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July 27, 2016
Photo © Shiho Fukada - Courtesy Bloomberg
Here's another photo essay on the Sōma-Nomaoi festival by photojournalist Shiho Fukada as featured by Bloomberg Pursuits.

The annual festival involves horse-riding participants don elaborate armor like samurais, who aim to recreate scenes from Japan's Sengoku period (1467–1603) which was marked by social upheaval, political intrigue and near-constant military conflict.

The festival's original purpose was a military exercise designed to sharpen the fighting skills of the samurai. One event in the festival, Shinki Sodatsusen, sees the samurai compete for flags that have been shot into the air. The festival has been designated as an "intangible cultural asset" by the Japanese government.

Shiho Fukada is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, cinematographer, and photojournalist based in Boston and Tokyo. She started her career as a news photographer in New York and has a decade of experience shooting and producing stories nationally and internationally. She currently pursues underreported stories both in video and photography. She has a degree in English literature from Sophia University in Japan and received a diploma in Multimedia Journalism from Ateno de Manila University in the Philippines.

Her work has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Time, Stern, New Yorker, Le Monde, CNN, MSNBC and others.

Incidentally, I've never heard of Bloomberg Pursuits, which describes itself as its hub for lifestyle news and luxury reviews, your guide to the best food, fashion, travel, cars, watches, real estate, gadgets, wine, and cocktails.

And here is a short movie on the Soma Nomaoi festival.

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July 10, 2016
Photo Courtesy of Untold
The portal website of Untold is a veritable trove of photo stories of endangered traditions and art forms of India, and one that piqued my interest is The Lone String Puppeteer of Monipally.

Monipally is a small and peaceful village in Kottayam district, Kerala, and according to Wikipedia earns the sobriquet of 'The Spicy Virgin Village', but no further explanation is given.

The photo story of The Lone String Puppeteer of Monipally is of a 15-year-old women named Renjini, who is said to be the only person in the world today that can maneuver the entire epic of Ramayana on the tip of her lips – on a pole of string alone. Renjini and her grandmother are the only practitioners of this delicate ancestral art.

In Kerala, a centuries old legacy comes to life with wooden string puppets that tell the entire Ramayana and Mahabharata. The art form is called Nokku Vidhya Pavakalli,  and is an indigenous puppet theatre form practiced for centuries in Kerala.

The puppets are perched atop a pole that rests vertically on the upper lip of the puppeteer squatting on the floor. The puppets are animated with the help of strings held by the artiste. The act of balancing the puppets and animating them call for extreme concentration and practice, as the puppets are made to move in tune with the tempo of the accompanying music.






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June 29, 2016

The highly anticipated photo book Hầu Đồng : The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam will soon be available to coincide with the inclusion of this ancient indigenous in the UNESCO Registry which is expected in September 2016.

With over 100 large color photographs and more than 60 pages of text, it explains the ancient syncretic religion of Đạo Mẫu, its rituals and its pantheon of deities, along with my narrative of my own experiences documenting it in Vietnam since 2014.

I am one of the very few non-Vietnamese photographers to be welcomed during countless Hầu Đồng ceremonies, and allowed to produce a photo book of this tradition in this magnitude.

Serendipity is a funny thing. Having literally stumbled on this Vietnamese religious tradition and its ceremonial tangential manifestations of Hầu Đồng and Hát Chầu Văn in late 2014 literally supercharged, and reinvigorated, my enthusiasm for documentary photography, audio recording, storytelling and multimedia production.

I completely immersed myself in this project, traveling many times to Hanoi from New York City to attend often undeclared ceremonies in the capita, its suburbs and in other distant regions to its north and east. To have access and be welcomed in these ceremonies wherever they are held, one must gain the confidence and trust of the community, and initially be accompanied by someone known to the mediums or the musicians.

Producing a book is an achievement for certain, but there's something infinitely more important to me than the photographs I made...and that's the friendships and the human kindnesses I've been privileged to experience while at these ceremonies.
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December 16, 2015
CyberLink PowerDVD is an all-purpose entertainment station, providing the ability to enjoy any type of digital media virtually. Not only is PowerDVD an excellent Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and DVD player, it also provides superior playback performance for movie and video files, including MKV, MP4, AVCHD, and XAVC-S. Additionally, PowerDVD plays audio files in the most popular lossless formats and supports all the main image formats. Camera RAW images can be directly viewed without having to convert them first.
CyberLink PowerDVD is an all-purpose entertainment station, providing the ability to enjoy any type of digital media virtually. Not only is PowerDVD an excellent Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and DVD player, it also provides superior playback performance for movie and video files, including MKV, MP4, AVCHD, and XAVC-S. Additionally, PowerDVD plays audio files in the most popular lossless formats and supports all the main image formats. Camera RAW images can be directly viewed without having to convert them first.

CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra Overview:

PowerDVD is the perfect universal media player for all your entertainment needs. Play any movie, video or music file or view photos stored locally, in Youtube or Facebook or on other devices all from within the one powerful application. It also works perfectly with your home network, share media library to other DLNA devices at home, browse content from other media server or extend your media experience to Power Media Player on your iPhone, iPad, and Android phone or Windows tablets.
PowerDVD is the perfect universal media player for all your entertainment needs. Play any movie, video or music file or view photos stored locally, in Youtube or Facebook or on other devices all from within the one powerful application. It also works perfectly with your home network, share media library to other DLNA devices at home, browse content from other media server or extend your media experience to Power Media Player on your iPhone, iPad, and Android phone or Windows tablets.

CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra 2015 Features:

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  • Complete DLNA Solution: CyberLink PowerDVD 15 Ultra allows you to playback media content across PC, Tablet, Smartphone & TV.
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System Requirements For CyberLink PowerDVD 15 Ultra:

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Microsoft Windows 7, vista, 8, 8.1, 10
Pentium 4 (2.4GHz), Athlon 64 2800+ (1.8GHz), AMD Fusion E-series & C- series or above
500MB HDD
2GB ram

Download Links:

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