Viviana Peretti | Camargue Gypsy Pilgrimage

Photo © Viviana Peretti-All Rights Reserved

I sometimes discover a photographer's work that is so interesting that I hurry to post about it as soon as possible, upending the predetermined order of future posts on my blog.

The work of Viviana Peretti is one of those.

So I'm glad to feature Viviana's Gypsy Pilgrimage in La Camargue which she covered so well using her iPhone and the Hispstamatic's Tintype Tinto 1884 lens and the D-Type film pack...which is by far my favorite.

The Gypsy Pilgrimage celebrate the saints Mary-Jacobé and Mary-Salomé, and it is held in Saintes Maries de la Mer, a small village in the heart of the Camargue, South of France. The legend is that a boat landed near the village's site from Palestine, carrying Mary Magdalene, Marie-Jacobé, and Salomé, as well as Lazarus. With them was Sara, whose identity is unclear. There are some who believe that she was the daughter of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ...while others believe she was the personal maid of Marie-Jacobé. As the only dark-skinned woman on the boat, she was embraced by the Romani as their patron saint.

Romani (aka gypsies) from the region carry the the saints' effigies in a long procession to the beach to be blessed in the sea. The procession is not only made of Romani, but of the region's Arlesiennes in their distinctive costume, as well are the Gardians (Camargue's cowboys) and pilgrims.

This ritual's concept reminds me of the Hindu Durga Puja and the Balinese odalan, where effigies are carried to the river or sea to be blessed.

Viviana Peretti is an Italian freelance photographer currently based in Europe. After earning a BA in Anthropology from the University of Rome, she moved to Colombia where she specialized in photojournalism and worked as a freelance photographer for 9 years. In 2010, she graduated in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism from the International Center of Photography, and worked in NYC as a freelance photographer until her recent move to Europe.

She received fellowships and awards from the International Center of Photography, the Joannie M. Chen Fund in New York, the University of Salamanca, the Spanish Embassy in Colombia, the Photo Museum in Bogotá, and the Colombian Ministry of Culture. In 2010, she was selected for the Eddie Adams Workshop (Barnstorm XXIII), and has been published in a number of international newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, the New York Magazine, BBC, CNN, Le Journal de la Photographie and L'Espresso.

POV: Missing The Right Moment

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

We all have had these missed moments...and I have a lot of those, especially when I do street photography in the streets of New York City.

This one illustrates one of such missed moments...the choreography of pedestrians which could've  worked perfectly if the gods had been smiling, but they didn't...they frowned.

I estimated the walking pace of these two Hasidim on Avenue A would perfectly frame the woman crossing it, and snapped my iPhone shutter at what I took to be the right moment . But was not to be. The partially obscured man on the left who had been about to cross the street, suddenly stopped at this precise moment behind the second Hasidim. Damn!

Perhaps I was too quick...and should've waited for just a second or so. I might have caught the second Hasidim's shadow on the pavement, and the man might have decided to cross.  Just look at the shadow in the center...it looks like a bird.

But realistically, it would've been too late to catch the woman exactly where I wanted.

I looked at the display and I said...damn!

Bill Newsinger | Memory Twenty Two

This is a little gem. No, make that a large gem.

Not only from an aesthetic standpoint, but because it made me (and I hope you) think out of the box.

It's a stop motion project titled Memory Twenty Two by a musician, photographer and videographer Bill Newsinger (Tumblr and Vimeo) who hails from Leicester in the United Kingdom.

It was created from photographs taken with the Hipstamatic Tintype Pak; in particular and the Tinto 1884 lens, and D-Type film....which is absolutely my favorite. It consists of 4500 photos in all, and the music is his own composition.

Let me repeat this...4500 photographs!

Judging from the number of videos on his Vimeo page, Bill is a prolific photographer/videographer...he spends almost everyday shooting in his hometown, and conjuring up short movies, whether it's with his iPhone, GoPro HD or Canon 7D.

Travis Jensen | 96 Hours In NYC

Photo © Travis Jensen. All Rights Reserved

I haven't yet done much street photography in New York City with my iPhone, spending whatever time I have roaming some of its streets instead with the M9 or the X Pro-1, but it's a tool I intend to eventually use, and use as well and as comfortably as I use my cameras.

