POV: FP Magazine: Talibanistan

Foreign Policy Magazine has featured an interesting photo/graphical essay on the war in Afghanistan. It's titled Inside Talibanistan, and effectively makes the point that our "enemies" are not a monolithic entity, but a combination of disjointed groups with different agendas and ideologies.According to our media and politicians, who have the talent of diminishing everything down to simplistic terms in the hope of further dumbing down its viewers, listeners, constituents and readers, we are fighting against the "Taliban"...the problem is that the Taliban (as defined by our talking heads, politicians and their cronies) doesn't exist as such.  In FP's feature, I've counted 10 groups ranging from Al-Qaeda to some group called Haqqani Network,...

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Posted in: Afghanistan,Photojournalism

El Rey: East Los Angeles' Mariachis

This is a delightful short documentary featuring Mariachis musicians in East Los Angeles produced by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari. The piece features Mariachi musicians who gather on corners of the streets of East Los Angeles looking for work, whether in birthday parties, in cafes, restaurants, quinceañeras, weddings and the like.To my delight, the main singer belts outs out the famous Mexican song "Volver Volver", initially without the accompaniment of musical instruments. I used to hear it played often in the zocalo of Oaxaca...just delightful.According to Wikipedia, the term "Mariachi" is said to be an adaptation of the French word for marriage or wedding "mariage" as this type of musical formation plays at these events.via The Cl...

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Posted in: Mexico,Multimedia

France Television: Portraits Of A New World

Here's a superb multimedia presentation guaranteed to knock your socks off.It's part of a collection of 24 multimedia documentaries produced by France Télévisions. Portraits Of A New World is a narrative of the world of the 21st century, and the upheavals which transform and influence our destinies.Unfortunately, it's only in French with no subtitles, which sadly reduces its internationalization and its appreciation by non-French speaking audience.Having said that, take a look nevertheless at Journal of A Concubine which, in my view, is the segment that most beautifully merges the techniques of photojournalism and videojournalism.In the era of pre-Communist China, wives and concubines lived under the same roof; in full sight and knowledge of...

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Posted in: China,Multimedia

My Bali Book

I've decided to self-publish a book of my photographs of Bali. I've hesitated for a long time, since I have no patience to fiddle endlessly with layouts, fonts and the myriad of other variables necessary to produce a book, but I recently discovered that Blurb has introduced a new interface called Bookify. This is essentially a tool for people like me who don't have the mindset to spend hours on a project of that nature.Lo and behold, I received my mock-up book a few days ago. The book is large landscape (13x11 inches) format, with an image wrap hardcover and the photographs are black & white. The mock-up revealed some slight variations in tone, a few photographs were reproduced "soft" and others were "muddy" requiring some more adjustment...

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Posted in: Bali,Books

Masr: Javier Morgade

Masr is the Arabic word for Egypt...and it's also colloquially used for Cairo. So in Arabic, Egyptians are called Masr'yeen...which is confusing for non-Arabic speakers, but that's how it is. Egypt was borrowed from the Latin Aegyptus and from the ancient Greek Aígyptos. Javier Morgade was filming in Egypt for an airline company, and was left with surplus footage for this short movie. It's a documentary made with a Canon 5d Mark II and a Glidetrack HD. It was edited in Final Cut Pro and graded with After Effects. The song is by a contemporary Egyptian singer and is titled ah men al forak, which loosely translated means "lamenting separation". In my view (and I should know), Javier managed to capture in this short movie the essence of the Egyptian character, the kindness, humor, hospitality...

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Posted in: Egypt,Multimedia

Charlotte Rush Bailey: Kutch Classic

Charlotte Rush Bailey joined my Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo-Expedition ™ earlier this year, and has just published her photo book titled Kutch Classic: Portraits from Northern Gujarat of her photographs made on that trip, which is a wonderful visual compendium of this magnificent region of India.The book is full of photographs of Kutch tribals; most are portraits, some processed in the photographer-author's signature style. Charlotte chose purple as the predominant color for her book, basing it on the lovely woman's veil on its cover. I also happen to think that Charlotte will follow up with another book, possibly titled Portraits from Southern Gujarat, on her return from another photo expedition next January. We'll see....Published...

