Here's one my audio-slideshows titled The Fishermen Of Punnapra, which was made during my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop in March 2012.
Fishing is one of the main sources of income in Kerala, and the fishing communities are found along its beaches and backwaters. This short audio slideshow features the arrival of the fishing boats on Punnapra beach and the frenetic auction activity which follows.
The light was extremely harsh on Punnapra beach, but that was the time when the fishermen generally returned with their catch, and sold it at what appeared to be impromptu auctions. The men who carried the catch in large baskets were mobbed by young children hoping for a fish or two to fall into their hands.
I had the choice to either convert the stills to black & white and exploit the harshness for contrast, or apply a sort of Lomo-like process to them in Lightroom. I opted for the latter. The audio slideshow was made using SoundSlides and Audacity Audio Editor, then converted to a movie format.
As a prelude to what equipment worked for me and what didn't on The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop, I thought I'd put up two photographs of the musical gear used by the traditional puppeteers. One was made with the Canon 5D Mark II and the other with a Leica M9. These are both jpegs out of the cameras with no post processing except for the same amount of sharpening.
Here's what worked for me on The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop and what didn't. The list of my equipment was as follows:
A Canon 5D Mark II, a Canon 7D, and a bunch of lenses (28-70mm f2.8, 70-200mm f2.8, 17-40mm f4, and a 24mm f1.4), along with a Canon flash 580ex. A Leica m9 with a Leica 28mm f/2.8 Elmarit, and a 40mm f1.4 Voigtlander lens.
For audio, I had a Tascam DR-40 Recorder, an Audio-Technica ATR6250 Stereo Condenser Video/Recording Microphone and Sony headphones.
1) Both the Canon 5D Mark II and the 7D were used 90% of the time, especially during the festivals when capturing the action, sometimes in less than ideal lighting conditions, was needed.
2) As for lenses, I used the 17-40mm f4 (as in the above photograph) on the full-frame Canon 5D Mark II around 60% of the time, while the 28-70mm f2.8 was used for most of the rest. The 70-200mm f2.8 was used no more than on a couple of special occasions. If I hadn't brought it along, I wouldn't have missed it.
This is part of my evolution as a photographer. I started out (as some do) by using the 70-200 mm as my primary lens wherever I went. Eventually, my lenses got shorter, and my current favorite is the 17-40mm. At some point, I'll probably get the 16-35mm f2.8mm which is a great lens.
3) The M9, and its 2 lenses, was used whenever I sought to make environmental portraits, or when I had the time to compose and focus properly. In low light, it would have been close to useless, and during the frenetic action of the festivals (especially of the Oracles), I might have missed many shots had I used it.
4) I didn't use the prime 24mm f1.4 at all on this trip, and used the flash for only a few shots of the Peacock dance. Other than that, it stayed in my room.
5) I liked my new Tascam DR-40 Recorder. It performed well and the quality of it recordings were satisfactory. That said, I really needed a "dead cat" to reduce wind noise, especially when I was recording on the beaches of Kerala where there was wind.
6) Both Audacity and Soundslides were used during classwork, and both worked flawlessly as they should.
Angkor Photo Festival is calling for submissions with a deadline of May 31, 2012!!!
The festival's 2012 program will present works photographed throughout the world through exhibitions and slideshows in Siem Reap, with no imposed theme.
The festival will be held from December 1– 8, 2012 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The deadline to submit the application is May 31, 2012, and all photographers will receive an answer by the end of July 2012.
Since its inception in 2005, more than 180 young photographers from all over Asia have been selected to participate in the annual free Angkor Photo Workshops. Conducted by renowned international photographers who volunteer their time, the Angkor Photo Workshops provide participants with firsthand training, invaluable exposure and a chance to perfect their art.
Over the years, the workshop has highlighted emerging talent from the region, and many previous participants go on to embark on successful photography careers both regionally and internationally.
I attended the Angkor Photo Festival last November and one of my photo essays The Possessed of Mira Datar was featured at the festival.