So I was very glad to have found Travis Jensen's A New York Minute: 96 Hours in the Big Apple, a collection of candid street scenes and street portraiture made in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. The photographs were shot with an iPhone, using the Hipstamatic application’s John S. Lens and Blackeys Supergrain Film combo. No other effects were applied. The collection was featured on the Hipstamatic's iPad magazine Snap.

Travis Jensen's website has a number of lovely photo essays apart from the one of NYC, including a number of street photographs made in his adopted city of San Francisco.

He started his career as a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and taught himself teach photography.  His photographs were primarily made through the lens of his iPhone, but he didn't really take up smartphone photography until he discovered Hipstamatic, the popular iPhone app....which I much prefer to its main competitor Instagram.

He adopted the John S lens and BlacKeys Supergrain film, and (I didn't know that)  this combo has been widely adopted by the Hipstamatic community for street photography.

You may want to view this 5 minutes video which features Travis in his element...photographing in the streets of San Francisco.

POV: Creation Of A Tintype Photograph

Readers of this blog know of my current flirtation with the wet plate look, so I'm glad to have found this short movie describing the rather finicky process of creating a tintype photograph. Bob Shimmin is the photographer describing this process, and he makes it look simple...and it isn't. It's slow and deliberate, part science, part alchemy and art. He has been working in the little used photographic process of wet plate collodion for a number of years.

This video is part of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum special exhibit - Remember Me: Civil War Portraits. You can also watch how Shimmin got involved in tintype photography on this documentary.

I learned from scouring the web that tintypes were introduced in 1856 as an alternative to the daguerreotype and the albumen print, the tintype was widely marketed from the 1860s through the first decades of the twentieth century as the cheapest and most popular photographic medium. It differs from the wet plate because the light sensitive material is coated onto a piece of iron rather than glass...but the process is similar.

I've also found Penumbra Foundation Center, which is a New York City organization dedicated to preserving historical and emulsion based photography, and which offers tintype (and other alternative processes) workshops.

Of course, if that is too cumbersome or complex, there's always the Hipstamatic Tinto 1884 App or the Alt Photo App for the iPhone! My gallery of portraits made using desktop version of the latter app is The Digital Wet Plates.

POV: Going Overboard With Wet Plate Look?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy (iPhone)

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy (iPhone)

I've been bitten by the "wet plate look" bug. Yes, I have...I admit it.

And it's been made worse by the recent announcement by Alien Skin Software that its Alt Photo iPhone App was available for free.

Just yesterday, I made a bunch of such photographs in my neighborhood using my iPhone. On Hudson street, I snapped a can collector as he walked past me, and of Mémé, a neighborhood popular restaurant with a delicious menu.

I don't know the reason for this infatuation, which seems to be concentrated on the wet plate and tintype look. So far, the remainder of the Alt Photo classic, retro and vintage film styles don't exert the same pull on me.

In my travel photography, I'm a purist...seldom, if ever, cropping my photographs, for example. While photographing the streets of New York City, I do crop since I normally shoot from the hip, and my framing is therefore not always accurate or satisfactory. All my post processing was done on Photoshop and/or Lightroom.

But upon my accidental discovery of Alien Skin's Exposure 4 software, and subsequently its iPhoto app, I've let my hair down and enjoy using them, hardly worrying about what wet plate purists may or may not think.

I scour my hard drives, looking for photographs (all portraits so far) that lend themselves well to the 'wet plate'/tin type look...I've even set up a new photo blog and named it The Digital Wet Plates to showcase these portraits.

With the Alt Photo App, I am certain that my iPhone will be an integral part of my gear while on my The Sufi Saints of Rajasthan & Kashmir Photo Expedition-Workshop. I am certain I will be able to capture many photogenic Sufi portraits that'll look almost authentic!

Note: I have no relationship with Alien Skin Sofware and/or Alt Photo App other than being a consumer.

Chiaroscuro | Vitùc

This is a gem.

I've posted a few times about Hipstamatic's new Tintype SnapPack...which consists of the Tinto 1884 Lens, a D-Type Plate Film and a C-Type Plate Film, and how much I liked it....and what I plan to do with it.

But Chiaroscuro, by the very talented Vitùc (who by the way, describes himsself as a passionate non-professional filmmaker) with his use of an iPhone and Hipstamatic App / Tinto 1848 + D-Type Plate, is taking this to new heights.