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Posted in: Books,India

LCD Viewfinder (Meike)

One of the accessories I decided to get for both my Canon 5D Mark II and the new Canon 7D is a LCD viewer. which would be handy whenever I wanted to shoot video on either of these cameras. Having looked at the B&H et al, I had the choice between the LCDVF at $170 or the much more expensive Zacuto Jr at $252, but thought these prices were too high for an add-on I would not use frequently. Some quick research led me to a post on the delightful Cheesycam website and another one here which suggested a much cheaper LCDVF clone ($59 including shipping et al) from eBay.I deliberated for about 2 minutes, and ordered the clone from the vendor. Within less than half a day, I got an email with an acknowledgment, and a USPS tracking number. It was...

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Posted in: Hard Gear

Christian Bobst: Tibetans In India

Photo © Christian Bobst - All Rights ReservedChristian Bobst is a Swiss photographer based in Zürich who originally studied graphic design, and became interested in documentary photography.  While working for advertising agencies, he won several national and international advertising awards.  At this time, he works as a freelance art and creative director as well as a documentary photographer.Dharamsala, or more accurately Mcleod Ganj, is the home of the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan government. The Tibetan settlement of Dharamsala began in 1959, when the Dalai Lama had to flee Tibet, and was allowed to settle in Upper Dharamsala or McLeod Ganj. It's sometimes known as 'Little Lhasa' after the Tibetan capital city.Christian's...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Photojournalists,Tibet

My Work: Dharamasla Matriarch

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy - All Rights ReservedHere's an environmental portrait of a Tibetan matriarch in one of the alleys of Dharmasala in northern India. It's been over 5 years ago since I've been to Dharamsala, and my photographic style has evolved noticeably. I would have photographed this woman differently now. She would have been most certainly less rigid, and I would have spent much more time making her more comfortable before any photographs were made. I occasionally revisit my photographs of a few years back to trace back my photographic evolution; a gradual evolution moving from simple portraits to more complex scenes...moving from travel "pretty pictures" to the less pretty ones, towards more of a documentary style.I am always attracted...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Travel,TTP Show Off

Beatrix Jourdan: Clash of the Titans

Photo © Beatrix Jourdan-All Rights ReservedHere's somewhat of a change of gear from the norm for The Travel Photographer blog, and is about Laamb, which is Senegalese wrestling and a type of folk wrestling practiced in Senegal. It allows blows with the hands, the only of the West African wrestling traditions to do so.Beatrix Jourdan (Bea Mészöly) is a Hungarian-born photographer currently based in Dakar, Senegal. She's a freelance graphic designer and photographer, and produced catalogs for the Museum of Modern Art in Gent, photomosaics in Budapest and Hajduszoboszlo, numerous posters, book and magazine covers, and brochures. She also She was one of the winners of the André Kertész international photo contest. Beatrix informs us that Laamb...

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Posted in: Africa,Photographers: Photojournalists

Rodrigo Cruz: Women Warriors

Photo © Rodrigo Cruz-All Rights ReservedThe reason I go out onto the streets with my camera is simple: I want to tell people's stories in an intimate way through powerful imagery. -Roberto CruzRodrigo Cruz is a freelance photographer with a particular interest in abuses of human rights, especially against women and children in his native Mexico. His work was published by National Geographic and The Washington Post, and by NGOs such as Amnesty International. He was shortlisted for the 2010 Anthropographia Award for Photography and Human Rights; received an honorary mention in the photo contest ‘Global World: through the lens of human rights’; and was selected last year to participate in PhotoEspaña’s Descubrimientos in Guatemala City.I met Roberto...

