FotoWala » TRAVEL

Riding a Bullet to Spiti Valley

sephi — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:07:30 +0000

Action and adventure photography is something that I have always loved doing. The thing about this kind of photography is that you must become a part of the adventure and cannot simply tag along. Being a participant gives close access to the events and the action, but also an intimate relationship with the other participants.

I’ve been commissioned to shoot a motorcycle tour in the Himalaya for a travel company that organizes rides on the legendary vintage-looking Royal Enfield bikes. The basic idea was to capture the romance of motorcycle riding in the Himalayas, the mist, the elements, the beauty, and the challenges it provides as a place to ride motorcycles. Guided by Moksha, the first woman professional bike rider in India, we left from Manali with a group of enthusiastic bikers ready for adventure, heading towards Rohtang pass on the way to Lahaul and Spiti valley. The barren landscape and sparse vegetation in this dry and cold desert is surrounded by high mountains on all sides and is a magnificent backdrop for shooting a motorcycle ride.

About shooting on the road

Before going on an adventure it is advised to make a good plan for the equipment you carry and the strategy for shooting. A mental picture of the kind of images you want to shoot will help you decide which equipment you want to take with you, and how you are going to shoot. Determining the hazards, both to yourself and your gear is essential.

Like in almost any other assignment, adventure photography is about telling the story of the adventure. The start of the day, the difficulties, the road, the high points and the emotions. The deeper you go into the adventure, the closer and more intimate you will become with the other participants, which will result in better and more compelling images.

Hanuman Mandir Flower Market

sephi — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:41:54 +0000

Travelers visiting Delhi are often surprised to see how late this city starts it’s day. Delhi wakes up early alright, people go for morning walks or yoga practice, but businesses will never open before 10am. If you are up before dawn looking for some adventure, there is very little to do at this early hour. You may want to go for a run in the park, or you could pay a visit to a surprising spot that will not wait for the late morning crowd. India’s biggest wholesale flower market in Connaught Place comes alive at 4 am and disappears without a trace by 9 am.

This morning, instead of coming back home after dropping my daughter to the school bus, I went directly to the huge pavement flower market in front of Hanuman Temple on Baba Kharak Singh Marg. Hundreds of traders set up their temporary shops at this spot every day of the year, displaying flowers and decorative items flown in from all over Asia. The customers are mainly retailers and decorators who come to stock up for their own customers, but some private customers who want flowers for their personal use will always be around.

Some tips for taking travel photographs

I was at the flower market on assignment, shooting for a travel feature on Delhi. The images will not be the main images of the story and I only needed one or two decorative shots to give some color to the story. I needed to get in and out and go on with the day to get the rest of the images. I used three very simple and easy tricks for getting the job done quickly. Getting a busy market image would have taken more time and concentration but I didn’t need it. For a quick morning shoot this is more than enough. The three elements I used are 1. the shallow depth of field with the portrait of the vendor holding the flowers, 2. the close up on dirty hands, 3. The wall. Three elements can be found in any situation and harnessed to produce good images that will make any travel magazine’s photo editor happy. I hope you like them too.

Jaipur for Luxury Vagabonds

sephi — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:38:03 +0000

As much as I intended to keep updating this blog on a regular basis, it really has been a while. I’ve been traveling outside of India, visiting family in Israel and waiting for my new visa to India to come through. It took more than a month and we actually didn’t really move much, except the trip to Sinai for a couple of wonderful weeks. Other than that, having the twins and all, it was not a very active vacation. I’m happy to be back in India and in the last couple of weeks have already been to Bangalore and Jaipur.

Now that we have a long term visa we can start planing the move to Manali and we are super excited about that. The plan is to start a center of photography in the Himalaya and offer more workshops and photo expeditions.

While in Delhi, I still need to get the trucking book out of the way and finish the other two that are in the making. The Indian wedding book is finished and I’m editing and captioning it now with the hope to get it out early next year. The ‘Fata Fat’ portrait project has passed the half way line and will be finished before we leave Delhi in April.

