Michael Ettema

I spoke too soon. Apparently, I still have a few more SoundSlides slide show to present. Todays entry is by Michael Ettema. Michael came to Lumen Dei packing light. He sported the only Leica on the trip. His whole kit, three lens and body all fit into a small bum bag. I tried using his fine piece of photographic precision German crafting only to find, I suck at focusing on the fly. Apparently Michael has no problem as you can tell from his images below. For a lawyer (sorry, I had to through that in) he did some amazing work.

My workshops generally are not physically easy. For that matter, they can be emotionally taxing as well. We go to dirty places, eat unfamiliar and at times unpleasant things. We stay at a whole range of accommodations from very nice, to dodgy ,to tight tents. These are hazards of the trade. The good images are not easily found and often they are uncovered in the most uncomfortable and remote places. This trip was no exception.  At times I thought Michael was out of his comfort zone, trekking and camping like we did. But the guy survived all this and showed us his photographic “stuff”.

Michael was kind enough to do a review of the Lumen Dei workshop. Here is a short excerpt from that review:

And we learned plenty from our mentors… Aside from regular photo critiques in the evening there was very little formal teaching – and I was not missing any of that. Shooting side by side with these guys, getting to know the mindset they apply on different situations, how they approach people (they do it differently and both “styles” are respectful, engaging and successfull),  just couldn’t be delivered with formal teaching. This was so much more valuable for someone like me, who is the “learning by doing” kind of student. Both were approachable 24/7 and explained, showed, helped even while knocked down from severe cold, E.Coli and mountain sickness.

Visit Michael Ettema’s website HERE. Read his full review of the trip HERE.

You can view all the shows (so far) from the Lumen Dei 2010 Workshop HERE

Interested in other Workshops lead by Yours Truly? Visit my workshop page HERE.

I think this might be the last of the Lumen Dei 2010 Slideshows. Today’s show is from another talented photographer, Matea Michelangeli. Matea’s father is a serous amateur photographer so she grew up among cameras. Vacations were filled with  waiting for Dad to get the picture. (I think we all can relate.) She’d take photos here and there but never took it too seriously. She grew up in Venezuela and worked in educational research. Moved to US to attend graduate school and stayed there a lot longer than planed, thirteen years so far. A couple of years ago she decided to change careers and took back an old love, photography. Now she is shooting full time.  She says, she enjoy photographing people the most, documenting their life, struggles and dreams.

She says,

“I would like my photography to have an impact  and help others. It might be just to help others understand diversity and culture or help an organization to spread the word about what they are doing. Not quite there yet, but working on it.”

Matea was a real joy to have on the trip, always asking question and trying new things. That is what an instructor loves – people like Matea that make teaching easy. We love it when students ask questions and challenge the way they look at a subject, or life for that matter.

You can read Matea’s new blog HERE. Go by and giver her some encouragement. She just started it after I chided her on the trip for not having one.

You can view all the shows from the Lumen Dei 2010 Workshop HERE

Interested in other Workshops lead by Yours Truly? Visit my workshop page HERE.

Enough of this. This post is to highlight the Martin’s photography and their Soundslide show. Their presentation is a look at the nomads of Tsomoriri. So…without further ado, may I ask you to view the show below.

In other news, I will be traveling on Sunday to England. On the way there I have a few hours layover in Bangkok. Gavin Gough and Marco Ryan were already meeting up and they managed to squeeze me in for a coffee at the airport. (A coffee my doctor will not even let me drink!) It will be great to see each of these guys, even if it means drinking Mylanta as they quaff…whatever they will be drinking.

My buddies at Think Tank Photo have announced a load of new goodies and now have a great way to find them. As if their website wasn’t tempting enought, they have released a super slick online catalog you can scroll through. It is sweet! (I keep having to wipe the drool from my keyboard) You can download and save it as a PDF or view it online HERE.

As you know, Think Tank Photo has been sponsors of mine for many years. I love them. Their product is some of the best out there, if not the best. They are my go-to bag system. Apparently feel I have something to say as well. I am honored to say that Think Thanks Photo has asked me to join their Design Board. I am flattered to be serving with some heavy hitters like David Alan Harvey, Ed Kashi and our old friend David duChemin. Thank you Think Tank.

Yves Perreault

While in Ladakh, I lead a short spur-of-the-moment workshop on Soundslide Plus and the basic concepts of a photo essay. We had several participants express their interest in trying their hand at it. I told each of them, if they got it to me I would gladly post their work for others to see. Here is the first of that project. Dr Yves Perreault is a surgeon in Canada. I am sure Yves is a great doctor, but he could easily make a living with his photography. His work is well thought out and executed. He has a great eye for composition and pretty darn good post processing as well.

About his time in Ladakh Yves writes on his blog in French. (I translated it into English through Google Translate),

“A big part of my fascination for this area comes from its Buddhist culture. Flags and prayer wheels everywhere, monasteries that dominate the landscape and of course the kindness and goodness of its people amazed me. I attended some sessions of morning meditation with trumpets to call the monks to prayer.”

Yves goes onto say,

“I had the chance to spend time with a family from the small village of Lamayuru and to observe the harvest their barley field. I also have a short talk with the head of the family to discover that their way of doing this has varied little over hundreds of years. After barley id cut, he gathered the stems and ears to dry.

When the entire field was harvested, it was time to share a glass of “chang”, a home crafted beer of barley made by the master of the house.

An unforgettable afternoon that I invite you to share as the small girl of the house sings in the background.

You can find more of Yves Perreault work HERE at his blog.

