The NY Times: Sebastião Salgado

© Sebastião Salgado -All Rights ReservedThe New York Times seems to have caught a photojournalism bug these days. Its photographic offerings are getting better by the day. The recent launching of its LENS blog as well as the ever improving One in a Million multimedia series, have made it a must-go-to destination for photo journalistic fix. It just published an interesting article entitled Back to...

Read more »

The Guardian: Yemen

Here's a Soundslides presentation titled The Secret Life of Yemen, as featured by The Guardian newspaper in the UK, and narrated by Kevin Rushby. It doesn't credit the photographs, but they could be by Bruno Morandi, whose photograph appears on the accompanying article by Rushby. The producer of the slideshow attempted to use the "flip-book" technique for a sequence of stills to convey dynamic movement,...

Read more »

VJ Multimedia Workshop

I'm not in the habit of advertising workshops that I'm not directly involved in, or knowledgeable about, but the VJ Workshop announces that it will provide a tuition-free multimedia shooting and production workshop for visual storytellers based in the traditions of journalism. Their goal is to give back to the visual journalism community by educating a new generation of visual journalists in current...

Read more »

Two External Backup Hard Drives

Having had the misfortune of frying two of my external hard drives a few weeks ago, I decided to take the example of TheLightroomLab, and get two OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 'Quad Interface' FireWire 800/400 + USB2 2.0 + eSATA of 1TB each, and restructure my backup storage system.Yes, I'm eschewing all advice for a RAID system, DOBRO, and Time Capsule by buying these two behemoths, and doing my backups...

Read more »

Jodi Hilton: Pakistan's Kalash People

With all the news of Pakistan these days, I thought I'd feature the work of a talented freelance photographer which documents the life of the Kalash people. Jodi Hilton is a freelance photojournalist based in Cambridge, MA. She works for newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, People, TIME, The Guardian and others. In 2002, her Master's project Return To Eboli was published in the National...

Read more »

Shiho Fukada: The End of Kashgar?

© Shiho Fukada/NYTimes-All Rights ReservedOne of my favorite photographers/photojournalists is Shiho Fukada, and she returns to the pages of The New York Times with photographs of Kashgar made into an audio slideshow titled A City and People At a Crossroads with the narration of Michael Wines (also author of the accompanying article To Protect an Ancient City).Kashgar is a important hub on the Old...

Read more »

Zekr or Soccer?

© Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedOver at Photocrati.com , I wrote of my experiences in covering one of the Sufi ceremonies in a neighborhood of Old Cairo that is, shall we say...dodgy. A few moments spent with its quirky denizens however, and I quickly realized that Cairenes never lost their warmth, humor and kindness. I also concluded that soccer trumps religion, even among Sufis.Read Part 1 of...

Read more »

Bhanuwat Jittivuthikarn: Tibetan Smiles

Photo © Bhanuwat Jittivuthikarn-All Rights ReservedBhanuwat Jittivuthikarn is an emerging visual artist who works in all cross-disciplines, including photography. He graduated from the School of Creative Art (University of Melbourne) with a combined degree in International Politics. Returning to Thailand in 2006, he joined SNF Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, a grassroots empowerment organization...

Read more »

Canon 5D Mark II's Movie Exposure

I haven't posted much on what I call Soft Gear, so Eric Beecroft's heads-up this morning was a welcome one.According to DPReview, Canon just announced it will release a firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II allowing users to manually control exposure when shooting video. The new firmware will be available for download from 2 June 2009 on Canon Europe’s support web site.(via Planet 5D Bl...

Read more »

Alia Refaat: Theyyam & Kathakali Exhibit

As I hinted earlier, another participant in my Theyyam of Malabar photo~expedition is about to step into the limelight. Alia "Coucla" Refaat is putting the final touches to an exhibit of her photographs of Theyyam ceremonies and Kathakali performances, and has issued the following press release:“The Art of Kathakali & The Rituals of Theyyam,” an exhibition by Alia (Coucla) Refaat, an award winning...

Read more »

My Work: Al Ziqr Multimedia

The ziqr is a form of ritual performed by Sufis, a sect of Islam frequently considered as too liberal and too progressive by the more orthodox theological authorities in Egypt and the Islamic world. Nonetheless, it is practiced in Egypt, particularly in the slums of Cairo and in the country's rural areas. There has been a recent revival of interest in Sufism, and many of Egypt's contemporary Sufis are young, well educated people in professional careers.The...

