Travel

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Sunday Break: Gansevoort Street Fair

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved
New York City's Meatpacking District is alive this weekend for the Target High Line Street Festival, a free celebration of the opening of the High Line, New York's newest and most innovative green space. Aside from the gigantic lemonade stand, there's performances by various musical bands such Hungry March Band, Zona Del Barrio, and Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra, among others.

Naturally, crowd-pleasers such as pretty girls and magicians were also on hand to entertain the crowds.

The High Line is a 1.5-mile-long historic elevated rail structure on the West Side of Manhattan, and is the newest addition to New York City's parks.

Here are some of the photographs:

My Work: A Gnawa Smile

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved
One the highlights of the Gnawa Photo-Expedition was the procession of Gnawa troupes through the streets and alleys of Essaouira, which started at Bab Doukkala and ended at Mohammed El Qorry near Bab Marrakesh. The procession signaled the start of the 12th Festival of Gnawa Music.

The procession started off by a Gnawa carrying a tray of incense, and was followed by the troupes, possibly in a certain order of hierarchy. There was quite a presence of administrators and police, but I wasn't prevented from photographing as I wished. I suppose they took me for an accredited photojournalist.

The most prominent Gnawa troupes were the Houara de Taroudant, Ganga de Zagora, Ganga de Tamanar, and Gnaoua Agadir. Each of the troupes wore distinctive costumes, ranging from a flamingo pink to black, while others such as the Ganga de Zagora only wear the traditional white.

The Gnawa in the above photograph wears a multicolored tunic, probably based on a traditional belief that there are seven colors which represent 7 jinns (spirits) in Islamic numerology. Click on it for a larger version.

A multimedia feature including my photographs of various Gnawas and ambient recordings of their music and performances will shortly be posted on this blog.

ViewBook Photostory Contest

Viewbook PhotoStory 2009 seeks to challenge conceptual and documentary photographers around the world to create compelling stories with a linear series of photographs in an online gallery.

The annual online competition seeks to find inspiring, high-quality photo stories within the photography community and bring them to a broad audience, and by so doing will provide a platform for emerging talents. There are already a number of submitted essays, which are quite interesting to look at.

Viewbook PhotoStory is initiated and organized by Viewbook.com in association with GUP magazine, backed by Blurb, Workbook and others.

As in all and every photography contests, I strongly encourage all interested photographers to make sure they carefully read the contests' terms and conditions, especially since misunderstandings between organizers and contestants over terms, prizes and other issues sometimes occur.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

One of Top Ten Blogs is TTP!

Tripbase Blog Awards 2009
I checked into Bob Krist's wonderfully informative and entertaining Photo Traveler blog this morning as I do everyday, and to my surprise read that The Travel Photographer was amongst the top ten in the Travel Photography Blog division of the Tripbase.com competition! Actually, The Travel Photographer came in Fourth place. Way to go, me!

Checking the Tripbase website, I read that its Travel award is only given to the blogs that are the top of their respective class and are some of the best in the field. These are selected based on how informative the blog is, the overall writing style, the actual blog appearance and how well that blog performs in its given category when compared and contrasted to other, similar blogs.

Among the top ten travel photography blogs are Chase Jarvis in First Place, My Marrakech in Third, Bob Krist's Photo Traveler, and the beautiful Stuck In Customs.

I'm gratified that The Travel Photographer blog has earned such recognition, and it encourages me to do even better in the weeks, months and years ahead...and Bob, thank you so much for the generous comments.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Gnawa Festival: What Worked/What Didn't

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved
To end the recent string of post-expedition navel-gazings, here's what I think worked and didn't in terms of gear during the Gnawa Festival photo-expedition. As readers of this blog know, I opted for a minimalist equipment load, and stuffed my Domke F-3X with the following:

* Canon EOS 5D Mark II
* Canon G10
* Canon 17-40mm f4.0
* Canon 28-70mm f 2.8
* Canon 24mm f1.4
* Marantz PMD 620 Audio Recorder
* Acer Aspire One 8.9-inch Mini Laptop (w/LR2 and SoundSlides)
* A 250gb G-Tech Mini G-Drive External Hard Drive

I used my 5D Mark II fitted with the Canon 28-70mm f2.8 about 70% of the time, the 70-200 f2.8 about 20% of the time and the 17-40mm f4.0 the balance. The 24mm f1.4 never left the bag this time. Wherever I went, I felt I needed the flexibility of zooms, and a prime wouldn't be useful in the situations where I photographed. I experienced initial difficulty in focusing on moving subjects, and blamed my 70-200 lens until I realized that I hadn't turned on my camera's AI Servo AF mode!

