La Guelaguetza: Oaxaca's Dance

Image © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
While in Oaxaca, I photographed a couple of lively Guelaguetza performances and uploaded some of the results on to a website. The dances are a form of celebration that dates back to pre-Columbian times and which remain a defining characteristic of Oaxacan culture. Its origins relate to the worship of corn as a mainstay staple of the Oaxacan region, and indeed all over Mexico and beyond.

Eventually, these photographs will be incorporated into a multimedia slideshow.

La Guelaguetza

Bar Banyan, Johor Bahru.

I visited some of the Bistro or Cafe around this area, and some of them I would like to share with you. The reasons are....comfort & cozy environment, nice setup, friendly staff......(This pub and cafe are different from those typical 'so call' pub flooded around JB area.)
This is the place you can have relax (with soft music) and chat with your friends or have discussion with your clients.

Bar Banyan (N1°27.937' E103°44.636')
Located at Jalan Abdul Samad, behind Hyatt Regency Hotel.

The area is small, and it won't be over crowded.

Reasonable Beer : MYR40.00 for one bucket(Carlsberg 5 bottles) for happy hours and MYR45.00 after happy hour.
Most of the customer here are business man or professional.

Related post :-
* Mulligan's Pub, Tmn Permas Jaya, Johor Bahru

MY TRIPS - Home

A Pilgrimage Special: A Gathering of Monks

No wonder there were so many Tibetans at Mahabodhi Temple! When we were in Lumbini, Nepal, our group had visited a meditation centre and according to a Japanese nun there, the head monk was away in Bodhgaya. Apparently, he was attending a big gathering and three days later, when we were at Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya, we were confronted with a sea of Tibetans in their trademark red robes. A festival was going on, a gathering of monks, I suppose. The sixth gathering of Jonang Monlam Chenmo was on and indeed, I felt extremely lucky to be walking amidst the group of pious people! Bodhgaya has always been teeming with Buddhist activities relating to the Tibetans and I have read that the Dailai Lama himself had graced some of the events...

At the sixth Jonang Monlam Chenmo...

Thomas Smallwood: Journey to the Himba

Image © Thomas Smallwood-All Rights Reserved
Thomas Smallwood is a creative director for some of the top advertising agencies and major retail chains throughout the country, and attended college at the Fashion Institute (F.I.T.) and the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he majored in advertising, and discovered that he liked taking pictures.

His portfolio comes through Double Exposure the web magazine of Photoworkshop.com, a photography interactive community, founded by Robert Farber.

Thomas Smallwood's sensitive and evocative photographs of the Himba are supplemented by his Namibia travelogue, which he ends by saying :"We reflect on all we have seen, our moments with the proud Himba, and this incredibly colorful country. I also think about all the shots I missed. How soon can I return?."

Thomas Smallwood's gorgeous Journey To The Himba

iPod touch

I splurged recently and got an iPod touch; principally to show off my portfolio to whoever is polite enough to ask to see it. Seriously though, I think it's really a nifty idea to have one's portfolio in one's pocket. As we all know, the iPod touch is lightweight and lends itself superbly in terms of coolness and screen resolution to show off photographs in their best light.

Naturally, it has many other uses as well...and in the range of a Wi-Fi signal, I can also show off my portfolio and websites. I found I had to use the two-fingered scroll to do that...but the iPod touch is really worth it. It's really a 'portfolio-in-your-pocket', and is useful in many field situations for travel photographers.

National Geographic: Annie Griffiths Belt

Image © Annie Griffiths Belt-All Rights Reserved
The National Geographic's website is featuring photographer Annie Griffiths Belt's biography and a short slideshow of her photographs along with her narration. She started her career after graduating in 1976 and began assignment work for the National Geographic Society two years later.

Her work has also appeared in Life, GEO, Smithsonian, Fortune, American Photo, Merian, Stern, and many other publications including dozens of books.

Amongst her many wonderful photographs, I chose this one of Muslim women praying at the mosque of the Dome of the Rock (Mosque of Omar) in Jerusalem. Look for the shadows on the robes of the women in the back!

However further on in the slideshow, at a photograph showing her and Himba tribeswomen in Namibia, Annie Griffiths Belt tells us that she handed them a Polaroid she had made of them. It was received with curiosity, not only because they had never seen a Polaroid image (this I easily believe) before but that they had not seen themselves having never used reflective surfaces! Hard to believe.

Annie Griffiths Belt's A Camera, Two Kids and a Camel

Anamitra Chakladar: Kolkata's Chinatown

Image © Anamitra Chakladar-All Rights Reserved
So far this week, my posts are of photographers using black & white pictures, and this suits Anamitra's work on Kolkata. Born in this city, Anamitra was expected by his parents to be a teacher or an executive, but he chose to be a photographer instead.

He joined an established newspaper as a trainee photographer, then moved on to television joining NDTV, and saw more than his share of world conflicts including the first Gulf War, the ongoing conflict over Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the coups in Nepal and Bangladesh...and getting shot at in the process.

Anamitra says that he's equally comfortable in both moving and still photography, but finds the latter therapeutic. From his website, I gather he's enamored not only by the city of his birth, but by the Taj Mahal and Delhi's Jama Masjid.

I had no idea that Kolkata has a Chinatown...its streets so well depicted by Anamitra's lens. I chose his well composed photograph of a rickshaw puller as the most illustrative of a Chinatown, although the government of West Bengal banned them in 2006. All this brings to mind the movie City of Joy and the brilliant performance by Om Puri, who acted the role of the impoverished rickshaw puller.

Anamitra Chakladar's Kolkata's Chinatown