Countless children, dead, dying and living in absolute terror. This is Zionism. This is Israel and the US. The world does not support this, but a few colonizer nations are hell bent on keeping this going.
#freepalestine #endgenocide #calloutkamala #endapartheid #MostMoralArmy
Surrounding kids
Surrounding kids, kidnapping, torture, murder, rape. The Israeli military commits endless war crimes against Palestinians, and gets more arms and money from the US. Meanwhile US lawmakers and institutions curtail free speech while breaking their own laws to support genocide and threaten and bomb nations that dissent.. #MostMoralArmy #ceasefirenow #calloutkamala #endapartheid #endgenocide
Don’t mirror the ugliness
Don’t mirror the ugliness. It’s a tough thing to do. In the face of those in power supporting a brutal genocide with absolute disregard for every rights organization, international court, UN vote, and the protests of their own people.
With over 40,000 Palestinians dead, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu continues his violence unabated with no willingness to negotiate for the release of his own country’s hostages, while he takes thousands more Palestinians hostage and grabs more land in Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile, the United States, his sole unwavering ally supplies endless weapons and support, despite the illegality of that under US law (Leahy Law). What should people do?
Protest. Disrupt. Demand.
Perhaps if we truly learned about rights movements and the way they organized and pushed for change, we would be more able to recognize them as they occur in front of us. If only we understood that those in power have always sought to delegitimize popular protest as fringe elements, acting in bad faith with no knowledge, goal or practical sense.
Today there was a huge Zionist counter protest to the UCLA Palestine Solidarity encampment. Here’s an article that talks about how it started over night, that gives you an idea of its nature. I visited the protest site a couple of days earlier, prayed in solidarity, created some art and soaked in the importance of what was being done there. It was very peaceful despite some belligerent voices outside the encampment trying to incite and disrupt our prayers and sermon. We were surrounded and protected by pro Palestine protestors, many visibly Jewish.
When the call came to support these students in the face of a Zionist counter protest, I was there, like many others. As I reached, I saw a friend and their child in a stroller. We walked to a group with banners chanting slogans, reiterating the need for not engaging with harassment, and centering on Gaza and the Palestinians. During this, some guy drove up and was pointing and shouting angrily at a group he could not control. People on the protest side spent a great deal of energy deescalating and handling this undeserving, entitled man with patience and decency. People accustomed to getting their way in life are losing their minds over this.
We then started a short march to the encampment. Since I had last been there, it had expanded and right next to it was a largely empty, barricaded space with a professional looking audio and video setup. Bro-ey guys hi fived one another as they got a few seconds of sound out before the audio would cut out again.
Meanwhile, we gathered, between them and the pro Palestine encampment with signs and chanting slogans. There were a small number of people with Israeli flags, pushing their way towards us, being belligerent, demanding that their will be done. It was clear that these were people accustomed to bullying politicians and corporations into compliance, but when you have a group of people, not swayed by greed for corporate profits, and no truth to back your stance, how do you deal with those who won’t bend to your will?
Apparently, by talking of being America loving, peaceful humanitarians while speaking over the sound system, as pompous men and women, holding flags, push, threaten with rape, dismemberment and try to stab with their little flags in frustration when not acknowledged.
It struck me that many of these people are not used to being refused or called out. I realized that the greatest affront to them was to not be heard or acknowledged in any way. They could shout and wave their flags. They rushed into the midst of the supposedly anti-Semitic crowd without fear, swore at people, tried to get a rise out of them and continued back to their group seemingly satisfied by way of all their self congratulatory hi fives, though perhaps not so from their anger.
The Zionists were quite unhinged on the mic. They bounded between telling us that we had said “Fuck you to America”, to about themselves, “We are lovers of peace and America”, to the “LAPD is on the way”, to “If you would all quiet down for a few minutes, we can talk. We’ll speak and then we’ll let you say a few words on the mic.” This was all within a span of maybe 30 minutes, while their people with Israeli flags pushed, shouted and threatened us. As a Muslim in the US, we’re somewhat accustomed to having a bunch of nut jobs harass us when we’re celebrating Eid, cursing at us, about our revered figures and humanity by way of right wing Christian extremists. To our kids, we have the delightful task of explaining that while people can inspire all kinds of greatness, there are also these ones.
More Zionists joined over time, as did Palestine supporters. I watched as an elderly Palestinian man, saw people of all varieties, supporting, validating and caring. There were amazing Jewish youth with watermelon crochet yamakas, not in my name shirts, people of every background in solidarity. People lead chants, endlessly, those who handled security from the Palestine solidarity side, placed their bodies between Zionists and pro Palestine protestors, protecting and de-escalating.
