The Tiffinbox Photo Fund has received its first donation. The donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted me today to say this:

“I applaud you for starting this revolving fund. I will copy your appeal and send it to my friends.”

I urge you all to consider a small donation towards this project. Once we have $1000 collected, I can begin distributing it to worthy photojournalists from South Asia. The green donation box in the upper right hand corner of this site is where you can quickly make your donation. No amount is too small.

Directly connected to this cause is some great news – Abir Abdullah, a photojournalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, informs me today that his image has been selected as one of the finalists in the annual Gordon Parks Photography Competition.

Images from South Asia, like Abir's, can see the light of day only if we in the West step up and help photojournalists there enter contests and exhibit their work on websites like Tiffinbox. Let's do this together!

Via Ashok Parameshwaran

There is a brewing controversy over two very similar images, showing people from two different racial backgrounds.

Black people loot, White people find. Two photo agencies with obviously shitty copy editors.

The caption for the image of black people reads:

A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when it made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

The caption for the image of white people reads:

Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.(AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen)

The controversy has spurred commentary from other well known bloggers such Romenesko and Gothamist.

What do you think? Was the difference in reporting intentional or unintentional?

Via Radhika Singh

Breakthrough presents:

A performance celebrating Mary Anne Mohanraj's debut book, BODIES IN MOTION.

Marian Yalini Thambynaygam and Varuni Tiruchelvam incorporate theater, spoken word, song, dance, and music to dynamically explore issues within the Sri Lankan Tamil community–war, detention, the tsunami, etc.–using gender and sexuality as a lens. The journey they take us on is rife with profound questioning, moments of loss, and a resurgence of hope and love. Thambynayaygam and Tiruchelvam collaborate with Mohanraj to create a powerful performance to the text of ‘Bodies in Motion'.

September 9, 2005, 7:30 pm
The Listening Room @ Caffe Vivaldi
32 Jones St. (off Bleecker st. near 7th ave)
Suggested Donation: $5

For as long as I have been blogging, I have used Bloglet to automatically send updates to your email inboxes. I just checked my account with Bloglet and there are 358 subscribers to this blog, Tiffinbox.

Three-hundred-and-fifty-eight! GAWD! Really? WRONG! Well, a closer inspection revealed that many [hopefully not most] subscribers are those with fake or false email addresses. “admin@flash.com,” “card@game.com” and “info@amer.com” are some examples. Either spambots have found a way to enter their email addresses and take over the Bloglet system or there is one very bored hacker who has nothing better to do.

With Six Apart's authentication service TypeKey, I have kept most comment and trackback spammers at bay and have required those of you who want to leave comments to register with the service. I understand that this has discouraged many of you and I regret that you find it a PITA [pain in the arse] to leave your thoughts on this site. But life is short and I didn't want to spend any more time batting away those nefarious emails that we all receive from time to time.

So, with TypeKey in place Bloglet's unreliable and perhaps buggy service is getting the boot. I am bouncing it out of here. In its place I will be using FEEDblitz. Look for the FEEDblitz form in the same place you found the Bloglet form. Subscribe to this blog [yes, still free] and continue to receive all the posts in your email inbox. For those of you who used Bloglet, I have transferred over legitimate email addresses to the new service. The rest didn't make it. It's still a whopping 315 subscribers so Thank You!

And this is as good a time to let you know about Feedburner, my choice of service to publicize and optimize RSS feeds. If you don't know what RSS stands for [in the non-desi sense], fear not. If you are set on receiving all my posts here in your email inbox and your are happy, let's leave it at that.

If some of you have ventured into the world of aggregators like Bloglines, FeedDemon or NetNewsWire, then you can receive my posts as an automatic feed; posts that magically appear in your choice of aggregator along with other weblogs that you read. You don't have, though I wouldn't recommend it, visit this site directly. If for instance, I post images on this site, you are unlikely to see them in an aggregator.

If you do use an aggregator set up, I urge you to use the following FeedBurner feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/Tiffinbox – to receive it without any interruptions. There are many advantages for doing this; everything looks consistent and clean and is an easier, enjoyable read. I welcome you to give it a whirl.

And, here is list of alternative RSS readers.

