POV: Moribund Google+ ?

A recent article in Slate about the future of Google+ caught my attention largely because it reflects pretty much what I feel about that social network, and about its photography community in particular.

I ought to have positive things to say about Google+ seeing that my profile received in excess of 436 million views so far. This is certainly a glitch, but seeing that number every time I log on to my profile is a tremendous ego boost.

But first things first...The New York Times pointed out recently that Google+ is useful to Google as an identity service by which the company can better track users across services like YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps. In other words, it's data mining like so many other social networks (Facebook for example).

Late last year, I joined a number of Google+ photography forums/communities, and posted whatever I write on my blog and on Facebook. To be honest, I never felt connected. It just didn't feel comfortable. Yes, photographs look much better on Google+ that any other social network, but it left me cold.

I suspect it's because 99% of my network of 'friends' on Facebook consists of photographers I either know personally and of others who know them...a sort of two degrees of separation. For instance, the number of friends' requests I receive on Facebook jumps just before, during and after the annual Foundry Photojournalism Workshop....so there are real human connections behind many, if not all, of these.

Not so for Google+.

Moreover, I'm really not a community/forum kind of guy... and expecting comments on photographs I post, saying that how "delightful the expression is", how "extraordinary is the light that dissects the scene" or if the photograph is better in color or monochrome...etc is not a turn on for me. Naturally, if I get a compliment, I respond with my sincere thanks....but I'm not ready to expend so much time to read, respond and reciprocate the commentary.

Perhaps it's because I'm not really that interested in such feedback from people (despite the fact some are very talented photographers) in that particular type of social interface/forum. Face to face feedback (or from someone I already met and know) is different, because it's verbalized and is done in person, and there's much more to gain and offer.

I know others exult about Google+ as being the bees' knees for photographers, but to me, the value of joining the photographic communities is not worth the required time expenditure.

I'll remain as I am on Google+, and will retain my activity level at what it is...but not more than that. And if and when it really dies or withers...I won't care.

Anthony Pond | Spice Wallahs of Khari Baoli

Photo © Anthony Pond-All Rights Reserved

Just off Chandni Chowk Market is Khari Baoli, the core of Asia's largest wholesale spice market. It's here in small wholesale shops that large bags, stuffed to the brim with chili, turmeric, ginger and various other spices are sold. Things have changed little in this market for centuries. Huge sacks of herbs and spices are still brought to the wholesalers on long, narrow barrows pushed by daily laborers from Bihar and Rajasthan. The wholesalers are ninth- or tenth generation spice traders, and are direct descendants of the founders of such establishments which date back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

It was our first stop in Delhi during The Sacred Cities Photo Expedition-Workshop, and Anthony Pond, a second time participant in my expeditions-workshops, photographed the activity in this market, producing Spice Wallas of Khari Baoli, a photo essay of about 29 monochrome images that perfectly capture the bustle and hustle of the frenetic to and fro of this market. The images were converted to black and white with Nik's Silver Efex Pro.

Anthony Pond worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he travels repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture. He has been a frequent contributor to The Travel Photographer blog,

POV: Shooting Thru The Lens Cap

Photo © Shane Green-All Rights Reserved

I've posted this hilarious photograph on various social media, including my Facebook Timeline, with the hope it goes 'viral'...or something like that.

The simple and short backstory to the photograph is this:

During my recent The Sacred Cities Photo Expedition-Workshop to Varanasi and Vrindavan, our first stop during the Holi week was in Barsana, and Shane Green (one of our group members, and a great guy) pointed his camera at me, and I immediately reciprocated with my lens cap on. Some of us were covered with gulal, the colored powder used during the festival....but I had escaped unscathed with just a trace of it on my clothes.

I've learned through my years in international banking that humor, and the ability of poking fun at oneself, plays an important role in one's "branding" and in marketing services, products and whatever else one is offering...so this photograph is heaven sent, and I will use it in all possible ways to extend my reach in marketing my expeditions-workshops.

No vulgarity, obscenities or acting like a clownish juvenile...humorous and subtle self-deprecation goes a long way...a very long way .