What I saw, while I was there, was an organized effort by the Palestine side to make our demands clear that the university needed to divulge their investments, as students had a right to know how their tuition was being used and to divest it from arms manufacturers and other entities supporting a genocide.
This is how change happens. Universities around the US offer no other way to challenge the support of investments in arms manufacturers and other war and occupation profiteers, as they seem to believe themselves, in their powerful circles, to be above question, even as the world screams for ceasefire, an end to this genocide and freedom for Palestine. The fight is just and it must disrupt, as other movements have before it. If this seems new to you, perhaps you should look into how previous struggles have prevailed.
Photowalk DTLA 9/6/2023
This time I took a couple of Contax Zeiss lenses, 25mm f2.8 and 135mm f2.8. I felt that the two lenses were a good contrast to one another in terms of focal lengths and being able to capture a variety of moments, closer and further away.
Photowalk Melrose
A walk around Melrose Ave with an ultra wide Laowa 15mm f4, a few shots from a Canon 40mm 2.8 trying some not great autofocus, and some night shots with a Contax Zeiss 50mm f1.4 all on a Sigma FP.
Photowalk Chinatown Los Angeles
Some photos from a walk through Los Angeles’ Chinatown. I experimented a bit with cropping and a few photos felt best in black and white.
Photo Walk DTLA
Another photo walk in downtown Los Angeles. This time I took an old Hasselblad 50mm f4 medium format lens and and Pentax 67 165mm lens. When I walk around, I feel more comfortable with a wider lens than something longer like the 165mm. I’m figuring out how to frame shots with the longer lens, in the moment. With this set of photos, even more than previously, I played around with cropping and found that it really helped to bring out a more compelling story. A longer lens could help me get some of that in camera, but in the moment, it is so much easier to get all the compositional elements in a nice wide shot, which gives me more to work with. This is a big part of what I am doing with these photo walks, is to see what I can capture in the moment, and then create from that in post to complete some images of fleeting captured moments.
Photo walk Little Tokyo and Downtown Arts District
Here are some photos from another photo walk in Downtown Los Angeles. This time, we went to Little Tokyo and the Arts District. With street photography, I am working on finding images that tell stories in my surroundings, rather than creating images from a story that I have created from nothing as I do in animation. This time I went out with the Sigma FP, Carl Zeiss 25mm f2.8 and Mamiya 150mm f3.5 lenses.
Grand Ave Street Photography DTLA
I took the Sigma FP, an old Vivitar Close Focus 28mm f2, Soligor 135mm f2 and a Laowa 15mm f4. I caught the sun as it shone through the buildings by Figueroa and 7th before joining the group behind the Central Library, up through Grand Ave, Grand Park and back again. Here are some of my favorites from the night. One of the highlights for me was while walking down Grand Ave, we saw some well dressed folks taking photos in the center lane of the street. Not wanting to intrude, we just kept taking photos around, when they invited us to photograph them. Those were a lot of fun and of course I made sure to send the photos to our wonderful models. While looking at the rest of the photos, it was fun to see which were more interesting to me. There are moments where a figure completes the composition of buildings and streets or a car slides into frame in mid turn that I feel make for a more interesting, captured moment.
Verdugo Park Painting
Plein air watercolor painting in Verdugo Park.
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Ali Sethi and Discostan at Grand Performances
It has been a while, but it was so much fun to see a live music show at Grand Performances, and what a night, with Discostan whom I have missed for a long time and to see Ali Sethi. Thanks to the Pakistan Arts Council, Aga Khan Museum and Grand Performances for sharing such a wonderful night of music. I was too busy dancing the night away to take many photos, but to hear Discostan meld music from across the subcontinent with driving beats that move your body, then Ali Sethi, bringing such warmth and history along with his own incredible songs as well as beautiful poetry and disco was just a perfect night. Dancing the night away to all of that with a kid obsessed with Pasoori, singing it all the time and loves dancing is about the best thing in the world. Thank you.
Ustad Anb Jogi
In memory of my dear friend and collaborator, Ustad Anb Jogi.
Read MoreAnamorphic Play at Kenneth Hahn Park
After a good rain, the sky clears up for a moment in Los Angeles. Here are some photos from a walk in Kenneth Hahn Park, using a Sigma FP with a Contax Zeiss 45mm f2.8 pancake lens and an Isco Ultrastar anamorphic projector lens. I had to shoot in crop mode, and noticed quite a bit of vignette on anything shot stopped down.