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Posted in: Interviews,Mexico,Photographers: Photojournalists

Next Week on The Travel Photographer

For the week starting Monday October 25, I planned posts on:1. A photo essay on the Tibetans living in India, that was supposed to be on last week.2. A remarkable web documentary (multimedia) on China that will leave you speechless.3. A short movie on Egypt made on a Canon 5D MarkII...very well done.4. The work of a photographer documenting musicians of the Mississippi Delta...with my kind of music...really hard core Blues.5. The work of a photojournalist documenting African wrestle...

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A Look At The Zoom H1

I've blogged a couple of times about the H1, the new handheld audio recorder from Samson Audio, and what seemed to be a handy portable stereo recorder at an unheard-of $99 price. I haven't bought the H1 (as I already have a Marantz PMD 620 which I'm happy with), but a number of my readers have expressed their interest in seeing a review...so the above movie by Shawn Harrel will do just that.As I expected, the H1 seems to feel a little flimsy, it has a few quirks, but does the job quite well. The price can't be beaten, so I predict I'll see it used by emerging photojournalists on a budget testing multimedia waters.Speaking of multimedia: I have my new Canon 7D next to me as I'm writing this, but I have yet to really test it. I've ignored the...

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Posted in: Audio,Hard Gear

Khaled Hasan: Death of Dreams

Photo © Khaled Hasan-All Rights ReservedKhaled Hasan is a Bangladeshi freelance photographer, whose work appeared in several daily newspapers in Bangladesh and international Magazines, such as Sunday Times Magazine, American Photo, National Geographic Society, Better Photography, Saudi Aramco World Magazine, Guardian, Telegraph, The Independent and The New Internationalist.He was awarded the 2008 All Roads Photography Program of National Geographic Society, as well as the Alexia Foundation Student Award (Award of Excellence). He has been recognized with several awards including the Humanity Photo Documentary Award.Khaled believes in immersion photography, and listens, observes and talks with his subjects over an extended period of time. In...

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Posted in: Bangladesh,Photographers: Photojournalists

A Storyboard Template

Following my earlier post on my handwritten storyboard doodles I used for one of my audio-slideshows, I thought I'd prep one that looked a little more sophisticated, and could serve as a template. The templates I found on the internets were not exactly what I wanted, so I basically created one using an existing Excel template.So here's The Travel Photographer's exclusive storyboard template (PDF) available as a free download to anyone who needs it. I hope you'll find it useful to plan and set up your slideshows.Is it better than the doodly o...

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Posted in: Soundslides

Xiaomei Chen: Puzhu

Photo © Xiaomei Chen-All Rights ReservedHands in Chinese Hakka culture are often a metaphor for the ability to work and survive; a symbol for diligence. "If you have hands, you never beg" the Hakka say.And so reads a caption under one of Xiaomei Chen's photographs in her Puzhu gallery.Xiaomei Chen had to choose between a Phd and a camera, and the camera won. Since 2006, she has been documenting human lives with it, using her background in anthropology. She's currently living in the US, and works as a contractor at The Washington Post. Having been a teacher in south China, she's fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka.She embarked on a visual project documenting Puzhu, an obscure and shrinking village of 45 people in south China which mirrors...

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Posted in: Books,China,Photographers: Travel

POV: Passport Renewal

Here's a statement which could irk all the Libertarians and Tea-Party grumblers: I had an excellent experience with the US State Department's Passport renewal process! Yes, a government office!I had to renew my soon-to-expire passport, and I decided to jump the gun a month or two earlier than necessary.I wanted my old one back as it still has a number of valid visas....and as I suffer from acute separation anxiety if I don't have my passport within reach (no, I'm not making this up nor is it hyperbole),  I chose the expedited route to speed up the process, and downloaded/filled the necessary application, and included a note saying that I needed the old passport back.As I also wanted  extra pages, I spoke to a State Department employee...

