Having moved to Goa and as the twins Eva and Amber are already walking and running we thought it would be a good idea to have a family portrait and show our friends and family in Israel how we all look like. We all got dressed in the traditional white Rosh HaShanah style and headed for the beach. It was a beautiful afternoon and by the time we were on the cliff overlooking Vagator the sun was just were it was supposed to be for incredible light. It was hard not to start shooting myself, and I did take a few shots of course, but for the card we needed something with me in it. My trusted intern Neha Pandey was put in charge of my own Nikon and somehow managed to get a decent image out of it. With a little post production we almost got it to look good. Just kidding Neha, we absolutely LOVE it! I wish I had taken this picture :-)

Eva was having a great time in the field and I could not resist but grabbing the camera and shoot. Neha was fighting over it but I was stronger and scared her off eventually. It’s sometimes good to be the boss.

Over the weekend we headed down to our favorite beach in South Goa to remember how nice it is to actually live in this part of the world. Liah, still only ten years old, was looking simply glamorous in the last light.

SHANA TOVA and a Happy New Year to you all.

Alternative photographic technique in 21st century India

About a year after coming to live in India, on a warm and sunny September day in 2003, I was with my wife and daughter at a place called Birla Mandir in New Delhi where I came across a photo studio, actually not more than a twelve feet square, owned by a photographer the likes of which I saw before only as street photographers at tourists spots like Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal or Pushkar. The photographer was using a big old wood camera to take amazing vintage looking portraits on black and white paper. We had our picture taken for thirty rupee but I knew this could not be the end of it. (Read more about this photographer and A few years later I visited him again and he was not using the camera anymore. “No one is interested in these pictures anymore so I use a digital camera now” he said. We had some chai and talked about his life and I ended up buying the old camera from him, along with sixty of his original pictures. I did not catch his name then and when I came to visit again the shop was not there anymore. His neighbor told me that he had disappeared one day on his way home and was never seen again. I kept the camera for a few years as I knew I would end up doing something with it but it was only years after buying it that I started using it for a new photographic project I call The Fatafat, after the name of this quick style of photography **.

The Fatafat

It is hard to imagine that up until very recently, and to some extent even today in some isolated locations across the country, this photographic technique that is almost identical to the very first photographic process, the Calotype, is still in use in India on a regular basis by working street photographers. The Fatafat project is a series of portraits of the new generation of Indians that live in Delhi in this special time of change in India. A generation that belongs to the digital age and the days of the internet. The portraits are shot using the old camera form 1949 in the same technique used for generations by street photographers in India. The final book will combine some of the street photographer’s original images and a chapter about street photography in India, which forty new portraits that I am now shooting with a chapter about the change that this generation is a part of. Every portrait will have a few lines of text describing the person in the picture; who he/she is, their age, their home town and how they came to Delhi, what they do in life etc.

Here is a sample of a few portraits from this project. If you are an Indian with an interesting story/look/attitude or if you know someone (in Delhi) that you feel represents a changing generation and want/willing to be a part of this project than I would love to hear from you.

How Does this camera work? *

The camera used probably stems from the turn of the century or even earlier and operates in an intriguing way. It remains a fixed distance from the object (about 6ft). The photographer loads the camera with negative paper (preferably fiber based for a better result of the negative). There’s no shutter so he exposes the paper by taking off the lens cap and count to guess the exposure time – 2 to 3 seconds in daylight and 15 to 20 seconds in subdued light. During the exposure of the paper, the client must stay utterly still and not blink or change facial expression or else a blur will result. To end the exposure, the photographer replaces the lens cap. To develop the print, he uses the back of the camera itself as a kind of darkroom. Inside there is a tray containing homemade developing fluid. He pulls the paper out from behind the lens and dips it in the developer while looking at it through a red glass panel (which prevents white light from reaching the negative paper). Once it is sufficiently developed, he removes it from the camera and dips it in a fixative tray (held underneath the camera) for a few seconds; then he washes the paper negative in a bucket of clean fresh water. He dries this as much as he can and then mounts the negative print on the frame that can be attached in front of the camera lens and re-exposes the print for 10 to 15 seconds, again depending on the light conditions. Because he is re-photographing the original negative on to a further sheet of negative paper, he ends up with a positive print which he develops in the same way (back through the two solutions in the rear of the camera, washed in water and dried). It is then ready for the customer to take away. The whole process is while-you-wait – about 20 minutes from start to finish, no film, no plate.
In the standard manuals and histories of photography, there is no clear exposition of this unique and incredibly economical process. To guess at the nature of the invention: it appears that the early street photographers managed to hybridise two 19th century technologies: the calotype camera and the portable darkroom into a single apparatus. Perhaps because of the sheer problems of having to carry the whole apparatus and having to present the client with a finished paper print quickly, they by-passed the luxuries of both plate and film photography and the Fox Talbot calotype itself (which all require separate development locales). How they arrived at this remarkable hybrid – a kind of Polaroid avant la lettre – is unknown. It is documented, however, that unique local variations on the calotype were being used in India before 1853, and presumably, therefore, within a decade of Fox Talbot’s announcement of the process.
Clearly then, this photographer’s method is a form of calotype, the process first announced by William Henry Fox Talbot to the Royal Society on 31st January 1839 (six months prior to the publication of Daguerre’s plate method), therefore one of the earliest photographic processes known, and the only known method of using light-sensitive paper in the camera itself. There are however several differences between Fox Talbot’s original procedure and those of the traditional Indian street photographers, though the differences are minimal. Fox Talbot prepared his own paper, while the street photographers use modern photographic paper. In the original calotype process, the negative image was taken from the camera, developed, pressed against photo-sensitive paper and exposed to sunlight to achieve the positive image. By contrast, the street photographers actually re-photograph the negative to get a positive. This suggests that the Indian street situation is probably unique. It’s a variation on the calotype and identical with it until the point of negative-positive conversion. The calotype involved a darkroom process, outside the camera – whereas the Indian process involves developing the negative inside the camera, re-photographing, and then re-developing the new positive (also inside the camera itself).

