Gaza's Massacre

Photo: Khalil Hamra/Associated Press As we read of the unfolding massacre in Gaza, I thought it appropriate to excerpt the following from an opinion piece written by Tariq Ali in yesterday's The Guardian newspaper. Here it is:And Israeli citizens might ponder the following words from Shakespeare (in The Merchant of Venice), which I have slightly altered: "I am a Palestinian....

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WP: Female Circumcision in Kurdistan

Photo © Andrea Bruce/Washington PostHere's a photo reportage by Andrea Bruce for The Washington Post titled Sheelan's Circumcision, which makes me cringe for two reasons. The first reason is obvious; female genital cutting (FGC) is an abhorrent and an utterly repellent practice. The graphic photographs show us how Sheelan, a seven-year-old girl is taken by her mother to be circumcised...

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My Canon 5D Mark II !!!

All's well that ends well. I was at B&H this morning to buy a card reader, and while at the desk to have it invoiced, I asked the salesman if they had any Canon 5D Mark II in stock, fully anticipating an exasperated no. To my surprise, he looked up and said he had one in stock....just like that. Naturally, I grabbed it. In life, it's all a matter of timing. Had I gone to B&H...

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Denis Dailleux: Egypt

Photo © Denis Dailleux-All Rights Reserved"Between Denis Dailleux and Cairo, it is a true love story : on one side, an insatiable fascination for this unique place, its mood, its magical lights and an unspeakable tenderess towards its inhabitants ; on the other, a natural generosity, a city which offers itself to this subjugated look, inhabitants full of spontaneous kindness."Denis...

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Canon 5D Mark II: Adorama

Within a hour of having read on 1001 Noisy Cameras that Adorama had the Canon 5D Mark II in stock, I sauntered rather skeptically down there to investigate the report with my VISA card in my back pocket. As I expected, the somewhat condescending (note: condescension arising from the knowledge that he had an item that many people wanted) salesman flashed his gleaming canines, and...

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NGS: International Photo Contest 2008

The National Geographic announced the 2008 winners in its International Photography Contest. Frankly, the NGS lumped so many contests together that I lost track of what is what but in any event, here's another one.The winner of the International Contest is Ilvy Njiokiktjien of the Netherlands for a photograph of elderly women in Mozambique. Quite a nice photograph with everything...

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Alison Wright

Photo © Alison Wright-All Rights ReservedHere's the work of a consumate travel (and documentary) photography professional which I take delight in featuring on this blog. Alison Wright has traveled the corners of the globe during the past 20 years, documenting endangered cultures and highlight human rights issues which she cares about.She's represented by the National Geographic...

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POV: Massacre in Gaza

Photo: Yasser Saymeh/AFP-Getty ImagesThe New York Times reports today that more than 200 Palestinians were massacred by the Israeli military strikes. Being The New York Times, it tempers its headlines by pointing out that these military strikes were in retaliation for the "rockets" launched by the militant wing of Hamas on the towns of Southern Israel.It also features Attack in...

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Alice Smeets: UNICEF Photo of the Year

Image © Alice Smeets-All Rights ReservedIt' always a pleasure to hear of young emerging photographers gaining awards and wide recognition for their work, and here's one who just did that.The young Belgian photographer Alice Smeets won the international photo competition "UNICEF-Photo of the Year". Her winning picture is of a girl in the largest slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital....

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Gyula Sopronyi: The Holy River

Image © Gyula Sopronyi-All Rights ReservedGyula Sopronyi, originally working for Népszabadságis, Hungary's political daily newspaper, is a freelance photographer with an eye for stories in the faces, expressions and eyes of his subjects. He has won an impressive array of awards and competitions, and attended various Magnum workshops and classes.Here's one of his galleries, titled...

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Alberto Cairo: A Good Man

Photo © Tyler Hicks/NYT-All Rights ReservedIn the midst of the unimaginable mess, misery and corruption in Afghanistan comes the story of Alberto Cairo, 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.Here's a man whose story...

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Happy Holidays & A Luminous 2009!

I wish all readers of The Travel Photographer blog a Merry Christmas, a very Happy Holiday Season and a Luminous 2009!It's the time of year when, amongst many reflective thoughts that whirl around my head, I look back at the genesis of this blog, and marvel at the breathtaking growth in number of its readers, at the number of comments received, and at what I've learned about photography...

