After 19 months of renovating a turn of the century shophouse I/we can finally call George Town home. A new project has me digging through the archives reminding me why I wanted to live here in the first place. George Town is a little sleepy, a little rough and tumble, a little wacky and a little beautiful all at once. It's nice to be home.
A few years back when I was shooting this story I found myself with a dilema - amputate part of the scene or shoot vertical. Many of my photographer friends talk about verticals the way someone might sheepishly mention driving drunk into a ditch or spilling hot coffee in their lap. Some say they only take one vertical a year. I've heard others say that it just feels weird.
Typically online slide shows are geared towards horizontal frames, a vertical in the mix looks odd. It throws off the continuity. Also, you can always crop a horizontal to vertical if you absolutely need a vertical for a page layout so why not keep as much information in the frame as possible.
So my problem with the Penang shot above and below is that I just could not make a horizontal happen. Above, I was shooting a 35mm pushed against a wall. In order to clear the top of the minuret I was laying on the ground with my face pressed against the sidewalk. At sidewalk level there was a nice line of light leading to the mosque. In a perfect world I would have a person walking through the light with the line of the mosque leading the eye to the minuret (when I took the above shot a cloud had just passed in front of the sun). I could get the line and the minuret but not the light. So when the guy below walked into the frame I said mea culpa and shot a vertical.
I didn't bother submitting this vertical frame but did end up using the shot later for a print publication. It's a scene I'll need to revisit either with a wider lens or with the idea of finding anther vantage point if I want to get it all in a horizontal.
Recent work for Travel + Leisure SEA. In November I checked out what was new in my adopted home George Town. It's still packed full of all the loveable characters that brought me here to begin with but a few more galleries, restaurants, cafes and hotels give it a whole new (in a good way) feel.
I'd like to think that George Town is just improving on the good things it had to begin with. Time will tell but so far so good.
Jump over to the December issue for a feature piece on Koh Samui, Thailand.
Not a hardship post (unless you're shooting a piece in the rainy season). Good food, clean ocean and an amazing artisanal producer of rum. It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.
Monday marked the first day of the Taoist Nine Emperor Gods Festival. The festival, which is designed to worship 9 emperors who are thought to be 9 stars around the Big Dipper and children of female deity, Dou Mu, is celebrated at Taoist temples in Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar and Thailand. Oddly enough, it is not celebrated in China, where it originated in the province of Fujian.
In 2010 I met by chance an elder of Tow Bo Temple on Cheong Fatt Tze Street (formerly Hong Kong St) in George Town, Penang. He invited me to attend ceremonies held on the ninth day of the festival, which culminate in a fantastic procession throughthe streets of George Town that ends at one of the Hokkien clan jetties on Weld Quay Road.
Tow Bo Temple is thought to be the oldest 9 Emperor Gods temple in Malaysia; scriptures at the temple date back to 1842. Families living in homes on either side of the temple, which have occupied them for five generations now, keep and maintain the float that the temple deploys in the procession.
Nine Emperor god worshippers are known by their white clothing and yellow sashes.
On the ninth day of the festival the 9 Emperor Gods are called to the temple and sent off in a boat. The ceremony begins with the raising of nine lanterns on a high bamboo pole outside of the temple. Inside the temple worshippers offer incense and food and pray. Then the temple's priest/medium calls in the Emperor Gods. Then the ceremony moves out onto the street, where arches are set up for worshippers to walk under.
While all this is going on members are beating drums outside; the atmosphere is electric and you can feel the spriritual fervor build. This helps worshippers who will be pierced though their cheeks enter a trance-like state which enables them to take the injury to their bodies dealt by quite large rods without bleeding. On the night I attended the ceremony about 6 or so devotees accepted the piercing. There's no wincing, there's no evidence of pain when the rod is driven through the cheeks of these men. It is, frankly, a little surreal to watch.