Hardly travel or documentary related, this is a time lapse of many frames made with the Tinto 1884 lens and the monochrome-ish D-type film. I read that Vitùc uses his iPhone to make almost 2500-3000 photographs and assembles them in a time-lapse to produce the kind of movie such Chiaroscuro.

2500-3000 Hipstamatic photographs! I've tried to sequentially shoot as many as photographs as possible using the same lens and film, and managed to squeeze about 8 or 9...and I then get a message that the "film" is rewinding....which probably means that the photographs are still being processed, and no more can be snapped until they're moved to the phone's camera roll.

Do watch it...it's less that two minutes, and will open up your lateral vision to what can be done with these apps...and with patience.

Introducing The Digital "Wet Plates" Photo Gallery!

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
The Digital Wet Plates Gallery

I took advantage of the lull during the past few days to work on a personal (and fun) project I've been wanting to do for a while...and made some progress in it. .

I've been quite public with my recently found affection for the Hipstamatic's new Tintype SnapPack and it's accessory films, and if the weather hadn't been so cruelly cold in New York City, I would've indulged in much more street photography using this combo last week. I've also been very impressed with Alien Skin's Exposure 4, which allowed me to process some of my photographs to look like pseudo-Daguerreotypes or wet plate images. It was especially effective when I produced Hilltribes In The Mist; a multimedia piece featuring my photographs made in Vietnam's Sapa and Bac Ha regions.

So it was a natural progression to start The Digital Wet Plates; a new blog-based website of a collection of travel portraits I made during my numerous photo expeditions. Not all the travel portraits lend themselves well to being processed in that fashion, and it's hit and miss with many of them...so I have to process the photograph and then decide whether it looks authentic or not.

This gallery is far from being complete, and I'll go as far as possible in my inventory of photographs. I will eventually organize these portraits in pages according the regions.

Oh, and another thing...in a previous post I mentioned a company called PostalPix who fuses iPhone photographs on thin aluminum sheets of varying sizes, and I thought that it may duplicate not only the wet plate look, but also its feel. The company responded and sent me a discount coupon to try the service out. I emailed back the photograph of the Rebari Herdsman you see in this post, and we'll see what it looks and feels like when it's returned to me.

Note: I'm not compensated in any way by Alien Skinware, nor by PostalPix (except for the $15 coupon it sent me).

The Travel Photographer's Hanoi iPhoneography

Stephen Mayes, a director at the VII photo agency, recently made a splash in the blogosphere with an interesting interview featured on WIRED's Raw File blog, in which he expressed his view that mobile phone photography is a "pure implementation of the digital phenomenon", and that images made with these devices were not documents as such but rather a stream, or waves of visuals.

He also raised the point that the popularity of these images and the apps that make them are about a nostalgia for the past.

Although I am on Instagram, and use it and other apps quite frequently with my iPhone, I have yet to join the streaming aspect of it, preferring to take my time in sharing the images when I choose to, rather than joining the torrent. This will probably change once I figure out how to have two accounts on Instagram; one for my personal stuff and the other for my travel documentary photography.

That said, one needs to be careful with wily-nilly streaming, because the quality (or lack thereof) of the mobile images affects one's branding and reputation.

Whilst I grapple with this thought, you may want to sit back and get a feel of Hanoi's street life via my iPhone photography. 

POV: Much Ado About An Instagram Cover Photo?

"If there was still any debate about whether serious photojournalism can take place in the context of camera phones and cutesy retro filters, it’s over now." - Jeff Bercovici, Forbes

Er, no. Not really. Mr Bercovici's pontification notwithstanding, the debate will still go on....simply because there always will be some photojournalists (plus photo editors and their ilk) who will remain wedded to their ways.

I occasionally use my iPhone's Instagram and Hipstamatic for my travel photography, as well as for my street photography efforts in New York City...and I enjoy snapping (and that's what it really is...snapping) a few pictures here and there using these apps, and having fun applying its various filters to the resultant images. I have Snapseed and Camera+ as well, and use these to apply further filters.