Here are a few pictures from last week’s trip to Jaipur. The feature, written by Fiona Caulfield, a travel writer living in India and the creator of the Love Travel brand of guidebooks, will be published in an in-flight magazine next month and I will load a PDF with all the pictures and text once I have it. I must admit that It was a very new way of looking at Jaipur, nothing at all like most tourist would probably see if they only follow the lonely planet. Fiona knows Jaipur and have compiled a list of some great places to stay, eat, drink, shop and relax. It is obvious that it is possible to discover the soul of the city in original and engaging ways.

More to come soon . .

Travel Photography – Vacation in Sinai with ‘The Best Camera’

sephi — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:49:57 +0000

Travel photography and the search for the best camera to take along on vacation continues. I have been struggling with this issue for years as the idea of going on vacation with my big set of cameras and lenses started being a little too much to handle. Why would I want to have the responsibility of carrying and caring for this expensive heavy set when I want to take some time off work and relax?

I have just come back from a ten-days vacation at Ras-el-Shaitan (view on Google Map) on the red sea in Sinai and have taken my iPhone as the main camera for the first time. there are a few reasons why I decided to do this, one of which is an amazing new application called ‘The Best Camera’ that allows you to creatively edit and share your iPhone images more simply than ever before. I started playing with it a few weeks ago and loved the results. Along with Photoshop app for iPhone I can now get some really cool results from the phone’s camera.

The other reason is that I am a bit exhausted from the perfect image and results of the pro cameras. Digital photography had become so advanced that there is almost no chance of making any mistakes anymore. The iPhone camera, being imperfect and slow at times, enabled me to have to play with the uncertain again. It is difficult to see the screen from an angle, especially when shooting in mid-day light, and the shutter is not as fast so one has to plan well before pressing the ‘click’ button or miss the moment.

On screen, after editing, the images look fantastic and I was very happy. When downloading to the laptop after coming home, there was a bit of disappointment. The image size is not enough for printing although still OK for internet purposes. Being used to the full frame D-700, the images of the iPhone have a lot of noise. I must say that I am still using the iPhone 3G and it is possible that the camera on the new model is far better.

The plus side is that no one suspects you are a photographer and so it is sometimes easier to get close to people and have a good picture without taking too much attention. I can’t wait to have an iPhone with a really high resolution camera that will enable me to actually work like this.

So here it is. For more images go to my facebook gallery or my Flickr page

Moonrise over Ras el Shaitan on the day we arrived. I played with the image color saturation but the vignette creates a circle in the center of the image that almost looks like the sun. I love the colors but the circle is too strong for me.

The low tide exposes the reef completely so people can walk over it looking for sea urchins and star fish.

I actually walked to the edge of the reef during low tide and took this picture standing over the corals and the blue sea. The water is so clear that you don’t even need to dive in order to see the fish. Simply and amazing experience.

My daughter held this inflatable chair against as she was going into the water and I shot directly into the sun using the plastic chair as a filter, hence the dark underexposed colours.

These are the real colours, believe it or not!

Who are these people that do travel photography anyway?

sephi — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:25:20 +0000

The thing about travel photography has not always been clear to me. Who are these people that do this kind of work really? I mean, travel to all these amazing places just to take pictures and show us how beautiful the place can look. You know, just go, stay at a five star hotel or a luxury resort and show us how much fun they had. Some people do this of course, while others simply enjoy taking pictures on their holidays travel and happen to be damn good at it. I really wish I could do this sometime.