As always, please send me feedback at tiffinbox [at] pipalproductions [dot] com.

This is getting to be a bad habit. What excuses can I conjure up this time for my utter reticence on this forum? Time again is at an all time premium. Ah, but should I continue supplying you with the same excuses?

It's late and my creative juices have stopped flowing. The fact is this – this last week I spent a great deal more time on a digital wedding photography forum learning the ins and outs of wedding photography than I did looking for cool content for this site. I can't mention that site's name or the URL. Suffice to say, I have learned more in a week than in a whole semester at college.

Some of you know that I have dove in head first into the digital realm. It's a little overwhelming. Harikrishna, a fellow photog, who posts his comments here has encouraged me to look at capturing images in the RAW format. But even before that crucial step, I have learned now, it's vitally important to know how to set the White Balance for the camera so that one's RAW captures can be easily converted. That's where I am sort of stuck. So, Hari, if you are reading this, holler at me. You know my number.

I am heading to the West coast this coming weekend to photograph a wedding. Yes, all digital. Am I nervous? Hell yeah, I am. If it were film, it would be a cake walk. But pithy comments aside, challenges are meant to make one stronger and I do hope this experience does for me what it has done for countless other photographers; make them better image makers using the tools of today. I don't mind acknowledging the fact that, in some respects, it does feel like I am photographing for the very first time. It is frightening, exciting and certainly exhilarating all at the same time.

The last few weeks of using my Nikon D70s has been very interesting. I have encountered lots of successful moments capturing precious moments in beautiful light. I have also been confounded by a recurring exposure problem when I use my 35mm f/2.0 lens on the new camera. [I understand a lot of this is going to be glossed right over by non-photographers, but bear with me please.] Consecutive exposures produced by my new camera have all had blown-out highlights and that too when I was just messing around in the “P” [or Program] mode. This is the mode that most amateurs will depend on for creating images. I use the “M” [manual] or the “A” [Aperture] modes for most of my image making. The “P” mode provides the user both the shutterspeed and the aperture to create adequately and [most of the time] accurately exposed images. To find that the machine fails in this rather basic function perplexes me. I have to wonder if I have unwittingly hit some button on the machine and it will remain whacked till I reset it to factory specifications.

Ok, I have rambled on enough for one night. I hope to have something more substantial and wholeheartedly interesting to post tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

Digital Black and White [by far the most exhaustive or exhausting way to convert color images into black & white]

Belgium-based photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve spends a great deal of time in Nepal photographing the Maoist rebellion there

Newfound photoblogs: smallestPhoto and LightTight

Editor & Publisher seeking entries for its sixth annual Newspaper Photos of the Year contest. Deadline is September 16, 2005.

BAGnewsNotes: Getting Between The Point and The View, a progressive and often satirical look at how images are used by the conservative press

BigEyeInTheSky.com shoots special aerial photographs that are combined by a computer to create fullscreen 360 degree aerial panoramas.

Random Experiences Of New Father, a must-read blog for fathers-to-be. Written by Neal Shah, it's full of useful information and often funny [which is really the best way to describe Neal himself]

Pia Awal beats leukemeia, gets married. Congratulations!

Shalini Akhil's i, Writer [adventures in the literary world]

How Is It Out There?

photo-eye is auctioning off Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment [hope you have a trust fund]

Photographer Jim Gehrz helps you find YOUR photograph

Digital Black and White [by far the most exhaustive or exhausting way to convert color images into black & white]

Belgium-based photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve spends a great deal of time in Nepal photographing the Maoist rebellion there

Newfound photoblogs: smallestPhoto and LightTight

Editor & Publisher seeking entries for its sixth annual Newspaper Photos of the Year contest. Deadline is September 16, 2005.

BAGnewsNotes: Getting Between The Point and The View, a progressive and often satirical look at how images are used by the conservative press

BigEyeInTheSky.com shoots special aerial photographs that are combined by a computer to create fullscreen 360 degree aerial panoramas.

Random Experiences Of New Father, a must-read blog for fathers-to-be. Written by Neal Shah, it's full of useful information and often funny [which is really the best way to describe Neal himself]

Pia Awal beats leukemeia, gets married. Congratulations!