In my opinion TIME magazine used a photographer's Instagram snap for one of its covers not because of its particular aesthetics or its compositional values, but because of expediency. Apert from being a crop, the image itself is mundane and nondescript. The Forbes article refers to the expediency factor in very explicit terms, saying that the magazine's director of photography chose to use the Instagram was motivated by the necessity for speed. After all, Instagram has 'insta" in its name, as did Kodak's Instamatic...both implying simplicity, speed and ease.

Oh, did I mention that it's also cheap? No post processing software to buy...no fiddling with levels and layers...nothing.

And that's the reason why Google has bought Nik Software, and Twitter will introduce photo filters in an effort to bypass Instagram.

As I'm fond of saying to anyone who'll half-listen...what you use to make a photograph is really irrelevant. It could be a DSLR, a medium format Hasselblad,a rangefinder or an iPhone...it doesn't matter. They're just tools. And if the photo buyers/editors accept the images...that's all that matters.

Cao Đài: iPhonegraphy

I thought I'd feature a collection of the portraits of the Cao Đài adherents made with my iPhone during our visit at their temple in Hue.

As I wrote in my post of September 19, I had wanted to witness and photograph a Cao Đài prayer ritual for quite a while, and it was by pure serendipity that I discovered that this new religious tradition had just completed building a temple in Hue.

Cao Đài is a syncretistic, monotheistic religion, officially established in southern Vietnam in 1926. Its Adherents engage in ethical practices such as prayer, veneration of ancestors, nonviolence, and vegetarianism. Its opposition to communism until 1975 was a factor in their repression, and its practice was forbidden until 1997 when it was granted legal recognition.

Caodism (as it's called) draws upon ethical precepts from Confucianism, occult practices from Taoism, theories of karma and rebirth from Buddhism, and a hierarchical organization (including a pope) from Roman Catholicism. Its pantheon of saints includes such diverse figures as the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Pericles, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, and Sun Yat-sen.

I can only stress how gracious the Cao Đài congregation was during our visit...despite our many faux pas during their time of prayer, and how receptive and welcoming they were to our photography. 

AikBeng Chia: Mobile Photography

Photo ©AikBeng Chia-All Rights Reserved

Having used my iPhone as a mobile camera quite a lot in Hanoi during the past few weeks, I'd like to feature the work of AikBeng Chia, who describes himself as a mobile photographer.

His photography was exhibited internationally in New York, Berlin, Italy and in the Apple Store in Sydney and San Francisco, along with other venues. He has also been featured as a mobile photographer in many online publications from the United States, Europe and across Asia, and became a member of the Mobile Photo Group with 11 of some of the world's most creative mobile photographers.

Along with many, I used to pooh-pooh the notion that an iPhone (or whatever other mobile phone) could make images that would fulfill my own aesthetic values, but I slowly evolved into joining the other camp...the camp that considers the iPhone as another image-making tool.  I downloaded a bunch of apps, including Instagram and Hipstamatic et al, and enjoyed myself tremendously in the Hanoi streets doing just that...clicking, snapping, and filtering.

I agree with John Stanmeyer who tells us that mobile photography and its accompanying image-modifying apps us are all about communication. He also says this: "Mark these words deep into your conscious — within the next five to tens years (likely less), most professional photographers will be primarily using a camera which is indeed located within something as portable and ubiquitous in our purses/pockets as an iPhone.

Rasha Yousif: Katha'Kali And More

Photo © Rasha Yousif-All Rights Reserved

As a photo expedition-workshop leader,  I very frequently see fantastic photographs by participants that make me wonder (after I stomp my feet in frustration) why I haven't shot them too, but I'm also glad it was these photo workshops that made these possible.

One of these photographs is the one made by Rasha Yousif of the Katha'kali dancer in full regalia, adjusting his belt. It was during The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop™ this past March, and which saw us spending the better part of half a day with practitioners of this ancient dance form.

Rasha is a photographer from the island nation of Bahrain, and is a portfolio manager at a financial institution and has a Masters in Finance from DePaul University.

As Rasha writes on her blog: "One of the most memorable experiences I ever had in India was watching Kathakali dance performance. We had access to backstage makeup and costume preparations before the show. I came back from India with 6000+ photos I haven’t gone through most of them. I picked these two just to give a sneak peek of the photos that are yet to come!"

This photograph of a fisherman in Kochi is included a section of her iphone photography on the same blog,  and I encourage you to explore it...there are many gems in there.

Photo © Rasha Yousif-All Rights Reserved