Rich-Joseph Facun: Darshana Ganga

There are a couple of images captioned "moksha" on Rich-Joseph Facun's Darashana Ganga gallery that are certainly disturbing, but the remainder of his gallery show us Varanasi and its streets at its grittiest, and being one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, it is a gritty city. This is a work in progress, and I suspect that more images will be forthcoming.For centuries, Hindus have sought "moksha", the release from the cycle of life, death and reincarnation by dying in Varanasi or having their remains cremated on the ghats alongside the Ganges. Hindus from across India and beyond, often choose to live out their last days in this 5,000 year-old city. Rich-Joseph Facun is a photographer based in Abu Dhabi, who specializes...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Photojournalists

WSJ Photo Journal: Pushkar Mela

Photo © Kevin Frayer/Associated Press-All Rights ReservedThe WSJ Photo Journal with a photograph by Kevin Frayer has reminded me that the Pushkar fair (or mela) is taking place from October 30 to November 2 this year. It is one of the world's largest camel fairs, and is held in the quaint town of Pushkar. At that time, hotel rooms and other accommodations are available at a hefty premium, especially at the venerable but ideally located Pushkar Palace. While it's famed for its camels, the fair is also a marketplace for livestock including the reputed Marawri horses. It has recently become a magnet for tourists, both local and foreign, with tour agencies setting up itineraries centered around the fair itself as the main attraction. Photo trips...

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Posted in: India,Pushkar Fair

Coming Soon: Bhutan Galleries!

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI'll be soon posting two galleries of some of my work made during my Bhutan Photo~Expedition a few weeks ago. One is a multimedia photo gallery of Monks' Debates at the Kharchhu Sangha in Bumthang (which has already been seen by subscribers to my newsletter), while the other will showcase some of the dancers at the Jambhey Lakhang tsechu in Chamkar.So watch this bl...

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Posted in: Bhutan,Photographers: Travel,TTP Show Off

My Work: Bhutan Monks, A Cat & TV

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedThis photograph (click it for a larger version) was made at the Wangdichoeling Palace in Jakar, Bhutan. Built in 1857, it served as the principal summer residence of the first and second kings of Bhutan; Gongsa Ugyen Wangchuck (1862-1926) and Jigme Wangchuk 1905-1952). Virtually dilapidated, it is now occupied by monks and novices who use some of its rooms.It's within a stone's throw from the Bumthang Amankora Resort, whose daily rate for a single suite is $1300!Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedThis photograph (click it for a larger version) captured two novices clandestinely watching a Bollywood movie at the Chimi Lakhang. The temple is dedicated to Lama Drukpa Kuenley, who is colloquially...

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Posted in: Bhutan,Photographers: Travel,TTP Show Off

April Maciborka: India

Every now and then I stumble on a website that, to my mind, reaffirms the essence of what a travel photographer is, or should be, all about. So I hope you will agree that April Maciborka is one of those who carry that particular torch.Her style, as evidenced by her various portfolios, matches my own visual philosophy: "travel photography meets photojournalism". Other travel photographers showcase lovely photographs of posed and smiling people...but that's not what this style is about.The range of April Maciborka's work is certainly impressive. She seems to hail from Toronto but traveled and lived in South and Southeast Asia (as well As Africa) during the past four years, after graduating from Sheridan College with a degree in Photography. Her...

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Posted in: Asia,India,Photographers: Travel

Mariela Furrer: Timket, Ethiopia

I'm often asked to lead a photo-expedition to Ethiopia and I always demur, citing the infrastructural difficulties (mostly in the South) of setting up such a trip, and the concomitant high costs. However, as can be seen in Mariella Furrer's Timket gallery, Ethiopia is one of the most visually and culturally magnetic countries in the world. These images bring back the emotions I felt when hearing the beautiful chants at dawn during the Timket festivities.Mariella Furrer is a photographer and photojournalist who has lived in Africa her whole life. She attended the Documentary Photography & Photojournalism Program at the International Center of Photography in NYC, and has since been working as a freelance photojournalist based between Kenya...

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Posted in: Ethiopia,Photographers: Travel,Photojournalism

Canon 7D: Shadow Image?

Photographers seem to have discovered a flaw in the new Canon EOS 7D, which results in a shadow of the preceding frame showing up in the following image when the continuous shooting mode is chosen.The flaw was confirmed by Canon in Japan and elsewhere. Canon announced that it "is currently investigating and analyzing the cause of this phenomenon, and we are planning to release a firmware update to address this issue."Canon USA actually has this on its website:In images captured by continuous shooting, and under certain conditions, barely noticeable traces of the immediately preceding frame may be visible. This phenomenon is not noticeable in an image with optimal exposure. The phenomenon may become more noticeable if a retouching process such...

