Sunday Break: Chinatown's Columbus Park

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI thought New York City's weather on Sunday was just perfect for a few hours of street photography on Chinatown's Mulberry Street, but ended up spending an interesting time at Columbus Park (Mulberry and Bayard). This is the only park in Chinatown, and is built on what was in the 19th century the most dangerous slum area of immigrant New...

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Praful Rao: Of Monasteries & Men

Photograph © Praful Rao-All Rights Reserved I had the pleasure of meeting Praful Rao in Thimpu, Bhutan which he was visiting at the same time I was there. Praful is a self taught photographer whose passion for photography spans his lifetime. He describes himself as a generalist, choosing to capture whatever catches his eye or creating photographs from impromptu themes conjured...

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A Tale of Two Bags

A month ago, as I was retrieving my checked-in bag at Heathrow (I've stopped over in London from New York, en route to Bangkok then on to Paro, Bhutan), I thought something wasn't quite right but in a hurry to get a cab, it's only later that I saw that my TSA-approved lock was missing. I unzipped my bag and saw that someone had opened all my zipped-up pouches holding chargers,...

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POV: The Old Boys Club Crumbled

Paul Melcher is his blog Thoughts of A Bohemian has penned an interesting and provocative post on the Black Star Rising blog, and one that I am in full agreement with.Paul Melcher's premise is best summarized by this quote from the post:"Once upon a time, cameras, processing, access and distribution were the privilege of the few in photography. The business was an Old Boys Club...

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Shiho Fukada: E&P Winner

Photograph © Shiho Fukada-All Rights Reserved Editor & Publisher has just announced its 9th Annual Photos of the Year winners. Shiho Fukada, won the grand prize for her work in The New York Times covering the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, China. The Travel Photographer offers its congratulations to Ms Fukada for the well-deserved award. An outstanding photographer,...

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Haj & Eid El-Adha

Photo © AP Photo/Hassan Ammar-All Rights ReservedI wish Eid Mubarak to my Muslim readers, and I refer them to The Boston Globe's The Big Picture for great photographs of the event.Friday, November 27th, was the start of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim "Festival of Sacrifice", which is based on the tradition that Ibrahim was willing to sacrifice his son Ismail to God. As I posted in a POV...

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Lourdes Segade: Bhutan & Nepal

Photograph © Lourdes Segade/All Rights Reserved Lourdes Segade is a Spanish photojournalist, based in Barcelona. Her work is often seen in Spain, where she publishes in Sunday newspaper supplements such as La Vanguardia Magazine or El Semanal, and in other magazines such as Yo Dona or Revista, of La Vanguardia newspaper or other publications, like DAMn, The New York Times and...

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Foto Week DC: Nov 11-22, 2008

A week long celebration of photography is scheduled for November 15-22, and will mark the launch of FotoWeek DC, the first annual gathering of a diverse and wide-ranging photography community in the nation’s capital, including photographers, museums, universities and all those involved in the profession across the metro D.C. area, including Virginia and Maryland. FotoWeek DC...

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Bhutan Photo Expedition: Novice & Dahlias

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy/All Rights Reserved Here's a photograph made at the Dechen Phadrang monastic school in Thimpu. We had the necessary permit to visit the school, and spent a number of hours photographing and interacting with the novitiates. The photograph is obviously posed, and I chose a spot at the school's lakhang where the light was just right. The novitiates involved...

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NGM: Martin Schoeller: The Hadza

The National Geographic brings us The Hadza, a collection of photographs by Martin Schoeller. He is a German photographer who assisted Annie Leibovitz in New York in the early nineties. He continued on his own and worked for The New Yorker under contract since 1999 and also for Rolling Stone and GQ. According to Wikipedia, the Hadza people, or Hadzabe'e, are an ethnic group in...

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David Lang: Street Photographers

Photograph © David Lang/All Rights Reserved David Lang worked in New York City for a well-known photographer specializing in portraits and celebrity shoots, but moved on to work for the International Organization for Migration. He documented the organization's relief efforts following the tsunami in Sri Lanka. He also worked with UNICEF in the Maldives, and Internews in Pakistan. David...

