travling photography

Photo � William E. Crawford | Courtesy The New York Times I don't recall writing a blog post about an article that appeared on The New York Times' Lens feature, but I could not let the wonderful photography of William E. Crawford on Hanoi Streets go without giving it its due merit on the pages of this blog. One of the photographs that I couldn't stop looking at is of this Vietnamese general. I have no idea who he is or what his history may have been...but I've met Vietnamese men (and women) of his age with similar facial expressions, whose astounding gentleness and courtesy to me -as a visitor to their country- are the most rewarding experiences I took away from my travels in Vietnam. In the Lens article, Mr. Crawford is quoted as saying  "despite the embargo and the wounds of the American War there was no obvious anti-American hostility ... the lack of hostility towards Americans, at least in the North, was a relief to me." This is so true! Everywhere I went...

Photo � Jay Tindall- All Rights Reserved I've always been interested in documenting the unusual or lesser known religious traditions (especially those of Asia) whether these were derived from mainstream religions or were stand-alone. It was this interest that guided me to photograph a number of such traditions, including Vietnam's �?o M?u which I documented for two years and produced a photo book of which I'm very proud of. It's with this frame of mind that I discovered the tradition of Jaranan; an age old Javanese tradition though the photo blog post  Exorcism In The Volcano's Shadow by photographer/entrepreneur Jay Tindall. His blog post describes this tradition as "...an intense ritual of spiritual passion and trance-induced savagery", so I won't duplicate the interesting contents of his post, except to say that Jaranan is a dramatic genre of a horse dance performed in Java. The most prominent feature of these performances is the trance dancers who...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I was officially recognized as the photographer for The Shade of Butterfly & The Red Pear Blossom opera at the community center theater in NYC's Chinatown. It was the first opera of the season, and is one of the most famous Cantonese operas, and described as a masterpiece. The plot centers on a scholar Yu-chow and the courtesan So-chow who write poems to each other and fall in love despite having never met. The scholar is attached to the court of a treacherous high official who schemes to keep the lovers at bay. The two lovers meet in the final act much to the delight of the audience. I was introduced to Mr. Qu Hui, a mainland Chinese performer, who was to perform one of the lead roles in the opera, and also to sing a few more modern songs. A charismatic tall man, seemingly very comfortable in high heels, he posed for my camera for a few minutes before the show. Cross-dressing has been an integral part of Chinese Opera from its ...

I have now completed producing 'The Legend of Hua', an audio slideshow (aka photo film) which recounts in just over 3:30 seconds (reportedly today's upper limit for our attention span) the story of Hua. The story   meshes the topic of ghosts, opium, Shanghai in its 1930's heyday, traditional Chinese cultural and supernatural elements; all revolving around a plot of betrayal. The plot is influenced by a 1988 movie by Stanley Kwan (in turn based on a novel by Li Pi-Hua (also known as Lillian Lee), one of the most influential Chinese TV writers, film writers and reporters. I've recently produced a handful of audio slideshows that involve imaginary plots during the 1930s in Shanghai, featuring friends who take on the roles of wronged women...possibly wronged by either Chinese men or laowais/gweilos .  My long-time readers know that I've embarked on a  chinoiserie "phase" for quite a while now; a phase fueled  by my travels over the past few years to Hanoi...

I've been absent from this blog for a while due to 'busy-ness', and working on a new audio-slideshow (aka photo-film) titled "The Legend of Hua"...which turned out to be more time-consuming than I anticipated, due to the various audio tracks that had to mesh with still photographs. In the meantime, I uploaded a sample of the still images from the soon-to-be released audio slideshow unto my Exposure website, however I chose to post process these differently from those in the slideshow.  I had read that a photographic technique merging silver printing with charcoal painting was widely popular in the 1920-1930s Shanghai, so I explored various modern digital post processing ways to try and imitate that 'look' as closely as I knew how. After a number of failed attempts, I chose a process which mixes a combination of my own settings using two imaging softwares; ON1 Photo Raw 2018 and Iridient Developer 4. When I was satisfied with the resultant 'look', I...

Photo � Supriya Biswas | Courtesy The Human World The Human World photography contest  just announced its overall winner; Supriya Biswas with the above monochrome photograph, and four honorable mentions namely Thigh Wanna, Shoeb Faruquee, Robin Yong and Edoardo Agresti. The Human World photography contest is organized by Matteo Vegetti, an Italian photographer, and is in its fourth annual iteration.  As one of the contest's judges, I was gratified that the winning image was one of my top choices...and I'm glad the remaining judges on the panel seemed to have thought so as well. By the way, these judges are  Diane Durongpisitkul, Jing Chen, Kim Hak, Sarah Trevisiol, Probal Rashid, and Gunarto Gunawan...a truly international panel representing the USA, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Italy, Germany, India and Indonesia. My blog's readers may be interested as to the reason for this photograph being one of my top choices...and in all candor, I struggl...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I'm currently working on a rather intricate "photo film" or audio slideshow that will mesh the topic of ghosts, opium, Shanghai in its 1930's heyday,  traditional Chinese cultural and supernatural elements; all revolving around  a plot of betrayal. The plot itself is influenced by a 1988 movie by Stanley Kwan (in turn based on a novel by  Li Pi-Hua (also known as Lillian Lee), one of the most influential Chinese TV writers, film writers and reporters.  It's funny how one thing leads to another...while planning my fortnight in Shanghai and preparing for my lecture and street photography workshop some six or seven weeks ago, I was invited to a number of WeChat groups by Yi Yi; a previous acquaintance from that super-modern city who would work with me on the second iteration of The Girl of Nanjing Road .  Through these WeChat groups, I connected with Ren Li Fung ("Betty") who seemed very popular as a qi pao mode...

Photo � Reuters/Jorge Silva - Al Rights Reserved I was planning to attend the Poy Sang Long celebration in Chiang Mai in early April, but the opportunity of my Shanghai lecture and workshop intervened, and so I had to postpone traveling to northern Thailand till next year. However, I viewed the recent wonderful photo essay and reportage titled Beloved Princes Become Buddhist Novices by Jorge Silva of the annual event which was featured in Reuters' Wider Image blog, and it definitely reaffirmed my intention to attend the celebration in April 2019. The essay/reportage is quite thorough in explaining what Poy Sang Long is all about, but here's more information: The days of April 4-6 are usually the time for the three-day festival of Poy Sang Long when, in the city of Chiang Mai, pre-teen boys are inducted as Buddhist novices. On the first day of the 3-day festival, the youngsters are in the midst of family feasting and gift giving before they are escorted to the temple to have t...