Shalini Akhil's i, Writer [adventures in the literary world]

How Is It Out There?

photo-eye is auctioning off Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment [hope you have a trust fund]

Photographer Jim Gehrz helps you find YOUR photograph

Caption: “We stay together as a family. I left my previous family and started a new life but did not feel sorry for the act because of the love which I got from my friends and Guru (leader) over here, I never received it from my previous family. –Chanchal”

Kaaya: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Imaging Self,
by Parthiv Shah
Director
Centre for Media and Altrernative Communciation (CMAC)
Delhi, India

As a photographer, I always find it challenging to work with marginalised communities. One of the reasons they are marginalised is due to the way they get represented in society. Whether it is the transgender community, sex workers, the diasporic community, tribal groups or religious minorities, they all face similar problems. Living on the periphery of mainstream society not only a physical reality but also invades their psyche. And due to little or no information about them they are regarded “Exotica”. Things that are unknown often romanticised. This then is an issue of identity, pushed outside of the normative – the parameters of which are determined by the mainstream society.

Transgender communities are a part of our society and have created a world of their own. They have their own kinds of relationships, unusual means of livelihood and importantly an identity which constantly underlines their exclusion. For many years now the community has been subjugated to roving eye of anthropologists, photographers and their ilk who made them subject of their study and represented them most of the time in a context which is not theirs. A single photograph projects an image of a person/ situation mostly out of context. Even a small article with few images cannot in most instances do justice to this community.

Hijras or the transgender community enjoys the mystery which surrounds them. This helps them in their business of cruising in zones created by them for themselves. They not only like to appear different in the body sense but also their mannerisms are idiosyncratic. They use this performance/act to iterate the identity that mainstream society has cast them in. To represent the true character of such a group for an outsider is a humongous task. They might allow you to help them in their territory on their terms and conditions for a purpose which they have no control over. In other words they might seek an outsider’s help for lets say health care, education or even legal advice but they never are sure about how they would like the world at large to look at them.

In the 1990’s I conducted a workshop with children in Mangolpuri, a resettlement colony in outskirts of Delhi. In that workshop I had given aim and shoot cameras to participants who were in the age group 9 to 15. The participants – all children, had not taken a photograph or even held a camera in their lives. It was my first attempt to understand how children look at things through a camera, how they frame their subject and how they perceive things. The results were astounding. We first printed and exhibited their prints in a Baarat ghar (Community Centre) where they proudly invited their parents for the inauguration. The exhibition traveled to one of the most prestigious galleries in India at the Centre for photography as an art form at NCPA, Mumbai. I am not sure how much my participants from the workshop learnt about photography but they sure had lot of fun exploring the world of looking and telling! For me – I discovered a new vision – a vision that was beyond my own.

When I started on this project I had imagined that the Mangolpuri experience would give me some directions in working with the transgender community. But that was clearly not the case. As I started out I discovered that there have been many attempts to showcase transgender community through photographs, documentaries, books and exhibitions by outsiders. It took several discussions to explore the idea that they are perhaps in a better position to communicate to the world outside of theirs the many facets of their existence. Unfolding the layers of misinformation, exposing and showcasing their lives would perhaps be the best way to bridge the disconnect. In the process they got involved thoroughly and had one goal in mind that they should be seen as human beings and no less or more.

For the first meeting when I entered the SAHARA clinic at Yamuna Pushta, the largest slum of Delhi, with Anjalee and Shantanu from SAHARA we heard lot of music and laughter. Not knowing what to expect, I found we were greeted by a room full of hijras. They were as anxious as we were. As I greeted them I realized in this project there are going to be no directors, no experts, no subjects and no underdogs. To break the ice I had taken few books which I shared with them. As they started looking at images they got interested in the costumes and makeup of people in those images, the situation in which it was taken and started laughing and sometimes even quarreling. After some discussion they told me that they would like to do this project. They were very willing to participate but will have to take permissions from their respective Gurus.