Bijoyeta Das | India's Jewish Tribe

Photo © Bijoyeta Das - All Rights Reserved- Courtesy Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera's In Pictures blog features non-news photo essays, and these occasionally are of ethnic minorities that are infrequently showcased on other similar mass media blogs. It has recently featured "Indian Jewish Tribe Heads Home" about the Bnei Menashe tribe who live in India’s northeastern states of Mizoram and Manipur.

Around 7000 of these Bnei Menashe members claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel; ten lost tribes refers to the ten of the twelve tribes of ancient Israel that were deported from the Kingdom of Israel after it was conquered by Assyria in about 722 BCE.

Most historians consider the Lost Tribes as nothing but a myth, and DNA studies have found no evidence of any lost tribes. Yet their emigration to Israel is supported and sponsored by a non-profit organization that aims to reconnect "lost and hidden Jews" with the people and state of Israel. Skepticism and debate over their ancestry and faith abound in Israel and India, and view this as nothing more than opportunism, and a desire to improve their living conditions.

Bijoyeta Das is a journalist and photographer. She has reported from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, South Korea and USA and holds a masters degree in Journalism from Northeastern University, and a photojournalism postgraduate diploma from Ateneo de Manila University.

Ruben Vicente | Varanasi Ganga Aarti

Ruben Vicente was a member of my The Sacred Cities Photo Expedition-Workshop last month which saw us photographing in the ancient city of Varanasi, and in the sacred city of Vrindavan during the festival of Holi. He is a first time participant in my expeditions-workshops.

Ruben just published his first multimedia project of the photo expedition-workshop, and titled it Varanasi Ganga Aarti. The multimedia features photographs of the nightly religious ceremony, which is held on the banks of the Ganges, on the most popular ghat; Dashashwamedh Ghat.

The aarti is a devotional nightly ritual that uses fire as an offering, usually made in the form of a lit lamp, and in the case of the Ganges River, small "boats" with a candle and flowers is floated down the river. The offering is made to the Goddess Ganga, goddess of the most holy river in India.

Ruben tells us on his own blog that because of the awful artificial light illuminating the ceremony, he decided to convert his photographs to black & white. He recorded the audio on location, and despite the amplification distortion, managed to produce a compelling audio slideshow. I described one of his images of the pandit gesturing with incense sticks as magical...

See if you agree.

Ruben Vicente is travel photographer based in Lisbon who, apart from loving photography, is an IT consultant in the financial industry.

Viviana Peretti | Colombian Easter

Photo © Viviana Peretti-All Rights Reserved

I'm generally impressed with photographs produced with an iPhone and the Hispstamatic's various filters, especially the Tintype Tinto 1884 lens and the D-Type film pack....and Viviana Peretti is one of the masters of this discipline. It's not as easy as one may think, and to do it well requires compositional skills that go beyond the standard.

She recently was in the Colombian region of Quindio, and photographed the Easter celebrations in the small towns of Salento and Pijao, and produced her Easter In Colombia gallery.

Viviana Peretti is an Italian freelance photographer based in New York where in 2010 she graduated in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism from the International Center of Photography (ICP).

In 2000, after graduating Magna Cum Laude with a BA in Anthropology from the University of Rome, she moved to Colombia where she specialized in photojournalism and spent nine years working as a freelance photographer.

Viviana has received fellowships and awards from the International Center of Photography, the Joannie M. Chen Fund in New York, CNN, the Fondation Bruni-Sarkozy in France, FotoVisura, the University of Salamanca, the Spanish Embassy in Colombia, the Photo Museum in Bogota, and the Colombian Ministry of Culture. In 2010 she has been selected for the Eddie Adams Workshop, Barnstorm XXIII. In 2013-2014 Viviana has been an Artist-in-Residence at L’École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (ENSP) in Arles, France.

Her work has been published in a number of international media outlets including The New York Times, Newsweek, BBC, CNN, L'Oeil de la Photographie, New York Magazine, Le Journal de la Photographie, and L'Espresso.

