travling photography

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 � 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...

Photo �  Patrick Aventurier | All Rights Reserved Having attended the Nine Emperor Gods festival's celebrations in Kuala Lumpur last month, I was interested to discover a gallery of 50 portraits of The Ma Song by French photographer Patrick Aventurier (which were in all probability taken during the festival in Phuket, and known there as the Vegetarian festival.  My own experience at the Nine Emperor Gods festival in Ampang was very much milder than what these portraits depict....but let's start with what the festival is all about.  The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is a nine-day Taoist celebration beginning on the eve of 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, and celebrates this community's belief that abstinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar will help them obtain good health, peace of mind, as well as spiritual cleansing. Its sacred rituals grant good fortune on those who observe this rite. In accordance with ...

As readers of this blog know, I've spent roughly two weeks in Kuala Lumpur to photograph the Taoist Nine Emperor Gods Festival with particular interest in its concomitant Chinese Opera performances. The latter are presented primarily to entertain the gods and spirits, and secondarily for humans.  I was privileged to be introduced to, and then guided through, the ritual labyrinths of the nine days long festival by Cheryl Hoffman who is not only a long time resident of Kuala Lumpur and a formidable photographer, but is also an " �minence grise " in all matters related to the religious and cultural DNA of Malaysia.  Although Cheryl's website provides fascinating galleries of her photographs made during various festivals (including an "almost" official guide to the Nine Emperor Gods festival), I thought I'd feature her most recent audio slideshow The Flow And The Fire which she describes as  "...on the eve of the Nine Emperor Gods Festival, space is t...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I've been in Kuala Lumpur for exactly a week today, and have yet to shake off the dreadful jet lag that comes with traveling from one of the globe to the other...metaphorically-speaking.  There's quite an activity amongst the Taoist community here on account of the Nine Emperor Gods festival; whose observance and rituals occur in KL's temples. The largest of these rituals occurs in the Kau Ong Yah Temple in Ampang...however this post is about the ancillary events of Cantonese Opera that are performed at some of these temples; essentially to entertain these gods on their arrival to earth. The most elaborate performance is held at the Leng Eng Tian Khien Ong Tai Tay Temple (yes, it's that long of a name) in Petaling Jaya, where it's attended by a large number of temple devotees, as well as by photographers who take delight in going backstage to capture the actors' make up sessions and costumes before they come on stage....

This is one of the best video-documentaries I've seen so far of a religious event/festival. Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Spain is the annual tribute of the Passion of Jesus Christ celebrated by Catholic religious brotherhoods and fraternities that perform penance processions on the streets of almost every Spanish city and town during the last week of Lent, the week immediately before Easter. This annual tribute has been observed for the past 500 years. The start of the documentary and its soundtrack reminded me of the blockbuster movies franchise; Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Inferno. The documentary clocked over 25,000 views on Vimeo, gained its Staff Pick and deservedly so. Brandon Li describes himself as a nomadic filmmaker on an endless world tour to document various cultures. For those interested, his film-making kit is here . 

Here's an interesting and compelling slideshow on Thaipusam, the Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community during January or February. It's mainly observed in countries where there is a significant presence of Tamil community such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mauritius Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar. Thaipusam is a celebration dedicated to the Hindu deity Lord Murugan (youngest son of Shiva and his wife Parvati).  This particular slideshow was made of a combination of color and monochrome photographs. Thaipusam is a rather striking festival with devotees shaving their heads and undertaking a pilgrimage along a set route while carrying out various acts of devotion, which may include self-mortification by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers. For my taste, the slideshow relies too heavily on the Ken Burns effect; presumably thought by the photographer to add focus to the scenes, but I thought was distracting. Nonetheless, the slideshow made...

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...

