Bhutan: Field Report

I am sitting in the main town of Bumthang which has the rather evocative name of Jakar. The internet cafe here has four terminals, wifi and espresso. What else can one ask from life! I shall try to post a few photographs in the coming few days. The two festivals in Wangdue and Tamshing exceeded our expectations, and our collective image storage has run in the hundreds of gigabyt...

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The Globe & Mail: Behind The Veil

Canada's The Globe and Mail provides a rare insight into the lives of Afghan women through a week-long multi-media series, Behind the Veil. In these series, 10 representative Afghan women in the Kandahar area speak about key issues in their lives. Aided by an interpreter, specific questions were asked from each of the women. The Globe & Mail is well-known for its edgy multimedia, having featured equally interesting and extremely well produced...

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On The Road: Bhutan (Bangkok Report #2)

Chinatown (Bangkok)-Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedThe 8 participants of my Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul photo expedition are currently in Bangkok, and are collectively relieved to hear that yesterday's earthquake hasn't disrupted our plans, and having spoken to our agent in Thimpu, all indications are that its damage was restricted to the Mongar area in south-eastern...

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On The Road: Bhutan (Bangkok Report)

The late afternoon in Bangkok saw Graham Ware, Kayla Keenan and I spending a couple of hours in Bangkok's Chinatown district, "de-rusting' our shutter fingers with some street photography.While having dinner with some of the photo-expedition's members at The Irish Pub on Silom, news of the 6.3-magnitude earthquake in Bhutan reached me. The AP report said that the earthquake killed at least 11 people, damaging an ancient monastery and forcing hundreds...

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On The Road: Bhutan Photo-Expedition

Well, I've packed my last few items in my bags and as you read this, I'm on my way to meet up with the rest of the Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul photo~expedition participants in Bangkok (after stopping en route in London) on September 21. The 8 photographers are all US-based, except for one who hails from Canada.Being in Bangkok for a couple of days will allows us to get to know...

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NPR: Traveling Down The Amazon

Here's Traveling Down The Amazon, an intelligently produced NPR multimedia feature that combines audio, stills and graphics to tell the story of transcontinental highway being built in Peru and Brazil which promises to bring economic opportunities, and also acute environmental problems, to one of the most remote places on earth. NPR correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and staff...

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Black Rapid R-strap: Reinforcement

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedAs reported here on The Travel Photographer's blog, I'm a fan of the Black Rapid R-straps and have used mine for over a year on my various photo-expeditions. Many participants in my photo-expeditions like and use them as well, however they're all wary about having expensive cameras dangling from their bodies.One of the common fears is that...

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Mansi Midha: Kashmir

Photo © Mansi Midha-All Rights ReservedFirst things first. I believe if Mansi hadn't been involved with the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Manali this past month, it would never have succeeded as it did. She was the hidden (and frequently, visible too) energy behind all the arrangements, big and small, that are crucial to the viability of such a complex venture. Mansi's cajoling,...

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POV: Divine Plan

Photo © Rita Castlenuovo/The New York TimesThe New Tork Times brings us a rather interesting photo-essay by Rita Castlenuovo, along with an article by Ethan Bronner, which starts like this:"Of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, those who live in unauthorized hilltop outposts like this one, a hardscrabble unpaved collection of 20 trailers, are considered...

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The Travel Photographer: GlobalPost

The GlobalPost's Full Frame features photo essays and conversations with photographers in the field, and it has just featured a slideshow of my photographs, along with an audio interview in flash format. The slideshow is titled Unusual Cultures, Unusual Places, and can be seen either by clicking on the arrow in the above image, or by clicking on the link.GlobalPost has published nearly 3,000 stories, videos and photo galleries since January including...

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Best Multimedia: Journey To End of Coal

Here's one of the best multimedia web documentary I've seen so far, and it's titled “Journey to the end of Coal,” developed by two French multimedia companies, Honkytonk and 31Septembre. It's an interactive web documentary set in China, and documents the sacrifices that millions of Chinese coal miners are making everyday, risking their lives and spoiling their land to satisfy their...

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POV: The Mind Boggles

© Casey Kelbaugh/The New York TimesWhile our country is involved in two wars and human lives are lost every day; while President Obama is tackling the enormous economic difficulties inherited from the previous administration, as well as trying to reshape our broken health care system; while we are remembering the dreadful events of September 11, 2001, and while unemployment is...

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Chris Rainier: Papua New Guinea

Chris Rainier: Meetings with Remarkable People - Papua New Guinea from liveBooks on Vimeo.RESOLVE, the informative blog from liveBooks, has announced that National Geographic Fellow Chris Rainier would be one of its new regular contributors. Chris is a well known documentary photographer who took part in many National Geographic initiatives, such as the All Roads Photography Program and the Enduring Voices Project. With RESOLVE, Chris will video-post...

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Pétanque In NYC's Bryant Park

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedFor a shift in gears, here are a couple of photographs made yesterday at the northwestern corner of Bryant Park in New York City, where aficionados meet almost daily to play bocce or pétanque.Pétanque is a French...