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Bhutan Photo Expedition: Taktshang

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy/All Rights Reserved Yech! Britain has now switched to Winter Time, and it'll get darker earlier from now on. The weather forecast calls for rain...so it'll be a miserable Sunday. Perhaps it's a message from the gods that I ought to stay in and start reviewing my thousands of images from Bhutan, process them and put Lightroom 2.1 through its paces....

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John Stanmeyer on Malaria Project

John Stanmeyer is a co-founding member of VII, and works regularly on assignment with National Geographic magazine. Here's is a recent interview (via Canon Professional Network) of him discussing his latest long-term assignment with the magazine, involving the global scope of malaria. A thoughtful interview with one of my favorite photographers...John Stanmeyer's Malaria . This...

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POV: Nepal's Gadhimai Mela: Atrocity?

Photo © Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP/Courtesy WSJ-All Rights ReservedHere's a thought to coincide with Thanksgiving, one of our most hallowed of celebrations.The Bariyapur festival (also known as the Gadhimai Mela) has been in full swing in Nepal for the past few days. As you can read in the following excerpt, the age-old festival involves slaughtering of thousands of animals as sacrifice...

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NYT: Roots Of Faith & Strife

Photograph © Rina Castelnuovo/The New York Times The New York Times featured a slideshow of Rina Castelnuovo's photographs of Joseph’s Tomb, a stone compound in the heart of Nablus that "many Jews believe is the final burial place of the son of Jacob, the biblical patriarch." The accompanying article is by Isabel Kershner. The article reports that ardent and devout Jewish pilgrims,...

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Photo Plus Expo in New York City

Although I'm still in London, I ought to acknowledge the self-proclaimed "Most Important Event in Photography: October 23-25, 2008" in New York City's Javits Center. Frankly, I wouldn't attend it even if I were there, since it's a sort of convention-like event that showcases new products that I'll eventually read of on the internet. Unless I were to specifically meet other similarly-minded...

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Graham Ware: Bhutan

Graham Ware joined The Travel Photographer's Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul Photo~Expedition, and has produced an audio slideshow in QuickTime format of some of his various images made during the trip, coupled with live audio recordings gleaned during the tsechu festivals, religious pujas, the Sangha debates of the monks and a Bhutanese folk song. A medical technologist based in...

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BURN: Michael Loyd Young: Blues

Photo © Michael Loyd Young/Courtesy BURN-All Rights ReservedThose of us who love the blues will really appreciate Michael Loyd Young's Blues, Booze & BBQ audio slideshow. It appeared on BURN magazine which is an online feature for emerging photographers, and is curated by Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey. A foot-thumpin' piece...highly recommended viewing with your loudspeakers...

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Jehad Nga: Master of Chiaroscuro

Photograph © Jehad Nga/All Rights Reserved One of my favorite photographers, Jehad Nga, has just launched his website...in my estimation a master of the chiaroscuro (the contrast between light and dark), Jehad Nga was born in Kansas, but moved when young to Libya and then to London, where he was raised. In his early 20s and living in Los Angeles, he discovered a book by photographer...

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Viewbook: Francesco Giusti: SAPE

Photo © Francesco Giusti/Courtesy Viewbook-All Rights ReservedFrancesco Giusti lives and works as a photographer in Rome, Italy. He recently won First Prize in the Viewbook Photostory competition for his documentary series, SAPE. SAPE is the acronym for Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, which loosely translated from the French means "the society of persons who...

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Paul Nicklen & The Leopard Seal

I normally don't post about wildlife photography, but this has become so viral on the internet that I had to mention it here. It's an incredible slideshow of National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen's encounter with a leopard seal. Leopard seals are carnivores and munch on penguins like we do on popcorn. On average, females are generally slightly larger than the males, and can weigh between 500 and 1,300 lb, while males are between 440 and 1,000...

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LENS: Tyler Hicks & The Tabligh

Photo © Tyler Hicks/NYT-All Rights ReservedIt's been a while since I featured a war-related photojournalism piece, so I thought The New York Times LENS blog brought us a couple of days ago an interesting On Assignment gallery from Tyler Hicks on the Tabligh Jamaat. I like the clever way the photographer framed the above image, as he had to photograph surreptitiously and very quickly...