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Nick Hall: Mongolia

Photo © Nick Hall-All Rights ReservedNick Hall calls the Cotswolds in England his home, but now lives in Seattle and works for various publications such as the UK's Geographical magazine. He was runner-up in the 2007 Travel Photographers Network Annual, and recognized in the Young Travel Photographer of the Year Awards.Check out his lovely photographs made in the Orkhon Valley...

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Chico Sanchez: Virgin of Guadalupe

Image © Chico Sanchez-All Rights ReservedAnother Soundslide-based slideshow from photojournalist Chico Sanchez, who this time documents the Virgin of Guadalupe's annual festival on December 12 in at the main Basilica in Mexico City, and titled The Empress of America.Not only are the photographs well-chosen, but Chico has seamlessly woven various audio tracks into the slideshow;...

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WP: "Destiny" of Girls

Photo © Nikki Kahn/WP-All Rights ReservedNikki Kahn is a documentary photographer and photojournalist working for The Washington Post, and has recently been featured of the its website with her photo essay "For Impoverished Girls, School Is Just A Dream", which is accompanied by an article written by Mary Jordan, titled "This Is The Destiny of Girls".The photographs are of young...

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Cambodia: Royal Apsaras

Photograph © Christophe Loviny-All Rights ReservedChristophe Loviny is a photojournalist and editor. He's been a specialist of Southeast Asia for over 25 years, and was based in Angkor from 1989 to 1994. His work on Cambodia has been published in The Sunday Times Magazine, Asiaweek, Geo, L'Express, Paris-Match, Stern, Le Figaro-Magazine, and others. He is the author of several...

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Justin Mott: HCM City (Saigon)

Photo © Justin Mott/NYT-All Rights ReservedHere's a slideshow of photographs by Justin Mott as featured in the Travel section of The New York Times' website under the caption of A Weekend in Ho Chi Minh City.I haven't been to Vietnam for a couple of years, and these photographs show the immense strides that Vietnam's main cities have taken towards modernization. Sure, there were...

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The Big Picture's Photographs of the Year 2

Image © Sigit Pamungkas-ReutersImage © Reinhard Krause-ReutersHere's the second installment of the Photographs of the Year as featured by "The Big Picture", the large image blog launched by the Boston Globe, and compiled by Alan Taylor. I'm told by knowledgeable sources that The Big Picture records about 750,000 to 1,000,000 hits a day.Deciding that I had enough of gory pictures...

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Lunatic Magazine #3

Here's issue #3 of Lunatic Magazine, a bi-annual online photo magazine which seeks to give photographers the opportunity to promote original stories and images. It also aims to provide space for creative work within photojournalism. The magazine presents new work from known and unknown talented photographers from all around the world. The magazine is very nicely presented, and...

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My Work: The Buddha's Apprentices

Here's an audio slideshow based on the Soundslides flash platform featuring photographs of novices (and nuns) in various monasteries in Bhutan titled The Buddha's Apprentices. The photographs of slideshow were made during my Land of the Druk Yul photo expedition this past October. The ambient audio was recorded in monasteries during prayer ceremonies, using a M-Audio Micro-Track,...

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The Big Picture's Photographs of the Year

Photograph © REUTERS/Kareem RaheemOne of the better photo blogs is "The Big Picture" launched by the Boston Globe, and compiled by Alan Taylor, who credits the old Life magazine, National Geographic, Mediastorm and MSNBC for his inspiration. The Big Picture joins the fray with its Photographs of the Year Part 1 using its high-quality large images.One of the photographs chosen by...

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Time Pictures of the Year 2008

Photograph © Livia Corona/Time-All Rights ReservedYes, 'tis the season for the "photos of the year" fever. Time magazine has just published it's Pictures of the Year feature, which showcases 47 photographs its editors believe are reflective of 2008.Incidentally, Barack Obama has made it as Time's Person of the Year. Not a great surprise...if not him, who?As for the Pictures of...

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Travel Photographer of the Year 2008

Photograph © Charlie Mahoney-All Rights ReservedTOPTY has just published its winners of its annual competition to crown the travel photographer of the year. Entries were received from photographers in 61 countries, and shortlisted entrants from 33 countries went through to the final judging round. Category winners for 2008 come from Australia, Italy, the UK and USA, with photographers...

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MSNBC's Year In Pictures 2008

MSNBC has just published its Year In Pictures slideshow, which is in two parts; News and Sports, and allows viewers to cast their vote. Many of the bylines under the News photographs are of well-known photojournalis...

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Lightroom 2.2 Available

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.2 is available immediately as a free upgrade for existing Lightroom 2 users. According to the company, its Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 2.2 update includes these enhancements:• Additional camera support for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon PowerShot G10, Panasonic DMC-LX3 and other.• Includes several corrections for issues introduced by the Lightroom...