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Posted in: POV

POV: Apple MacBook Air

Well, Apple's announcement that it added two MacBook Air laptops is immensely welcome as it provides an embarrassment of choices to its ever expanding fan base.I am especially excited by the 11-inch MacBook Air, which measures 11.8 inches by 7.56 inches, and weighs only 2.3 lbs. The 64gb flash memory model starts at $999 and would be ideal as a travel laptop for photographers. Couple it with an external hard drive of whatever storage capacity works for you, and you've got a winner.And it's $300 more expensive than the iPad (the one sans WiFi)....that's really intelligent pricing.I guess it isn't really a netbook..or is it? Although Steve Jobs assertion they wouldn't do netbooks, I do think this is a posh netbook...and what I do know for sure...

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Posted in: Hard Gear,Innovative Stuff

Theodore Kaye: Theyyam Dancers

Photo © Theodore Kaye-All Rights ReservedTheodore Kaye grew up in China, India and Indonesia. While majoring in Film, he studied also Uzbek and Farsi and worked as a newspaper editor and mountain guide in Central Asia.Subsequently he was a staff photographer at Rhythms Monthly, a Chinese-language geographic magazine, and covered stories in India, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Japan, Ireland and Great Britain. His work has been featured by the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Asahi Shimbun and the National Film Board of Canada. I was particularly attracted to his Theyyam Dancers of North Kerala for the vibrancy of his photographs. Interestingly, it seems that Theodore was guided to these performances by a contact who lives...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Travel

The Travel Photographer's Channel on Vimeo

I've converted a number of my audio slideshows to mp4 movies, which are also iPad-compatible, and grouped them in a Vimeo channel. The channel is (obviously) called The Travel Photographer Channel....so this is a heads-up for TTP's readers to drop by and comment or "like" or whatever.I prefer Vimeo to YouTube...I think its quality is better, and it seems to be more "serious" in its inventory of movi...

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Posted in: Multimedia

Angkor Photo Festival 2010

The 2010 Angkor Photo Festival is to be held between November 20 to November 27 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The event is a unique photo festival in South East Asia,  and it's now in its 6th iteration, having had its inaugural gathering in 2005.In 2010, 110 photographers including 50 Asian photographers are showcasing their work, in keeping with festival’s mission of highlighting emerging Southeast Asian photographers. These works are curated by  well-known figures in photography, Yumi Goto, Antoine d’Agata, and Françoise Callier .This promises to be a real cornucopia of established and emerging photographic talent, with the participation of Olivia Arthur, Munem Wasif, Paolo Pellegrin, Shiho Fukada, Sohrab Hura, Rony Zakaria, Palani Mohan,...

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Posted in: Asia,Festivals,Photojournalism

Next Week on The Travel Photographer

Phew! I got Walter Astrada's Undesired in after all! I'm glad I did...what a compelling piece of multimedia!!!For the week starting Monday October 18, I have posts on:1. A movie by a travel photographer on religious circumbulation in Bhutan.2. The work of a Mexican photographer featuring photo essays on Women Warriors and La Santa Muerte. 3. A short movie by a travel photographer on her travel in Burma.4. A photo essay on the Tibetans living in India, that was supposed to be on last week.5. A photo gallery by a travel photographer  on Theyyam, the South Indian Deity worsh...

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Walter Astrada: Undesired

"Fear is contagious, but courage is also contagious" - Ruchira Gupta Here's an extremely well done production (click the image) by MediaStorm of the remarkable work by photojournalist Walter Astrada. It deals with the issue of Indian women having to face immense cultural pressures to bear a son. This arises from the belief that males earn money while females do not, and are financial burdens on their families due to the tradition of dowry payment.The multimedia reportage informs us that "The numbers are staggering. Since 1980, an estimated 40 million women are 'missing,' by way of abortion, neglect or murder. 7,000 female fetuses are aborted every day according to the U.N., aborted solely because they are girls. One dowry death is reported every 77 minutes. Countless others are never known."Although...