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WTF Department: Do I Look Stupid To You?

I recently got this rather terse but pseudo friendly email the other day (it'll remain anonymous because I'm a nice guy) from presumably a very busy person who cannot find the time to type full sentences:wd apprec. recg detailed itinerary info (hotels, meals, transportation, etc.) on your India tour.excellent website.thanksWhat's wrong with this request, you ask? Nothing...except...

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WSJ Photo Journal: Street Barber

Photo © Manish Swarup/AP/Getty-All Rights ReservedThe WSJ Photo Journal brings us a daily collection of fine photographs from photojournalists spread all over the globe, and this one caught my attention. It's by Manish Swarup of a man getting a shave at a roadside barbershop, decorated with portraits of Hindu gods and goddesses, in New Delhi...and the poster of the Swiss lodge...

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Twitter & Google: Lots of Followers

I am chuffed (a British colloquialism meaning delighted) that The Travel Photographer blog now has over 300 Google Followers, over 500 Twitter Followers and is listed in 80+ lists ....and that's not counting close to the thousand subscribers to my newsletter mailing list. Thank you! It's another a milestone on this blog's (almost) three years' li...

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Global Post: Finbarr O'Reilly: Senegal

GlobalPost brings us a feature by photographer Finbarr O'Reilly. The photographer came across performers of the Dseu Renaissance de Pikine theater group, and was smitten by the intense colors he saw when the female artists put their traditional headscarves and applied black makeup and markings worn by the Toucouleur people of West Africa.The "Toucouleur" possibly originates from...

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NYT: Lynsey Addario : India's Coconuts

Photo © Lynsey Addario/NYT-All Rights ReservedThe New York Times has featured a photo gallery by photojournalist Lynsey Addario documenting coconut pluckers in Kerala, India. Having visited and photographed in Kerala a number of times, I saw many of these coconut pluckers (as well as palm toddy tappers) climbing the trees with an incredible agility...and yet, it never crossed my...

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Dan Bannister: Bhutan

Photo © Dan Bannister-All Rights ReservedDan Bannister is a commercial, industrial and editorial photographer based in Calgary, Canada, who joined my recent Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul Photo~Expedition™, and I'm pleased to feature a selection of his fabulous work that he is showcasing in his Bhutan slideshow.Photo © Dan Bannister-All Rights ReservedA consummate professional, Dan's...

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WTF Department: Leica M7 Hermès

From the British Journal of Photography comes the news that Leica M7 Hermès edition has just been announced representing a collaboration between Leica and Hermès Paris. My readers may be interested to know that only 200 units will be available...and to make it even more exclusive, only 100 will be in orange and 100 in a green. The Leica M7 Edition Hermès will be available in the...

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Denver Post: The Last Tribes

Photo © Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images-All Rights ReservedThe Denver Post is another newspaper website that brings us large photo galleries from varied sources, including parts of the world that are less well known.This particular gallery documents the Penan; a tribe found mostly in the northern parts of Sarawak near Miri, Baram and Limbang. The nomadic hunter-gatherers Penan are...

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Tom Van Cakenberghe: The Living Goddess

Tom Van Cakenberghe is originally from Antwerp, Belgium and lives in Kathmandu, Nepal since 2004 and works as a press photographer. His website brings us a number of galleries on Nepal, but most interesting to me is The Living Goddess photo gallery...where he captured luminous (and candid) images of the Kumari. He must have been granted special access to be able to make these...

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POV: Twitter This Twitter That

I've been on Twitter for a while now, and I must say that I haven't gotten it yet. I follow a handful of talented photographers and other professionals, and I am extremely happy to be followed by many more...I must be doing something right... but here's what I find rather puzzling:1. I only "tweet" my blog posts, and on occasions some stuff that I find interesting in the realm...

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La Santa Muerte: Lorne Matalan

Photograph Lorne Matalon-All Rights ReservedHere's an audio slideshow of photographs by Lorne Matalon of La Santa Muerte, which is a saint-like figure worshiped and venerated in Mexico, probably as spiritual fusion of Mesoamerican and Catholic beliefs. Its cult attracts those who are inclined to seek the non-traditional ways for spiritual solace, and many of its followers live...