2021 Year in Review
A look at some projects from 2021
Read MoreCamping in Idyllwild
After filming for about 5 weeks, in every free moment I could manage, I took a break and went camping. I wanted to try out the Sigma FP for stills as I had been using it for filming “Ramkali”. I also ended up using Dark Table for all the color work afterwards. I shot with no color profile and made my adjustments after the fact. It was actually quite impressive to see what could be pulled out of these images with some simple editing.
The stars in the clear night sky were beautiful. I used a combination of Laowa 15mm f4, Vivitar (Komine) Close Focus 28mm f2, Zeiss 50mm 1.4 and a Zeiss 300mm f4. Focus is more challenging off a screen in the bright sun. Other than a few missed shots due to that, I really enjoyed it.
Filming begins
After over a month of focusing on the animatic (storyboards in motion set to music), and weeks of additional camera, puppetry and lighting tests, I began filming ‘Ramkali’, the short excerpt of my feature film ‘Risalo’ for my Hand Made Puppet Dreams Micro Commission. It is a daunting task. I always wanted to film with the actual Rajasthani puppeteers, Puran Bhatt and his group and work with a crew, but this is the way to move forward.
Every morning I put in a few hours before work. I categorized shots by difficulty 1-4 and am starting with the 1s. I've found that shooting with the camera (Sigma FP) at its native ISO (in this case 3200), with aperture set to how much depth of field I want and variable ND filter to bring the exposure down to 0 on the camera gives me grain free images that I can color grade later. The Mamiya 645, medium format lenses are beautiful to work with, and a few Aputure lights, some cheap soft boxes and I’ve got what I need to tell this story.
I even managed an overhead shot and one with a slider and rack focus. It is actually a lot of fun and exhausting work to create these shots and come up with creative ways to make each of them possible.
Lighting Tests 07/15/2021
I’ve started to put some more pieces of the setup together. Here I used a couple of Aputure lights and some simple soft boxes. The softboxes did a good job of illuminating the backdrop, without casting shadows from other objects. This also meant that the gel colors were less intense on the background, but I think it works.
I used an Aputure light as a hair light to pull the goat puppet off the background and look like the early morning sunlight.
The Sigma FP, camera works so well in low light and at higher ISO values that it was really easy to shoot most of this at F8 to get a deeper depth of field (more depth in focus). It also worked well at ISO 100 at F1.9 on this Mamiya 80mm medium format lens I was using.
I added a crumpled cloth underneath the set ground on the table to give it some shape and interest. This will be a useful way to create variety.
I have an optical snoot that I am interesting in experimenting with custom disks to get some stylized looks.
Thanks to Hand Made Puppet Dreams for giving me some support to push this journey forward. It’s a tall order to have to do the filming, light and puppetry by myself on top of everything else, but it’s the only way this project will move forward.
Bran and Park Kathputli
This was a test assignment or Cohort Challenge for a micro commission that I am a part of thanks to Hand Made Puppet Dreams. This was a test of some puppetry manipulation, lighting and editing.
PUPPETRY TESTS 06/08/2021
I experimented more with hands movement of the puppet in this session. I saw how without an additional white lights, the gel covered lights can be a bit overpowering. Manipulating the hands, and keeping the head and back under control is tricky with direct manipulation of the strings. There was some progress, but the kind of nuanced movement I am striving for is still out of reach.
Puppetry Tests 06/07/2021
I added some Aputure 60D lights and began looking at some of my lighting diagrams from past tests. I really like the lights. They seem to be a good replacement for the Arri 300w fresnels that my friend Cinematographer Peyton Skelton had generously lent me in the past. These LEDs are nice as they do not heat up, but give me the bright lights and many qualities I liked about the fresnels.
I brought out the backdrop designed by myself with my friend Muhammad Umar. We sourced used cloth for it from the landa bazar in Lahore, which Umar skillfully put together with meticulous cutting and hand stitching.
I tried some helpful suggestions from Daniel Luce, by creating space behind the backdrop to puppeteer from and using foot contact with the table to keep the puppet from floating or swimming around. I also added the equivalent of a sturdy apple box to stand on, which makes it easier to keep out of view and control the puppet from the back.
I’m going to work on using some of the phone apps to control the camera and lights next, in addition to working in some other set elements, and practicing control of the puppets arms next.