Theyyam: Incarnate Deities | Maptia

I'm very pleased that Theyyam: Incarnate Deities, one of my most colorful photo essays, is now featured on Maptia.

A beautiful way to tell stories about places, Maptia is a new platform designed for thoughtful, inspiring stories that make us want to get out there and explore the world, and each story has its own unique map.

It's different from the crop of photo/storytelling platforms that have recently appeared, inasmuch as it makes easy for people and story tellers to share long-form stories about the places that matter to them, and by creating unique, visual maps of these stories.

In an interview with WIRED some 6 months ago, Maptia's founders indicated that the platform already had a community of 10,000 bloggers, photographers, and writers.

Theyyam is a popular ritual form of worship of North Malabar in the state of Kerala (India), and is essentially a living cult with several thousand-year-old traditions, rituals and customs. 

In his book, Nine Lives, William Dalrymple wrote about the Theyyam. One of the stories, "The Dancer of Kannur", is of one of the Theyyam performers who's quoted as saying:

"...during the theyyam season, from December to February. We give up our jobs and become theyyam artists. For those months, we become gods. Though we are all Dalits (untouchables) even the most bigoted and casteist Namboodiri Brahmins worship us, and queue up to touch our feet."

The Theyyam prepares for his performance by meditating while his make up is applied, which usually takes a few hours. When it's ready and totally dry, he views himself in a hand mirror, and then enters in a sort of a trance, whereupon he walks (aided by assistants) over to the temple's shrine and gradually morphs into the shrine's deity. The Theyyam dances to the accompanying drum beat,  and goes deeper into his trance. At the appropriate time, the Theyyam is seated on a stool and devotees approach him with donations and solicit advice, which he provides in a raspy voice. I was also told that the Theyyams' advice is provided in a mixture of Sanskrit, Old Malayalam and Tamil. Both Theyyams and Kathakali performers use similar eye movements to convey emotions.

POV: Daily Mail & Captions

Photo © Eric Lafforgue-Screen Grab: Daily Mail

The work of the highly respected Eric Lafforgue has recently been featured by the Daily Mail, a British daily tabloid newspaper and the second biggest-selling daily newspaper after the infamous The Sun.

One of Eric's recent spreads has been his photo essay on last year's Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, and whose headline reads "Inside India's Kumbh Mela festival where holy men (and women) reach the gods with a little help from some marijuana and technicolour make-up".

Ah well, I say to myself...some acceptable poetic license to attract readers is not uncommon for newspapers, and The Daily Mail is certainly one of the more creative in that regard.

However, my scrolling down comes to a screeching halt when I come to the above photograph and its caption which is "A young 'black Sadhu' who takes care of cremations. They a (sic) rumoured to eat the human flesh of corpses".

I don't know for sure who the writer of the captions are, but I assume it's Katy Winter of The Daily Mail, and writer of the article itself who let her fertile imagination go wild.

After all, she's the author of intellectual gems like "Talk about tending to the flock! Female farmer juggles looking after 2000 acres and 1000 sheep with raising her SEVEN children in remote village".

Just because this young man has a broken tooth doesn't make him a member of the fearsome Aghoris...the sect whose members are described by Wikipedia as "... known to engage in post-mortem rituals. They often dwell in charnel grounds, have been witnessed smearing cremation ashes on their bodies, and have been known to use bones from human corpses for crafting skull bowls (which Shiva and other Hindu deities are often iconically depicted holding or using) and jewelry.

No self-respecting aghori would allow himself to be photographed by any photographer...even by the great Lafforgue. And sadhus do not perform cremations...the cremations are carried out by a certain caste, and there's no deviation from this tradition.

Of course, the only 'real" aghori I've ever seen is the one and only "Black Mamba Cobra Boom-Boom" who quoted me $80 for a picture in Varanasi.

UPDATE:  I've received an email from Eric, who having read this POV post, affirmed that he was told the two men he met were black sadhus, and that one of them had, a long time ago, consumed human flesh that remained after cremations.