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Kirsten Luce: Kashmiri Family Portrait

Here's a new portfolio by the talented Kirsten Luce titled A Kashmiri Family Portrait; a family living with the ghosts of their loved ones.Kirsten is a freelance photojournalist working in New York City. Her work was published in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Time, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald (International Edition), AP, Bloomberg News and...

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OP: Mystical Adventures Photo Contest

Outdoor Photographer magazine has announced a Mystical Adventures Photo Contest, with a sponsorship of India's Ministry of Tourism. According to the rules, submissions must be in keeping with the general theme of the Mystical Adventures Photo Contest, including, but not limited to photos of historical locations, landscape and travel, but I'm not sure if the submissions are restricted...

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My Work: The Dancers of Tamshing Goemba

Here's a gallery of new photographs made during my recent Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul Photo~Expedition™. The gallery is a collection of photographs of various performers at the tsechu at Tamshing Goemba near Chamkar town, in the religious heartland of Bhutan. The performers range from the jovial jokers who wave wooden penises around, and whose principal role is to distract spectators,...

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Sumit Dayal: The Sundarbans

Photo © Sumit Dayal-All Rights ReservedSumit Dayal is a freelance photographer, traveling extensively to cover stories in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. While of Kashmiri origin, he spent his childhood in Kathmandu and was educated in Delhi. He graduated from the Documentary and Photojournalism Program at the ICP in New York. His work documents the plight of...

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Rant: Email Newsletters

I use Campaign Monitor to send my (almost) monthly newsletter, which informs my subscribers of my new photo galleries and forthcoming The Travel Photographer's Photo~Expeditions™. Although these newsletters are only sent to those who subscribe through my sign-in box on this blog, I still get a spam notice, or even two, once in a while.So here's the rant:1. The mailing list for...

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Penelope Gan: Malay-Chinese Opera

Photo © Penelope Gan-All Rights ReservedAlthough Penelope Gan works in the financial industry in Kuala Lumpur, she's also passionate about photography, and particularly about photojournalism. She recently embarked on documenting various social issues that concern her, and produced a number of audio-visual photo essays to assist a number of local NGOs and government organizations...

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DPReview: Canon 7D Review

From DPReview's just published write-up on the new Canon EOS 7D has this interesting paragraph:"In some respects the 7D is even a better camera than the EOS 5D Mark II and a viable alternative for all those who do not want or need a camera with a full-frame sensor. Its 8 fps continuous shooting speed and highly flexible AF system might even make it a consideration for credit-crunch...

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Tim Chong: Hemis Festival

Hemis Tsechu 2008 from Tim Chong on Vimeo.Hemis Tsechu is a festival commemorating the birth of Guru Rimpoche, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism. It's observed and celebrated on the 10th day of the fifth Tibetan lunar month, which usually falls between the end of June and the beginning of July.The festival is a two-day event held at the Hemis monastery, almost 30 miles south of Leh in Ladakh, India. During the festival, resident Lamas and monks perform...

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Hard Gear: Iomega's eGo Helium

I plead guilty to the sin of impulse buying. It's not often that I do that, but the Apple store in the West Village has such a cornucopia of irresistible temptations. So a sleek and elegant 500GB Iomega's eGo Helium Hard Drive is now part of my external hard drive panoply. While its design (and its intent) makes it a natural for the MacBook Air, I'll be using this baby with my...

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Ami Vitale: Updated Website

As TTP readers know, Ami Vitale is one of my favorite documentary photographers, and has been featured on many occasions on this blog. Ami worked on contract for National Geographic for many years, been published in all or most of the top-name media outlets, and won a ton of awards for her impressive work. She lived in India for almost 6 years out of which nearly 4 of those were...

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China's Tibet: Desmond Kavanaugh

China's Tibet from Desmond Kavanagh on Vimeo.This is hardly a travel feature, but is more of a statement against the encroaching Sinification of Tibet. Desmond Kavanaugh is an a Dublin-based photographer, who produced a documentary made of still images titled China's Tibet. The collection of photographs is an exploration of the effects of Chinese occupation and development on the ancient culture and land of Tibet as it is pulled into the 21st century...

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