry , Fred Troilo and myself. More photographers are expected to join this eclectic mix of image professionals.
Photocrati will bring a collection of tips and how-to articles covering everything from photographic technique to gear to starting and running your own photography business, insider knowledge from fellow professionals in your field for dealing with common challenges, knowledgeable commentary about what’s happening in various fields of photography, and random thoughts and ruminations from others who share your love of photography and share the challenge of making a living from it.
I will be posting my personal take on travel photography, and I look forward to read your comments on Photocrati. You can read one of my initial posts here: Kathakali: Dance-Drama
Theyyams of Malabar: Beverly A. Sanchez
An entranced Theyyam approaching the devotees, Kasaragod, North Kerala
The Theyyam of Malabar Photo Expedition was joined by a number of talented full-time and part time photographers, whose primary objective was to photograph the Theyyam religious rituals as well as the Kathakali dance-drama, both indigenous to Kerala.
This is the first of a series of posts which will showcase some of the work of the photographers who joined the expedition. The first post features four photographs by Beverly A. Sanchez, whose main forte is candid portraits. Over the course of the expedition, Beverly adopted a more journalistic approach to her image making. She works with 2 Canon 5D Mark II bodies, a 70-200mm 2.8, a 24-70mm 2.8, and a 16-35mm 2.8. She has photographed in Puerto Rico, Morocco, Kenya and Papua New Guinea.
Theyyam make up follows age-old traditional patterns, Kasaragode, North Kerala
A Kathakali performer in the Pacha character (hero), Thrissur, Kerala
A Pacha character & the Virtuous Lady in background, Thrissur, Kerala
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)