Semana Santa | Reuters' Full Focus

Photo © REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo-All Rights Reserved

Try to say the following in one go...without pausing to take your breath.

"Holy Week is the week preceding Easter and the final week of Lent. Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday and ends with Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday. Holy Week includes Holy Thursday (also known as Maundy Thursday) and Good Friday, which, together with Holy Saturday, are known as the Triduum. Before the revision of the liturgical calendar in 1969, Holy Week was the second week of Passiontide; in the current calendar, Passiontide is synonymous with Holy Week."

Out of breath and confused? That's okay.

Reuters Full Focus has two dozen photographs of the Holy Week, which are worth you stopping by. Most of the remaining photo bogs will sooner or later feature photographs of this week long event, but Reuters was the first.

I have a travel photography bucket list, and the Semana Santa event in Seville is certainly on it. This event is one of the important traditional events of the city, and is celebrated in the week leading up to Easter. The week features the procession of floats of lifelike wooden sculptures of individual scenes of the events of the Passion, or images of the Virgin Mary showing grief. Some of the sculptures are ancient, and are revered.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I attended a Semana Santa in La Antigua (Guatemala), and it was quite an experience. Although small, it featured some rituals indigenous to this Central American nation, which included covering streets of La Antigua with natural, aromatic carpets of flowers, pines, clover and fruits, which the residents made and placed in front of their homes.

I'm interested in the Spanish observances during Holy Week, especially in the smaller towns and villages where one can see processions of hooded flagellants in chains and performing self mortifications...and this is on the bucket list.

Matilda Temperley | Omo Valley

A few years ago,  Matilda Temperley traveled to Ethiopia's Omo Valley with a portable studio to, as she says it, to "isolate the subjects from their surroundings, extracting the individual from his or her contextual backgrounds so as to bring their gaze, unmediated, into the image."

The Omo valley is at a crossroad of cultures and civilizations and many tribal groups, such as the Mursi, Suri, Ebore and others live around the South Sudanese, Ethiopian and Kenyan borders. These tribes have developed their own unique styles of self decoration to differentiate themselves from their neighbors. The Mursi women, as an example, have their lower teeth removed and ceramic plates inserted that stretch the lips.

"Tribal porn", as some correctly describe it,  is what fuels the gradual and steady increase in the tour groups, and there's been an increasing stream of westerners into the valley in the recent years. Tourist cash in making its way into the tribal regions, and is polluting their cultures. The fashions in the more accessible Omo Valley villages are changing, with tribes people adorning themselves with as much accessories as they can find in order to beg for photos.

It's regrettable and very sad to see these proud Omo Valley inhabitants being encouraged by many unscrupulous tour agents, tourists and photographers to do so, at the risk of losing their identity and age-old cultures.

The Ethiopian government's actions are also a contributing factor. The  forthcoming hydroelectric Gibe III dam is expected to cause potential humanitarian disaster for the region's 500,000 inhabitants. The dam will allow Ethiopia to become a major energy exporter, but will also allow for large-scale commercial farming through irrigated agriculture along the banks of the Omo. Another change in the ways of life for the tribes of the Omo Valley.

Matilda Temperley is a British photographer, who had career in tropical infectious diseases before taking up photography. She is known for her stylised portraiture of marginalised societies. 

POV: The Disciples of Mehboob-Ilahi

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

The Disciples of Mehboob-Ilahi is a gallery of monochrome candid photographs made at the shrine of a Sufi saint.

One of my favorite street photography haunts in Delhi is the area known as Nizzam Uddin (West) where stands the shrine of one of the world's most famous Sufi saints, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (1238 - 1325). A Sufi saint of the Chishti Order in the Indian Subcontinent; he established an order that sought to draw close to God through renunciation of the world and service to humanity.

Raza Rumi in his book "Delhi By Heart" describes the settlement of Nizzam Uddin as "the quintessential Muslim ghetto of today's India. Congested, unkempt and stinking in parts, it retains a medieval air." 