I was greatly impressed by the Angkor Photo Festival's evenings at the FCC, and by the quality of the curating. Francoise Callier and Jean-Yves Navel were not only paragons of hospitality, but were instrumental in making a success of the event, along with the assistance of Camille Plante and Jessica Lim.
This is a phenomenal opportunity for all photographers, emerging and established. Submit your work for inclusion in the Angkor Photo Festival. You'll never regret it.
The Foundry Photojournalism Workshophas announced the winners of the Foundry full tuition scholarships for its 2012 Chiang Mai workshop.
Eric Beecroft, Director of the workshop, stated that the amount of entries was unprecedented, and the quality of work received was stunning.
The awardees are:
Arif Setiawan, Indonesia
Saw Banyar, Burma/Thailand
Barat Ali Batoor, Afghanistan
Ajit Bhadoriya, India
Enrique Leopoldo Benedicto Cruz, Philippines
Satirat Dam-ampai, Thailand
Nguyen Thanh Hai, Vietnam **
Ekkarat Punyatara, Thailand
Roger Anis, Egypt
Fabian Weiss, Germany
Ilkin Huseynov, Azerbaijan
Simona Pampallona, Italy
**Nguyen Thanh Hai is also known as Maika Elan, and I'm especially pleased she will be working with me on my Vietnam; North of the 16th Parallel Photo Expedition-Workshop this coming September.
If any of my readers are still on the fence with this unequaled opportunity to attend phenomenal classes with top-class photographers and photojournalists, and expand their network with their peers and others, I really can't urge you strongly enough to get off that fence and join!!!!
John Spillane is from Cork, Ireland and works in IT Network support in the pharmaceutical sector. A landscape photographer, John has recently diversified into travel and people photography and to that end, traveled to Italy, Cuba, Namibia and Bhutan...as well as his native Ireland.
His interest in photography started when he was 8 with a Kodak 126 Instamatic. In the 80s, John moved to an Olympus OM10 with a 50mm lens until the early nineties when he started shooting slide film, used a tripod and started working with graduated filters and polarizers for landscapes. He started his digital photography in 2006 with a Nikon D200 purchased while passing through Singapore.
During my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop, John worked on a number of multimedia photo projects and has now published his very first attempt at Soundslides with his The Usual Catch; an audio slideshow of black & white stills of the fishermen of Punnapra in Kerala.
It was his first travel experience to India. And he certainly got his India "baptism" in an unusual but unforgettable fashion when he encountered the so-called Oracles at the Bharani festival. Covered in turmeric powder, and his Nikons dangling at his sides...he told me he had never imagined it would be like that.
I was promised a pint (perhaps two) of Murphy's Irish Stout if I visited County Cork. It's a worthy inducement.
The Wakhan Corridor is a slender area in the far north-eastern Afghanistan which forms a land link between Afghanistan and China. The corridor was a political creation of the Great Game, and a result of agreements between Britain and Russia in 1873 and between Britain and Afghanistan in 1893. It currently has 12,000 inhabitants, who live very much the same as their ancestors did centuries ago.
In 2011, inspired by an article published by the New York Times, Fabrice Nadjari and Varial, two 33 year-old authors, photographers and childhood friends, decided to embark on a journey in the Wakhan region. It is here that they decided to take photographs of the inhabitants of the Wakhan villages. The portraits made with their Polaroid cameras developed odd hues, and their quality deteriorated quite rapidly due to the altitude.
The photographers also produced the Traces of Time book project (to be published in May 2012) which they claim "presents a vision between a current and tangible printed reality that already ceases to exist and an uncertain present resembling the past. This is the perspective of travellers who steal a snapshot of life and leave behind a trace that could change the lives of those they've passed."
As is seen in the trailer (listen to the haunting soundtrack!!) above, the photographers convinced Ismaili children, young women, and housewives, opium smokers, village chiefs and simple peasants to pose for their Polaroid cameras.