Venice by Lidia D'Opera on Exposure After so much focus on Southeast and South Asia on the pages of The Travel Photographer blog, I think my readers and I are ready for a change of geography...and Venice and its famous carnival is probably one of the most jarring, but visually breathtaking- segue from one region of the world to another. The Carnival of Venice (known locally as Carnevale di Venezia) ends with the Christian celebration of Lent, forty days before Easter, on Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. To make it simple, it will be held between the dates of February 11-28, 2017. It is known for its elaborate costumery and masks. While it is uncertain as to the reason for the earliest mask wearing in Venice, it is said by some that covering the face in public was a unique Venetian response to one of the most rigid class hierarchies in European history back in the 13th century. There are distinct types of masks with names such as Bauta, Colombina, The Plague Doctor, Moret...

Photo �  Takehiko Yagi -All Rights Reserved "I have been fascinated by the colors of the sacred festival of Holi for nine years now. I fell in love with the festival for the first time when I saw it on television as a high school student."  This is very possibly a first.  My Twitter feed has the link to the photo gallery  Diving Into The Colors of Holi by Japanese photographer Takehiko Yagi, and naturally I followed it to view it. Scrolling down the intensely colored images of the well known Indian festival, I stopped at the above photograph, showing the spiritual intensity on the faces of devotees in the temple of Banke Bihari in Vrindavan, the epicenter of the Holi festival.  I recognized this exact scene because I was there as well....at the same time, and photographed these very same devotees. And then I remembered being shoulder to shoulder with an Asian photographer, who, now I know, was Takehiko Yagi. We were both swathed in scarves and eye protecti...

Photo � Shiho Fukada - Courtesy Bloomberg Here's another photo essay on the Soma-Nomaoi festival by photojournalist Shiho Fukada as featured by Bloomberg Pursuits. The annual festival involves horse-riding participants don elaborate armor like samurais, who aim to recreate scenes from Japan's Sengoku period (1467�1603) which was marked by social upheaval, political intrigue and near-constant military conflict. The festival's original purpose was a military exercise designed to sharpen the fighting skills of the samurai. One event in the festival, Shinki Sodatsusen, sees the samurai compete for flags that have been shot into the air. The festival has been designated as an "intangible cultural asset" by the Japanese government. Shiho Fukada is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, cinematographer, and photojournalist based in Boston and Tokyo. She started her career as a news photographer in New York and has a decade of experience shooting and producing stories nationall...

Photo �  Richard Atrero de Guzman  (aka Bahag) - All Rights Reserved One of the great summer festivals of Japan�s northeastern Tohoku region, Soma-Nomaoi dates back over a thousand years and is held every year for three days during the month of July. Some 500 armored and helmeted warriors ride on horseback, and  take part in this military recreation. There are primarily two main attractions during the festival: the Koshiki Kacchu Keiba and the Shinki Sodatsusen. The former event involve 12 samurais in their armor who race over a distance of 1,000 meters. The latter event involves several hundred samurais on horses that compete for the 40 shrine flags known as " goshinki " that are shot into the air with fireworks.  Richard Atrero de Guzman (also known as Bahag) was recently at the festival and produced a number of photographs viewable on his Photoshelter website . Bahag (or Bahagski) is a Tokyo based photographer/filmmaker whose photographs have been published ...

Photo � Heinz-Peter Bader - Courtesy Daily News I wasn't aware that a World Body Painting Festival even existed, but I should have. It is an annual body painting festival and competition held in P�rtschach, Austria, and attracts artists from 45 nations, and attracts more than 30,000 spectators. The event was held on July1-3, 2016. It's a competition between artists (I suppose they're called 'body painters') who work on models for the festival's three days with a given theme. The categories are brush & sponge, airbrush and special effects for the World Champion Award. I've done some digging, and I chose a couple of galleries that feature the wildest body painting examples; the Daily News has a gorgeous gallery   with large images, while the UK's Daily Mail has a set of equally interesting images here . I viewed many more of these galleries and noticed the number of photographers carrying the quasi-obligatory DSLRs with 70-200 lens were cheek-to-jowl ...