After the piercing the men are led down a sort of human chute of devotees, encouraged by clapping and drumming, and then they take their places on the temple's float. Lots of firecrackers are set off at the base of the street where it joins Carnavon, a major thoroughfare along which the procession, which includes floats from many other Nine Emperor God temples on Penang, will pass.
The procession is long and intense. Devotees follow along banging drums and in addition to their wheeled floats each temple has numerous male members carrying a sort of palanquin upon which a heavy boat rests. This boat figures in at the end of the ceremony. As the procession moves past other non-9 Emperor Gods temples (there are a LOT of temples in George Town, large and miniscule) the palanquin carriers do a sort of back-and-forth movement towards their entrances 3 times, symbolizing bows of respect.
At the pier, Tow Bo elders boarded a boat with the temples boat, which was loaded with paper offerings, joss sticks and sandlewood. They motored out to sea and set the boat ablaze. I boarded another boat with Tow Bo devotees and from that we watched the fire. We could see boats from other temples, also ablaze, floating in the distance. If the craft returns to land it is considered unlucky.I have attended many religious events in Asia over the years. This was by far one of the most intense and exhausting.And rewarding. I hope this multimedia captures some of the intensity and raw emotion of that night.
A technical note:
I shot with 3 cameras - Canon EOS 1 Mark II fitted with a 70-200mm 2.8 IS, Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a 35mm 1.4 and Ricoh GRD3 which proved to be especially adept at capturing close in shots in a tightly packed crowd. I generally shot at ISO 800-1600 on the Canons and 400-800 on the Ricoh. I also had 2 OP/TECH USA Rainsleeves in my bag which came in handy when we had an hour-long deluge towards the end of the procession. When I met up with my contact at the temple he told me that big rain happens "every year at about the same time in the procession" -- so if you plan to attend this year, be forewarned.
Thank you to elders and members of Tow Bo Temple for their warm hospitality.
One of those 'you gotta stop the car' moments. Heading home from a portrait shoot in George Town this morning. A shrine erected on a small residential lane, paper horses grass stuffed in their mouths, baby passifiers hung around their necks. In a bucket at one of the horses' feet gold peanuts float in water.
Across the street a giant joss stick burns at a smaller shrine. as people pass. Some taking notice..others oblivious.
Just another day in George Town.
If you're coming to Penang and are interested in photography and in seeing a different side of George Town I offer one on one instruction tours. Details here. Drop me a line.
It's always nice to do a story close to home so I was delighted when asked to photograph 36 Hours : Penang for the New York Times. (Go here for the slideshow).
Assignments always push me to do a little more, like knock on complete stranger's door at 8:00am to ask if I can take a photo (above) from their window.
..or to climb on to a fishing boat to see what I can see..
..but mostly it is about trying to see the place with the eyes of a visitor. ..
..scenes that I might sometimes take for granted..
But there really is so much cool stuff here that I'm still finding new things about the place. And the best part is that it seems to still be getting better.
For more Penang check out past work in the NYT here as well as a 'self assigned' series 'My Penang',
or take a musical tour here.
So this is my new home - Penang. I've been coming up here regularly since I first arrived in Malaysia some 5.5 years ago, but now it's where I'll hang my camera.
Don't get me wrong - no hard feelings KL. You were good to me but it was time to move on.
Since moving here I've had a chance to take several people around on photo walks and I'm always amazed what we'll find.
There's always something around every corner.
Pick up a copy of this month's Travel + Leisure SEA where I shot up and coming heritage hotels in historic George Town.
We've posted a pdf over here. You can download your own copy from this site.
Click here for more of my commercial and editorial work in the hotel and restaurant industry.
For part 3 I changed tact. I had a few other things that needed to be photographed on my last visit to Penang so instead of setting up in a single location I roamed George Town, as I often do, stopping to photograph interesting folks along the way.
Since I was working my focus was on others working as well, like this newspaper collector or these two watching renovations taking place across the street.
And these hardworking citizens...
First leg of the US trip and it's hard to believe I was in Penang 10 days ago. It rained most of the time I was in Penang so my street portrait sessions were limited. Here are a few from the first day.