* (Text by Alec McHoul used with permission)

** More images of the camera and the process on my previous posts “Maharaja portrait photography in 21st century India“, “Working with an old wood camera” and “Portrait Photography in a Daylight Studio”

My luck, of course depending from where you look at it, is that I have twins and those two devils are a feast to the eye. I have a small point-and-shoot Lumix that I use most of the time but every now and then I take out the DSLR and spend some time with them to take some love pictures. I end up loving those more than any commercial work that I do but for some reason I never thought to share any of them here on the blog. Well, here is a start.

I was away for a few days and my wife had uploaded a few iPhone pictures to facebook of the twins with shaved heads. We did the same with Liah when she was their age and it makes the hair grow stronger. Shefi shaved their heads when I was not there so that I don’t try to talk her out of it, and she might have been right. The result however is super funny and they look damn cute. We all went to the beach a few days ago and I took these. Pure bliss in the sun.

A quick look at wikipedia tells us that “Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, which provides visual support for stories, mainly in the print media, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to sell products or services.”

The problem of definition

The dictionary recognizes that there are no universally-accepted definitions of the related terms “art photography,” “artistic photography,” and “fine art photography”, and so in reality, being the photographer’s ‘creative vision’ that we are talking about, if you call yourself a photographer you might as well be an artist! Everyone has a point of view and once it is framed and hung on a wall who will stop him from calling it art?

To be honest to everyone, there are a few serious galleries in Delhi, as well as in other cities in India, showing the works of some really fine photographers who’s work I respect and admire. To mention a few, PhotoInk, Tasveer, Nature Morte and Vadhera gallery are very serious venues curated by people who really know what they look at in terms of photography and art. I would love to show my work there when I feel I have something to show.

Being an ‘art photographer’ is very hip in Delhi now, and galleries open up in malls and shopping centers, catering for a growing middle class who knows nothing about art but has money to buy. This, in combination with the digital photography age that enables everyone to shoot without thinking has brought the market to this point. There are good sides to this development of course, as it is a step in the right direction and hopefully people will slowly be educated in the history of art and learn how to appreciate it. There are a lot of photo exhibitions happening in Delhi in the last few years and this by itself is a great thing, so not all is bad.

Chhattisgarh Woods

Here are a few B&W images from the woods in Chhattisgarh that I photographed last week. It was a commercial assignment, believe it or not, but it didn’t feel like one. I spent two hours in the forest early in the morning and came out with these. Looking at them I really felt for a moment that I wouldn’t mind printing them and putting them up on my wall. Would that make it fine art?

Fine Art Prints

If you like any of the images: Fine Art Prints Size: 12×18″ (30x45cm) and 16×24″ (40x60cm) | signed limited edition | archival paper | From the series Chhattisgarh Woods are available for purchase with or without frame. Please contact me by email for details and price.

Why do I need a daylight photo studio

I am working on my new project these days, shooting portraits of the young generation in Delhi using an old wood camera. I have already written two posts about it; Maharaja Portraits in 21st Century India where I explained the photographic process, and Video Killed The Radio Star about my own project using this wood camera.

The most interesting and innovative thing about this camera is the use of b&w paper as the negative. The camera is also a dark room and inside there is a tray containing homemade developing fluid, and a tray of fixer. We prepare the chemicals in the morning before starting and I’ll write about this in another post.

