travling photography

Photo �  Giselle Natassia - All Rights Reserved This blog post will lead to a photo gallery that featured graphic and possibly disturbing images. The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is a nine-day Taoist celebration starting on the eve of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, and is observed in a number of Asian countires, including Thailand. In Thailand, this festival is called thetsakan kin che or the Vegetarian Festival. Celebrated throughout the entire country, it is at its height in Phuket, where more than a third of the population is Thai Chinese. The festival honors the nine Taoist emperor gods. During the Vegetarian Festival, Thai people practice jay , or veganism. Men (rarely women) participate in this self-mutilation ritual, and are called masongs . They are men possessed by gods or deities during the festival. Only pure, unmarried men without families of their own can become a masong.   The deities inside them   protects them from feeling any pain, and allows them to wal

IN THE COURTYARD OF THE BELOVED by Tewfic El-Sawy on Exposure Ms Fatima Bhutto, daughter of Benazir Bhutto, recently wrote an  Op-Ed  in The New York Times bemoaning the gruesome event of an attack by the so-called "Islamic State" on a Sufi shrine in Pakistan, and described the Sehwan shrine as "...  an egalitarian oasis formed by the legacies and practice of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism merging into one. "  The shrine of Moin'Uddin Chisti is another. Over the course of about a week, I photographed -virtually non-stop- at this shrine during the annual Urs (commemoration of death anniversary) of the Sufi saint Moin'Uddin Chisti. The shrine is in Ajmer, Rajasthan (India) and hosts one of the largest Muslim pilgrimages in the world.  It was most certainly one of my three most intense photographic experiences.  The 'ecosystem' feeding off the shrine consists of pious pilgrims, vagabonds and charlatans, sightseers, mendicants and beggars, fakirs, shoppe

Photo � Shinya Arimoto - All Rights Reserved I don't think I've featured the work of a Japanese photographer on The Travel Photographer blog before, and especially not one who traveled a number of times in Tibet. Tibet, on the situated on the Tibetan Plateau on the northern side of the Himalayas, is an autonomous region of China. It shares Mt. Everest with Nepal. Its capital, Lhasa, is site of hilltop Potala Palace, once the Dalai Lama�s winter home, and Jokhang Temple, Tibet�s spiritual heart, revered for its golden statue of the young Buddha. While some quarters argue that China�s invasion of Tibet ended feudal and theocratic rule and started a liberation process, the fact remains that Tibet has been subjected to an old-fashioned colonization. The invasion by China produced tens of thousands of refugees, manmade famines, and attempts to wipe out local culture, religion, and language. It also brought in thousands of Chinese Han immigrants, and ruling officials. However, let me

The New York Times recently featured two articles concerning the future of photojournalism, through interviews with Donald R. Winslow (editor of the National Press Photographers Association�s News Photographer magazine and newspaper) and Leslye Davis , a young video journalist and photographer for The New York Times. In essence, the viewpoint of a veteran and an another  from an 'emerging' photojournalist. Some of the statements made by both interviewees just jumped at me...total deja vu for me. Why deja vu? Well,  because I said exactly what they said during my classes at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshops and more recently during my 2016 talk at the Travel Photographer Society in Kuala Lumpur. The statements that mirror mine (or vice versa) are: " If you�re going to earn a living now, you have to be a photographer who occasionally does photojournalism. You have to be able to do wedding photography, corporate photography or event photography." (Donald Winslow).

Readers and followers of The Travel Photographer blog are probably well aware of my immense disappointment at the inertia demonstrated by the Asia Society in NYC in acknowledging my letters suggesting it recognizes the Vietnamese Mother Goddess religion as an important event in this Asian nation. As background; I had sent over the past 60+ days two letters to specific high-placed staff members highlighting that the indigenous Vietnamese Mother Goddesses religion (known as �?o M?u) and its rituals (known as H?u �?ng and/or L�n d?ng) had been included on the UNESCO's List of Intangible Heritages, and urging the Asia Society to recognize this by organizing some sort of event at it New York City (or elsewhere) location. However, there was no reply, no acknowledgment, no reaction of whatsoever nature emerging from the Asia Society. Not even a "thank you, but we are not interested" email or voice mail. And certainly no event or recognition of any sort was held...not even, a sho