I have to say that my beloved 70-200 f2.8 is on its last legs. I guess it dropped too many times in Orissa, on Angkor Wat's stone slabs, in Bali's rice paddies and elsewhere. It now wobbles and rattles and, while it still works, it also earned a well deserved retirement...maybe as door stop.

My experience with the G10 was an unhappy one, and I left it aside after a few tries. I had high hopes that it would be a perfect street camera for the alleys of the medinas, but it frustrated me and I gave up after a while. Larry Larsen, a member of the photo-expedition, used his as a point & shoot and seemed reasonably content with its images. Perhaps he managed his expectations better than I did. I have no doubt that in the right hands and used in the appropriate conditions, it's a fine little point & shoot. However, in my case I expected something more...but I didn't have the time nor patience to work at it.

I thought the PMD 620 recorder performed quite well in the rather extreme situations I put it through. Since most of the Gnawa performances were held in small zaouias, the din of the iron querqab (castanets) used by the Gnawa caused significant distortion in the recordings. Moving around to better positions was impractical, so I had to choose a spot where to stand or sit, record and photograph...not exactly an easy thing to do. I tried using Audacity's filters, but the distortion on some of the sound tracks is still too harsh. As one expert told me when I complained, distortion happens and we have to live with it (or not) sometimes.

Both the Acer and the G-Tech Mini G-Drive performed flawlessly. No complaints there.

POV: Afghanistan's "Holy" War?

Photo © Joe Raedle/Getty Images -All Rights Reserved

The Denver Post's Captured Photo Collection has featured a bunch of photographs led by the above image of a U.S. Marine of the 2nd Marine Exhibitionary Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines holding a bible during a Protestant church service on June 28, 2009 in Delaram, Afghanistan.

The rest of the photographs are of U.S. Marines in action.

I never quite understood (and never will) why similar photographs have appeared, and continue to appear, in the media. Is there a link between Christianity and our war machinery? Is it a conscious effort by myopic news editors to paint our wars as Crusades... sanctioned and even blessed by a Christian faith?? Is it to justify the inevitable loss of life, and give those who kill for our "freedoms" some sort of religious cover? Isn't that what religious extremists do? Haven't we had enough of this neo-conservative perfidious and hypocritical jingoistic claptrap of the past 8 years?

My antipathy at this rubbish dates back to the early days of this blog, when I wrote a short post titled Crusades.

But no one addresses it better than photojournalist Asim Rafiqui in his The Spinning Head blog, and I urge everyone to read his latest post on this and other issues.

He titled it Fighting Ghosts And Selling The Good War Or Why Are The Toy Soldiers On The Front Lines!, and it's his incisive opinion on the selling of war in our main newspapers. Here's a paragraph from Asim's blog post:

"The glory of war is being sold on the front pages of our newspapers, none of which have the courage to ask what they know is in fact a fake war, aimed at a poor and defenseless people, fueled by the ‘intelligence’ and advice of a group of venal, corrupt, blood thirsty and power hungry clique of Afghani warlords, drug barons and oil hucksters!"

And a thought-provoking quote from Chris Hedges, also from Asim's post:

"The vanquished know the essence of war—death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life."

Sanctity and preservation of life. These words meant nothing to the Crusaders. They're often bandied about, but still seem to be meaningless.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Li Lu-Porter: Gnawa Photo~Expedition

Photo © Li Lu-Porter -All Rights Reserved
I organized the Gnawa (or Ganoua) Photo Expedition in late June, which was joined by a number of talented full-time and part time photographers, whose principal objective was to photograph the legendary Gnawa musicians during the 12th Essaouira Music Festival.

This is the second of a series of posts which showcase a sample of the participating photographers' work, and is by Li Lu-Porter, a Senior Program Manager with Microsoft in Seattle. While Li frequently travels the world on business and pleasure, including to South Africa on a learning tour for a NGO, this was her first photographic trip. As demonstrated by her photographs, she is passionately embracing photography. She uses a Canon 30D with EF 28-135 IS lens.

One of the highlights of the expedition was attending the various "lilas" (nightly performances) at the zaouia of Sidi Billal, and participate in the clapping and even dancing. During one of the performances, Li and I were told that if we continued to photograph, our cameras would be "confiscated" by an administrator since we had no press passes. Taking umbrage at the rather harsh tone, we opted to leave (after getting our money back), and headed for the concerts in Bab Marrakesh...a more than adequate consolation prize!