travling photography

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Although the Fuji GFX50s might not really be the most appropriate format to photograph theatre and opera, it produced interesting images while using it to photograph a live performance by the Yan Yang Tian opera troupe in at the    Leng Eng Tian Khiew Ong Tai Tay temple  in Kuala Lumpur during the annual Taoist Nine Emperor Gods Festival.  For nine days, Taoists gather at various temples around the country to celebrate the Nine Emperor Gods festival, which begins on the eve of the ninth month of the lunar calendar. The troupe performs traditional Cantonese opera, and has been on stage since its founder opera troupe owner Elizabeth Choy was 7 years old. Now in her late eighties, she is considered a treasure by the Chinese-Malay communities in Malaysia as well as those in neighboring countries. While the popularity of Cantonese opera has dwindled, especially among the young, her troupe has continued to perform in local ...

I've been photographing Chinese opera performers at performances and backstages in New York City's Chinatown, various locations in and near Kuala Lumpur and in Shanghai for the past 18 months or so. My intention is to eventually produce a photo book of these photographs; a long term project if there was ever one since Chinese opera is a subject of immense complexity and depth. Influenced by the square format portraits by Andres Serrano (see my previous blog post), I chose 24 portraits of artists (12 male and 12 female characters) who performed in Cantonese, Hokkien and Jingj� performances. I mentioned the complexities of Chinese opera; it is said that there are as many variants as dialects in China. For instance, there's the Beijing Opera , known also as Peking Opera ?? (Jing Ju) which I've photographed in Shanghai;  Cantonese Opera , known as ??   Yue Ju, which is popular in the Canto nese speaking regions, such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macao...

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...

scroll image down Taking advantage of being in Shanghai to give a 3-hour photo talk on travel photography at the well-known IG (Imaging Group) Photography Gallery, followed by a day long street photography workshop for 10 local photographers (and a subsequent photo critique), I was able to indulge in some street photography of my own...either alone or with a Chinese friend. I naturally gravitated to the neighborhoods that still had the traditional narrow alleys where the less fortunate Shanghainese families still lived...a world apart from the shiny new areas where the  ?? ( xiaozi � 'little capitalists') lived, worked and shopped. By the way, modern Shanghai is lightyears ahead of New York City in terms of infrastructure, cleanliness, transportation and overall efficiency...and its subway system is as good as Tokyo's. Shanghai's Vanishing Longtang Alleys . The narrow and tightly-packed alleys that escaped demolition in some Shanghai neighborhoods are called  l...

I've been hard at work for a number of days, pulling images from my voluminous archives; choosing some; rejecting others; changing my mind and reversing my choices...in what is a circular -and one could say almost agonizing- activity which will only subside when I'm completely comfortable with my choices. The objective is to present no less than 100 of my photographs to an audience of passionate photographers in Shanghai, who are to attend my photo talk at one of the premier photographic venues in this jaw-dropping megalopolis. Through these photographs, the photo talk will take the audience on a journey that starts in 2000-2001 and continues to the present day, interspersed with my thoughts on travel (and other styles) photography, as well as storytelling; thoughts that some may found controversial, provocative and debatable...such as this one: My photo talk in Shanghai is to be hosted by the Imaging Group 's IG Photography Art Gallery, a large building that includes IG St...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved The Fushimi Inari Shrine (??????) is an important, and very popular, Shinto shrine in Kyoto. It is famous for its thousands of vermilion torii gates, which straddle a network of trails behind its main buildings. The trails lead into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari. Naturally, the site is a magnet for tourists, who come here in large groups or individually, to walk its trails and to pose for either selfies or for pre-arranged photo shoots. Not far from the entrance to the shrine, I watched one of these photo shoots in progress, which involved a young couple wearing identical dress being photographed by a photographer and his assistant. They had a chosen a spot that had small replicas of  torii gates hung as souvenirs, and were clearly enjoying their pre-wedding event. I approached the group, and asked permission to photograph as well...and it was readily agreed to by all. It turned out that the couple was from China, while t...