Just checking in. We have had a great time with a very diverse team and some very talented photographers. Just got back from Lamayuru today and heading out tomorrow morning to the mountain lake of Tso Moriri. The net has been almost impossible. So it is all I can do to even post this small greetings. But I wanted to send you this little post card and say, “Wish you were here!”

I am sitting in Singapore on my way to India for three weeks. I will be co-leading the 2010 Ladakh Lumen Dei with my buddy David duChemin. David and I started this workshop/tour back in 2007 and it has become something of tradition. We were told, we could never pull it off. The nay sayer told us that people would not take the time off of work and pay good money to be taught photography from two photographic nobody’s. Well, somebody did. In fact, it has been sold out every year. Of course, it didn’t hurt that David went from being a photographic nobody to a photographic best seller 3X over!

Lumen Dei is a highlight of my photographic year in many ways. This year we have added a new destination to the tour, Tso Moriri a high altitude lake. At 15,075 ft (4,595 m) Tso Moriri is by it’s self a picturesque destination. But add in the fact that it is also the home to some Ladakhi nomads and you have one amazing photo op! Another thing I am looking forward to is the amazing light you find at this altitude. It is said, you can not take a bad photo in Ladakh, because the light is so amazing. Well, I know this isn’t true, as I have taken plenty of crappy shot from there, but I had to work at it.

There will not be much time available to blog. In fact, there will not be much internet available to use to blog, so as in years past, the updates will be sporadic at best. But keep checking back, you never know what you might find.

In yesterday’s post, someone noted in the comments that they would like to see more examples. What a perfect lead in, I had already planned on showing you some of the student’s worked from our last Lumen Dei workshop in India and at the Kumbh Mela. Most of the participants as well as Gavin Gough and myself produced a slide show. All the student’s work was all produced using the demo version of SoundSlides. You will see at the beginning of each show a brief splash screen that states it was made on the demo version. Another thing you will notice is the template that each student used was different. Some have a gray background while others a black. All but Paula have titles on their show. Paula’s has simply “headline here…”. This because she didn’t enter the name of her show, yet chose to show the title in the options. I am telling you all this to give you a peek into how the software works and what you can do even with the demo software.

Gavin and I decided that we should each do a show to demo for the students and to show what could be done using SoundSlides. You’ve already seen my essay, Wasim the Sari Maker.  Below is the show that Gavin made for the students, I think you’ll get a little a chuckle watching it.

The next example is from our only male participant on the workshop, Kevin Dowie. Kev, (I can call him Kev because he’s from Australia, and that’s the way they talk in Australia) started the trip off concerned about how to approach his subjects . He was amazed at how physically close Gavin and I got to our subjects when we were photographing them. I think you’ll see from his essay that Kevin was able to get over his inhibitions and produce a fantastic piece of work.

The next student’s essay is from Ursula Wall.  Ursula focused on one of the four elements, that is; earth, air, water and fire. She focused on fire and did so very creatively. This is a wonderful example how a simple music bed can add so much depth to a photo essay.

Lesley (not spelled with an ie) Fisher took the “every day” of India and made it special. She covered the ubiquitous chai shop. Usually just a hole in the wall that is so unremarkable, you can walk by and never see it. Yet Lesley not only saw it, but made a wonderful essay to show to the world.

Finally, our last essay was created by Paula Bulancea. Paula decided to step out of the box and shoot everything in a vertical or portrait format. For slide show like these it is often best to have everything in a horizontal format. This gives continuity to show. It’s visually jarring to see a slide show proceed from several horizontal images, to a vertical, then back to horizontal images. Yet, by creating the whole show in a vertical format, Paula was able to pull it off. She’d heard that many older people come to Varanasi to live out the remainder of their days and die on the banks of the Ganges. In her research she actually didn’t find this to be the case, but she did uncover an interesting segment of the society, that of the aging residents of Varanasi.

Remember, you have an opportunity to own the software that these people used to create these shows. Just go to the comments of the post found HERE and tell me what story you would create an slide show on if you owned SoundSlides Plus. Check back tomorrow announcing the winner on this blog.

One of the assignments we gave our last Lumen Dei workshop participants was to create a short, two minute multimedia photo essay on anything or anyone as long as it was in Varanasi. They were to use Soundslides, but we would provide the audio bed for them. The assignment was to be shot the two days we spent in Varanasi. Gavin and I will be posting some of the participant’s shows in the future. All of them did very well.

This show was the one I made. I found it interesting that though Varanasi is known as a holy Hindu city, it has a Muslim population of over 665,000. The Muslims of the city are often over looked by the throngs of tourist that visit every day. Yet they contribute richly to the culture of this great city. I hope you enjoy.

Sadhu Portrait #2. Kumbh Mela, Hardiwar, India.

This was shot with my favorite 85mm f1.2. I was talking the other day with someone about the 85mm f1.2 and the 50mm f1.2 (that I recently bought). We were joking why they even have a focal length over f2.8 on those lenses? If you buy a super fast lens chances are you’ll never use it at a speed higher than that. At least I don’t.

While walking around Haridwar exploring the Kumbh Mela last week, Gavin Gough and I walked into a rather non-discript ashram. An ashram, for lack of a better description, is kind of like a Jewish Kibbutz. Travelers or “seekers of truth or enlightenment” might come and stay at an ashram while on their journey. They might give the visitors work or responsibilities to share in while they live there.  It can also be just a glorified guest house. This place we had stepped into was more like the latter than the former. There where dozens, if not hundreds of Sadhus house for their time at the Mela. As we walked around several asked for us to take their photos. The light was nice and the subjects colorful. This emerged.