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Posted in: Hard Gear

NYT: Ariana Lindquist: Heshun (China)

Photo © Ariana Lindquist/NY Times. All Rights ReservedThe New York Times featured a short slideshow of Ariana Lindquist's photographs of Heshun, in Yunnan province, China. With beautiful scenery and abundant cultural traditions, Heshun is one of China's earliest border trade town, and is a perennial favorite of film directors, photographers, and painters.Heshun is located on China's southern border in Tengchong County, and was once famous for its wealthy merchants who traded with India, Burma and the interior of China itself. Its location on the tea caravans route made it also an important hub for the tea trade.During the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, caravans arrived to Heshun ply their trade. They would bring silk, jewelery,...

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Posted in: China,Photographers: Travel

The Frame: Chhath Festival

Photo © Dar Yasin/AP. All Rights ReservedThe Frame, the photography blog of The Sacramento Bee, is one the main three large sized picture blogs, along with the Boston Globe's The Big Picture and the Wall Street Journal's Photo Journal.It brings us 19 photographs of the Chhath festival where Indian Hindu devotees offers prayers to the sun. The festival is also known as Surya Pooja (or prayers to the sun) is observed in the eastern part of India 8 days after Diwali, the festival of lights. The festival in celebrated in the regions including but not exclusive to the northeast region of India, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi as well as Mumbai.Traditionally, Chhath festival devotees fast and offer water, milk and fruits...

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Posted in: India,Photographers

Field Report: B&H & Adorama

Well, I succumbed to the "bigger is better" axiom and decided to add a 16gb SanDisk Compact Flash card to my inventory.In arriving to this decision, I was guided by two facts: the first is that the images files from Canon 5D Mark II are monstrously large and that, although my 8gb CF cards are quite adequate, I filled them up a number of times in the midst of a photo shoot. The second reason is that SanDisk was offering interesting rebates on its cards, which meant $20 off the 16gb baby I got.After spending an hour browsing at B&H, and touching-feeling-playing with the newly released Canon 7D (it feels solid, well balanced and its 8 fps sounds really good to my ears...but we'll see about the image quality), I was told that the SanDisk Extreme...

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Posted in: Soft Gear

Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak: India

Photo © Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak-All Rights ReservedThe face on Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak's website's cover is haunting...I can't tell if she's smiling or not. Have a look, and then explore his galleries which include photographs of East and West Africa, Maghreb countries, the Middle East and India, among others.Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak is from Pozanan in Poland, and his photographs were published in CNN Traveler, National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Newsweek, Globtroter, FAO, Lonely Planet and many more international and national publications.He also won a couple of prestigious awards to include the National Geographic Competitions in 2006 and 2007.I haven't yet had the chance of exploring every single gallery as Swiatoslaw has been photographing...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Travel

POV: Antiquities & Colonialism

© Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters. Courtesy The New York TimesAntiquities and its politics are hardly topics that stay for long on my radar screen, but this time it involves Egypt, my birth country so I'll take a stab at the recent news which involves the bust of Nefertiti, currently displayed in a Berlin museum. What does this have to do with travel photography, you ask? Not much...but I need this off my chest.A New York Times' article (written by Michael Kimmelman) on this issue starts as follows:"As thousands lined up to catch a glimpse of Nefertiti at the newly reopened Neues Museum here, another skirmish erupted in the culture wars. Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, announced that his country wanted its queen handed back forthwith, unless...

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Posted in: Egypt,POV

Books: Claudia Wiens: Burma

Claudia Wiens was based in Cairo, and is now in Istanbul working as a freelance photographer, and is represented by Getty Images. She has now published a book of her photographs of Burma and titled "Of Dung-Beetle Messengers And Infamous Crickets" which, although I haven't seen yet, does provide Claudia's interesting visual narrative of this lovely country and its people. Have a good look at the section involving Nats.I'm glad that Claudia chose this blurry image for her book's cover since, as regular readers of this blog know, I'm enormously partial to motion blurred images myself. Good choice, Claudia! For further images of Burma and other galleries, visit Claudia's website.I met Claudia at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (FPW) in Mexico...

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Posted in: Books,Burma

Zhou Mi: Where The Ganges Flows...