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TTP's Photo of the Year

Photograph © Alixandra Fazzina-All Rights ReservedI'm very pleased to announce that the second annual The Travel Photographer's Photo of the Year is the above wonderful photograph by Alixandra Fazzina. It's of an Afghan woman named Siamoy, who's breast feeding her baby boy as she goes to visit her sisters at their home in Khourdakon village, in the remote mountainous province of...

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Canon 5D Mark II: Availability?

US-based photographers who can't find a Canon 5D Mark II at their favorite (or any) retailer, can always fly to Paris and buy it there. I'm told by a visitor to Paris that she'll be buying one at the retail price of Euros 2400 or 2000 (the latter when clawing back one's "detaxe" or VAT at the airport). Euros 2000 is equivalent to $2740 at today's rate of exchange. An alternative...

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Ryan Pyle: Gongga Shan

Photographs © Ryan Pyle-All Rights ReservedBorn in Canada, Ryan Pyle obtained a degree in International Politics from the University of Toronto and subsequently fled to China on an exploratory mission. In 2002 he settled in China permanently (currently in Shanghai, China), and began taking freelance assignments in 2004. He then became a regular contributor to the New York Times covering China, Time, Newsweek, Outside Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine,...

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Condition Critical

Here's Condition Critical, a feature produced by MediaStorm for Medecins Sans Frontieres on the war in the eastern Congo; a horrific war virtually ignored by the US mainstream media, which is consumed by far more serious matters such as whether the Governor of Illinois is corrupt, if Sarah Palin will be running in 2012...and of course, that Barack Obama will use his middle name...

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NPR: Reza: War And Peace

Image © Gerard Rancinan-All Rights ReservedReza Deghati is one of the world's eminent photojournalists, who traveled the world for nearly 30 years, bearing witness to wars, unrest, great leaders and the courage of ordinary people trapped by history. He has won countless awards, working for publications such as National Geographic, Newsweek and Time.NPR has an interview with Reza,...

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Canon 5D Mark II: $4800...WTF?

I just read on 1001 Noisy Cameras that a camera retailer is offering a Canon 5D Mark II with a EF 24-105mm f4.0 L lens for $4800, a nice $1000 premium. Since these cameras are sold out with a long waiting list, it seems the retailer in question figures that some photographers will fork out an additional $1000 for it to have it now...you know, the immediate gratification thing.I...

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Private: The Other Side of India

PRIVATE is a self-described quarterly international review of black and white photographs and texts, and an "independent and itinerant publication that offer its photographic journey since 1992".Its website, Private Photo Review, is showcasing a special issue titled The Other Side of India, with black & white photographs by Indian photographers, such as Srinivas Kuruganti with...

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Charles Meacham: Hemkund Sahib

Image © Charles Meacham-All Rights ReservedCharles Meacham was born just outside of Philadelphia, and his first major travel experience was a year trip touring the U.S. in a 1971 Volkswagen camper. Overheating and bursting into flames, the van died along a highway in Arizona, but his interest in travel did not.He specializes in projects involving Sikhism, and he has recently documented...

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NG's Traveler: 2008 Photo Contest Results

The National Geographic Traveler announced its annual photo contest winners. The photo contest received over 14,500 entries from 4000 "amateur shutterbugs" (The Traveler's terminology, not mine).Traveler's Photo Contest WinnersNot to diminish the quality of the winning photographs, but had I been the judge, the above photograph would have won first prizes.Separately, in the National...

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Mustafah Abdulaziz: Patagonia Cowboys

Photograph © Mustafah Abdulaziz-All Rights ReservedWhen you finish viewing his portfolio (especially his new Patagonia Cowboys series), you'll agree with me and many others...Mustafah Abdulaziz is a damn good photographer. Not only is he good, but he realizes the power of large images which populate his website, and it's quite an experience to be able to enjoy his craft through...

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Canon 5D Mark II: DxO Lab

(Credit: DxO Labs)CNET's Underexposed, a blog by Stephen Shankland, has posted an article with a bunch of interesting news on the Canon 5D Mark II. For instance, it reports that the camera's sensor ranks very high on DxO Labs' test of sensor performance. This is especially significant since there's been an ongoing debate as to whether the $2,700 5D Mark II performs better than...

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Moises Saman: Machu Picchu

Photograph © Moises Saman-All Rights ReservedI noticed that The New York Times' featured a slideshow of Machu Picchu's photographs by Moises Saman, who's better known as a conflict photographer, having covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.The slideshow is titled The Lost City of the Incas while the accompanying article is written...

