Next Week On The Travel Photographer

Most of my posts are scheduled ahead of time, but there are exceptions, which occur when and if I stumble on an interesting portfolio, website or issue...

For the week starting Monday October 4, I have posts on:

1. A poignant multimedia project involving the treatment of Women In India .
2. A movie trailer by a super talented ethnophotographer showing off his work on endangered cultures.
3. An interview with a travel photographer's talking about his passion for documentary photography and Leica M cameras.
4. The work of a documentary photographer featuring daily life along the Ganges.
5. My as yet unreleased work from Bali featuring a new audio slideshow on deity purification ceremonies.

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SoundSlides Version 1.9.4 Beta

I'm chuffed (as the Brits say) that SoundSlides is now available in Beta with the option to produce the audio slideshow so that it's iPad compatible. In fact, version 1.9.4 has a couple of options related to the iPad. The first option is to have the slideshow only readable on iPads, whilst another is an iPad-auto-detect.

I've tried the auto detect option on three audio-slideshows, and they worked pretty well. However, I haven't been able to remove the Captions and Credits buttons (which I don't want) from showing up on the iPad, and I understand that this will be fixed in a future version.

The other issue which I don't think is fixable relates to transitions. The transitions look somehwhat choppy on the iPad...presumably due to its processor and browser. One of my audio slideshows makes use of the "flip-book" technique which relies on a large number of stills with very short time intervals to give the appearance of motion, and this feature doesn't show well on the iPad at all. It just shows the first and last frame.

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Posted in: Soundslides

Timer Remote Control For Multimedia Projects

I was so impressed by Andreas Burgess' In The Courtyard of the Beloved that I solicited advice from my good friend Anamitra Chakladar, who suggested that the time lapse frames may have been produced by using an intervalometer.

The device is a remote switch with a cord and a self-timer, interval timer, long-exposure timer, and exposure-count setting feature. The timer can be set anywhere from 1 second to 99 hours, 59 minutes, or 59 seconds. Ignoring the more expensive Canon model on B&H, I found one on eBay for less than $50 including shipping.

The brand new device, called JJC TM and made in China, arrived last night in perfect condition. Its accompanying manual is somewhat sparse in details, so I'll have to figure it out on my own (which I prefer anyway). Once I do, I'll try it out on the traditional opera singers in Chinatown or some similar activity.

PS: I figured how to work it in a few minutes...without the manual's "help".

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Posted in: Hard Gear

Devadasi: Prostitutes of God

I'm somewhat ambivalent about this documentary by VBS Television (you can click on the above image), which I found on The Independent newspaper's website. In a nutshell,  Sarah Harris, a British journalist,  made a documentary about temple prostitutes in south India...Devadasi women dedicated to a Hindu deity who spend their lives selling sex.

The journalist, with a couple of local minders, travels to villages and towns of Southern India to try to document a system of religious sex slavery dating back to the 6th century. Although illegal, there seems to be more than 23,000 women in the state of Karnataka selling their bodies in the name of the mysterious Hindu Goddess Yellamma. These are known as Devadasis, or ‘servants of God’.  As such things go, these statistics are estimates...which can be inflated or deflated depending on one's agenda.

I'm ambivalent because I don't get from this documentary that the women are Devadasi per se. They are certainly sex workers, but not necessarily Yellamma temple sex workers.  In parts, the documentary feels like a Lonely Planet or Global Trekker feature I watch on PBS...minus Ian Wright's wit and humor. I don't think that this documentary is accurate at all...and comes across as callous and superficial. The journalist sounds and acts as flaky as a young tourist traveling in India during a gap year, and I've seen no evidence that there was serious research done in the subject matter.

Having said that, William Dalrymple in his recent book Nine Lives, has interviewed and written about devadasi women, and their undeniable plight. Devadasi women have had a venerable history in performing a wide variety of religious functions, including sexual service...but their lives are now hard and harsh. Only marginally better than ordinary prostitutes, the devadasi system provides a way out of crippling poverty...very similar to other countries and societies. 

You can also watch it on VBS.TV website.

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Posted in: India,Multimedia

Breaking News: 2011 Foundry Photojournalism Workshop

Eric Beecroft has just announced that the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop will take place in mid July 2011 in beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina!

The tuition is $500 for regional students (Mexico, and all countries south to Tierra del Fuego; including Caribbean nationals, and $975 for non-regional students. Early registration is available for a non-refundable $100 via Paypal only. The early registration guarantees a spot and places the payer in the front of the line for class choice. Scholarships will be announced shortly.

The instructors' line up include:

Kael Alford
Walter Astrada
Andrea Bruce
Michael Robinson Chavez
Tewfic El-Sawy
Ashley Gilbertson
Ron Haviv
Henrik Kastenskov & Poul Madsen (Bombay Flying Club)
Jared Moosy
Maggie Steber
Ami Vitale
Adriana Zehbrauskas

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Posted in: Central America,Events,Photojournalism

NYT's One In 8 Million Gets An Emmy

I was very glad to read that The New York Times’ multimedia series One in 8 Million won an Emmy Award in the “new approaches to documentary” category a few days ago, and that its producers and all those involved were deservedly recognized and honored.

For those who don't know,  the series is a collection of stories told with audio and photography that portray everyday New Yorkers. Unfortunately, it was only featured for 12 months...presumably because the creators didn't want it to go on any further, but I never found out the reason behind that.

Why would I devote a post on this, instead of just a Tweet? Well, apart from thinking it was extremely well produced, I used One in 8 Million as a teaching tool during my Introduction To Multimedia class with the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Manali (India) and in Istanbul.

I used the series as an example to stress to my classes the need for simplicity (the "keep it simple" doctrine), the need to humanize the story and the need for brevity.  Whichever one of the series that the class attendees watched, they unanimously agreed that these were inspirational.

From reading the interview conducted by James Estrin with the staff photographer Todd Heisler, the senior multimedia producer Sarah Kramer, and the photo editor Meaghan Looram, I learned that the audio was recorded before the photography took place..I didn't know that, and I am certain to share this interview with my future classes.

A very well deserved recognition!

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Posted in: Multimedia,Photojournalism

Candace Feit: Orissa's Tribals

Photo © Candace Feit -All Rights Reserved

 

 

Candace Feit is a photojournalist currently residing in New Delhi, and was featured on the pages of The Travel Photographer blog a number of times.

Her photographs of West Africa  (she was based earlier in Dakar, Senegal) appeared in the The New York Times, Le Monde, Le Figaro, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and Time magazine, among others.

Candace has recently published more Indian photo stories, including this one on the Adivasis of Orissa.  Orissa has one of the largest concentrations of tribal population in India, and according to a government census, they number around 7 million.They are neglected by the central government, and suffer from extreme poverty.

This has given rise to a fertile environment for the Naxalite anti-government movement, which exploits the vulnerability of the tribals, and forces then to take sides. In turn, the Indian government is battling this separatist movement, and the Adivasis find themselves in the middle of the conflict.

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Photojournalists