It is medieval, and perhaps it is the reason why I make it a must-stop whenever I am in his capital city. Over the years, I've seen Delhi modernize itself, with flyovers, gleaming international and national hotels, wide avenues, colorful billboards hawking the most modern of appliances...but Nizzam Uddin stubbornly resists all these. Modernity in Nizzam Uddin is measured by the number of cellphone ringtones based on the Muslim call to prayer, and the app that shows the direction of Mecca.

I imagine it's the time warp experience I feel when I first enter the area from Mathura Road...right next to the police station....that attracts me to it. It's certainly not faith or belief as I have none of either, but it's certainly a visual (and perhaps cultural) transfusion that takes over my senses. I enter a photographic "zone" during which I am totally immersed in the visual patterns that emerge in the to and fro of the people who come to pay their respects to the saint. It's not only the saint who's buried there, but it's also where the poet Amir Khusrau and princess Jahanara Begum both rest.

It is here where the essence of Sufism was postulated by one of Nizzam Uddin's disciples; Abdel Quddus Gangoh who wrote this:

"why this meaningless talk about the believer,

the kafir, the obedient, the sinner,

the rightly guided, the misdirected, the Muslim,

the pious, the infidel, the fire worshipper?

All are like beads in a rosary."*

Sheikh Gangoh wouldn't have found much acceptance for his admonishment these days.

Pity.

*Delhi By Heart. Raza Rumi

POV: The Pehlwani | The Kushti Wrestlers

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

One of the scheduled photo shoots during my recent The Sacred Cities: Varanasi & Vrindavan Photo Expedition-Workshop was at an akhara, which is a Sanskrit word meaning training area for traditional Indian wrestlers, known as pehlwanis. This traditional Indian wrestling is known as kushti, and was developed in the Mughal era by combining native wrestling and Persian techniques.

These two pehlwanis were the most photogenic of the group that was training when we visited early in the morning. The wrestler in the top photographer is yielding a nada,  a heavy round stone attached to the end of a meter-long bamboo stick. This training implement is associated with Hanuman.

The bottom wrestler is using heavy Indian clubs, exercise clubs introduced by the Mughals and originally used in the Near East, especially in Persia and Egypt.

I wasn't thrilled about the quality of light in the akhara, as the area combined extreme harsh sunlight and deep shadows....and most of the background was of unfinished concrete walls. A difficult photo shoot. However, the wrestlers largely compensated for this, especially when they had daubed themselves with soft clay

For some of the wrestlers, the day starts as early as 4 am and their practice lasts into the day. Technically there's no age limit, but some wrestlers can begin their training when they're as young as four years old. To protect themselves from wound infections,  the wrestlers add lime, oil, milk, ghee, camphor, neem leaves, butter milk, and turmeric to the clay on which they practice daily.

Nyepi | The Atlantic's In Focus

Photo © Agung Parameswara/Getty Images-All Rights Reserved

The Atlantic's In Focus (which, in my long held view, is the best photography blog of all the major news media) has recently published a gallery featuring 27 photographs of Nyepi.

Every year, the Indonesian island of Bali celebrates Nyepi, the Balinese New Year's Day. Nyepi is a day of silence, and is dedicated to self-reflection. It's the day when people (Balinese Hindus and tourists) stay home and are not allowed to use lights, start fires, work, travel or enjoy entertainment. There is little or no noise from TVs and radios, and few signs of activity are seen even inside homes.

However, the days surrounding Nyepi are anything but silent - several rituals of offering and cleansing take place before and after New Year's Day, to rid worshipers of past evils and bestow good fortune in the year ahead.

I haven't been to Bali during Nyepi, but I attended a number of Melasti rituals which start off Nyepi, but are also frequently held all though the year.  A Melasti ritual is performed near the sea, and is intended to purify various sacred icons belonging to several temples. During the festival, sacred purifying water is obtained from the sea.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

In the above photograph, I photographed a Melasti in Bali during which a number of women (and men) lost conciousness and went into short trances. The one above was particularly interesting because it coincided when the sacred water from the sea was brought onshore in a large bottle (seen on the left under the white umbrella). 