Being confined indoors for long stretches by the recent horrible winter weather in New York City, I started to choose potential picks for its front cover, and will eventually choose its back cover as well. After all, one has to start somewhere in a photo book, and although others perhaps make the cover choice as their last step in the book creation process, I prefer to start with it. It's common knowledge that people spend an average of 8 seconds looking at a book's front cover and 15 seconds studying the back cover before making a decision whether to buy it or not...so the choice of both front and back covers is obviously critical to the success of Chinese Opera In The Diaspora. The initial short list for the front cover of Chinese Opera of the Diaspora (its tentative title) is as per the above thumbnails. Although this "contact sheet" is skewed towards male performers, I have much more images of female performers for another sheet, however I believe that the final f...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Spending a couple of weeks documenting the Chinese (Hokkien) Opera troupes during the Nine Emperor Gods festivals in Kuala Lumpur gave me the opportunity to continue my "Red Qi Pao" project which involves photo shoots in atmospheric interiors that are reminiscent of a 1930 Shanghai. This time, I chose to shoot in a studio setting (a first for me). Along with Stanley Hong, a friend and photographer, we drove from mid town Kuala Lumpur to 512 Studio, Jalan SS 7/26, in Petaling Jaya...a journey that took us about half an hour or so. The studio is owned by Ms Osa Lim, and managed by the ebullient Ms Shay Yap, herself a photographer as well. The small studio is reasonably well appointed, with 4 or 5 separate areas that are decorated in different styles; such as a dark bar with wine glasses, a red room with old Shanghai posters, another in a Japanese style, etc. We were to met Lee Lee; a lovely friend who volunteered to model for us. She...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I've immersed myself (not totally...but let's say, up to my waist) in documenting Chinese Opera in its various forms since mid 2017, but have found the project to be daunting because of the complexity of that ancient art form, its diverse types/styles, because of its thousands of tales and because I don't speak or understand Mandarin and/or Cantonese. Notwithstanding these challenges, I started to read on the various types of Chinese opera, and during 2017 attended and photographed various performances in New York City's Chinatown (Cantonese), in Kuala Lumpur (Hokkien) and in Shanghai (Qinqiang). It is a Qinqiang performance in Shanghai that's the subject of this Beyond The Frame blog post. The premier venue for Chinese opera in Shanghai is the Yi Fu Theater on Fu Zhou Lu Road near People's Park. It was known as the largest theater in the Far East, and no opera actor or actress could achieve fame until they performed ...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Having recently visited this blog's archives, I remembered it had a periodic feature called "Beyond The Frame" in which I chose a single image and wrote about its back story.  As it was quite popular with readers, I decided to re-introduce Beyond The Frame as an irregular feature on The Travel Photographer blog. Readers will recall from my many posts on The Red Qi Pao that I've produced two multimedia essays about an imaginary love story involving  a Shanghainese young woman and a foreigner in the 1930s at a time when Shanghai was a "wicked" city. Taking the opportunity of being in Shanghai in September, I was fortunate to be introduced to Yi Yi (a pseudonym); a professional model and a budding photographer herself, and featured her as the red qi pao -clad girl of Nanjing Road; a famous road in the city. Along with Eric, a photographer friend, we went to Guilin Park for a 3 hours photo shoot. The park's tea h...

It's the time of year. Time flies.  The most viewed posts of 2017 on The Travel Photographer blog are: 1. POV : Can The X-Pro2 Do The Job Of The GFX 50S?  of January 8 in which I share my ambivalence about acquiring this -at the time- new camera, while owning the X-Pro2 and a bevy of lenses...and questioning whether the return on investing in a GFX 50S would be worth it. Would the quality of the GFX 50S surpass that of the X-Pro2 by such a factor that it justifies its $8000 expenditure? It seems many of my blog's followers and other readers were interested in the same question, and that boosted this post to very top of the popularity totem pole....and by a substantial margin. As readers of this blog know, I did get the Fuji GFX50s and its 63mm lens a few months later, and haven't regretted it in the least. Quite to the contrary, I have fallen for it (as I have for the X-Pro2 before it) especially doing the "fashion-lifestyle-travel" type of photograph that I'm...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy - All Rights Reserved X-Pro2/12mm Zeiss/f2.8 With the end of year closing in, I thought I'd post 10 photographs that I made during 2017 which I deem to be the "best" (always a subjective thing) for a variety of reasons.  By "best", I mean that these images combine the visual (composition et al), the ambiance and its connection to me as photographer. The first (not in any particular order) is one of many I took of "Wang"; an aging Hokkien opera performer in Ampang (Kuala Lumpur) during the Nine Emperor Gods festival in October. In fact, I have a complete blog post on Wang, and how I formed a bond of sorts when I dropped on a couple of nights by the stage where he and his troupe would perform. For me, "Wang" epitomizes the gradual decline in popularity of the Chinese Opera.  In this particular photograph, "Wang" wears heavy-handed make up on his face, with painted eyebrows. I can't decide whether his facial ...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved (GFX50s) At the end of every trip, whether I had been giving a workshop or working on a project, there's one (or perhaps two) frame(s) that I specifically fall in love with. This never fails to happen. I believe it's about developing an instant emotional bond for the subject(s) in such frames. As I often tell those who attend my workshops...the photographer has to fall in a semblance of "love" with his or her models. Whether posed or candid photo shoots, successful imagery depends on the mutual bonds that develops between these parties.  I was in Kuala Lumpur last month during the Nine Emperor Gods festival; an important Taoist religious festival which begins on the eve of 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar.  While the festival itself with its unusual rituals and religious processions is a veritable feast for the eyes, for the senses and naturally for photography, I was there to photograph the performances and back s...