Read more »

Books: The Photographer

From what I've seen online, The Photographer is an innovative book combining the photographs of the late Didier Lefèvre, and the drawings of Emmanuel Guibert, and tells the story of a small group of mostly French doctors and nurses who traveled into northern Afghanistan by horse and donkey in 1986, at the height of the Soviet occupation.The fact that a woman, Dr. Juliette Fournot, led the medical...

Read more »

PDN Photo Annual 2009 Winners

PDN presented the winning images of the 2009 PDN Photo Annual, which were submitted by an international group of photographers. Apart from the obvious talent so amply displayed by all the photographers, I was gratified to see that most of the winners in the Web Sites category have used large images...and some like David Maitland and Dani Brubaker have used enormous images on their websites' landing...

Read more »

Joyce Birkenstock: Theyyam Painting

© Joyce Birkenstock-All Rights ReservedI am continuously astounded, and I daresay you will as well, by the incredible talent exhibited by the participants in my Theyyam of Malabar Photo~Expedition. And more is yet to come!Once again, here's a painting by the gifted Joyce Birkenstock of a Theyyam in Kasaragode, Kerala. As I wrote earlier on TTP, Joyce is a remarkable artist and photographer, and a...

Read more »

Bas Uterwijk: Nepali New Year

Bas Uterwijk lives in Amsterdam, is an alum of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico City (and plans on attending the next one in Manali in July), and has now sent me a link to a multimedia production of his colorful photographs made during his travels to Nepal. Bas has been telling stories with images for most of his career as a computer graphics artist for a video game company, and has...

Read more »

Daylight Magazine: Jehad Nga

I just received Daylight Magazine's May newsletter, which features Jehad Nga's wonderful photo essay titled "My Shadow My Opponent" which deals with boxers and boxing clubs in Kenya. It explores the scarcely-known boxing subculture of Nairobi's largest slum.I'm sure many of you will agree with me that the title of the photo essay fits Jehad's trademark chiaroscuro photographs like a glove. It's excellent work by an extremely talented photojournalist/photographer,...

Read more »

Alixandra Fazzina: TIME's Pakistan Essay

Photograph © Alixandra Fazzina-All Rights ReservedA paragraph in the TIME magazine article titled How Pakistan Failed Itself starts off with this:Pakistan is a complicated country, one of religious and political diversity, fractured by class and ethnicity. Pakistanis like to quip that they have a population of 170 million — and as many different opinions.It is accompanied by Pakistan Under The Surface,...

Read more »

Victoria Olson: Men Becoming Gods

Victoria (Torie) Olson, a contributing editor at Wild Fibers Magazine, and author based in Vermont, announces the forthcoming exhibition of her photographs she made whilst participating in my Theyyam of Malabar Photo~Expedition.The exhibition of Torie's photographs is titled "Men Becoming Gods in the villages of India's Malabar Coast", and is scheduled for June 5, 2009 during Gallery Walk at 181 Main...

Read more »

Hallelujah! BBC Goes Big

© Micah Albert-All Rights ReservedI always thought that the BBC website was created and administered by a tea-lady who's a dead ringer for Terry Thomas. However, having been alerted by Benjamin Chesterton's post over at the excellent duckrabbit, I now realize there are stirrings of modernity, and someone may have finally found the nerve to tell the omnipotent tea-lady that size does matter after all....

Read more »

POV: NYT & Its Posed Photo

©Zackary Canepari/The New York Times-All Rights ReservedThe New York Times's editors published an unusual apology on Friday. The apology relates to a picture appearing in a May 5 front-page article about the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which showed a silhouetted Taliban logistics tactician, holding a rifle (above). The Times subsequently learned from the photographer that the rifle the Taliban...

Read more »

Maynard Switzer: Rann of Kutch

©Maynard Switzer-All Rights ReservedThis is the second time that Maynard Switzer's work is featured on The Travel Photographer blog, and there are good reasons for that; his color aesthetic and his recent gallery of lovely photographs made in the Rann of Kutch and Gujarat. I find Rajastani women to be some of the most attractive in the world, always an incentive to post their images.Maynard received...

Read more »

WSJ's Photo Journal: Islam in Cairo

©Dominic Nahr-All Rights ReservedThe WSJ's Photo Journal has featured some 21 photographs by Dominic Nahr in an interesting photo essay titled In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood Plays Defence and starts it off with this: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is on the defensive, its struggles reverberating throughout Islamist movements that the secretive organization has spawned world-wide. I'm somewhat puzzled by...

Read more »

100 Followers!

I'm flying to London today where I'll spend a few days before returning home to New York City. I wasn't planning to post today (my robotic assistant is on vacation) but I saw that The Travel Photographer blog now has 100 Followers...so I thought I'd thank them with this post. Thank you! I think that's quite a milestone on this blog's trajectory.I'm still bemused that this blog attracts thousands of loyal readers on a daily basis, who arrived from...

