travling photography

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 On an overcast day during my two weeks stay in Shanghai, I traveled to the ancient water town of Jinxi with a Chinese photographer, his wife and a translator. The town is about an hour's drive, and is known for being -as yet- untarnished by commercialism. Jinxi is also known as Chenmu, or the tomb of Chen. She was a beautiful royal concubine of Emperor Xiaozong(1127-1194)of the Song Dynasty. The legend is that during their stay in Jinxi, she decided to stay a little longer, and died there because of a sudden illness. However, this is not about Jinxi, but about a small nondescript small town a few miles away called Shi Hu Dang, where I was introduced to a delightful octogenarian by Mei Qi; a businesswoman and his student at the school where he had worked for decades.  I was welcomed by Mr. Wu into his small house; neat but cluttered at the same time. Unfortunately, his wife was absent doing errands so I could not meet her, alth...

Photo � Cira Crowell - All Rights Reserved Koyasan is one of the most important Buddhist temple complexes in Japan. This monastic complex of 117 temples is dedicated to the study and practice of esoteric Buddhism. It's the center of Shingon Buddhism, an important Chinese-influenced Buddhist sect which was introduced to Japan in 805 by Kobo Daishi, one of Japan's most significant religious figures. It is one of the best places to experience an overnight stay at a temple lodging pilgrims and visitors can experience a monk's lifestyle, eating vegetarian monk's cuisine and attending the morning prayers. Around fifty temples offer this service to both pilgrims and visitors. The history of Kobo Daishi is interesting. In 816, after years of study in China, it is said he climbed the holy mountain of Mount Koya and created the first temple of the Shingon sect of Esoteric Buddhism among its eight peaks, said to resemble a lotus. He was regarded as a saint by the time he fell ill...

Photo �  Victoria Knobloch | All Rights Reserved I can make no apologies for the recent spate of China or Chinese related posts. As this blog's readers know, I'm currently neck-deep in a new long term project revolving around the traditional Chinese opera (and its various styles) amongst the Chinese diaspora in South East Asia and elsewhere. So here's the work of Victoria Knobloch which she has titled China Charm . Many of her monochromatic images are of simple portraits, with some more complex environmental portraits (including the cormorant fishermen of the Li River), along  with some landscapes.  Aside from her portraits, I was mostly attracted to her work depicting men in traditional Chinese interiors (presumably rural tea houses) and walking cobblestoned old villages. She has also a number of other galleries worth stopping by; those of Tibet, Tibetans in exile and Kham stand out and reaffirm Ms. Knobloch's fascination in Tibetan Buddhism.  V...

Sh�nghai by Tewfic El-Sawy on Exposure In a few days, I'll be in Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur to cover the Nine Emperor Gods festival...and returning to my roots of photographing non-mainstream religious events and rituals. The festival is a nine-day Taoist celebration beginning on the eve of ninth lunar month, and will include trances by mediums, processions and Chinese Opera performances. However, this post is to feature my latest street photographs made in the terrific city of Shanghai. In this incredibly modern megalopolis, buzzing with nervous creative energy, with one of most and best subways in the world...and home of more than 24 million people, I found a few incongruities. These are some of them. 

Photo � Noah Shahar | All Rights Reserved Chinese opera has a long history in Thailand, which is home to the largest overseas Chinese community in the world. Bangkok's Chinatown roving performances have casts consisting of a mix of Chinese and Thai performers. The purpose of these roving troupes in Bangkok is to preserve Chinese culture and tradition in a country where Thai-Chinese are often third or fourth generation. The performances are also held to please the gods. As in New York City's Chinatown, where I frequently attend such performances, it is the middle-aged and elderly (with a handful of youngsters) of the neighborhood who go to these operas. Those held in Bangkok's Yaowarat Road, Chinatown's main thoroughfare, are probably not expensive in comparison to those in New York where the cheapest seat goes for $10 and the most expensive (depending if one of the stars is from Hong Kong or mainland China) can go for $100. I was pleased to find Noah Shahar's Chines...

Photo � Li Jianzeng | All Rights Reserved I'm currently immersed (well, partially) in research for what I hope may be a long term project, involving various types of Chinese Opera. It's a lot to chew on since Chinese Opera has innumerable varieties. For instance, there's the well known Beijing Opera, known also as Peking Opera (Jing Ju), and which is regarded as the standard opera of China. There's also the Cantonese Opera, (known as Yue Ju) and that's performed in Cantonese; the Sichuan Opera which is also widely known in mainland China and is delivered in Mandarin; the Ping Opera (Ping Ju) which is easy for the audience to understand, and thus popular with rural communities and especially where people are not well educated. There's also the Henan Opera (Yu Ju), the Qinqiang Opera, the Kunqu Opera and the Huangmei Opera. For this post, I am featuring a gallery by Chinese photographer Li Jianzeng* of th e Daoqing opera popular among villagers in some of the p...

Photo � Ofir Barak - All Rights Reserved You'd be forgiven if you thought that the above photograph was taken in Saudi Arabia or Iran, but it's not. It's a street scene in the Mea Shearim settlement  outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in Israel, and part of the photographic project of the same name by Ofir Barak . We are told that the settlement was established in 1874 and its name is derived from a verse in Genesis 26:12. To this day, it remains an insular neighborhood in the heart of Jerusalem with an overwhelmingly Hasidic population,  and its the streets reminiscent of an Eastern European shtetl. Life revolves around strict adherence to Jewish law, prayer, and the study of Jewish religious texts. It is populated mainly by Haredi Jews and was built by the Old Yishuv (the Jewish communities of the southern Syrian provinces during the Ottoman period). Interestingly, the numerical value of the words Meah Shearim equals 666, which allegedly has esoteric an...

As all large metropolitan cities (and this one is the largest and most populated), Tokyo has proven to be a 'gift that keeps giving' for street photography. This megapolis has super modern skyscrapers, neon lights (that rival NYC's Times Square), unusual fashion sense, faceless salarymen (and women) with surgical masks, temples and narrow alleys from the 1940s, small eateries that ought to have samurais in full regalia as patrons, occasional kimono-clad ladies and an eerie cleanliness....and everything seems to work efficiently, painlessly and politely. Wandering the various distinct areas of Tokyo such as the famous crosswalk intersection in front of Shibuya Station; Shinjuku, Japan�s largest red light district, and the narrow alleys of of Golden Gai and Memory Lane; the red light district of Kabukicho; Harajuku and its crowded Takeshita Dori; Ginza, the capital's most famous upscale shopping district; Asakusa with the incomparable Sensoji temple; and...

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...

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...

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...

Photo � Denis Dailleux - All Rights Reserved Every now and then, I chance on photographic work which fills me with nostalgia, and viewing the monochromatic images of Cairenes and other Egyptians by Denis Dailleux brings me back memories of growing up in a leafy suburb of what was at that a cosmopolitan capital. Unimaginable now of course, but at that time it was more European than Arab...and secularism was the norm.  And Denis says it well in an interview: " I left Cairo more than a year, but return to it on a regular basis. I still love this chaotic city that spellbinds me, and I'm extremely sad of its current situation. However, if there is positive news out of Egypt, it is that of the courageous youths who got a glimpse of freedom ." I stopped at length at every of his photographs...easily imagining what these people would tell me, how they lived, would they share their troubles, their sufferings. Some smile, but others are stoic. A woman squatting in her ki...