Debesh Sharma | City of Ghats

Photo © Debesh Sharma-All Rights Reserved

Mark Twain said of Varanasi, "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together."

It's certainly one of my favorite cities in India to photograph, and I comfortably guarantee that one could spend a lifetime living in the old city and photograph it every day. For those who share my visual and cultural interest in one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities, I am featuring the work of a very talented Indian photographer who covered Varanasi in his City of Ghats gallery of 64 photographs.

Debesh Sharma is a self-described photographer, writer, traveler and wanderer, and travel photography is his main interest. He's mostly interested in creating portraits of the ordinary people met during his journeys, all of whom have a different story to tell, which he attempts to relay to viewers through his frames.

I recommend that you bookmark Debesh's website. It offers more than two dozen galleries of India which will sate the most committed of Indiaphiles. Take your time in exploring it.

Incidentally, it's estimated that there are 23,000 Hindu temples in Varanasi but you'd be mistaken if you thought that it was a totally Hindu city. It is not. The Muslim population of the city is about 250,000 out of a total of 1 million. Muslims have been living in the most Hindu of cities for more than a thousand years. It is in Varanasi that I came across the shrine of Bahadur Shaheed which introduced me to India's Sufism and the syncretism that exists between these two religions.

Finally don't mistake the "svastika" in Debesh's photograph above as the Nazi symbol. The Sanskrit svastika literally means "to be good", and is a Hindu symbol. The Nazi swastika is reversed.

Back Story | The Banana Seller of Mattencherry

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Another of my favorite location for street photography in India is old Mattencherry (part of Kochi) which was once a bustling centre of trade, particularly in spices. Due to the tolerance of the erstwhile rulers of Kochi, communities such as Jews, Arabs, Konkanis, Gujaratis, Jains and Marathis made it their home and the center of their business. 

The street activity of the area is a virtual live theater, with bazaar-like alleys, traditional godowns and stores stocked with all types of rice, dark brown nutmeg, red and green chillies, earthy ginger, black pepper and other spices. Not only people photography of traders, merchants, porters, but there are details, age-old textures, peeling wall colors (or discolored) of indigo blue and ochre.

Many of the local people I spoke with, and photographed, were Muslims, descendants of the Arab merchants who propagated their faith along the Malabar Coast. A significant community was created through the marriage of local women to these Arab sailors, and are still known as the Mappilas or Moplahs. The Arabs merchants and mariners are believed to come from the Red Sea coastal areas, and from the Hadramaut region of Yemen.

The banana seller was probably one of those. A few words of Arabic greetings were exchanged, and he exhibited the traditional hospitality and generosity of Arabs extended to visitors and guests by offering me some bananas from the many clusters hanging in his modest stall. Small and sweet, these were certainly tastier than any available in Western supermarkets.

Chico Sanchez | La Antigua's Easter Week

Photo © Chico Sanchez- All Rights Reserved

La Antigua is a city with a UNESCO World Heritage Site appellation, and a city in central Guatemala, famous for its Catholic celebration of Holy Week, which commemorates the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

All of Antigua participates in the annual event, and the entire week is replete with religious activities. These rituals arrived with the missionaries from Spain, who brought Catholic fervor to the local indigenous population during colonial times. The event begins on Palm Sunday, during which images of Jesus and the Holy Virgin of Sorrow are carried from their churches through the city on the shoulders of devoted followers who carry lanterns while dressed in purple robes with white waistbands. 

On Good Friday, the streets of Antigua are covered with natural, aromatic carpets of flowers, pines, clover, fruits and colored sawdust, which the residents put together and place in front of their homes. 

Chico Sanchez just produced an audio slideshow of the event, with ambient sound and narration/interview.

I've featured the work of Chico Sanchez, a freelance photographer based in Mexico City, on a number of occasions. Chico worked in Venezuela, collaborating with Reuters, European Pressphoto Agency, Agencia EFE, and currently freelances for various newspapers and magazines.

Irene Becker | Durbar Festival

Photo © Irene Becker-All Rights Reserved

I haven't posted much travel/documentary photographic work of Africa (with the exception of Ethiopia) on The Travel Photographer blog, so I'm very glad to redress this shortfall by featuring the very interesting work of Irene Becker.

One of the galleries that caught my eye was of Irene's photographs of the Grand Durbar in Argungu, Nigeria. The Durbar is an annual festival celebrated in several cities of Nigeria at the end of the Muslim festivals Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Its highlight is a parade of the Emir and his entourage on horses, accompanied by music players, and ending at the Emir's palace.