Read more »

Cairo Report: Minimus Gear

Just a short blog post to confirm that my minimalistic gear setup consisting of the Acer Aspire One netbook, the G-Tech Mini 250 gb hard drive, the Domke F3-X plus my Canon 5D Mark II with a 28-70mm 2.8 and 17-40mm 4.0 mm, has worked marvelously well here in Cairo.The small Domke bag holds all the above gear, plus the Marantz PMD 620 and assorted paraphernalia including travel documents. This has...

Read more »

POV: Cairo Report

©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI'm frequently asked to organize and lead photo~expeditions to Egypt (or more specifically to Cairo), and I've always resisted the temptation. People view this as strange and have difficulty understanding the reasons. After all, I was born in Cairo, I speak the language (almost a colloquially as its residents) and perfectly understand the culture.My reasons for my...

Read more »

James Nachtwey: Red Cross in Afghanistan

James Nachtwey photographed Alberto Cairo who heads the orthopedic rehabilitation program of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a job dedicated to helping disabled Afghans live normally again by equipping them with artificial legs and arms.Cairo, once a debonair lawyer in his native Turin, Italy, is almost certainly the most celebrated Western relief official in Afghanistan, at least among...

Read more »

Cairo Report: Zekr at Manawat

©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedIt happened. Driven by Abdel Fattah ("Kojak") and accompanied by Badawi, then meeting with Haj Zakaria and Badawi's father at 11:00 pm, I was welcomed to an authentic zikr ceremony held at the village of Manawat. This is certainly not a venue for the faint-hearted or for foreigners (assuming they would even find the village). The ceremony starts after the night prayer...

Read more »

Antonio Mari: The Rajasthan Diaries

Antonio Mari is a Brazilian journalist and photographer based in New York City, specializing in ethnographic subject matter--documenting peoples and cultures outside the mainstream of western civilization. He emailed me attaching the above slideshow of Rajasthani portraits and scenes for inclusion on the blog.This is an opportune post as I'm currently preparing details for my first photo~expedition of 2010, and Antonio's slideshow is a hint as...

Read more »

Cairo Report: Madh in Old Cairo

©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedHere's another of my photographs of the band at Monday's Sufi madh at the shrine of Sayyidah Fatimah Al Nabawiyya. The fellow on the left in his white galabeya is called the muallem or the leader of the band, while the other is called el-madah.I'm hoping to attend a real zikr ceremony late tonight in one of the villages surrounding Cairo. Naturally, I'll be accompanied...

Read more »

Stuart Freedman: Kathakali

©Stuart Freedman-All Rights ReservedStuart Freedman is an English photographer, whose work was published in, amongst others, Life, Geo, Time, Der Spiegel, Newsweek and Paris Match covering stories from Albania to Afghanistan and from former Yugoslavia to Haiti. He was recognized in many awards such as Amnesty International (twice), Pictures of the Year, The World Sports Photo Award, The Royal Photographic...

Read more »

Zikr At Fatimah Al-Nabawiyah Shrine

©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedWell, it did happen. Driven in the rickety taxi expertly navigated by Abdel-Fattah (aka Kojak) in the grimy labyrinthine alleys of Old Cairo, and accompanied by Badawi and Haj Zakaria (an Imam by choice and a government employee by necessity), I arrived in reasonable good form at the shrine (and mosque) of Sayyidah Fatimah Al Nabawiyya just before the afternoon Muslim...

Read more »

Cairo Report

©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI'm planning to attend a genuine zikr ceremony this afternoon in a traditional (aka gritty) Old Cairo neighborhood called Darb Al Ahmar. A rickety taxi driven by a ricketier cab driver nicknamed Kojak (yes of course, he's totally bald) will take me to the place, where I am assured that I will have access to the ceremony. This is not a performance for tourists but...

Read more »

Asia Without Borders Photo Contest

Asia Without Borders Photo Competition is organised by Asian Geographic, and sponsored by Canon, Jet Airways and Lowepro among others. The photo contest is open to special photographs from talented photographers that capture a striking image of Asia’s land, people, architecture or wildlife.As in all and every photography contests, I strongly encourage all interested photographers to make sure they...

Read more »

Senol Zorlu: Portraits

©Senol Zorlu-All Rights ReservedSenol Zorlu is a Turkish photographer living and working in Germany, who has an incredibly beautiful website. I hesitate to describe it as "slick" because of the word's connotations, but it merits at the very least the descriptive adjective of "cool". I don't know how efficient this website is terms of SEO and impressing photo buyers, but the photography and his portraits...