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Posted in: India,Multimedia,Photographers: Photojournalists

Gary Knight: New Website

Photo © Gary Knight-All Rights ReservedGary Knight has recently launched his personal website, appropriately titled Gary Knight Photography which features his portfolios, workshops, multimedia (soon) and his current academic involvement in Tufts and Harvard universities.Gary Knight started working as a photographer in Southeast Asia during the 1980s at at the time when its countries were slowly recovering from bitter wars. He then moved to Europe when Yugoslavia was collapsing, and where he documented the siege of Sarajevo through the fall of Kosovo. Following 9/11, he worked in Afghanistan and two years later independently followed U.S. troops into Iraq. Notwithstanding his conflict photography involvement, his focus is on the survival of...

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Posted in: Photographers: Photojournalists,Photojournalism

Alia Refaat: Bali Island of Odalan

Photo © Alia Refaat-All Rights ReservedHere are work samples from Alia Refaat, the final participant in the Bali: Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition ™ . It is Alia's second travel photography expedition, and she plans a series of exhibitions in Cairo of her photographs.Alia is a commercial photographer from Cairo, Egypt. Alia studied Mass Communications, and trained at Spéos Paris in commercial, portrait and studio photography. The above photograph is of Balinese devotees returning from the ocean having purified their temple's deities. The all day ceremony was performed near the famous temple of Goah Lawah.Photo © Alia Refaat-All Rights ReservedThe above intriguing photograph is of Balinese playing Kocokan. This is a sort of roulette in which...

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Posted in: Bali,Photo Tours,Photographers: Travel

My Work: Old Delhi's Khari Baoli

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedKhari Baoli is reputed to be one of Asia's largest wholesale spice market, and is accessible from Chandni Chowk Road in the heart of Old Delhi. It's one of my favorite haunts whenever I'm in Delhi, and it's a wonderful area for some serious street photography. Of course, going there is also an excuse to stop by Kareem's for its famed kebabs.Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedThe area is full of explorable narrow alleys, while porters hurry with massive jute bags of spices jostle passer-bys. The atmosphere is almost medieval, with the spice and rice traders carrying on the business of their ancestors. Nothing has changed much over the years.Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedIn a small...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Travel,Photojournalism

MediaStorm For CFR: Pakistan

Here's Crisis Guide: Pakistan (click on image), a magisterial multimedia production featured by The Council of Foreign Relations and produced by MediaStorm. As we all know, Pakistan is critical, if not the most critical country, to the national interests of the United States, and yet it's misunderstood and viewed through a prism of apprehension and, from some quarters, of distrust.The concern over its stability with the current escalation of drone attacks on its tribal areas, the horrific human toll following the recent floods and its geographical and ideological positioning underscore its importance. The New York Times reported last night that international lenders estimate that the floods in Pakistan caused $9.5 billion in damage to its...

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Posted in: Multimedia,Pakistan

My Work: Traversing The Kachchh Part Two

I've uploaded around two dozen of new photographs unto a still gallery titled Traversing The Kachchh Part Two. These photographs were made during my Tribes of South Rajasthan & Kutch Photo~Expedition ™ earlier this year.As the title suggests, this is the second of my still galleries of photographs made in that area; the first was Traversing The Kachchh.Both galleries are precursors to my forthcoming photo-expedition In Search of Gujarat's Sufis to south Gujarat and the Kutch. The In Search of Sufis Photo~Expedition ™ was sold out a week or so from its being announc...

