POV: DxO Film Pack 3 & Color Efex Pro 4

All Photos © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I admit it...sheepishly perhaps, but I really do.

I've mellowed and moved away from my earlier resistance to experiment with what I call funky experimentation on my photographs. I was an unwavering believer in "purity" insofar as my photography was concerned, preferring to keep my photographs as untouched as possible.

As recently as a year ago, I would use Photoshop or Lightroom as minimally as possible, barely using their capabilities except for some sharpening and color enhancements. But the availability of specialized post processing software such as DxO Film Pack, Alien Skin Software, and Color Efex Pro 4 encouraged my explorative forays into different creative avenues, and I developed an affinity for the wet plate look (quite obviously influenced by the Hipstamatic Tintype filter)...which in turn led me to try fiddling with some of my photographs using the previously mentioned software, either singly of together. Importantly, these software products are really no-brainers to use, and produce good results.

I'm still a conflicted purist at heart. For example, I'm unwilling to crop my travel photographs but I'm perfectly happy to crop the heck out of a photograph which I shot from the hip during my street photography jaunts in New York City. The fact that I shot an image from the hip gives me the "excuse" to crop it...but not for those I made using a viewfinder. So yes, a conflicted purist...or perhaps a purist who follows his own rules which he makes up as he goes along. Whatever.

This morning, I experimented with using the DxO Film Pack converting the lower photograph to monochrome (using the Kodak T-Max100 preset) and then applying a Sepia Gold toning filter to it. I then added some Structure and Vignetting using Color Efex Pro 4. I showed if off on my Facebook page...some friends liked it, so I used the same "soup" on the top two.

It took me no more than 3 minutes to process each photograph...and I quite like the results. Will it become one of my "signature" looks? I don't think so...I'm just having fun. That's the whole idea.

Subrata Biswas | Chhau, Behind The Mask

Photo © Subrata Biswas-All Rights Reserved

India, black and white* photography, storytelling, cultural-religious tradition....what's not to make my pulse race?

This is about the ancient traditional dance form named Chhau. It's a type of Indian tribal martial dance which is popular in the Indian states of Orissa (now called Odisha), Jharkhand and West Bengal. There are three subgenres of the dance, based on its places of origin and development, and these are Seraikella Chhau, Mayurbhanj Chhau and Purulia Chhau.

The Chhau blends dance and martial practices employing mock combat techniques, stylized gaits of birds and animals and movements based on the chores of village housewives. The dance is performed by male dancers from families of traditional artists or from local communities and is performed at night in an open space.

As is often the case with such traditional dance forms, the future doesn't look bright for the Chhau despite it being inscribed in the UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Fewer young people are interested in joining the art form due to the uncertainty of its financial future.

Behind The Mask is a photo essay by Subrata Biswas, a talented visual storyteller and painter from Kolkata. Despite being an IT software engineer by training, he decided to embrace a life as a self-taught painter/artist and photographer/photojournalist. His paintings have been exhibited in various venues India, while his photographs were published in a number of print and online media.

*I don't know why pure black & white images now automatically appear as sepia on Blogger. 

Arthur "Fuse" Osmanov | Hanoi

© Arthur Osmanov-All Rights Reserved

Ah, Hanoi! A city made for street photographers, as New York City and Old Havana (and many others) are. The Old Quarter especially replete with natural and impromptu life scenes that make street photographers' hearts jump out of their throats...I could lose myself in that city for days, just ambling about, and take pictures of daily life as it goes on. No one minds your camera...they're far too busy living and making a living to care. All one has to be careful of is the lava stream of whizzing scooters and motorcycles.

Arthur Osmanov Dreams of Vietnam is a collection of monochrome street photographs of Hanoi, which he describes as being a city where everything happens in public, and human interactions are not hidden behind closed doors of privacy.

Arthur is a web designer and a travel photographer who's living on the road for a second year after leaving NYC. He spent half a year in Hanoi working and living around Tay Ho area photographed with my Leica m9 and Fuji X100s.

He also has a gallery of color photographs made in the area of Tay Ho or West Lake.

John Horniblow | Imilchil Wedding Festival

The Imilchil moussem (festival) is held in Morocco's High Atlas, and is all about livestock and finding a partner. It's also known as Souk Aamor Agdoud N’Oulmghenni, which is a tongue-twister for most of non Berber speakers. It represents the annual meeting of the large and important tribal Berber families of Aït Haddidou, Aït Morghad, Aït Izdeg and Aït Yahia.

There are two versions of stories explaining the birth of the festival. The Berber version tells the legend of two young people from different feuding tribes who fell in love but akin to Romeo and Juliet, they were forbidden to see each other by their families. The grief of unrequited love led them to their deaths. The legend tells that they cried themselves to death, creating the neighboring deep alpine lakes of Isli (his) and Tislit (hers), near Imilchil.