Here's a black & white photo essay Where The Ganges Flows... by Zhou Mi, documenting his traveling down the Ganges from its source in Gangotri to Kolkata, passing through Rishikesh, Haridwar and Varanasi.It brought to mind the classic book Slowly Down the Ganges by Eric Newby, which may have been the photographer's inspiration.Zhou Mi was born in Wuxi, Jiang-Su, China and worked as an engineer in his country before gaining a M.A. Communication Arts from the New York Institute of Technology. He then worked for Young & Rubicam Inc./ K& L Advertising before being a freelance photographer in San Francisco.An eclectic photographer, Zhou Mi's galleries are mostly black & white and range from documenting lost and found objects on San...

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Posted in: China,India,Photographers: Travel

Robert Caplin: Cuban Life

© 2009 Robert Caplin-All Rights ReservedI came across Robert Caplin's work through a recent interview published in The New York Times' Frugal Traveler. Moving from this interview to his website, I immediately saw that much of his work was typically that of a quintessential travel photographer.Caplin started out in Athens, Ohio, with a Nikon N50 film camera, but subsequently moved over to Canon, currently crams his expensive gear into a cheap bag and is enamored of one of the least sophisticated cameras on the market today: the iPhone.He is also a full-time freelance editorial, corporate and portrait photographer based in New York City, and works regularly with The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News, and has also been published...

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Posted in: Cuba,Photographers: Travel

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta

Adobe just announced its Lightroom 3 as a public beta version, which means anyone with an Internet connection can download it and start putting it to the test. You do not need to own (or have tried) a previous version of Lightroom. The version of Lightroom 3 beta software available for download is offered in English only. You can download the beta and use it until the product expires on April 30, 2010.By the way, those who are on a Mac PowerPC are out of luck. Lightroom 3 Beta will not download on your machines.Notable new features are:* Brand new performance architecture.* State-of-the-art noise reduction.* Watermarking tool * Portable sharable slideshows with audio, which allows us to save and export slideshows as videos.* Film grain...

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Posted in: Soft Gear

Magnum: In Silence: Susan Meiselas

© 2009 Susan Meiselas/Magnum-All Rights ReservedIn Silence is the beautiful and powerful work (a combination of still photography and video) by Susan Meiselas as featured by Magnum In Motion which deals with the tens of thousands of Indian women and girls who die during pregnancy, while in childbirth, and in the weeks after giving birth, despite the Indian government's programs guaranteeing free obstetric health care. Each year half a million women around the world die in childbirth. Twenty percent of those deaths are in India, and most are preventable with access to proper healthcare. Both photographer Meiselas and reporter Dumeetha Luthra traveled to India for Human Rights Watch to retrace the steps of one woman who dies after giving birth...

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Posted in: India,Multimedia,Photographers: Photojournalists

My Work: Debate At The Sangha

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedJust a short post today to share the above image (still undecided as to the placement of the title) from a project I'm currently working on. Debate At The Sangha will be a gallery of photographs made during two of the weekly debates at the Kharchhu monastery in Chamkar (Bhutan). I've also recorded the animated debates as they were occurring, along with the traditional hand-clapping and the sound of the prayer beads, so it'll probably end as a multimedia ess...

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Posted in: Bhutan,TTP Show Off

New! EOS-1D Mark IV

Canon has just announced the EOS-1D Mark IV, a 16.1 megapixel digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR) camera body, and the successor to the Canon EOS-1D Mark III. It is the first Canon APS-H format DSLR to feature HD video recording at 1080p resolution.I've been waiting for a worthy successor to my beloved Canon 1D-Mark II and this may just be the one, effectively doubling the megapixel count but more significantly for my style of photographing, the 10 frames per second makes my heart sing.Some of its features are: * 27.9mm x 18.6mm; 16.1 effective megapixels APS-H CMOS sensor * Dual DIGIC 4 image processors * New autofocus module (45 AF points with 39 cross-type AF points) * Integrated sensor cleaning system * 1.3x crop factor...

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Posted in: Hard Gear

POV: WTF! This Is My Photo Shoot!

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI don't know if it's the bottled water in Bhutan, the crisp Himalayan air, the scent of the pine trees or the excitement of the festivals...but some tourists lose their sense of civility when faced with opportunities to photograph. And I mean tourists, not serious and experienced photographers. Having arrived at the Chimi Lakhang monastery in Bumthang, I was glad to find two young novices lighting candle lamps, and asked them to pose in a certain way to take advantage of the light coming through the rather grimy window. It took quite a while to have them just right where I wanted, but as I was giving hand signals for minor adjustments in the novices' stance, a bunch of European tourists had entered...