I am not really serious about this question of course. Travel photography is a challenging kind of assignment and some photographers out there are really very good at it. Me? I started my photography exploration in the 80′s by reading Popular Photography and Outdoor Photographer magazines and trying to learn all the tricks about working with a wide angle lens for landscape, and shooting interesting travel pictures, but my carrier hadn’t really taken me in this direction. Not only that, but I must admit that just traveling and taking pictures has never been something that I really do. I either travel on assignment, or on vacation. On assignment I would have my full camera bag with me, and the focus would be the assignment and the brief. When I travel on vacation I carry my small Lumix LX3 and shoot my family. The reason why I bring this up is because my last post was about a personal photo walk I did at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabd in 2001, but I really cant remember when was the last time I simply went out shooting like this in India. Going somewhere with no brief is not something that I do very often, and this is why the pictures here are so different for me.

I was on assignmen in Kerala and on a day off I decided to take a short trip to Kanyakumari, also known by its former name Cape Comorin. Kanyakumari is located at the southernmost tip of the Indian Peninsula, at the confluence of the three water-bodies – the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Mannar and the Indian Ocean. Here are some of the pictures I took on that day trip. I had a great time :-)

I’ve always been attracted to street food and the instruments that are used to prepare it. Here is the very common sugar cane juice stall decorated with the yellow limes in the foreground of the Thiruvalluvar statue. I loved the way the blue, yellow and orange colors of the juice stall were mirrored in the colors of the saris of two women, framing the famous statue in the distance.

There was a large group of women students from a teachers college visiting the beach, all wearing uniform pink saris. I shot them sitting on the wall above the beach and slowly came down to the water edge with them. I sat quietly behind them as they were completely fascinated with the sea and the waves, oblivious to my presence. At one point someone called from behind, alerting them to the fact that I was taking their picture. They turned to look and I clicked this picture, just before they actually noticed me. The next picture was slightly less interesting as the lady on the left had put her foot down. There was no time for another as they immediately dispersed.

I left the beach just before sunset and the driver took me to the ‘sunset point’. there was no sunset as the haze had covered the horizon, but the clouds were painted this amazing pink. A group of women were sitting on the dunes praying next to a small church. I got out of the car and slowly approached them. They were singing quietly and the dune was glowing in the purple color of the sky. It was a wonderful moment and felt so far away from the reality of the busy beach only a few hundred meters away.

Sunset pictures are the most obvious to take, but I loved the simple palm tree catamaran boats on the beach that made this a different sunset picture than anywhere else.

Personal photo walk at the Maha Kumbh Mela, Allahabad 2001

sephi — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:29:51 +0000

The Kumbh Mela, the largest religious gathering on earth, is taking place these days in Haridwar and everyone makes plans to go. I recently read a post about the fact that photography is now prohibited at the Kumbh grounds, which I feel is completely ridiculous. It seems the Indian government has gone a little too far with all this ‘teror’ security and is making everyone’s life more difficult while not really securing anyone. The same thing is happening in the UK now, and only last week a huge gathering of photographers at Trafalgar square was calling to protest English cops’ continuing harassment of photographers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.

So all this brings back memories of the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad in 2001. I am not sure I will be going to the Kumbh in Haridwar this time, but in 2001 I came to India for this reason alone. I was a commercial photographer in Tel Aviv at the time, and the plan of moving to India was already shaping up. I had just bought a new camera; the Nikon F100 and new lenses, and was going to India to play with it a little.

Thinking back about this trip now feels like it was in another life time. The F100 is of course a film camera, and I carried a bag of 200 rolls of film with me, to be used in India over a period of one month. I had only used about 80 rolls but this was an expensive trip anyway. The amount of money it took to process these rolls could have gotten me a digital camera today!

I went into my archive and dug out a few of my images of the 2001 Kumbh Mela in Allahabad. It is very interesting to look at one’s work in the perspective of time, especialy knowing now, that I had no idea what I was doing at that time. Being a commercial photographer, I had no clue of how to tell a story and how to properly document the event. I was simply walking around looking for nice pictures and hoping I manage to get a few. I must admit that I was mostly disappointed with my results at that time. In that sense, it would actually not be a bad idea to go back to the Kumbh Mela today and see what I come up with.

