POV: Is TTP The New "Nerve"?

Having installed Google Analytics almost since the inception of this blog, I saw that a noticeable cluster of daily hits on specific pages of this blog came from (not listed in any specific order) the following countries:

India
Dubai
Qatar
Kuwait,
Bangladesh,
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates

All the hits from these countries are clustered on these two posts:

Beyond The Frame: Nepali Circus Girls

Q. Sakamaki: Bangladeshi Sex Workers

Now, it doesn't take an agile mind to know why. These visitors have access to Google and are obviously trawling for sex sites, so these terms are just catnip for them. It also explains why the total time they spend on these TTP's posts is just under 2 seconds which, in my reckoning, is about 1.5 seconds too much. These links are obviously not what they seek. I know it's tempting to pass judgment on them, but I won't.

There are millions of South Asian workers in the Gulf, and they are the ones who in essence built Dubai, among others. With Dubai's economic meltdown, possibly affecting all its neighbors, I'll be interested to see if the anticipated eventual repatriation of these workers is felt in The Travel Photographer's statistics.

Man, this blog of mine is not only about travel photography but is also tracking globalization, financial events, porn trends and international employment flows!!!

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Posted in: POV

Pictory: Innovative Concept?

Pictory is a photo magazine, and claims to be re-imagined for the web. Photojojo describes Pictorymag as one part Boston.com’s Big Picture, one part This American Life, and one part Laura Brunow Miner.

I didn't know who Laura was but I found out she had been the Editor-in-Chief of JPG Magazine, and Pictory is her brainchild.

Pictory's premise is a simple one: it's a showcase for people around the world to document their lives and cultures, and anyone can submit a picture and a story. The best are featured in large sized photo essays.

Is it a commercially viable project? Time will tell.

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Posted in: Innovative Stuff

Gilles Sabrié: Chinese Traveling Opera

Photo © Gilles Sabrié-All Rights Reserved
It's by pure coincidence that I stumbled on Gilles Sabrié's website, in which he dazzled me with his many documentary galleries ranging from The Traveling Opera and the Kham (Eastern Tibet) to Faiths of Asia, and passing through Calcutta Prostitution. Large sized photographs on the web always make me happy, and these are large!

As I have just photographed street Chinese opera singing in New York's Chinatown, I thought it worthwhile to highlight Gilles' gallery titled The Traveling Opera. It covers a small opera group (or troupe) trying its best to keep alive one of China's oldest traditions, despite the low pay and dismal living conditions.

The website is flash-based, so you'll have to look for the gallery, but I encourage you to look at and study all of his galleries of large sized images.

Gilles Sabrié is a freelance photographer based in Beijing, China. After years spent working in television, he switched careers to embrace his passion — documentary photography. Since then, he has focused on news and social issues in China. In particular, he spent months documenting the life of China’s migrant workers as well as the fate of the inhabitants of the Three Gorges area. Sabrié’s images have been featured in numerous publications including Newsweek, TIME, US News, The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, L’Express, Focus, Le Point and more.

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Posted in: Asia,China,Photographers: Photojournalists,Photographers: Travel

Photogs Slang

I thought I'd lighten the mood here on The Travel Photographer by introducing you to some of the more colorful slang used by photographers and photojournalists (according to a lighthearted post on Lightstalkers).

So learn the slang, get yourself a pre-used keffeiyeh or krama, a third-hand Leica M7 (it doesn't have to work) and join the group! You'll be welcomed with open arms.

Photog: short for photographer
Shooter: slang for a photojournalist.
Snapper: rather derogatory term for amateurs.
Chimping: shooting a digital image, looking at it in the LCD, shooting again, looking...
Machine Gunner: A South African term for a photographer who always shoots at 6 fps and above.
Hail Mary: Photographing while holding the camera above one's head without looking through the viewfinder.
Big-Footing: Describes when a famous or staff photographer arrives at a location which has become newsworthy, and thereby pushing the freelancer who has been covering it aside.
Bang Bang: war or conflict, catastrophe, etc.
Goat Fuck: My very favorite expression! When a dozen photographers all elbow each other to photograph one person weeping at a funeral, or holding her dead child, or even (in the case of travel photographers) a preening monk-dancer holding a wooden penis at a Bhutan festival. A similar expression is “cluster fuck".
Fuck Job: Any scene overly set-up, arranged, posed, or directed. Also applicable to many top-end travel photographers, by the way.
Spec: To work without guarantee of pay. We see a lot of those recently.
Guarantee: Some pay but not an assignment.