The show Wakhan, An Other Afghanistan will be featured at the MILK Gallery, 450 West 15th Street in New York (May 18-23, 2012).
"...the uniqueness of this photo expedition-workshop..."
That's how one of the group members started to express his satisfaction in having attended The Oracles Of Kerala Photo-Expedition-Workshop while bidding goodbye to me and the rest of the group.
Uniqueness! It's precisely what I strive for when I structure my itineraries and programs for my photo expeditions/workshops. Are all of those based on unique itineraries? Of course not...but most of them are. The Oracles Of Kerala Photo-Expedition-Workshop was based on two main Hindu religious festivals: Thirunakkara Arattu Utsavam, a 10-day temple festival, and the Kodungallur Bharani, a wild and unusual localized religious festival near Kochi. The former is a Hindu religious extravaganza with elephants, while the latter surpasses the famed Kumbh Mela in intensity. To my knowledge, no travel photographer has ever dared to conduct a photo trip/workshop covering these two festivals.
This uniqueness of this photo expedition-workshop, as well as the positive group dynamics among its group members, certainly places it amongst the top three I have ever organized and led so far.
Now cutting to the chase, here are the planned photo shoots that worked well:
1. The Fishermen of Punnapra. 2. The Vedic School in Thrissur. 3. The Thirunakkara Arattu Utsavam Festival. (Drummers & elephants galore) 4. The Shadow Puppets near Cheruthuruthy. (Excellent!) 5. The Kathakali performance at the Kerala Kalamandalam. (Superb!) 6. The Kodungallur Bharani aka The Festival of Oracles. (Incredibly Intense).
Although the group members liked the photo shoot at the Mattencherry spice godowns, it was rather mundane, at least from my perspective. The photo shoot at the Kochi Chinese nets was passable. The photo shoot planned at the oldest mosque in India known as the Cheraman Juma Masjid was a total failure from a visual standpoint. Nothing of its original structure remains, and its artefacts are copies of the originals (lost or pilfered). I can add to this that no one can make non Muslim visitors feel more unwelcome to mosques as blinkered Islamic clerics. The short visit to the adjacent Islamic school was, in contrast, a pleasant experience with delightful young students.
I fault myself for not having double checked the information provided by our guide which resulted in our being late in attending the last day of the Thirunakkara Arattu Utsavam Festival. The local policemen saved the day by getting some of us through the throngs of people. They were very helpful, and wanted us to get to the best vantage points, and as close to the elephants as possible.
Logistically, the photo expedition worked well. All the hotels were of high standard (mostly in the 4-star category), and their staff were very helpful. I must mention here Mr Bijou, the restaurant manager at the ABAD Whispering Palms Resort, who is an encyclopedic source for Keralite religious festivals. I wished he had joined us on the trip.
It was a little disappointing that the ABAD Whispering Palms Resort in Kumarakom didn't have an alcohol license, but we nevertheless managed to procure the bottles of beer so necessary for our well-being after long photo shoots. That said, the hotel provided us with a conference room where we met daily to work on our slideshows, and edit our photographs...so it more than made up for its lack of alcohol license!
The vehicle used to transport us was more than adequate, and was driven with skill by Haris Aziz, a delightful and reliable young man with a good sense of humor. He quickly became our group's go-to-man for whatever we needed. In contrast, the guide allocated to us by the local travel agent was ineffectual, and was out of depth. He was more suitable for elderly tourist groups interested in museums and history, not for a bunch of gung-ho travel photographers. I couldn't find it in me to fire him, but I should have.
Lastly, it was immensely gratifying to witness how seriously all of the group members worked at their multimedia projects; often while exhausted. Two of the 7 photographers in the group had already attended my previous Kolkata workshop, so had a substantial head start but worked as diligently as the rest. One of us had an extremely uncooperative laptop that crashed frequently, but who never lost his sense of humor nor his interest in learning multimedia.
To be assured that the 7 group members were fully familiar with SoundSlides and Audacity, I suggested they completed a 2-3 minutes multimedia project in less than 3 hours.
:.