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Posted in: India,Photo Tours,Photographers: Travel

Rich-Joseph Facun: Darshana Ganga

Rich-Joseph Facun is a documentary, lifestyle, travel, commercial, editorial and portrait photographer based in the United Arab Emirates. He recently published a personal project titled Darshana Ganga which documents the daily life, culture and heritage along the Ganges River over a number of trips to India. The latest trip saw him in Haridwar, an important pilgrimage city, Rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world and Devprayag, where two rivers converge to form the Ganga. Darshana is a Sanskrit term signifying "visions of the divine", and is the central act of Hindu worship, and Rich built his photo essay around the reverence that all Hindus have to the Ganges. He also interspersed it with some excellent photographs of street life scenes in...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Travel

Canon 7D Is Here...Well, Almost.

I've finally decided to replace my trusted and loyal (but ageing) Canon 1D Mark II with a Canon 7D. I hummed and hawed about whether to get the Canon 1D Mark IV, but balked at its price ($4900ish) and its weight....I thought of getting a second Canon 5D Mark II but wanted a much faster fps rate...and seeing a Canon instant rebate of $100 on the 7D, I jumped at it and now have it.Well, I should say I almost have it, since although it's physically here I can't touch it for another few days. It's technically a birthday gift so it's in the no-touch zone until then. I think I took the right decision in choosing the 7D. It's light in comparison to the 1D models, and its smaller sensor doesn't really bother me, especially since I have the 5D Mark...

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Posted in: Hard Gear

Hamid Sardar: Mongolia

Hamid Sardar-Afkhami is a photographer and a scholar of Tibetan and Mongol languages with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After moving to Nepal in the late 1980’s and exploring Tibet and the Himalayas for more than a decade, he traveled to Outer Mongolia, and determined to document its nomadic culture by setting a mobile studio ger camp in Mongolia. With his arsenal of cameras and different formats, he mounts yearly expeditions into the Mongolian outback to document her nomadic traditions. Apart from the two movie documentaries (these are not short, and run for almost an hour), take a look at Hamid's photographic gallery titled Dark Heavens, which has color and platinum portfolios.Photo © Hamid Sardar-All Rights ReservedImpressive, huh? Especially...

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Posted in: Asia,China,Multimedia

Storyboard Doodles

Planning a multimedia photo essay or audio slideshow needs a sort of bird's eye view of the project as a whole, and that's what storyboards are essentially supposed to do. Storyboards help to pre-visualizing the photo essay's sequencing, and act as blueprints for the project.The above photo shows my rather elementary storyboard for one my recent Bali audio slideshow Ngaben: Cremation Ceremony, which has the sequencing of images and audio clips, timing, etc. Naturally, it would have been more professional/efficient to use a proper storyboard template downloaded from the web, but where's the fun in tha...

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Posted in: Multimedia,Soundslides

Amira Al-Sharif: Call For Photo Backers

Amira Al-Sharif was born in Saudi Arabia and currently lives in Yemen. Both of these are extremely conservative societies, and being a female photojournalist is practically unheard of. Amira has had to struggle for an education, and is the first person in her family to graduate from university. She attended The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul last June, and was the only representative of her native Yemen to be there. She not only loves photography and photojournalism, but is a talented photographer. She attended Stephanie Sinclair's class...possibly one the toughest of the workshop, and did well.She has just been accepted at the International Center of Photography in New York City, and will soon begin a photography project there documenting lives of young American women seen from...

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Posted in: Photographers: Photojournalists

Reem Al-Faisal: The Holy Cities

Photo © Reem Al-Faisal-All Rights ReservedAn email newsletter from The Empty Quarter Gallery introduced me to Reem Al-Faisal who's a Saudi photographer. She started her career in 1994, and has exhibited her work in various galleries in Saudi Arabia, showcased at the Opera House in Cairo and at the University of Art and Design in Beijing. She also showed her works in various galleries in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands, and in exhibitions at the Arab World Institute and the Galerie Agathe Gaillard in Paris. Her photographs are in various public and corporate collections such as The National Museum of Seoul, Korea, and Sakakin Center in Ram Allah, Palestine. Interestingly, Al-Faisal is also one of the first women to be granted permission...