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Posted in: Photo Tours,POV

Alia Refaat: Vedic School

Photo © Alia Refaat-All Rights ReservedI'm pleased to feature an audio slideshow by photographer Alia Refaat showcasing her work at a Vedic school in Thrissur, Kerala. The photographs and audio were made during my Theyyams of Malabar Photo Expedition 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 the sacred Vedic scriptures.Alia's Soundslides audio slideshow Vedic School is here, and you'll see she successfully applied the various multimedia techniques such as the flipbook to convey the sense of movement to her stills. A nicely done photo essay....lovely and atmospheric photography by a talented photographer....

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Travel,Soundslides

"Toothpick" Photo Expeditions

Photo © Tewfic "Toothpick" El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedOne (or possibly two) of the sharp wits on the Bhutan Photo-Expedition decided to rename (or name) it as in the above photograph. In Bhutan, each tour group has to have a paper nameplate on dining tables, and these are carefully and dutifully written by the tour guide.Unhappy with the formality and simplicity of the rather boring "Tewfic's Group", one of my group's participants thought that Tewfic rhymed awfully well with toothpick, and added it to the nameplate...along with a real wooden one.Haven't I said that this group included some comedians?Notwithstanding the musicality of Toothpick's Photo Tours, I think I'll keep using The Travel Photographer's Photo Expeditions after all.Note:...

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Posted in: Bhutan,Photo Tours

Rafaela Persson: Afghan Women

Rafaela Persson graduated from the Documentary Photography and Photojournalism program at the International Center of Photography in New York in 2008. She holds an MA in sociology with studies in human rights, international migration and ethnic relations from university of Lund, Sweden.Her photographs were exhibited in Copenhagen, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Pingyao Festival in China, and are featured in the ICIMOD traveling exhibition: Nepal 2008, Germany, Switzerland, US and Japan in 2009. Her work was published in The New York Times, Sydasien, People Sweden, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan and the Canadian Film Board.Rafaela was recently chosen to participate in the Asia-Europe Emerging Photographers Forum...

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Posted in: Afghanistan,Photographers: Photojournalists

Book: 100 New York Photographers

As previously announced on TTP, I am chuffed in being featured in Cynthia Dantzig's new book: 100 New York Photographers, which is a 442-page review of contemporary New York photographers and their diverse and divergent images. So here I am in the august company of well-known photographers such as Annie Liebovitz, Jay Maisel, Amy Arbus, Hugh Bell, Arnold Crane, Bruce Davidson, Carrie Mae Weems, Elliott Erwitt, Lee Friedlander, Joel Meyerowitz, Mary Ellen Mark, Pete Turner and others (including Jenny Jozwiak, who joined my Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul Photo-Expedition).Four of my photographs were chosen. One from the Omo Valley, two from Bhutan and one from Lake Inle in Burma.This handsome book is available from major bookstores such as B&N...

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Posted in: Books,Photographers

My Work: Tsechu Drummer In Bhutan

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedHere's what is largely a grab shot of a Bhutanese tsechu drummer on his way to join the rest of the musical group that accompanies the traditional dancers in Tamshingphala Lakhang in Bumthang. I've been to Bhutan 4 times so far to photograph during the tsechus season, and I can only recall one overcast day. The bright sunshine and the resultant shadows make it very difficult to photograph these festivals; this difficulty is compounded by the need to isolate the dancers from the background crowds which requires photographers to become either contortionists, or use long glass at a very shallow aperture.Having noticed this fellow because of his green satin tunic and demeanor, I grabbed a shot (this is...

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Posted in: Bhutan,TTP Show Off

Zackary Canepari: Kathputli

As my many posts on TTP show, one of my favorite photographers is Zackary Canepari who has recently shown off his talent with Kathputli Is My Home on 100Eyes, an excellent photo e-magazine published and edited by Andy Levin.Kathputli Colony slum in North Delhi is an illegal settlement or shantytown, which is both home and a mecca for the thousands of itinerant and non-itinerant magicians, acrobats, jugglers, musicians, dancers and puppeteers who perform in the vast Indian sub-continent. Whether performing in the marble lobbies of top hotels or in the back streets of impoverished slums and villages, the nearly all of the 1,500-3,000 families in the colony are professional performing artists, and consider Kathputli thier home. Canepari's talents...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Travel

Bhutan: Pow (Shamanism)

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedMy recent field reports on the Bhutan photo-expedition generated much interest as to our shaman (known as "pow" in Bhutan) photo shoot, and since it will take me quite a while to edit my photographs, here's one of the images while he pow performed his exorcism.In Bhutan, traditional households will frequently call on the healing powers of a pow when a member of the family falls sick or is suspected of being inhabited by evil spirits. I was told that in this case a young boy had been taken to the local hospital because of his lack of appetite, but the doctors couldn't find anything wrong. His parents then decided to call on the traditional healer to rid him of what they perceived were evil spirits.The...