Now go out there and look the part!!!

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Posted in: POV

Condition Critical: Eastern Congo

Bahati's Story - Condition Critical from duckrabbit on Vimeo.

Benjamin Chesterton of the award-winning duckrabbit has done another jaw-dropping job with Condition Critical, a highly commendable and important project for Medecins Sans Frontieres.

As Ben says:

"I've finished four videos on the Congo subtitled into eight languages to run on a website where people can leave messages to be translated and put up in the camps and clinics in Eastern Congo. The strongest thing about this project is that all you hear is the voices of the Congolese affected by the violence."

Here's some background of the Eastern Congo's conflict. It's the world's deadliest conflict since the second world war and yet the majority of people have never heard of it. According to the IRC at least at least 5 million Congolese have died in more than a decade of conflict sparked off by the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Most of the deaths are linked to a lack of medical facilities as the ability to access medical care in Eastern Congo has crumbled with the war. The four videos on the Condition Critical website give voice to the pain and trauma of those caught up in the conflict, bearing witness to their dignity and attempts to survive the conflict.

In Ben's own words:

"Told only in their own voices all the website asks you to do is send a message of support. At first that might sound a bit daft. I mean why send a message of support to people I know nothing of? Surely what they need is cash, right? Well first off if you watch the videos you can find out a little about their lives, that they're not that much different to you and me except that they've been caught up in an unforgiving conflict. Secondly messages of support do make a difference. I know this because last year I worked in camps in Kenya and the thing that people were most frightened of was being forgotten, the sense that no-one cared. That's what leads to depression and despair. Worse than that, when no-one cares people get away with murder, literally."

So the fact that MSF will take these messages and share them in the camps and clinics will make a difference. It will also give a huge morale boost to the MSF staff working in Eastern Congo.

People can do four great things:

1. Leave a message of solidarity on the map
2. Twitter about it and link to it on Facebook (for Twitter use #conditioncritical)
3. Embed one of the video's on their blogs.
4. Write something about the project"

It's worthwhile to reiterate what Ben realized from his time in the Kenya camps:

"...the thing that people were most frightened of was being forgotten, the sense that no-one cared. That's what leads to depression and despair. Worse than that, when no-one cares people get away with murder, literally."

So show you care.

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Posted in: Africa,Events,Multimedia

Suzanne Lee: Odissi Dance

Suzanne Lee is a Malaysian photographer who started her career while attending an Angkor Photography Workshop in Siem Reap. Her coverage of a small community of blind masseurs there resulted in her being given second place in the workshop's Paris-Match award.

She's currently based in Delhi, working freelance as a photographer and multimedia journalist. She's working on a collaborative photo book project on Jewish festivals around the world, and also pursues personal projects across Asia.

I particularly liked her gallery of photographs of Odissi dancers getting readied for their performance.

Odissi is one of the eight classical dance forms of India, and originates from the state of Orissa, in eastern India. I traveled in parts of Orissa, and recall photographing various forms of indigenous dances, including the unusual Gotipua dancers which I posted about here.

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Posted in: Photographers: Travel,Photojournalism

AMNH's The Silk Road

As a nice segue from my foray in Chinatown this past Sunday, I ought to mention the interesting exhibition "Traveling the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World" that can currently be seen at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.

Through the power of interactivity it brings to life one of the greatest trading routes in human history. It features produce, products, cultures, and technologies from four representative cities: Xi'an, China's Tang Dynasty capital; Turfan, a oasis and trading outpost; Samarkand, home of wealthy traders who thrived on the caravan trade; and Baghdad, a cosmopolitan hub of trade and scholarship that became the intellectual center of the era.

I've never traveled to any of the Silk Route cities (yet), but it seems to me that this exhibition would be a good start.

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Posted in: Events