Anyway, here are a few pics from my trusted F100 that served me so well until it was replaced by the D70 when I stared shooting digital. Good or bad, it was simply an unforgettable experience!

Trucking in the Himalayas

sephi — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:10:15 +0000

My book ‘Horn Please – Trucking in India’ is almost finished and we are scheduled to go to print in a couple of weeks. It’s been a year of extensive work and it was funny to see that some of the images that we all like the most were captured only in the last month or so. The layout design by Yogesh Gajwani looks amazing. Some of the images are spread over a whole double page and it is so lovely to see.

wait for the book in January. In the mean time, here are some new images. I hope you like them.

People load a truck with sand from a river bed on the way to Gangotri in the high Himalaya mountains

A truck driving through a forest road in the state of Uttarkand, in the upper Himalayas

Worshipers unload an idol of the Hindu goddess Saraswati from a truck during celebration of Durga Puja festival, some forty km from Delhi

An idol of the HIndu goddess Durga being transported on the back of a truck to the site of immersion during the Durga Puja festival, some forty km from Delhi

A decorated truck is featured in the Bollywood movie 'Dil Bole Hadippa' (2009, Yash Raj films) seen from the projection room of a cinema hall in Noida (UP). The movie projector is reflected in the glass window of the projection room.

A women catching a ride on a back of a loaded truck on the Delhi-Jaipur highway bids farewell to the setting sun.

Raghurajpur – The Crafts Village

sephi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:10:28 +0000

Situated on the southern bank of river Bhargavi and surrounded by coconut, palm, mango, jackfruit groves and other tropical trees, Raghurajpur, a small village in Puri district of Orissa, occupies a unique place in the cultural map of India. The village is inhabited by artisans producing sheer poetry on pieces of treated cloth, dried palm leaf or paper.

Besides producing these unique works of art, this village has a living tradition of performing art known as Gotipua, the earlier form of Odissi. Guru Kelu Charan Mohapatra, an exponent of Odissi dance, was born in this village and had his early trainings in Gotipua tradition here. Now a Gotipua Gurukul Dance School has been established here under the guidance of Guru Maguni Charan Das. The trainees of this school present their performances in different cultural events, in India and abroad.

The government of India has selected Raghurajpur village for the promotion or rural tourism in the country as a part of a program to highlight tourism potential of villages. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) takes an active part in this initiative as part of it’s Endogenous Tourism Project (ETP).
all images © Sephi Bergerson / UNDP India

A man walks past a temple in the middle of the artists village of Raghurajpur in Puri district Orissa. The village runs from east to west with houses arranged in two neat rows, facing each other. At the centre, runs a line of small temples and the lone Bhagabat Tungi, the community meeting place of the villagers. The temples are dedicated to the lords, Radha Mohan, Gopinath, Raghunath, Laxminarayan, Gouranga, and to the village goddess, Bhuasuni.

Drawings on a house wall in the artists village of Raghurajpur in Puri district Orissa. Raghurajpur was selected to revive the ancient wall paintings of Orissa. The work has already been completed and now the village looks like a living museum of paintings.

A practice performance of the junior level Gotipua dancers at Gotipua Gurukul, a part of UNDP's ETP in village Raghurajpur, Orissa.

Guruji Maguni Das (99) winner of the Padmashree award 2004 is the Gotipua Gurukul's Orissi dance Guru.

Dyes on the floor of an artist studio, Raghurajpur, Orissa.

An artist at work. Raghurajpur village, Orissa. each family is engaged in one craft or another. There are 103 households having 311 artisans in the village. Some of them are winners of National Awards. One comes across the best tradition of Orissan paintings and some of the finest pieces of work in this village.

Daily life in the artists village of Raghurajpur in Puri district Orissa.

An artist showcasing his creation. Raghurajpur village, Orissa.