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WSJ: Phil Borges

"When Phil Borges learned of the perks that came with being a dentist, he switched his major from engineering to orthodontics. But his first love -- photography -- would eventually become his second career."And so begins the recent Wall Street Journal's article on a peerless photographer; Phil Borges. For over twenty five years Phil has lived with and documented indigenous and...

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Canon 5D Mark II: Black Spots?

The blogosphere is jumping with the buzz that some users of the new Canon 5D Mark II have reported that photos taken with it can be "blemished with dark spots near areas with very bright highlights". While some users have said that there is a simple fix for it, Canon appears to be aware of this report, and is looking into it...it's possibly a firmware issue.I have two thoughts...

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Rodrigo Cruz: Migrants

Photograph © Rodrigo Cruz-All Rights ReservedI'm very pleased to feature the excellent work of Mexican photojournalist Rodrigo Cruz on TTP. Rodrigo was the energy behind the success of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico in June 2008, and without his unstinting assistance, many of us would not have been able to produce the work we did.Rodrigo is an extraordinarily talented...

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PDN's POTD: More Large Pictures

PDN has recently joined the list of large-image blogs with its Photo Of The Day. As posted earlier on TTP, some of the others are the Boston Globe's The Big Picture and WSJ's Photo Journal, and the Sacramento Bee's The Frame.PDN's entry is somewhat different than the rest, since it appears that it intends to feature a collection of various photography styles: documentary, fine...

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POV: If Only....

Photograph © Jb Reed/NYT-All Rights ReservedI'd like to start the week with a story that appeared in the New York Times' City section yesterday. After the mindless mayhem in Mumbai, stories such as this one are to be treasured and remembered. An Indonesian Muslim, Dinar Puspita is a 17-year old exchange student currently attending school in Riverdale, New York. This is an increasingly...

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Katie Orlinsky: Muxe of Juchitan

Photograph © Katie Orlinsky/NYT-All Rights ReservedThe New York Times features a photo essay by Katie Orlinsky titled A Lifestyle Distinct: The Muxe of Mexico. In Zapotec cultures of Oaxaca state, a muxe is a physically male individual who dresses and behaves as a woman. These individuals are generally regarded by Mexicans as a third gender, and live their lives as women, choosing...

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Foundry Photojournalism Workshop 2009

As previously posted on TTP, the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (FPW) has announced its second annual event planned for 26 July - 1 August 2009, in Manali, Manali-Kulu Valleys, Himachal Pradesh, India.The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop was created to provide training, education and networking to emerging photographers and students who normally would not be able to afford workshops,...

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The Hajj

Photograph © Hassan Ammar/AP-All Rights ReservedDraped in white robes to symbolize purity and the equality of mankind under God, nearly three million Muslims from all over the world gathered Friday in Mecca, on the eve of the start of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.The Hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca and is the largest annual pilgrimage in the world. The pilgrimage is one of the fifth...

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POV: On The Sly or Candid?

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedAs I'm putting the final pieces together for The Travel Photographer's Theyyam of Malabar Photo Expedition in February, I'm thinking about my favorite places to photograph in Delhi, and that's the Sufi shrines of Nizzam-Uddin abd Qutb-Uddin.These wonderful shrines are not for the faint-hearted, as they usually teem with devout Muslims...

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Iomega Helium External Drive: Yum!

Photograph Courtesy The New York TimesThe New York Times' Personal Tech section features the 320-gigabyte eGo Helium USB 2.0 portable hard drive. The article says that MacBook Air owners will be drawn to this peripheral's design. To quote from the article:"The 2.5-inch eGo (compatible with Mac OS X 10.1.5 or above and Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, XP and Vista) mirrors...

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Vincent de Groot: Faces of India Part 2

Photograph © Vincent de Groot-All Rights ReservedThis is the second installment of Vincent de Groot's photographs of India on this blog. The black & white photographs, of people in markets, are arranged in a SoundSlides slideshow accompanied here by a hip-hop style of music....it could well be modern Bhangra or something similar. As I mention in my earlier post, this might...

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Angkor Wat: Don't Go!

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI've ranted quite a few times about the mindless uber-development which I witnessed in Siem Reap in 2005 and 2006, and how it seemed every time I blinked, a new hotel appeared on the scene....and how I had to make sure that our photographers woke up before dawn to be able to photograph at the temples before waves of tour groups swamped...

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