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Posted in: Bhutan,Photographers: Travel,TTP Show Off

Tyler Hicks: Kandahar

The New York Times features Tyler Hicks' photography on its LENS blog with a gallery titled Under The Radar In Kandahar.While I've seen much better from Tyler Hicks, these black & white photographs are nevertheless gritty and raw, and certainly worth a look. More interesting to me is the article which accompanies these images, in which Mr. Hicks speaks (or writes) of the dangers he faces during his assignment in Afghanistan.“It doesn’t matter where you are in the city — there’s always a possibility that you’re moments away from being killed,” said Mr. Hicks, 40, who has been working in Afghanistan for The New York Times since 2001. “So you shave off risk anywhere you can. It’s that bad.”I found it also remarkable that he admits often photographing...

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Posted in: Afghanistan,Photographers: Photojournalists

Bhutan Photo Expedition: The Verdict

(Gangtey Goempa). Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedOn completion of every photo expedition I undertake, I publish a verdict on what worked and what didn't. I'm probably the only travel photographer and photo expedition leader who does that so publicly, but it's a transparency ritual in which I believe very strongly. It's designed to assist those who intend to visit (in this case) Bhutan, and provides an insight at how and what my photo expeditions are all about.Bhutan: The Land of the Druk Yul photo expedition was designed to provide its 8 participants with photo opportunities during the early fall festivals, or tsechus, which required us to travel from Paro to the west to the Bumthang region, its central heartland over a time frame...

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Posted in: Bhutan,Photo Tours

Hakka Dwellings: Ryan Pyle

Photo © Ryan Pyle/GlobalPost-All Rights ReservedThe GlobalPost website features Ryan Pyle's Chinese Hakka Houses, which are also known as Hakka Tulou "apartments" in Yongding county, Fujian province. These structures are indigenous to the Hakka minority group and other people in the mountainous areas in southwestern Fujian.In 2008, UNESCO granted the Tulou dwellings World Heritage Status, and cited these structures as "exceptional examples of a building tradition and function exemplifying a particular type of communal living and defensive organization."Having seen these buildings in Ryan's slideshow, these are typically large enclosed buildings, rectangular or circular in configuration, between three and five stories high, housing up to 80...

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Posted in: China,Photographers: Travel

William Darlymple's Nine Lives

Despite Thai Airways' efficient service and the knowledge that I would have a row all to myself as the flight was only half full, spending 12 hours on the flight from Bangkok to London wasn't something I looked forward to. However I bought William Dalrymple's new book Nine Lives to keep me company during the long haul flight. I had high expectations that this book would be highly enjoyable and informative, and was glad to have found it in paperback version at the airport's bookstore. I'm almost 2/3 through it and have to say that, whilst it's not as well written as the author's previous books, it is nevertheless extremely educational.Nine Lives is described as an Indian Canterbury Tales, and introduces us to 9 characters with varied and different...

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Posted in: Books,India

Bhutan Field Report: Group Photograph

Photo © Ugen Dorji-All Rights ReservedWell, all good things have to have an end and the Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul photo-expedition came to its end a couple of days ago. Our stay was extended for 24 hours due to heavy rain in Paro which meant that our scheduled Druk Air flight was unable to take off to Bangkok, but we made it out the following day October 8th. I had the foresight to advise the group members to give themselves an additional day in Bangkok as a buffer against such an eventuality.In my view, the highlight of the trip was a photo shoot during which we documented a traditional exorcist at work in a farmhouse. He was called in to exorcise evil spirits out of a child and a middle-aged woman. In due course, I will post a photo gallery...

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Posted in: Bhutan,Photo Tours

Bhutan Field Report: Ura Goempa

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedBesides the tsechus festivals in Wangdue and Tamshing, we were privileged in attending a funerary ritual at the Ura monastery. It appears that a prominent judge in the Ura valley region had died, and funerary rites were being held at the ancient monastery and goempa, as we arrived. Having secured the permission from the head monk of the temple, we trooped in the main chamber along with around 30 monks, who started chanting.We were told that this was the first time that foreign photographers were allowed to photograph inside the goempa (temple) as it hold extremely sacred wall murals. We had given our assurances that we would not photograph them. The ritual was the first of its kind that I've ever witnessed...

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Posted in: Bhutan,Photo Tours