I took this to be a good sign as they were all willing and excited about this newfound activity. This was not just to be an experience of clicking photographs and looking at themselves only, but also about meeting new people like us. In next meeting we discussed further about how to proceed. We discussed some themes which would allow them to look at things around them. The group of participants was never the same. They would come and go. I realized that this is going to be pattern and I will have to accept the situation. The good rapport that Sahara had with the community facilitated the discussions on many instances. The Hijra community lives all across Delhi and they have their areas marked for their business/work. It became easy for us to distribute cameras according the area they stayed. We made pairs of two and they took their first film rolls with great excitement. Two weeks later I received about 10 film rolls, each one labeled with names. When I saw prints I was amazed with the results, also because I did not know what to expect! I took these prints for our next rendezvous and I shared them with both the groups the one who shot these images and the next group who would be shooting. They were really excited and wanted to shoot more. They talked about each of these images they had selected and why. This was then recorded and translated for the catalogue and exhibition. They were asked to select two to three photographs, which they would like to exhibit. They also created the narration for each of the photographs that they selected.

When I see these images which are photographed, modeled and selected by Hijra’s themselves I feel reassured that our decision to make them part of this entire process was completely valid. These images work at many levels. For one in it allows you to journey into their lives from their point of view. It is clear from the pictures that they want to share, want others to know how they live – that this is how they eat, bathe, dance, feel sad, and survive. I kept my role as minimal as possible as I wanted very little outside influence in this venture. This visual journey defines their very identity. The transgender community in this project has unveiled their lives into the public space. This is one of those rare instances where they have modeled, photographed and written about themselves for a book and exhibition which is meant for a world outside their own. I personally believe that this effort will contribute to doing away with stigmas. An increased understanding of their lives, will foster the realization that they are people first and transgender afterward.

If you haven't noticed, I haven't posted anything here for over a week. It has been rough. My father, who is visiting us, took ill and we have had numerous trips to the hospital. He is on the mend now. It's been busy at work as well. Plus, I am not in the habit of posting just anything here. If it isn't really interesting to me, it is a safe bet your interest won't be piqued by it either. There is already so much junk on the Internet anyway, why clutter it up even more and waste your time.

Well, I am going to make some real effort to finish the Kaaya series this next week. There are some controversial images coming up; ones that will make you wonder if viewing this at work is wise, so I am going to tuck them into the extended section of the post. Click on the link at your own risk. I assure you it is not pornographic, just graphic.

Having said that, let me get back to the projects I have at hand. One of which is a blog about wedding photojournalism. I'll let you know what the URL is in a few days. Will launch on my 37th birthday [on August 23]. I also want to report here that I am having way too much fun with my new digital camera, the Nikon D70s. While I still gripe about it missing a vertical battery grip for shooting portraits, the camera performs satisfactorily. My true test of the machines (yes, I am about to buy another) is if can produce work for a wedding I am photograhing in Los Angeles at the tail end of this month. This will be my first all-digital wedding. I am a bit nervous, but the process of photography is about stepping off the curb and into high traffic to see if one can survive. This will be just another test. I am mucking about now with the machine to get used to all its various bells and whistles and trust me, there is more here than there was on my F-100s.

I am selling my Nikon Coolpix 4500 for $200. First person to respond and pay me [Paypal possible] will get that camera and a 192mb compact flash card, along with a couple of rechargeable batteries and a battery charger. Shipping included. Email me at tiffinbox [at] pipalproductions [dot] com. The Coolpix has served me very well. I paid $645 about two years ago. It's a 4 megapixel camera that swivels [very cool!]. The picture you see below was shot with it. So, the quality is there.

After months of research [yeah, rite – more like hand wringing], I have jumped the film ship for icy cold digital waters. Here is proof [grin]:

Thanks to Harikrishna, Maran and others who nudged me along to make the move. Will I be shooting RAW or JPGs? Hmmm … all will be revealed eventually. I am trying to come up with a sane workflow. Advice/suggestions welcome.

I have to admit that when I saw this box at home, I responded to the UPS man like he was Santa Claus and danced like it was Christmas morning. Ok, I am slightly embellishing what really happened, but you get the picture.

I have yet to unpack the strobe, the memory cards etc. Just taking it all in one at a time. However, here is a sample of what I recently shot with the D70s. The image is of my son doing what he does best:

I'll post more of my digital experiments here. So, keep checking back!