Following the Elephant God

sephi — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:56:49 +0000

Every year, sometime in August or September, the city of Mumbai goes crazy and in almost every house people perform their annual worship of Lord Ganesha, celebrating the birthday of the elephant God. Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is widely worshiped as the supreme god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune.

This eleven-day festival called Ganesh Chaturthi begins with the installation of beautifully sculpted Ganesha idols in homes and large tents where they are worshiped with family and friends. The festival is celebrated over ten days at the end of which the idol is taken in a big procession around the city’s streets and immersed in the Indian ocean. Tens of thousands of people gather on Chowpati beach in south Mumbai to witness the immersion of the biggest idols.

Fried water bombs – Pani Puri on Chowpatti beach

sephi — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:01:43 +0000

Its been a long time since my last visit to Mumbai when I worked on my ‘Street food of India’ book. Funny enough, this visit was also for street food. More specific, I came to Mumbai for Chowpatti beach and it’s Pani Puri vendors. It probably would have been better to come over the weekend when the beach is crowded with people, but my dead line was too tight and I had to go in the middle of the week.

Apart from Juhu in the suburbs, Chowpatty is Mumbai’s most famous beach. During the day, it is the hangout of the unemployed who snooze under the shade of its stunted trees, but in the evening the atmosphere is more like a carnival with hundreds of people coming to relax and maybe grab a light early evening bite at one of the bhelpuri shops hawking Mumbai’s most popular snacks: bhel puri and of course, Pani Puri.

Panipuri, also known as Gol Gappa (North India), Phuchka (Bengal), bataashaa or Gup chup is a popular street snack in the Indian subcontinent. It comprises a round, hollow “puri”, fried crisp and filled with a watery mixture of tamarind, chili, chaat masala , potato, onion and chickpeas. Its size is small enough to fit in the mouth. Pani comes from the Hindi word for water and puri (or poori), an Indian bread made by frying dough in oil. Delicious! :-)

Street food stalls on Chowpati beach in Mumbai offer a variety of favorite snacks like Bhel puri, Sev Puri and Pani puri.

A man visiting Chowpatti beach just after sunset, enjoys Pani Puri, as the vendor looks on. Mumbai. August 2009

Children visiting Chowpatti beach just after sunset, enjoy Pani Puri, a favorite street food snack. Mumbai, August 2009

Panipuri, or Pani puri, is a snack synonymous with the beaches of Mumbai. However, it is also very popular in all other parts of India known by many names like golgappa in North India, Foochka (Puchka) in West Bengal and Gupchup in some central parts of India like Hyderabad.

A vendor at a food stall on Juhu Chowpatti beach serving dripping Pani Puri. Mumbai, August 2009

A drive through Munar tea plantations in Kerala

sephi — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:00:34 +0000

While on assignment in Kerala I got lucky to visit the beautiful hill station of Mumar and it’s wonderful tea plantations. I wasn’t there to photograph the tea plantations, and it is a shame as it is so beautiful, but one cannot simply drive through Munar and not take pictures.

Four hour drive from Cochin, at an elevation of about 5000 ft above sea level, Munar is a beautiful destination for a vacation. Very often we drove in dense fog that only added to the mystery of the landscape. God’s own country indeed.

A coconut seller on the road to Munar, Kerala

Local nuns stop to pray at a roadside christian shrine in Munar, Kerala

Decorated cows in meadow approaching Munar tea estates, Kerala

Local women picking tea in the plantations, Munar, Kerala

Workers of the tea plantations carry fresh picked leafs to the road where they will be collected for further processing

Transporting the freshly picked tea leafs form the plantation to the factory, Munar, Kerala

A decorated Kerala truck loaded with timber, Munar, Kerala

I don't have too many pictures of myself. When I do finally pose for a one it really does feel a little strange, but hey, if I don't do that I will never have any picture at all :-)

Wine Country in South India

sephi — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:04:51 +0000

40 kilometers towards north of Bangalore in the state of Karnataka, lies a region that has only recently come to the attention of the rest of the world. Today, it has risen as a rich wine producing area which was once known as Tipu Sultan’s and later, the British summer retreat. Nandi Hills is a picturesque region dotted with sloping green hillsides and miles of forestland, inhabited with incredibly beautiful wild life. Grover Vineyards and Winery in the heart of Nandi Hills is one of the most well respected and reviewed emerging wineries in India.

