travling photography

Photo � Ye Hong Qi - All Rights Reserved It's been a few weeks since my last post...but I needed a break to re-energize my blogging appetite, and with my time swallowed up with a forthcoming photo book, and the incessant demands of social media, blogging took a back seat. However, I chanced on wonderful images by the Chinese photographer Ye Hong Qi whose long term project " The Portraits of Chinese Miao Nationality " (???????) is just a delight for those who are interested  -not only in portraiture- but in anthropology and ethnic minorities. Ye Hong Qi tells us that he started his project in 2012, seeking to document the Miao culture through portraits made in situ, eschewing artificial lights and other devices. The Miao is an ethnic group belonging to South China, and is recognized by the government of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. They live primarily in southern China's mountains, in the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi...

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...

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 � 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 � Raed Ammari - Courtesy Travel Photographer Society - All Rights Reserved The TPS Photo Awards 2018 were recently announced by its founder,  Ahsan Qureshi, and the overall winning image is a macro photograph (above) by Raed Ammari. The winning submissions for all the categories were exceedingly difficult to judge due to their quality, as well as for their stylistic diversity.  In 2018, there were participants from 92 countries with 2560 entries.   I was one of the 15 judges; chosen amongst well established photographers in different fields of specialization. This attribute led to there being no ties in any single category; an unusual result for any imaging competition. It was a singularly tough competition to judge; not only for the sheer number and quality of the submissions, but also because of the number of categories: Street, People, Landscape, Wildlife, Black & White, Architecture, Sports, Fashion, Weddings and Stories. My favorite category ...

Photo � Sebasti�o Salgado | Courtesy Folha de S.Paulo I'm very glad to have stumbled on the latest work by the legendary Sebasti�o Salgado. It's published as a reportage in the magazine (or blog?) of the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo , and while its descriptive text is in Portuguese, I used an online translator tool to feature it here. The remote tribe known as the Korubos received Sebasti�o Salgado, in September 2017. He was welcomed with guttural sounds such as "hey hey hey", and stayed in their village in the Javari valley for 20 days to produce his new project, "Amaz�nia". The Korubos number about 80, and maintain regular contact with officials of the Brazilian State... but have had little contact with the "white" culture. They are divided into two villages on the banks of the Itu� River, in the Indigenous Land Vale do Javari, in western Amazonas, along the border with Peru, 3,500 km from S�o Paulo and 1,200 km from Manaus. This tribe w...

Photo � Nagi Yoshida-All Rights Reserved I now feature my favorite 5 photographer for 2017. I do so in no particular order, either alphabetically, nor chronologically nor by preference...just randomly. Nagi Yoshida :  My first favorite photographer of 2017 is Nagi Yoshida which was featured on this blog on June 26 with her work on Ethiopia . I liked her imagery of the various tribes in the Omo Valley such as the Mursi, Bume, Hamer and the Afari people.  The Japanese photographer's love affair with Africa started when as a child, she was fascinated by being African. Some children want to become pilots, some models, but her dream was just to become African.  Photo �  Corentin Fohlen  | All Rights Reserved Corentin Fohlen : Another favorite is French photographer/photojournalist Corentin Fohlen featured in my post of March 3 , with his incredibly colorful and fantastical portraits  of Haiti's Karnaval .  This festival has been held for ove...

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 � Justin Hession | All Rights Reserved Enough already with China, I heard you say? Well, here's a post on the famed Kumbh Mela in Allahabad in India. There are different kinds of Kumbh Melas...the so-called "Maha Kumbh" melas are the largest  kahunas of these Hindu religious festivals, and the second* Maha Kumbh of this century at Allahabad (also known as Prayag by observant Hindus) concluded with a magnificent ritual bathing on the occasion of Mahashivratri on March 10, 2013...and it is this religious gathering which influenced photographer Justin Hession to publish his stunning  Pilgrims of the Kumbh  portraits on Exposure.  Justin tells us he spent two weeks in a makeshift tent studio, making portraits of pilgrims drawn to these rivers' confluence. He chose a different perspective from the hundreds of photojournalists who came there to document the event, and opted to create studio style portraits against a plain black backdrop.  The Ku...

I was raised in a household in which French was the predominant language, and the cuisine was primarily Mediterranean...not surprising as Egypt's culinary roots were (and still are) influenced by Turkey...and to some degree, Greece, Italy and France. Ottoman Turkey and its antecedents ruled Egypt from 1517 to 1914, following the defeat of the Mamlukes, and its culinary influence is still pervasive to this day. This, perhaps a convoluted way, explains the fact that I consider it as my "comfort" food; one with which my taste buds are very familial with, and one that reminds me of growing up in a household where Osta Hassan, the loyal family cook, would prepare for us aromatic kebabs, dolma, and imam bayaldi (the famous Turkish aubergines). So it was with considerable pleasure that I received Istanbul & Beyond , a Turkish cookbook by Robyn Eckhardt & David Hagerman. I haven't had the chance of meeting the two-time Saveur award winner Robyn Eckhardt, but I know D...

Photo � Chen Haiwen-All Rights Reserved Whilst in Shanghai, I was very pleased to meet with Mr Chen Haiwen; a master photographer, the founder of Shanghai Museum of Antique Cameras, the recipient of the highest photography award in China twice in a row and Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Photography Association.  He and his family were a model of gracious hospitality and assistance. Between the summers of 2008 and 2009, he and his support teams  visited 28 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, 554 cities and counties of China (and Taiwan), to produce  The Family Photos of China's 56 Ethnic Groups. Mr Chen and his team took 57,228 family photos of 1,125 cultural heritage  ethnic group representatives. These are analog images that provide a complete ethnographic record of China's 56 ethnic groups. Using a VIP invitation to the Shanghai PhotoFairs, I posed in front of one of Mr Chen's large format images. At Shanghai PhotoFairs Aside from his masterly wor...

Photo � Robert van der Hilst | All Rights Reserved While in Shanghai some weeks ago, I had the good fortune of meeting Mr Chen Haiwen (whose work will be featured here in a forthcoming post) for the very first time at his impressive offices in the Xuhui District. I was happy receiving  Robert van der Hilst's  ' Chinese Interiors ' coffee-table photo book as a gift from Mr. Chen, who told me he and others had helped  the author/photographer during his travels which resulted in this very handsome tome. Robert van der Hilst is certainly a world traveler. He studied photography in Amsterdam and started traveling in his late teens. These travels took him to France, North and South America, and China. During the past 20 odd years, he focused much of his efforts on China, and he produced many personal work as well as taking on assignments for well-known international magazines. In 2004 until 2008, he started his seminal personal work titled Chinese Interiors. He tells us th...