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Posted in: Photographers: Travel

Cathy Scholl: Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat

Photo © Cathy Scholl-All Rights ReservedCathy Scholl is a photographer and a participant in my Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo~Expedition, which took place earlier this year between January 23 and February 7, 2010. She has traveled to India no less than 13 times, as well as to Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma.Her photographs were exhibited in galleries throughout Southern California. In addition to winning awards, her work was selected to hang in juried exhibitions curated by leading experts in the field of photography, such as Arthur Ollman, founding director of the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.Cathy is also an active member in the Burn magazine community, which is curated by David Alan HarveyPhoto © Cathy Scholl -All Rights ReservedFollowing...

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Posted in: India,Photo Tours,Photographers: Travel

Next Week on The Travel Photographer

I had to rejig my posts this past week to diversify the posts a bit, so I omitted some I had originally planned to feature. For the week starting Monday October 11, I have posts on:1. A poignant multimedia project involving the treatment of Women In India, which I planned to post last week.2. The work of a documentary photographer featuring daily life along the Ganges, that I also wanted to post last week.3. The work of a Saudi Arabian female photographer, whose work (and herself) shatters all stereotypes.4. The very interesting work of a photographer and a scholar of Tibetan and Mongol languages on Mongolian cultures.5. A photo essay on the Tibetans living in Ind...

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Alixandra Fazzina: UNCHR Interview

This interview is really worth watching and reflecting on.In July 2010, British photo-journalist Alixandra Fazzina was awarded the annual UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award as a recognition of her work documenting the often overlooked consequences of war. In this video by UNCHR, she speaks about the plight of the uprooted.  She traveled to some of the worst hit areas in Pakistan where she saw first hand the devastation caused by the floods, and reminds us that refugees are human beings too.UNHCR cares for more than 40 million uprooted people. Alixandra Fazzina, who's based in Pakistan, is a member of the NOOR foundation and photo agen...

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Posted in: Multimedia,Photographers: Photojournalists,Photojournalism

Western Digital iPad App

Hmmmm.....that's interesting. Western Digital announced a free photo viewing application called WD Photos for the iPad that works with its line of external storage products like the My Book World Edition, My Book Live, and WD ShareSpace.  The app is said to allow the user to access up to 285,000 images placed in a shared folder. The advantage in this is that saved images can be accessed using the app from anywhere through a web connection. The benefits to photographers are obvious...for instance, while traveling I could show my portfolio to anyone in the world on my iPad using this app. The app has pinch and zoom functionality,  and the images can be viewed in 1024 x 768 resolution on the iPad.However,  wouldn't it be phenomenal...

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Posted in: Hard Gear,Soft Gear

NPR: Tibet 100 Years Ago

Photo Courtesy Bonhams NPR's The Picture Show recently reported that a part of Tibet's history recorded through old photographs was auctioned in London. The photographs (consisting of 70 platinum prints and 2 folding panoramas) were taken by British political officer John Claude White during a 1903 British mission to Tibet, and were sold for £38,400 (or about $60,000).I love news like that because it fuses history (military), Asia, adventurism and photography. John Claude White was part of the British expedition led by Francis Younghusband who, under orders from George Curzon, was to settle disputes over the Sikkim-Tibet border. In reality, the expedition was to establish British hegemony in Tibet, and morphed into an invasion and occupation...

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Posted in: Books,Events,Kashmir,Tibet

Jean-Marc Giboux: Holy Men

Photo © Jean-Marc Giboux -All Rights ReservedJean-Marc Giboux started his photographic career in 1988 in Los Angeles where he was a correspondent for the Gamma-Liaison photo agency covering news, social issues and cultural trends for European publications.In 1997, Giboux was awarded a grant from Rotary International to cover the progress of the worldwide polio eradication programs, traveling in India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Yemen, Mali, Niger, to name but a few. He also covered the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan for Doctors without Borders, and this was featured in an exhibition touring the USA and Europe from 2004 to 2006.Currently residing in Chicago, Jean-Marc continues to collaborate with Doctors Without Borders, CARE,...