Read more »

NYT: Afghanistan's Opium Scourge

©Lynsey Addario/NY Times-All Rights Reserved"Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium, is drowning in a sea of its own making. While the country’s narco-traffickers ship vast quantities of the stuff to Europe and the United States, enough of it stays behind to offer a cheap and easy temptation to the people at home."The New York Times featured a photo essay by Lynsey Addario titled Drowning...

Read more »

WSJ: Rajasthanis

©Arko Datta/Reuters-All Rights ReservedThe Wall Street Journal's Photo Journal brings us the above photograph of Rajasthani villagers, attending a wedding in the Ore Village near Abu Road in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. I believe the villagers in their red turbans are Rebari tribesmen, who are largely nomadic in their lifestyle. One of them has traces of pink dye on his tunic...remnants...

Read more »

Haiti

Ruxandra Guidi is a freelance radio and print news correspondent. During a five-week IRP Fellowship, Guidi traveled to Haiti to examine the effects of foreign aid on human rights, violence and povety. This Soundslides gallery, with photos by Roberto "Bear" Guerra and music by Luis Guerra, depicts the harsh living conditions in Haiti, a country gravitating from one humanitarian crisis to another. The...

Read more »

Horst Friedrichs: Mali

©Horst Friedrichs-All Rights ReservedHere's a Soundlsides on Mali by Horst Friedrichs. It's in German but worth your while for the photographs even if you're a non German speaker. Horst is photographer/photojournalist, who studied photography in Munich. He freelanced with Stern, The Independent and The New York Times in the nineties, and traveled to Venezuela, Pakistan, Mali and Japan. He produced...

Read more »

WSJ: A Dip In The Ganga

©Jitendra Prakash/Reuters-All Rights ReservedThe Wall Street Journal's Photo Journal has, in my view, surpassed the Boston Globe's The Big Picture in terms of quality of photographs, partly due to the variety it provides. Whereas The Big Picture presents photographs on the same theme or subject, the WSJ presents photographs from various sources around the globe.In today's gallery, this lovely photograph...

Read more »

Zackary Canepari: Turning To Madrasas

©Zackary Canepari/NY Times-All Rights ReservedI like Zackary Canepari's photographic style. Here's a gallery of his photographs documenting for The New York Times a few of Pakistan's madrasas, or traditional Islamic schools, that teach, feed and occasionally house children of the poorest familiest. Whether in Pakistan or elsewhere, some also teach a militant brand of Islam, offering no instruction...

Read more »

Robot Posts

I will be traveling over the course of the coming few weeks, and will have intermittent access to the internet...just in case however, i've set up a number of posts that will be "robot" posted during that time, as I did whilst on my February photo-expedition. I hope to be able to report now and then on my photographic "exploits" in Cairo etc.I wish I had a robotic assistant as cute as Wall.E...

Read more »

Gianfranco Tripodo: Wat Bang Phra

I saw the work of Gianfranco Tripodo mentioned in a Lightstalkers forum discussion, and noticed he documented the ritualistic tattooing at the Thai temple of Wat Bang Phra, near Bangkok as I did a couple of years ago. His gallery is titled Sak Yant: Thai Magical Tattoo. Gianfranco Tripodo is a photojournalist currently based in Madrid, Spain, and is a member of Cesuralab Agency, an Italian photo collective...

Read more »

Diti Kotecha: Shekhawati

I occasionally, usually by accident, come across work of such fresh creativity and imagination that it figuratively stops me in my tracks. To me, the work of Diti Kotecha, a photographer based in Mumbai who describes herself as a documentary and travel photographer, graphic designer, cat lover and collector of knick-knacks, qualifies as one of those "stop-in-the-tracks". Her website is not gallery...

Read more »

Beyond The Frame: Vedic Master

©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI'm resuscitating the Beyond The Frame feature on The Travel Photographer blog, which today shows-off one of my favorite photographs from my February photo-expedition in Kerala. One of photo shoots was inside an ancient Vedic 'gurukul' (or training/boarding school, and very similar to the Buddhist monasteries for novitiates), where we were treated to a demonstration...

Read more »

Canon G10 & VII Agency

Here's an entertaining advert for Canon's G10 featuring some of the VII Photo agency founding members: John Stanmeyer, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Ron Haviv, Joachin Ladefoged and Marcus Bleasdale (seemingly the only member with no beard).Technically, the advert is flashy and very well made, however the tips offered by both Gary and Antonin seem to be targeted at an audience who, despite the...

Read more »