Thaipusam | Yeo Kai Wen

Here's an interesting and compelling photo essay on Thaipusam, the Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community during January or February. It's mainly observed in countries where there is a significant presence of Tamil community such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mauritius Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar.

This particular series of monochrome photographs were made during Thaipusam at Sri Thendayuthapani Temple in Singapore, by Yeo Kai Wen and was featured by Exposure.

It's unusual to see Thaipusam photographs in black and white as it's a colorful festival, with devotees shaving their heads and undertaking a pilgrimage along a set route while carrying out various acts of devotion, which may include self-mortification by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers.

The photographer, Yeo Kai Wen graduated from the School of Film and Media Studies with a Diploma in Mass Communications in 2009, and is now specializing in documentary production, print and photojournalism.

Exposure is a storytelling platform specifically created for photo sets which are described as 'narratives'. It appears to have an extremely simple and easy to use editor that lets you drag and drop photos into your browser, and then add headers, body text and captions between photos. The posts feature full-bleed images and imaginative fonts and white space. Three Exposure posts are free, but for unlimited posting, custom domains, password-protected posts, and more, one has to shell out either $5 or $10/month, depending on the package chosen.

POV: A Favorite Staged Photograph

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

It's not often that I stage a photograph, and that it also becomes one of my favorites. But it's exactly what happened during my just completed The Sacred Cities: Varanasi & Vrindavan Photo Expedition-Workshop.

Walling back from a free-for-all photo shoot on the banks of the Yamuna river in Vrindavan, I saw brilliant and powerful ultramarine colored house walls, happily clashing with the remaining drab gray concrete walls of the neighborhood; reminiscent of the houses of Jodhpur's Brahmpuri area, the houses in Chefchaouen (Morocco), or even Reckitt's Blue Laundry Bluing (a traditional laundry whitener).

An elderly widow passing by prompted me to ask her to pose for us,  and showing no hesitation whatsoever, she almost hopped on the side step and sat there...patiently waiting for us to finish taking her photograph. I didn't need to prompt as to how to sit...doing so generally results in people looking awkward, and telling aged people how to pose sometimes causes them discomfort...so I refrain from doing that. My initial thought was that the pose did seem awkward but on reflection, I realized that many elderly women in  India adopt that very pose...the hand over a hip, and the rest of the arm forming a sort of triangle...almost at right angle to the body.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Some time later, an attractive woman (presumably the lady of the house) came over to investigate the commotion outside her home, and while extremely graceful and gracious...she didn't have the photogenic ingredient that the widow had. At least, in my view.

Yes, it does happen...age trumps youth and beauty.

Patrick de Wilde | Faces

Alessandra Meniconzi, a friend and herself a fabulous photographer, introduced me to the photography of Patrick de Wilde...whose work she liked very much, and one whose type of photography counterbalanced the recent commercialism in the realm of travel and cultural photography.

Naturally, I checked the website out...and in its gallery simply titled Faces, I found brilliant portraiture of ethnic groups ranging from Omo Valley's Mursi tribals, to Kyoto's geishas, to Brazil's Amazonians, to Malian Tuaregs, and to Vietnam's Caodaists...and of course, Sadhus from India and Nagaland tribes people.

Simple ethnic portraiture has been, in some sense, maligned recently and described by some as too simple. However, portrait photographs have been made since virtually the invention of the camera, and will continue to be one of the most sought after photographic styles. Lighting, of course, is one of the main techniques in portrait photography, and these portraits have all made in the same way.

All the 265 portraits are vertical...none are in my favored landscape format, as the photographer sought to focus on nothing but the faces of his subjects. Simple, no stagecraft, and powerful.

Patrick de Wilde is a French photojournalist, and has served as editor-in-chief of several French travel photography magazines. He has contributed to international travel and wildlife publications including BBC Wildlife and Géo for over twenty years, and has photographed thousands of men and women on five continents over the past decades. He started his professional life as a photojournalist in Asia, and focused on the Buddhist and Jain religious traditions, and shared the life ways of Buddhist monks in Thailand and Burma.