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New Leica M9

Photojournalists (the few who can still afford it) and dentists have been impatiently waiting for 9/9/2009 for the new Leica M9. According to the British Journal of Photography, Leica has updated its M8 model with a full-frame M9. The M9 fits a 24x36mm 18.5 million pixel resolution CCD sensor that has been developed specifically for the camera. It offers ‘full 35mm film format...

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Mohit Gupta: Thankas

I mentioned that I would feature Mohit Gupta's multimedia project "Thankas" on TPP as soon as it was uploaded on his website, and I'm pleased that he has just made it available to us to appreciate on his newly completed website/blog.Originally from Himachal Pradesh, Mohit is an independent photographer based in New Delhi, who specializes in travel and documentary photography. To...

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Mindy Adams' Guide: Multimedia Reporting

Mindy McAdams teaches university courses about online journalism and the changing ways we use technologies for communication, and she has published a comprehensive guide to multimedia proficiency, now available for download in PDF from her website.The 42-page document is fully linked and usable online in most web browsers, Adobe Reader, or in Preview on the Mac OS. McAdams has...

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Mitchell Kanashkevich: Seeing The Light

Photo © Mitchell Kanashkevich-All Rights ReservedMitchell Kanashkevich is an oft-published travel/documentary photographer, whose main passion resonates with those of us who are described as "ethno-photographers". Much of his work is in capturing disappearing ancient cultures and the human condition in unique, challenging situations. Much of his travel/documentary photography is...

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WIRED: Kanepari & Ferguson

Photos © Adam Ferguson (L)/Zackary Canepari (R)-Courtesy WIRED"The photojournalist has long been known as the lone wolf, traveling solo to the far-flung corners of the world to document experiences few are capable of seeing. By function, it’s often a solitary quest, lonely and alienating; rarely as romantic as the photographs make it appear."What a great start for the Raw File...

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Ulla Lohmann: Papua Mummies

An unusual project has put Ulla Lohmann in the 'crosshairs' at the Visa pour l'Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan. Ulla's Mummies in Papua portfolio was shown at Visa's first nightly projections, and is a distinct change from the normal fare that the festival is reputed for. She had to wait two years before being granted authorization to see and photograph the mummies....

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POV: To Publish or Not?

After 3 weeks of deliberation, the Associated Press released a graphic photograph by Julie Jacobson of Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard shortly after he was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan. Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard was mortally wounded and died shortly thereafter. The New York Times has the whole story here.Naturally, both the knee-jerk...

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Shiho Fukada: Tawang

Photo © Shiho Fukada/NYTimes-All Rights ReservedOne of my favorite photographers is Shiho Fukada, and a fresh slideshow of her photographs is featured in the New York Times. A Contested Frontier In The Clouds is the rather awkward title chosen for the slideshow, but Shiho's photographs, despite the dry reportage they illustrate, has flashes of her usual creativity.Tawang is a...

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Carolyn Cole: Afghan Women

Photo © Carolyn Cole/LATimes-All Rights ReservedThe Los Angeles Times has featured an audio slideshow on Afghan Women, photographed and narrated by Carolyn Cole, and produced by Bryan Chan.The premise of the audio slideshow is that while Afghan women live in a freer environment than what it was under the Taleban, when they were forbidden to leave their homes without a male relative,...

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WSJ Photo Journal: Pind Daan

Photo © Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press-All Rights ReservedThe Photo Journal of the Wall Street Journal continues to bring us interesting photographs from all corners of the globe, including this one by AP photographer Rajesh Kumar Singh of Hindus performing Pind Daan rituals in blessing their ancestors’ souls in the River Ganges in Allahabad. As per Hindu tradition, families...

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LENS blog: Dominic Nahr's Uneasy Congo

The New York Times' LENS blog brings us the work of photojournalist Dominic Nahr in a series of photographs titled Uneasy Congo. Though he is only 26 years old, Dominic’s photographs of Congo’s brutal conflict are being exhibited in Perpignan at Visa pour l’Image, one of the most important international photojournalism festival.The article explains the reasons as to why Dominic's...

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My Work: The Street Barbers of Manali

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedThe gestation period for The Street Barbers of Manali was remarkably short...certainly the shortest for any of my projects. Walking through the streets of Manali with Yasin Dar (a conflict photographer and photojournalist based in Kashmir), we came about the barbers who had set up a sort of shack near the Peace Cafe...a Tibetan coffeehouse...

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Ami Vitale: Interview

Photo © Ami Vitale-All Rights ReservedI regret two things. While Ami and I traveled side by side to Manali for the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop on the latter section of a 20 hours road trip marred by unforeseen twists and turns (including fender benders and police shake-ups), we were both so knackered that conversation was limited, and I regret that both she and I were so immersed...

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Canon Announces the EOS 7D

So the rumors were right, and the flaky images leaked by Chinese and Japanese website were accurate after all! Canon USA Inc. has today announced its new EOS 7D single-lens reflex digital camera, as well as three new lenses, a new battery grip, and a new wireless file transmitter.The Canon 7D has a new 18-megapixel APS-C sensor with a 1.6x crop factor, and is equipped with dual...

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