Bali: Spirits Dance!

Image Copyright © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
I've put together a slideshow of some of my photographs of Bali's indigenous dances such as Rejang, Arja and Kecak. Some are candid photographs, while others are of dancers I hired to pose for the members of my Bali photo-expedition in July.

I decided against adding any sound recordings made while the dancers' performances...gamelan and kecak are somewhat repetitive, and I wanted to show the images on their own with no distractions.

Bali: Spirits Dance!!

Cambodia: Pchum Ben Festival

Image Copyright © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
One of the most important religious observances in Cambodia will start on October 11th. Prachum Benda, known colloquially as Pchum Ben, is the period during which the Cambodians gather to make offerings to their ancestors. The observance usually lasts an entire lunar cycle, constituting the fifteen days that ancestral spirits are given to visit their living relatives.

Although Cambodians believe that most living creatures are reincarnated at death, some souls remain trapped in the spirit world. So each year, for these fifteen days, these trapped souls are released from the spirit world to search for their living relatives, meditate and repent. Pchum Ben is for the living relatives to remember their ancestors and offer food to those unfortunate enough to have become trapped in the spirit world.

I also learnt today that the upper level of the Angkor Wat temple has been closed by the authorities because of the volume of tourists. The stairs are too narrow to accomodate the traffic of visitors, so it'll be no longer possible to get to the top of the temple.

Podcast: The Art of Tea

This is not really about travel or editorial photography...well, maybe it is. Jennifer Sauer, a photojournalist and photographer, decided to document the most intriguing tea lounges and tearooms in the San Francisco Bay Area, and to introduce you to the world's top tea experts, who explain how to judge quality teas, and explored tea cultures from around the world in a book titled The Art of Tea.

In this podcast (courtesy of The Digital Story via Imaging Insider), Jennifer tells us how she thought of her project, how she put her photographs and text together...and gives us tips to publish such a book in the current publishing environment. It's well worth a listen.

Podcast (mp3)

News Update: Myanmar

Image Copyright © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
According to the Reuters, the U.N. envoy met with Myanmar junta chief Than Shwe and detained opposition Aung San Suu Kyi today, hoping to halt a bloody crackdown on the biggest democracy protests in 20 years.

Although the streets of Rangoon are quiet, it's reported that raids on homes by pro-junta gangs are being carried out looking for dissident monks and civilians. The number of dead is unknown but is estimated at much higher than the figure reported by the government.

It is also reported that about 4,000 monks have been rounded up in Rangoon over the past week and are being held at a disused race course and a technical college, and would soon be sent to prisons in the far north of the country. Sources say that the monks have been disrobed and shackled, and that they are refusing to eat.

Klavs Christensen: Women of Chah Faleh

Klavs is a Danish photographer who picked up photography as a hobby after graduating from The Royal Academy of Music. He started work as a freelance for various Danish magazines and organizations, and his work is based on social and cultural issues in his local neighborhood of downtown Copenhagen.

A few years ago he decided to do more work on stories of international interest but still with a focus on cultural, social and political issues. These have taken him to Iran, Egypt and Syria. He began working with WpN in January 2007.

I found his photographs of masked women from the village of Chah Faleh in south Iran to be most interesting. Many women in this region of Iran wear different kinds of masks. The tradition of these masks goes further back than the time when Islam came to Iran, but in this part of the country (especially in the villages) the tradition has been adapted as a part of hijab.

The traditional masks are black, some with gold. Within the last 30-40 years, the coloured masks started to show up and today they are subject to fashion. Klavs tells us that most of the women wearing the masks are doing it because of hijab, but some wear them only to protect their skin from the getting tanned by the sun.

Klavs Christensen

Print Space (NYC)

A couple of weeks ago, I had some of my Bali and Bhutan photographs printed at Print Space, and chose to have them done on its Chromira printer. I had read that the Chromira exposes photographic paper or film at 300 pixels per inch (ppi) in 36 bit color using Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), and using ZBE's proprietary Resolution Enhancement Technology, the image is sharpened to a visual resolution of 425 ppi.

What I like a lot about the large prints I got is that, unlike large format inkjet output, there here is no "dot pattern", and there are no inks used that can smudge or fade.

I can vouch for the extremely nice staff and attentive service. I just walked in, asked a few questions and got my large prints the following day, and I'm absolutely delighted with the results.

Apart from the Chromira 30 for digital C-Print output, Print Space offers a wide range of features and options to help make professional B&W fiber, RC, and Color C-prints. It also offers dip'n'dunk C-41 film processing, and drum-quality Imacon 848 & 949 scanner rental.

Print Space (212 255 1919) is located at 151 West 19th Street NY 10011 (8th floor).

Print Space

Jonathan Hanson: Mexican Life

Image Copyright © Jonathan Hanson-All Rights Reserved
Jonathan Hanson worked for the Santa Fe Workshops after attending graduate school for commercial photography at Ohio University. In Santa Fe he he worked with photographers Jay Maisel and Arthur Meyerson who influenced his eye for color and light. He then moved to San Miguel in Mexico where he studied Spanish and Mexican culture. This paved the way for his skill with the use of bold color, composition and the subtleties of body language.

As TTP readers probably know by now, I like highly saturated colors in photographs, photographs with a lot of shadows and I always try to introduce motion blur in images that need it...so it's not a surprise that I chose Hanson's photograph of this yellow and black street scene for this post.

Hanson's website is flash-based, and his Mexican Life portfolio is "filed' under Essays. Another great photograph with shadows is the one with turquoise and pink walls and cotton candy.

Jonathan Hanson