Irene tells us that the Durbar in 2009 involved more than 500 horses, 120 camels, 1760 men and women dressed in traditional indigenous attires with resplendent colors. The Emir of Argungu led a special group of horsemen in a rich and beautiful display.

The slideshow of Irene's Durbar photographs consist of 20 still images, however there are some more on her blog. There are few photographs of this event on the internet, and most of them belong to Irene.

Irene Becker describes herself as a culture, travel and doucumentary freelance photographer, and is based in Budapest, Hungary. She earned a degree at the Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad at its Department of Music. Her images have appeared in brochures, annual reports, billboards, books, magazines, web sites, exhibit spaces, greeting cards, and have been featured in fine art gallery exhibits, as well as in individual collections of photo lovers worldwide. She also produces stock for Getty Images.

POV: A Problem For Traditional Photography?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Recently published articles appearing in Poynter and Business Insider raise the point that Instagram can now process images in an instant rather than a lot minutes and hours with Photoshop or in a darkroom, and such images can make it to the front page of The New York Times.

As Megan Rose Dickey writes in her article in Business Insider:

"But the skills needed to make beautiful shots that are worthy of the cover of a newspaper continue to diminish rapidly."

There was a time when writing a letter required the skills of a writer or a calligrapher...and there was a time when making a photographic print required a darkroom expert...and there was a time when....etc. It will always be as such.

As photographers face the realities of an exciting era filled with new innovations, they must embrace them and evolve with them. The above photographs were made a few moments from each other...the top one using my iPhone with Hipstamatic, while the bottom one using a Leica M9. Both are photographs and both are exemplars of different photographic tools...yes, one took a little more thought than the other in terms of clicking the shutter and processing...but both have a place.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post in this blog comparing photographers or photojournalists clinging to their glorious past as people breathlessly running after a Third World public bus on a pot-holed road, with young and eager passengers hanging like a bunch of grapes from its doors and windows....with no available toe-holds in sight. 

So let's be smart....let's learn multimedia, Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Soundslides...audio techniques...learn DSLR videography....let's use Twitter & Facebook intelligently...do anything to find a toe-hold...let's use Instagram, Hipstamatic and the rest of them to complement our arsenal of tools, and get our work bought, seen and appreciated.

If not, we'll be left inhaling exhaust fumes from the metaphorical Third World bus. 

Sam Barker | Omo Valley

Photo © Sam Barker-All Rights Reserved

The followers and readers of my blog who are fans of Omo Valley photographs will rejoice in seeing Sam Barker's gorgeous two dozen images of its tribes. 

The Omo Valley has considerable resonance amongst us who've either been to the south of Ethiopia and those who want to go. It is believed that the area has been a crossroads for thousands of years as various cultures and ethnic groups migrated around the region, and it's been said that “If Africa was the mother of all humanity, then the Omo River was its main artery”. Having been there in 2004, I believe that.

The area is home to eight different tribes whose population is about 200,000 and it's been reported that the hydro-electric dam under construction on the Omo river will destroy a fragile environment and the livelihoods of these tribes, which are closely linked to the river and its annual flood.

Sam Barker began his career in photography about 15 years ago while attending the London School of Printing. His work appeared in The Telegraph, Landrover, and GQ Magazine, as well as in worldwide publishing houses and well known advertising agencies. 

In between London and New York, working on commercial assignments, he continues to produce travel stories and personal projects round the globe. He is a regular contributor to the National Portrait Gallery where he has 12 portraits in the permanent collection, and has won the prestigious One Life International Photography prize.

RØDE i16: 360º Surround Recording

I'm fascinated at how the iPhone is (and continues to be) an essential component in most photographers' arsenal of tools with new accessories and apps.

I was recently tempted by RØDE’s iXY microphone for the iPhone, but now the company has produced  the RØDE i16 which consists of sixteen individual gold-sputtered cardioid condenser capsules, allowing the user a high amount of freedom to record in either surround, stereo, mono, or anywhere in between.

The company claims that the software inside the RØDE i16 will allow the cancellation of background noise through phase manipulation of the other channels, working much in the same way as noise-canceling headphones, and may be more effective at recording dialogue than a traditional shotgun microphone.

The i16 is available with both Apple Lightning (iPhone 5, iPad mini) and 30-pin connections. Both are shipping now, with a MSRP of US$399.

For more technical details, take a look at RØDE i16  home page.

Have a good look at the picture above. This looks like the most unwieldy device I've ever seen. So it sounds like an April 1 Fools joke. We'll see.