Photo � Yvan Cohen - All Rights Reserved I've been interested in Chinese opera for quite a while; way before watching Farewell My Concubine. As a photographer, I'm attracted by its visual aesthetics and by its colorful make up and costumery...but I am also interested in its history and its influence on other similar art form in Asia. For instance, I've photographed a performance of H�t Tu?ng in Hanoi a few years ago. Influenced by Chinese opera, it is one of the oldest art forms in Vietnam, and is said to have existed since the late 12th century. I wanted to spend much more time in photographing its performers, but was constrained to do so as I was leading a photo workshop, and couldn't set aside enough time for it. Together with Greece tragic-comedy and Indian Sanskrit Opera, it's one of the three oldest dramatic art forms in the world. I won't go into much background detail about the art, as it is widely -and more ably- described on scholarly websites, as wel

CHINATOWN NOIR by Tewfic El-Sawy on Exposure I am lucky to live in a neighborhood within easy walking distance to New York City's Chinatown. A mere 15 minutes or so, and I'm in Asia. It's as if I am walking in the cacophonous streets of Hong Kong, perhaps with a tiny smidgen of Hanoi thrown in, but without its motorcycle traffic madness. My Fuji X-Pro2 with its 18mm f2.0 dangling from my neck, I take in the visual, aural and olfactory vibes of this quintessential Asian ambience, rub shoulders with its Fujianese and Cantonese residents; try to avoid and ignore the slow-walking sidewalk-hugging out-of-state out-of-shape tourists who gawk at them, and concentrate on catching interesting interactions and expressions. I wear all black, with a dark scarf to sort of mask my camera. It might be a superfluous "precaution" since no one so far has noticed, nor minded me, taking pictures. They are far too engrossed in their daily to and fro, mostly shopping for seafood, veg

Photo � Sam Barker Photography -All Rights Reserved Let's go south of the border with the charro. These are Mexican horsemen (the horsewomen are known as charra) typically dressed in an elaborately decorated outfit of close-fitting pants, jackets, and sombrero. The charro originated in the ce ntral-western regions of Mexico, and participate in the c harreada ; a form of rodeo riding that has become an official sport in that country. It  is a competitive event quite similar to the United States rodeo, and was developed from animal husbandry practices used on the haciendas of old Mexico. According to scholars, there is perhaps no better representative of the country's combined cultures and history than the horse trained for " c harreada ." Charros believe that Mexicans were originally conquered by horses, but gained independence with horses, so are inseparable from their steeds.  The horses preferred by the charros are a combined breed: the American Quarter Horse, desc

I am a creature of habit...so on the days I decide to photograph in the streets of my NYC neighborhood, I follow a certain route that takes me from the streets of SoHo to Chinatown. Sometimes, I deviate and hit the East Side and the Bowery, but normally I stick to my normal trek, and alter my walks within the confines of this SoHo-Chinatown 'map'. My Fuji X-Pro2 with its 18mm f2.0 dangling from my neck, I walk and imbibe the vibes of the city, and the human diversity that populates it. I normally shoot from the hip, since I seek fleeting expressions as much as I can. This obviously means that my success rate is very low, but it is what I like doing.  I don't want to get into a debate as to whether SFTH (shooting from the hip) is unethical or not, and whether photographing " a la sauvette " (as Henri Cartier-Bresson described his on-the-sly photography) is right or wrong. I choose what to photograph, and never have photographed a homeless person or disrespected any

A Three Hour Tour by Lee Cohen on Exposure The Circular Railway is a local commuter rail network that serves the Yangon (previously known as Rangoon) metropolitan area. It extends over 28 miles, and serves 39 stations in a loop system. The railway has about 200 coaches, runs 20 times and is said to sell 100,000 to 150,000 tickets daily. The loop, which takes about three hours to complete is heavily utilized by lower-income commuters, as it is (along with buses) the cheapest method of transportation in Yangon. It is also a way to see many areas of Yangon. It runs daily from 3:45 am to 10:15 pm, and the  cost of a ticket for a distance of 15 miles is about $ 0.18, and for over 15 miles is $ 0.37. These prices are for the locals. The cost for a one-way tocket for non_burmese is $ 1.00. The circular train stops at each and every station for only a minute or two, forcing passengers to quickly clamber on board, with all sorts of luggage and belongings. It returns back to Yangon�s city stat