Tewfic El-Sawy, an international banker-turned-photographer, specializes in documenting cultures and traditions from around the world. En route to Bhutan from his home in New York, Liz Smailes met with him in Bangkok to hear about his work and photography tours.

“I became seriously interested in photography about 12 years ago. In my previous career I was an international banker. I would travel a lot with the bank that I was working for and always took a small camera with me and basically snapped what I saw on my trips. Much of this was in Egypt, Beirut and Pakistan where the majority of my work was. When I essentially switched careers I decided that travel photography was the right fit for me.”

Tewfic El-Sawy now leads two-week travel photography tours throughout the year, with a focus on Asia, Latin America and Africa, making his living from doing what many dream of…travel photography. Accompanied by photographers who are invited or referred by past participants, Tewfic’s photography tours allow participants to make contact with the people he meets and live the detail of remote cultures and surviving traditions.

“It started out when a friend asked me to accompany him on a photography workshop in Morocco, we were all semi-professional or serious amateur photographers. Because I love travel and photography and I’m good at organizing things I found myself moaning all the time about how inefficient and chaotic the workshop was. The creative element of unpredictability juxtaposed with my meticulous international banker character, and having all that bundled up in a new country just didn’t work with the precision I was used to. So my friend challenged me to do a better job of it.”

Less than a year later, Tewfic was on the road leading avid travelers and photographers through Asia. Crafting his way into the niche of organizing travel photography tours rose out of that challenge, and in hindsight, on his first tour Tewfic admits his confidence exuded his experience at the time.

“My first tour was in 2000 and it was a wake-up call, big time, and complete madness when I look back on it. We did three countries in one trip; India, Bhutan and Nepal, some of them were my first visit there too. It was insane and since then I never do more than one country at a time, it was just too much to take in, focus on and absorb. We had a great time, don’t get me wrong, and because of my people and organizational skills everyone enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, but it was a sharp learning curve for me.”

Since then, Tewfic concentrates on unique cultural festivals that become the core of his trips, often traditions that are dying out and when capturing these, he is always applying his people skills acquired through his banking days. “I am no good at landscape photography. People are my thing and when they are participating in rituals, they are so engrossed in those particular acts that I tend to find I experience human nature at its best then.

“I can quickly connect with strangers, develop a level of trust and friendship, which is what you really need to establish in a short space of time if you want to capture the essence of a culture in people and their behaviour.”

Through his images and multi-media website, Tewfic highlights a series of events that open our eyes to the sheer diversity and intrigue of the world we live in, and how it is so very different from our homes. “I love coming to Asia, and I am really enjoying becoming more familiar with Bhutan, though I doubt it will top India as my favorite country. I always say that anybody can take an excellent picture in India because of the colors, the people are so photogenic and willing to be photographed and the light there is magnificent. Whether it’s because of rituals, the different religions, the sects – their whole culture is so unbelievably rich, it has so many layers and I still consider myself on the outer layer.”

Capturing all of these facets in one image is a challenge few can achieve, but with the advancement of technology, Tewfic has become known for his multi-media reports and training. A slide show set to ambient sounds recorded simultaneously is what ensues.

“If I left the recorder on while taking a picture, there’d be a lot of noise from the shutter. The first thing I do when I enter somewhere is I go in and I check things out and I begin shooting. That’s my first priority – to get the pictures, to capture the images. Then I go around again and record. No shooting, no camera. Just a recorder. I turn it on and I record the ambient sound – people talking, walking, and the surrounding sounds. Then I will go back to the people I took photographs of and ask them to give me a few words. Sort of a mini interview – usually these things go for a minute or two. I don’t stay too long doing recordings because I’m more interested visually.”

A typical day as a travel photographer will see Tewfic out on the streets just before dawn and exploring the location just to catch the best light possible. “I’ve got three hours or so to use. Otherwise it gets very sunny. So I get up very, very early and I’m out there at the break of sunlight and in the afternoon I go out again maybe at about 4pm and catch the last three hours or more of light – the final hours of the day. To me, the worst hours are between 9 and 3 every day – unless there are rituals, a performance, a festival. Then there’s nothing you can do so you try to make the most of what you can.”

On one of his trips, a group can expect to shoot, shoot, shoot for a solid 12 hours, breaking only for lunch. “We go out at about 6 in the morning and come back at 6 in the evening. It’s pretty intensive. It’s all photography except for the travel days, then I have to download my images when I return from the shoots. So it’s a very long 15 days.”

When sharing advice he still recalls the best advice he received from a very famous photographer that he took a course with – Constantine “Costa” Manos, who works for Magnum. “He looked at my pictures and said, ‘well your photographs are technically good. However, they are too simple.’ He meant that I needed to tell more of the story with my photographs. To be more complex, to tell a story to the viewer rather than just showing a picture of a face, even if it’s in a travel environment. Even if I see a woman who’s very interesting in terms of clothes or whatever. He saw that this was really my sort of affinity when I started out, so he said ‘No, you have to become more complex.’

To tell a story, to tell people the relationship between the subject and the background. It’s what we call now environmental portraiture. I can’t say this advice was a life changer but it was certainly a vision changer.”

This series of images were taken on his most recent trip to Bhutan in September 2009. To view more of his work and find out about trips planned for 2010, visit www.telsawy.com.