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Posted in: India,Photographers: Photojournalists,Photographers: Travel

How Many Arms Do I Need? And WTF?

I just read in WIRED's Gadget Lab that Zoom will launch a new Flip-like recorder that records beautiful audio for about $300. Stores expect it soon.Zoom is the Japanese company that manufactures the various audio recorders that are popular with many multimedia producers, and which recently announced the affordable H1 Handy Recorder that I posted about here.The plethora of useful (and others not so useful) products and gear aimed at multimedia producers, photographers, and videographers is incredible...but how do we carry and operate all this stuff?And in the WTF? Department, here comes the Leica M9 Neiman Marcus Edition limited to a only 50 units. Engadget reports that it's "wrapped in a brown ostrich leather trim this time around, and it...

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Posted in: Audio,Hard Gear

My Work: The Bali Trilogy

I'm glad to present Bali: The Trilogy; a three-part audio-slideshow (based on a chaptered SoundSlides platform), which consists of black & white documentaries of Balinese ceremonies.The Melasti ceremony is an all important Balinese tradition of purifying temple deities in the waters of the ocean, the Ngaben is the Balinese tradition of cremating the dead, while the third is Tajen, the ancient tradition of cockfighting, technically illegal but still practiced on the island (and elsewhere in Indonesia).This above link will not work on iPads (by the way, about 6-7% of my daily readers view this blog on their iPads, and I think this percentage is growing every day), however the following links will allow iPad owners to watch the individual...

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Posted in: Bali,Multimedia,Soundslides,TTP Show Off

Justin Guariglia: A Leica Interview

Photo © Justin Guariglia-All Rights ReservedJustin Guariglia has had a lifelong passion for documentary photography and Leica M cameras that eventually led to a distinguished career as a magazine and travel photographer.He currently lives in Taipei, and was recently interviewed by the Leica Camera Blog, in which he says:"Of course, one cannot travel without money, and that is how I discovered photojournalism. Even back in the late 1990s, unlike today, there was still a good amount of work available—a shoot here, a story there, a portrait needed…so magazine work became the way to pay my bills and to travel and see the world, but I always came back with lots of personal images that editors usually never saw. At that stage National Geographic...

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Posted in: Interviews,Photographers: Travel

Faces of a Vanishing World: Joey Lawrence

I've posted a few times about Joey Lawrence (he also goes by Joey L), the young photographer who's been involved in commercial photography, photojournalism and music videos around the world by the age of 17, and who now has the established reputation of being a pioneer of new aged digital hyper-realistic photography, lighting and manipulation.Joey has released a documentary titled Faces of a Vanishing World available for purchase on DVD or as an instant download. The official trailer for the documentary is above. Joey also says he's donating a portion of all the documentary's sales to Survival International, who are supporting the tribal people of the Omo Valley defend their rights, protect their lands and determine their own futures. I am always a little hesitant in accepting cliches such...

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Posted in: Ethiopia,Multimedia,Photographers: Travel

POV: My Photo~Expeditions: Verdicts

Wade Laube is a photo editor, a photographer and an opinionated ranter (the two last descriptions make him a "my-kind-of-guy"), and he's penned an interesting post on his blog titled Buyer Beware of the Dodgy Workshop.He says this: "The travel industry has offered photography-themed holidays for years. Hobbyists spend their annual leave somewhere picturesque, get expert tuition and access to expensive gear they wouldn’t normally, while the organisers make some money and everyone’s happy. But what aboveboard entrepreneurs started, parasites are mimicking."And I couldn't agree more. Caveat Emptor is the rule here. I would also add that great photographers are not necessarily great travel photography workshop teachers and/or leaders. Some are...

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Posted in: Photo Tours,POV