Anthony Pond | Ganga Aarti

Anthony Pond was a member of my The Sacred Cities Photo Expedition-Workshop a couple of weeks ago during which we photographed the eternal city of Varanasi and the sacred city of Vrindavan during the festival of Holi, and is a second time participant in my expeditions-workshops.

He just completed his first multimedia project of the photo expedition-workshop, and titled it Ganga Aarti. The lovely photographs are of the nightly religious ceremony held on the banks of the Ganges. The aarti is a devotional ritual that uses fire as an offering. It's usually made in the form of a lit lamp, and in the case of the Ganges River, a small "boat" with a candle and flowers is floated down the river. The offering is made to the Goddess Ganga, goddess of the most holy river in India.

Rather than using Soundslides and Audacity. Tony chose to process his photographs in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro, and built the slideshow movie using Final Cut Pro X. Setting aside the fact that Tony is an aficionado of black and white photography, converting his photographs to monochrome eliminated the difficult lighting conditions that afflicted photography during the ceremony.

Anthony Pond worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he travels repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture. He has been a frequent contributor to The Travel Photographer blog,

POV: Why Wasn't I Thrilled With Holi? Why No Fuji X Pro1?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy- All Rights Reserved

On my return from The Sacred Cities Photo Expedition-Workshop last week, a handful of readers asked me these questions:

1. Why wasn't I more thrilled with photographing the Holi festivities in Vrindavan and Mathura?

2. Why haven't I used the Fuji X-Pro1 more often (only an estimated 10% of the time)?

Well, I certainly was excited to photograph Holi, particularly as the pink/fuschia, yellow and neon green powders being thrown in the air, smeared on people's clothes and faces made for compelling color (and possibly monochrome) photography. However, something was missing....and I knew that that something would be missing much before traveling to India.

The large majority of my photo expeditions are event-specific; whether it's to photograph the mind-blowing annual death commemoration of Sufi saint Moin'uddin Chisti in Ajmer, the bloody rituals of Velichapadus in Kerala or large Ngaben (cremations) in Bali. These events are usually religious and spiritual, and masses of people attend them to express their devotion and faith.

The festival of Holi had little evidence of that. Holi is a festival of Spring, of reconciliation, of exuberant fun, to celebrate the advent of a new season. Its religious 'ancestry' has been largely forgotten, and secular festivities have taken it over. While the throwing of colors seem to have some original religious significance, it's now an opportunity to 'frolic' as some of my Indian friends describe it.

Avoiding excessive colored gulal being thrown directly at me prevented from entering in what I call my "deep zone".. This the frame of mind that I get into when I photograph...sort of being sucked into a different dimension where I only see what I want to photograph....a sort of complete immersion. That was generally not possible during Holi. Only for a few moments in the 'mosh pit' of Vrindavan's main temple, Bank Bihari, did I achieve that...oblivious of the chaos around me, and focusing on what I wanted to photograph.

Outside of the Banke Bihari temple's courtyard, where expressions of faith and devotion were aplenty, I saw no religiosity whatsoever...aside from tapestries depicting Krishna and Radha, and devotional songs blaring from roadside shacks.

That's why I wasn't thrilled photographing Holi as much as I was buzzed to photograph the religious events I mention earlier. As I said in an interview, "it's religious rituals and ceremonies that attract me the most for my photographic work because it’s where people are at their most authentic, where there are no artifices and no make-believe. It is at these events that one connects with humanity at its basic denominator, and with the nobility of the human spirit … and it is that that nourishes me, and I try to share that with others."

It's that simple.

As for not using the Fuji X-Pro1 more often. It's a good question. I thought about that, and conculded it was a combination of needing the speed of the DSLRs and their being better sealed. Before traveling, I fashioned a waterproof cover for the X Pro-1 out of a Zip-Lock bag, and while it seemed to be more than adequate, I was reluctant to put it to the test.

It's that simple.

What I do regret very much is that I didn't use my iPhone during Holi...I didn't want to risk it being stolen in the crowds.