Ruben Vicente & João Maia | Hidden Gion

Here's a lovely multimedia piece (in video form) of photographs by Ruben Vicente and João Maia of the famous Gion neighborhood.

Gion is a district of Kyoto, Japan, originally developed in the Middle Ages, and built to accommodate the needs of travelers. It eventually evolved to become one of the most exclusive and well-known geisha districts in all of Japan. The geisha in the Gion district (and Kyoto generally) do not refer to themselves as geisha; instead, Gion geisha use the local term geiko. While the term geisha means "artist" or "person of the arts", the more direct term geiko means essentially "a child of the arts" or "a woman of art".

I read that Gion's structures boast wooden lattice windows made of thin wooden beams in a grid pattern to create a lace effect, and its streets are lined with stores selling traditional Kyoto crafts, such as 'kanzashi' (ornamental hairpins), incense and kimono accessories.

Ruben Vicente is travel photographer based in Lisbon who, apart from loving photography, is a senior programmer in the telecom industry. João Maia is a part-time freelance photographer in Lisbon specializing in landscape, nature and travel. He is also a software architect with a major Japanese company.

Raspberry, Chocolate and Almond Cake

It made a welcome change to make a cake that isn't either filled or covered in buttercream but we did serve the cake warm with double cream poured over, and very nice it was too.

Chocolate and raspberries go really well together, the cake will keep covered for a few days in the fridge. It slices well and will freeze too.

The cake testers gave this one the thumbs up.......

I'll let you take a peek behind the curtains of Kitchen Delights new kitchen sometime in September, the finishing touches are taking longer than we anticipated.

In the meantime to make this delicious cake -

You will need:

150g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs
150g self-raising flour
50ml milk
150g ground almonds
135g dark chocolate chips
150g frozen raspberries
25g flaked almonds
Icing sugar
Double cream to serve

1. Grease and line a 20cm springform cake tin.
2. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
3. Beat the caster sugar and butter together until it is a light and fluffy consistency.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time and add a tablespoon of flour with the last egg, beating well.  Add the milk and keep on beating.
5. Sieve the flour over the egg mixture and fold in.  Add the ground almonds and chocolate chips and fold these in to the batter.  Now carefully fold in the frozen raspberries.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and sprinkle over the flaked almonds.
7. Bake for 60 minutes or until cooked through.  Cool and then release the tin and leave on a wire rack to cool completely.
8. Sieve the icing sugar and dust over the cake.
9. Best served with cream.

Kares Le Roy | Asia In 6 Minutes

I frequently find wonderful work by photographers on my ZITE, and this remarkable video by Kares Le Roy managed to temporarily distract me a little from following the horrific events in Egypt. I hope it will have the same effect if you feel the same way.

Kares is a French photographer and graphic designer. More of his background can be found on his blog (scroll down for the English version). He traveled and photographed in Tibet, Nepal, India, Bali, Cuba, Cambodia and Morocco. He traveled through 56 000 km of land and humans: faces, smiles, eyes, monuments, cultures, events and this 6 minutes video masterfully provides a bird's eye view of the Asian continent.

I have featured the work of Kares on The Travel Photographer blog already, but Beware Magazine also has an interesting interview with him.

Mykel Hawke vs. Joe Teti – The Next Round of TV Survival Show Host Drama

On Wednesday, a fellow blogger and writer of  Rocky Mountain Bushcraft, who seems to have his finger on the pulse of survival show drama, published a post about a war of words brewing on Facebook between former host of Man, Woman, Wild, Mykel Hawke, and co-host of Dual Survival, Joe Teti.

It is unclear to me how all this started, but seems to have been going on behind the scenes for some time now. It became very public when Mykel Hawke published a post about it on his Facebook page. The post vaguely spoke about how Joe Teti has been attacking him, and as his former commander, Myke knew things about him he would not want made public. (Sorry about the poor screen shot)

 

By the time I decided to make a post about this so you guys are in the loop as well, there was a massive amount of information. It is too much for me to post here, as Myke goes on for a number of posts about misrepresentations made by Joe Teti and things he has done wrong. The last post on the subject as of the time I am writing this discusses how Joe Teti allegedly failed to show up for combat duty after 9/11 and instead tried to make money by starting his own private security company.

As far as Joe Teti, he seems to have gone silent since Myke started posting all of this information on his Facebook page. Prior to that point however, he did publish several cryptic posts, which now make much more sense.

I am sure there will be further developments. Something clearly went down between the two of them and has devolved into an all out war. Regardless of the the cause, I can’t imagine this will be good for either of their careers. Considering all of the publicity issues some networks have had with less than credible survival hosts, I don’t imagine any of them will want to do much business with people who have this much baggage… or maybe that’s exactly what they would want. Stay tuned for the Myke and Joe Survival Hour. :)

All that being said, what really blows my mind is that this is all happening on Facebook. It seems like a communications medium more suited to teenage girls than grown men, especially considering that both of them have websites, publicity teams, lawyers and publishers. I suppose sometimes people just can’t help themselves. 

POV: Monochrome...A Phase In Life?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

A Facebook "conversation" touching on the merits (or lack thereof) of the Leica Monochrom with my friend Pierre Claquin triggered many thoughts in my mind. First off, the ephemeral thought of selling some or all of our photo gear to acquire the $8000 Monochrom crossed our minds...but after pushing away the temptation, I reflected on the reasons behind my recent interest in making monochrome photographs.

It started off during my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop™ in October 2011 during which I asked all its participants to produce their projects in black and white in order to bast capture the grittiness of Kolkata's Durga Puja.

I started to dabble with the various techniques in Photoshop or Lightroom; sometimes using presets in some cases. I also tried shooting in black and white with my M9 and the X Pro-1. The latter was used quite a lot in that mode in Sa Pa and Hanoi during my North of the 16th Parallel Photo-Expedition/Workshop, resulting in The Indigo People, and Hanoi Streets among others.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

More recently, I caught myself converting some of my most colorful photographs (such as the one of the Rajasthani shepherd and the Kathakali performer) to black and white, and was glad in seeing that these were equally powerful and pleasing to my eyes. I continued this trend over the past weeks, and started sending some of my conversions to be printed at Adorama.

In my office, I have about two dozen of some of my Cibachrome photographs made about a decade ago, already framed and mounted, and I've now decided to replace them with more recent photographs in monochrome. I already have switched 3 or 4 and these adorn one of my walls.

So is this infatuation with monochrome a function of a maturing phase in my photography timeline...or is it just an aesthetic phase that will subside? I don't know, but I wager that I'm not the only one who's passing (or has passed) through it.

It might also be a partial consequence of having downloaded the Nik Collection with its Silver Efex 2 software. The ease to use this software, and its results are really worth its $150 price tag.

In fact, its suggested workflow is what I use...not necessarily on all my conversions, but with a little tweaking, I found it works for me:

1. Apply Raw Presharpener using Sharpener Pro 3.0.
2. Apply noise reduction using Dfine 2.0.
3. Control color and light using Viveza 2.
4. Apply filter enhancements using Color Efex Pro 4.
5. Convert to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2.
6. Apply output sharpening using Sharpener Pro 3.0.

Finally, will I desert color photography for monochrome? No...how can I when there are many instances where color photography is just perfect for the scene?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy- All Rights Reserved