Using a paper as the negative requires a relatively long exposure as the iso of the paper is very low. This is the reason why it is only possible to work with this camera in full day light.The paper is exposed by taking off the lens cap (there is no shutter) and counting to guess the exposure time – 2-3 seconds in daylight and 15-20 seconds in subdued light. During the exposure of the paper, the person being photographed must stay still and not blink or else the image will be blured. To end the exposure the lens cap is placed back.

My daylight studio is made of a bamboo frame that I cover with white fabric for diffusion of the light. The morning pictures look different than the afternoon images as the sun moves in the sky and the light comes from a different direction. The backdrop is a simple red curtain. Red seems to be the best color to give a good contrast on the B&W paper.

Here are a few iPhone pictures from this Saturday’s shoot.

I have been fascinated by this wonderful apparatus since the first time I saw these street photographers on my first visit to India, back in 1996. Little did I know that fifteen years later I would actually be taking a personal project using such a camera.

I had bought my camera a few years ago from a photographer who used it in Delhi until he realized that ‘Video killed the radio star‘, as the old song goes. Here it was the age of digital photography that killed his business. He started using a simple digital camera but business was never the same anymore. The camera I bought from him has been in use since 1949 and was in pretty good shape when I got it, but naturally needed some minor repairs. The lens is very old and ‘soft’, with dust that has not been cleaned for ages. The first stage in my work was to run a few tests with it and make sure I can really use it to produce images. (if you want to know more about how the camera works please read the first post from April 2009).

When I decided that I wanted to start working with the camera again, I made a trip to old Delhi and had the lens cleaned as much as possible.

Using the camera is not an impossible task but I decided that it would be in the better interest of my project if I recruited a photographer who used such a camera for years to assist me in my project. Bharat Bhushan Mahajan, probably the last photographer in Delhi who still keeps such a camera, had agreed to come on board and we had our first day of shooting last week on my roof in New Delhi. His son had accompanied me to Old Delhi to buy the chemicals for the developer and to find someone to clean the old lens.

My assistant, Atul, records the exact mixture of chemicals that Bharat Bhushan Mahajan uses to prepare the developer. We bought the chemicals in Old Delhi the day we went to clean the lens. Rs 85 ($1.8) for everything.

A view into the camera itself. Atul seen from inside the camera as he poses for the test shot

Bharat Bhushan Mahajan and Sephi Bergerson examine the first results. Mahajan actually prefers digital cameras. "Less work, more money" he says. He does not have to make chemicals every day, or get his hands dirty anymore. it is the new age of 'Fata fat' (quick) photography.

The paper negative and the positive

The idea of the project is to use this camera to document the generation of young Indians who visually represent the change that Delhi is going through in the last few years. It would be a requiem to this camera and this photographic technique through the documentation of the people who live in Delhi at the time when it is quickly fading out of sight.

I.D Singh (31), DJ and event promoter, in front of the camera

The result, paper negative and positive.

I have made a list of people that I am going to photograph but this list is still open. If you have an idea of someone that can fit the project please feel free to write and suggest.

Technorati code: B42W6UAXGB92

A pair of Spotted Owlet (Athene brama) in the tree in front of our window in Delhi

And some information about the Spotted Owlet from Wikipedia:
The Spotted Owlet (Athene brama) is a small owl which breeds in tropical Asia from India to Southeast Asia. They are very common species and have adapted to living in cities. They roost in small groups in the hollows of trees or in cavities in rocks or buildings. This species is a part of the larger grouping of owls known as typical owls, Strigidae. The Spotted Owlet is a common resident bird in open habitats including farmland and human habitation. It nests in a hole in a tree or building, laying 3-5 eggs. Nests near human habitations were found to show higher breeding success with the young being fed a greater number of rodents.

How I did it at home with some help from PhotoShop

Being a documentary photographer, I usually don’t play with PhotoShop effects in my work, but here I decided to give it a go and use some techniques that I wanted to experiment with.

The first picture, about two weeks ago, natural light coming form the door on the left side of the frame. Slow shutter speed. To get the color effect I first converted the image to Grayscale and then applied ‘Antique light’ filter in LR. Further enhancement in PS to give some more depth and contrast. I then superimposed a second shot of a sheet of brown paper to achieve the texture on the wall and her body.

The second session, a week later. On the same wall in our living room but this time using two Nikon Speedlights, an SB900 on the left, and an SB800 on the right. Again, image was then converted to Grayscale and exported to PhotoShop. Worked with filters to achieve the metal blue body color. I then stepped out to the roof, took a shot of the concrete floor and used it for the textured wall.

