Bhutan: Land of Druk Yul

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy
I will be on my Land of the Druk Yul photo expedition from September 28 to October 18. A few days in London, then on to Bangkok where I meet the expedition's participants, then we fly off to Paro on Druk Air in the wee hours of October 3.

I have yet to pack all my photo gear, make sure that whatever needs it is recharged and in working order, and figure how to fit everything I need in my carry-on luggage...always an exercise in spatial ingenuity.

By necessity, posts will slow down while I'm traveling, but I'll try to set some "robot" posts before I leave, and if I have reasonable internet connections in Bhutan, I will keep TTP readers appraised of our progress.

The above image of a Cham dancer in Prakhar was “lomo-ized” via Lightroom.

Read more »

NGS+ liveBooks: All Roads Film Festival

All Roads is a National Geographic initiative supporting films by and about indigenous groups and under-represented minority culture filmmakers. The festival is a multimedia event comprised of cutting-edge film, videos, live music, photography, and art from cultures around the world.

One of the facets of the initiative is the Photography competition which honors four photographers from Argentina, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan who used their work to advance awareness of the plights of their native countries and drive social change. The photographers will participate in the All Roads Film Festivals in both Washington D.C. (Sept. 25 to 28) and Los Angeles, California, (Oct. 2 to 5), where their images will be exhibited. The winners will be discussing their work during the Global Storytellers program and exhibiting at this year’s All Roads Film Festivals.

In addition to the festival’s programs, the photographers will be in the spotlight in San Francisco, during the Global Storytellers program. Details are of the venue are:

Monday, Sept. 29th, 2008
Reception: 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. (Refreshments & Light Fare)
Lecture: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Adobe Systems Inc.
601 Townsend Street @ 7th Street
San Francisco, California


“Global Storytellers” is hosted by a consortium including the National Geographic All Roads Film Project, Adobe Systems Inc, the Aurora Forum, DataColor, FiftyCrows Foundation and liveBooks.

Read more »

Multimedia Muse

Three anonymous photographers created Multimedia Muse, a website that aims to rectify the substandard showcasing of multimedia by news websites, and that seeks to increase the "clickability" factor of multimedia projects.

Here's wishing them lots of luck.

Read more »

Photo~Expedition: Theyyams of Malabar

Having forgotten that I would have little time to blog while on my Land of the Druk Yul photo-expedition to Bhutan in a few days, and even less time to properly announce my first photo-expedition of 2009, I decided to do so today!

The Theyyams of Malabar photo-expedition is specifically structured and timed to allow its members to photograph and document the most spectacular ritualistic dances of Northern Kerala: Theyyam.

Our itinerary will take us to the Malabar region of south India, and along with Malabari villagers, attend the Theyyam performances in local temples. Not only will we attend these unique rituals which are scheduled from February 22 to 25, but we shall also encounter smaller Theyyam rituals deep in the forests of Northern Kerala.

Read more »

Alixandra Fazzina: Childbirth Perils

Photograph © Alixandra Fazzina/TIME
TIME magazine features a 14-picture essay on the perils of childbearing in Afghanistan. Photographer Alixandra Fazzina traveled to Badakhshan, where a harsh landscape and lack of infrastructure have given rise to an astonishingly high rate of deaths during childbirth. In this far flung area of Afghanistan, for every 100,000 babies born, 6,500 women will die.

I’m sure I won’t be the only one who thinks the above photograph is reminiscent -to use a cliche- of La Pieta, and there are many more in this essay that will move you.

Alixandra Fazzina has spent a decade chronicling war, violence, misery and distress, mainly in Africa and the Middle East. She photographed the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army and their victims in Uganda, the Miya-Miya rebels in Congo, and is currently working on a story about people-smuggling from Ethiopia and Somalia to the Yemen and Saudi Arabia. In addition to her work for British newspapers such as The Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph and Independent, her reportage features were published in Newsweek, The New York Times, Stern and Corriere.

TIME magazine's The Perils of Childbirth in Afghanistan

Read more »

India: Theyyam

Photograph © REUTERS/Sivaram V.
The Boston Globe's The Big Picture blog has just posted 34 wonderful photographs from all around India. Many are of everyday life in this amazing country, and some are of unique festivals such as Theyyam, Ganesh Chaturthi, and Pulikali.

Sharp-eyed readers of this blog may wonder why I've posted two photographs of a Theyyam dancer today (scroll down two posts to see the other). Subscribers to my monthly newsletter already know the reason. It will be publicly announced on this blog in a few weeks!

India on The Big Picture blog

Read more »

Leica S2: A 37.5 MPs Surprise

As reported by the British Journal of Photography, Leica launched an entirely new digital camera system destined to bridge the gap between professional digital SLRs and medium-format high resolution models.

The S2, with 37.5 million pixel resolution, is the first of many future models that will form part of the S system. The first model sports a 30x45mm CCD sensor, which is 56% bigger than a typical 35mm sensor. The camera will retail at around €20,000 (approx $30,000), and is aimed at fashion and commercial shooters who want medium format quality combined with a DSLR's speed and versatility.

Read more »

POV: Portable Hard Drive Issues

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy
Recently returning from a trip to Mongolia, Nevada Wier recounts her frustrating experience with portable hard drives (aka digital wallets). It appears she purchased two of these gadgets before her trip and while in the field, these hard drives would not hold a charge, and eventually would not work.

Nevada suspects the battery issue was caused either because the only available electricity in Mongolia was 220AC or through generators. In the meantime and until this is resolved, she's withholding her endorsement of this hard drive model.

I think the lesson we all learn from this experience is (1) hard drives will fail when you least expect it, or where you have little chance of having them fixed quickly (this is also known as Murphy's Law); (2) to never take a newly acquired gadget, camera, accessory on a trip without having it been tested (although in this case, it seems that the drives worked well in a 110AC environment), and (3) always have a back-up solution.

Read more »

News: Art Collection

All Photographs © Tewfic El-Sawy
I've recently sold 10 of my photographs to a major international bank headquartered in London. The distinctive aspect to this transaction is that the photographs are part of the bank's permanent art collection, and are printed on 40" by 25" (approx) canvases. My sales of photographs are traditionally either for stock or to magazines.

Most of the photographs chosen are of adivasis from Central India, and the rest are from Ethiopa's Omo Valley, Rajasthan and Bhutan.

The bank's art collection include photographic works by Philip Lee Harvey, Desmond Burden, Steve Bloom, Remi Benali, William Chapman, Boaz Rottem, among others.

Read more »

Cham Dances in New York City

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy
In elaborate dress and masks, monks from Bhutan performed Cham dances at the Merchant's Gate in New York City's Central Park yesterday. The dances by the monks-dancers were in celebration of the opening on September 19 of The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan at the Rubin Museum of Art.

The Rubin Museum and its Program Director, Tim McHenry (who served as the event's emcee), are to be commended for bringing such an event to the streets of New York City. The large-sized audience watching the whirling and twirling of the Bhutanese dancers had people who knew where Bhutan was, some wore Buddhist bracelets or fingered prayer beads, and a few photographers who seemed they had seen such dances before.

Despite it all, and at the risk of sounding churlish, I sensed that the Cham dances against the backdrop of modern glass-fronted buildings and yellow cabs didn't fully work. The full impact of the dances really comes to life in their natural 'habitat'...the authenticity of ancient monasteries, the age-worn cobblestones, the shy Bhutanese villagers as audience, are what completes the Tchechus and such dances.

The above photograph of a masked dancer is one of the many I made during the hour-long performance.

Read more »