Founder of Grover Vineyards in 1988, Kanwal Grover (center) decided at the age of 60, when normally people think of getting retired, to transform his passion for wine into a lifetime dedication. Kapil Grover, Kanwal’s son (L), is today the owner of Grover Vineyards, and his daughter Karishma Grover (R) is the third generation to the Grover family wine making family.

Michel Rolland at Grover Vineyards near Bangalore, India. Michel Rolland is the foremost wine consultant in the world. He has a Bordeaux-based consulting practice which takes care of the most prestigious estates across 12 countries around the globe. He consults some of the greatest Bordeaux Great Growth such asChteau Angelus, Chteau Lascombes, Chteau Loville Poyferr, Chteau Belgrave. Among others, he also consults Casa Lapostolle in Chile, Robert Mondavi, Harlan Estate in California and Chteau Saint Michelle.

The beginning of May is the time of harvesting at the Grover Vineyards at Nandi Hills outside of Bangalore, Karnataka.

For more images and for licensing, please visit the archive.

Horn Please – Trucking in India

sephi — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:54:17 +0000

If you have ever been to India you must know what ‘Horn Please’ means as it is carefully written on the back of all the trucks in the subcontinent as an advice for the driver who intends to go past them. We thought this would make the perfect name for a book about Indian trucks.

‘Horn Please – Trucking in India’ is a new upcoming book on trucking and the life and realities of truck drivers in India that will come out in December 2009. I was originally supposed to be the book’s photo editor but when I had a day off between two assignments in Kolkata a few months ago, I went to the fruit market to see what it is like, and shot a few images there. It was so much fun and so colorful that I then decided the book will have to be shot from scratch and not bought from stock, as was the original intention.

The majority of the images in the book will be mine while the rest by some other great photographers like Zackary Canepary, Thomas Pickard and Claude Barutel that have done some incredible work. The book is fully sponsored by a leading trucking and transportation company in India with a network form Kashmir to Kanyakumary.

Here are a few of my images from the upcoming book.

A truck driver having his first morning chai on a foggy winter day in Punjab

Drivers go about their morning duties in a Kolkata market

Kashmiri truck drivers in the cabin of their truck. Drivers spend weeks at a time on the road and deck the truck as fully as they can to make the time away from home as comfortable as possible

A decorated cabin of a truck in Kerala

A long line of trucks wait their turn for checking at the notorious Walayar check post between Tamil Nadu and Kerala in south India

A driver about to start making dinner in the cabin of his truck. Punjab

A makeshift restaurant at a truck depot outside of Delhi

An open-chassis truck seen through the front window of a taxi on the Agra-Delhi road. Half built trucks are a common view on Indian roads. The chassis is manufactured by the truck manufacturer but the rest of the truck is made of wood and will be built and decorated individually

A truck comes down a hill road undergoing maintenance near Wayanad, Kerala

Trucks at the fruit market in Kolkata, west Bengal

A decorated truck loaded with timber near Munar, Kerala

Toy trucks for sale in a roadside stall near Bathinda, Punjab

‘Fourchette et sac à dos – Inde’

sephi — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 07:41:25 +0000

Street food of Delhi – For those of you who didn’t see it on French TV5, dubbed in French of course.
Produced by coyote.fr and hosted by Julie Andrieu, this film was originally aired on French TV5 in July 2007.

Fourchette et sac a dos – Destination Inde from Sephi Bergerson on Vimeo.

Street Food ‘FotoWala’ in Old Delhi

sephi — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:23:33 +0000

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.