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]]> http://www.sephi.com/personal/two-simple-maternity-shots-and-how-i-did-it/feed/ 15 http://www.sephi.com/personal/maharajas-portrait-photography-in-21st-century-india/ http://www.sephi.com/personal/maharajas-portrait-photography-in-21st-century-india/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:59:26 +0000 sephi http://www.sephi.com/?p=1369 A new exhibition at the city palace museum in Udaipur explores the portraits of the Maharajas and their families taken by their personal photographers, but only a few people know that the same kind of photographers, although a dying breed, are still around in India using more or less the same techniques as in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

Not so long ago, street photographers using big old wooden cameras where a common sight in India. In Jaipur, right next to the wall of the Palace of Winds (Hawa Mahal) there used to be at least ten photographers only a few years back but now there is only one left. The rest must have found some other way to make a living now that everyone has a digital camera, and only an occasional tourist would sometime be interested in these old style pictures as a memento of India.

A few weeks ago, when my friend Philippe Lopez was visiting Delhi, we went looking for the photographer from whom I had bought such a camera a couple of years ago, only to find that his shop was gone and that he had mysteriously disappeared one day never to be seen again! I don’t even know his name. I do however have his old camera and a wonderful collection of some wonderful b&w basic cut-and-paste collage images.

Another photographer, Bharat Bhushan Mahajan, could very well be the last such photographer in Delhi. His ‘shop’ is in the park behind Birla Mandir in New Delhi. He has been using the same wooden camera and the same backdrop since 1949. The camera shows obvious signs of wear and tear and when we came for the session that was arranged two days in advance, he needed to first fix the camera using a hammer and some glue. this took about an hour. The price of a finished black and white photo here used to be 30 rupees (US$0.60) for 3 pictures but there are no customers these days for this style of photography. He took the camera out especially for us. Mahajan learned his trade as a young man from his father who was master photographer in what is today Pakistan, and it is indeed a remarkable trade

How does this camera work?

Alec McHoul describes the process very well in the wonderful article about Street and Studio: Popular Commercial Photography in India and Bangaladesh where he explores the exact same technique and compares it to the Calotype, one of the earliest photographic processes known.

The camera he uses, he writes, probably stems from the turn of the century or even earlier and operates in an intriguing way. Mahajan loads the camera with negative paper (Kodak commercial photographic paper) and then exposes the paper by taking off the lens cap (there’s no shutter) and counts to guess the exposure time – 2 to 3 seconds in daylight and 15 to 20 seconds in subdued light. During the exposure of the paper, the client must stay utterly still and not blink or change facial expression or else the picture will be blurred. To end the exposure, he replaces the lens cap. To develop the print, he uses the back of the camera itself as a kind of darkroom. Inside there is a tray containing homemade developing fluid. He pulls the paper out from behind the lens and dips it in the developer while looking at it through a red glass panel (which prevents white light from reaching the negative paper). Once it is sufficiently developed, the paper is removed from the camera and dipped in a fixative tray (held underneath the camera) for a few seconds; then he washes the paper negative in a bucket of clean fresh water. He dries it as much as he can and then mounts the negative print on the frame visible in front of the camera lens and re-exposes the print for 10 to 15 seconds, again depending on the light conditions. Because he is re-photographing the original negative on to a further sheet of negative paper, he ends up with a positive print which he develops in the same way (back through the two solutions in the rear of the camera, washed in water and dried). It is then ready for the customer to take away. The whole process is while-you-wait – about 20 minutes from start to finish, no film, no plate.

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Sephi Bergerson (left), Bharat Bhushan Mahajan (right) and his son (center) at his studio, New Delhi

the paper negative and the finished picture in a bucket of clean fresh water

A couple of samples form my collection. unknown photographer.

]]> http://www.sephi.com/personal/maharajas-portrait-photography-in-21st-century-india/feed/ 22 http://www.sephi.com/personal/street-food-fotowala-in-old-delhi/ http://www.sephi.com/personal/street-food-fotowala-in-old-delhi/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:23:33 +0000 sephi http://www.sephi.com/?p=544 I have been walking around old delhi with a couple of friends visiting from Hong Kong. we went out looking for some interesting painters and old style print shops for my friend’s project and of course sampled some street food. I was clicking some pics of a chhole kulch wala and blocking the traffic of the bicycle rickshaw when one of them yelled at me, “arre fotowala!” trying to grab my attention and clear the road. after all these years in India, this was the first time I have noticed anyone addressing me as ‘fotowala‘ :-) nice coincidence.
here is the picture I was shooting:

A street food vendor selling Chhole Kulcha on the street of Old Delhi as bicycle rickshaw passes by.