Another version is that the lovers drowned themselves in the separate lakes. The Imilchil Marriage Festival was founded as a commemoration of the lovers' death, and provides the opportunity to unmarried Berbers, particularly women trapped at altitude for most of the year, to look over and mingle with prospective spouses. They sing, dance and flirt, and available men must wear white turbans and their female opposites wear the family silver.

Another version, but much less romantic explanation, is that Morocco's French past colonial administrators assembled the transitory Berbers to register their births, deaths and marriages.

John Horniblow tells us "small groups of young Berber women dressed in traditional finery and roughly, woven woollen robes distinctive to each family tribe, some with berber fibules (amulets), eyes rimmed with heavy black kohl, and intricately hennaed hands, amble through the commerce of the souk talking, flirting with or being approached by the potential bachelors trying to strike up meaningful conversation. The wary eyes of elder relatives, looking on, following them protectively at a furtive distance."

John Horniblow is the founder and editor of Photojournale and publisher of Photojournale Connections Across A Human Planet. John is both photographer and film maker with his photographic work featuring in Geo Mundo, Penguin books and People ( Time Inc.) . He also has worked on production managing and assisting Frans Lanting on assignment with National Geographic and has also produced directed and shot documentary and short films featuring on SBSTV , Channel Seven and at International Film Festivals.

Jason Florio | The Vodun Trail

Photo © Jason Florio-All Rights Reserved

I had a hard time choosing a photo essay out of Jason Florio's interesting and compelling work, but thought that his Benin: The Vodun Trail would suit this blog the best due to my own interest in featuring and documenting religious rituals.

The other photo essays that competed for my attention are The Ring (a photo essay on Muay Thai boxing in Chiang Mai) and Blackout Portraits-Mogadishu.

Benin is considered the cradle of vodun (one of its adaptations is voodoo) which is one of the ancient belief system essentially based on animism. Despite concerted efforts of Christian missionaries, this ancient belief system still has millions of adherents along West Africa’s former Slave Coast, from Ghana to parts of Nigeria, and especially in Benin. In 1996, Benin’s democratic government officially decreed vodun a religion, and ever since, thousands have openly practiced it. A significant percentage of Benin practice pure vodun. For more information, an article from the New York Times (with Jason's photographs) can be viewed here.

Jason Florio is a New York City based photographer and writer from London. He worked as a freelance photojournalist around the globe for publications including The New Yorker, New York Times, Outside, Liberation and The Times of London, working on stories that attempt to reveal the unseen and to provide an alternative point of view on people and places.

He spent the last 3 months of 2009 making a 930 km expedition by foot of The Gambia, West Africa to produce a series of portraits of African chiefs for which in part he was given fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society in London. His work on Afghanistan is in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, as well as a number of private collections.

The Girls of Tết Trung Thu

A year ago, I was walking the streets of Hanoi's Old Quarter during my Vietnam North of the 16th Parallel Photo Expedition-Workshop, carrying my street photography gear: a Leica m9 and a Fuji X Pro-1. Hanoi's streets are replete with extraordinary life moments, ready for the taking by anyone with an interest to do so.

My group and I were there in late September just before the Mid Autumn Festival, which is known in Vietnam as Tết Trung Thu festival. Traditionally, this festival celebrates harvest and is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar. In recent years, it’s an occasion for young women (and men) to walk the streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter to show off new clothes, and to wear over-sized fake eyeglasses, and Minnie Mouse ears or antlers on their heads.

I thought it would be timely to feature a gallery of photographs showing the youthful, fun and innocent exuberance that envelops this time of year in Hanoi. The Girls of Tết Trung Thu was just added to my The Leica File (& X Pro-1) website, and is one of many featuring my work out of Vietnam.

The adorable young women parading the street were very keen to be photographed, and seeing my cameras, asked to be photographed, making the well known Asian ‘V’ sign and tilting their heads in a sweet way. 

Ninth Angkor Photo Festival 2013

The 9th Angkor Photo Festival is scheduled for November 23-30, in Siem Reap, Cambodia.It's longest-running international photography festival in Southeast Asia, will showcase the work of over 130 photographers, half of which are from Asia.

The week-long event will feature daily evening outdoor slideshow projections as well as 8 indoor and outdoor print exhibitions.

The 2013 Program is curated by the festival's program coordinator, Françoise Callier. In addition, Shahidul Alam (Director of Chobi Mela - Bangladesh) and Jean François Leroy (Director of Visa pour l’Image – France) will be its guest curators.

Some of the photographers who will showcase their work are Edwin Koo, Marylise Vigneau, John Vink, Patrick Aventurier, Kumi Takahashi, Gali Tibbon, Sankar Sarkar, Dina Oganova, Binh Dang, Abir Abdulla, Subrata Biswas, Antoine Raab and many others.

I was privileged to attend the Angkor Photo Festival in November 2011 and one of my photo essays The Possessed of Mira Datar was featured at the festival. It was an absolute delightful experience to be part of such an event, and the gracious hospitality of Francoise Callier and Jean-Yves Navel (the Festival Director) was instrumental in making it such success. I have no doubt that the festival in November 2013 will equally be as wonderful.