First 2011 Photo Expedition

I'm on my way back to New York from teaching a multimedia class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul, and thought it opportune to announce that my first photo~expedition in 2011 will be to Gujarat, India. I have yet to pinpoint the dates, but I am leaning towards January 23 to February 6, 2011.The Travel Photographer's In Search of Sufis photo~expedition will focus...

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My Work: Belly Dancing In Istanbul

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedDue to the distance between the historic Sultanahmet district and Kadikoy where the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop was based, I wasn't able to photograph much of Istanbul...except for some grab shots with my new GF1.However, some of us did manage to take some time and attend a folkloric dance program in Sultanahmet, where we were allowed...

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Chico Sanchez: Andalucian Flamenco

Photo © Chico Sanchez-All Rights ReservedHere's another lovely audio slideshow by Chico Sanchez, a freelance photographer based in Mexico City. Chico worked in Venezuela, collaborating with Reuters, European Pressphoto Agency, Agencia EFE, and freelances for various newspapers and magazines.The title of this audio slideshow is The Angel.This time, Chico documents the spiritual...

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Foundry Workshop (Istanbul) Signed Off

Photo © Anamitra Chakladar-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Anamitra Chakladar-All Rights ReservedWell, what is there to say except that I had a blast! The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop has ended with a marathon session to show the work completed by some 130-odd photographers who joined it. It was a visual overload of photographs and multimedia projects, and was followed by the customary...

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On The Way: Foundry Photo Workshop

Photo © Guy Calaf-All Rights ReservedWell, after a few days of intermittent internet service at our hotel in Kadikoy, Istanbul, it seems we're back to full time availability. The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop has started in full blast, and it's amazing to see so many various nationalities amongst the students. Different languages different styles perhaps, but all connected by...

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WSJ Photo Journal: Sufi Anniversary

Photo © Deepak Sharma/AP-All Rights ReservedThe WSJ's Photo Journal has featured the above photograph by Deepak Sharma (AP) of Pakistani pilgrims carrying an offering of embroidered cloth (which I believe is called kiswa) to cover the tomb of Sufi saint Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti on the anniversary of his birth in Ajmer, India.I should have been there!!! My kind of event!Shaikh Khawaja...

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Matthieu Paley: The Pamir Mountains

Here's a 6 minutes trailer from a multimedia documentary "Forgotten on the Roof of the World" by photographer Matthieu Paley and anthropologist Ted Callahan that tells the story of a little-known tribe of Kirghiz nomads in one of earth’s most remote regions - Afghanistan’s High Pamirs mountains.The full documentary will be screened by Matthieu at the Royal Geographical Society (Hong Kong) on Tuesday 22nd of June.Matthieu Paley is an Asia-based (currently...

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Think Tank Multimedia Buyer's Guide

Photo Courtesy Think TankI don't have any Think Tank products (except for its see through bag for cables and stuff), but I must say that it's one of the companies that seems to be in lock-step with the industry's evolution with multimedia.Here is it's latest effort in the multimedia field which is the Multimedia DSLR Buyers Guide. It's essentially a fluff piece about various products...

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Istanbul-Bound

I'm on my way to attend the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul, where I'm giving a class on multimedia (Introduction To Multimedia). The class will adopt a simulated under pressure work environment where class participants have to shoot, edit and present their photographs and audio tracks to me, to eventually produce a publishable 3-5 minutes audio slideshow.I'm stopping...

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NYT's LENS: A.K. Kimoto

Photo © A.K. Kimoto-All Rights ReservedThe New York Times' LENS blog features a poignant photo essay on opium addiction in Afghanistan by the late A.K. Kimoto. The photo essay is in black & white; dark and brooding as befits such a subject matter. See it...I highly recommend it, along with its accompanying article.Kimoto was a 32-year-old Japanese photographer based in Bangkok,...

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Trevor Snapp: La Santa Muerte

Photo © Trevor Snapp-All Rights ReservedTrevor Snapp is a self-taught photographer with degrees in anthropology and African studies, and his work is syndicated with Corbis and Millennium Images. His clients include Stern, National Geographic Traveler, BBC, Time.com, Chicago Tribune, Marie Calire and others. He has also worked for a variety of NGOs such as Heifer International,...

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The Daily Beast: Veronique De Viguerie

Photo © Veronique de Vigurie-All Rights ReservedOne of my favorite photojournalists, Veronique de Vigurie, was featured on The Daily Beast blog in an article/interview titled The Bravest Photographer.Veronique de Viguerie is based in Paris and, at the age of only 32, has already won prestigious awards including Canon’s coveted Female Photojournalist of the Year Award in 2006. Her...

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Greater Middle East Photo

Photo © Manal Al Dowayan-All Rights ReservedFinally! Someone came up with the timely idea to publish a photography blog titled the Greater Middle East Photo blog, with the commendable intent to provide space for photography from a region which is sadly under represented. This new blog hopes to be a facilitator of great photos, great photographers, and great minds discussing photography...

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Joey L. : The Mentawai (The Movie)

Here's a highly recommended 16-minute long movie documentary of Joey L.'s (and his team) excursion into the land of the Mentawai. It starts with the 10-hour crowded cargo ferry ride from Sumatra across the strait to the islands of the Mentawai, approximately 150 kilometers off the Sumatran coast. The excursion took 2 years to plan and prepare, and we are treated to a behind the scenes look at the photo shoots along with snippets of the Mentawai's...

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In The Shadow of Everest At RMA

Photo © Tom Wool-All Rights ReservedThe Rubin Museum of Art in New York City is showing the photographs of Tom Wool in an exhibition In The Shadow of Everest, which runs until July 26, 2010.Coming from a fashion photography background, Tom Wool has devoted himself to work for humanitarian organizations. Using a medium format Hasselblad, he photographed Tibet's Rongbuk Valley and...

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Fons Rademakers: Haridwar Kumbh Mela

Photo © Fons Rademakers-All Rights ReservedI've featured so much work from various photographers, and seen so many photographs of the Nagas and pilgrims here and elsewhere, it's as if I've been there myself. I'm pretty sure these photographers who were at the Kumbh will either recognize each others work, or recognize the subjects.However, here's the work of Fons Rademakers who's...

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John Batdorff II: Peru

It runs in the family, as they say. John Batdorff II is the son of two avid photographers, and it was only natural that he was "infected by" the same passion. Based in Chicago and in Ennis (Montana), John developed his craft early on by photographing for his family's newspaper, and enhanced it by specializing in landscape and travel photography.His work has been exhibited in museums...

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Revamp: The Travel Photographer's Website

It took a while, but I completed setting up two websites based on the popular WordPress F.8 theme that will run in parallel to my current website.The first WordPress-based website contains 15 photo galleries, which are also iTouch and iPad-compatible.The second WordPress-based website contains 8 audio-slideshows.The Travel Photographer's original HTML/Flash-based website still...

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POV:The Future of Travel Photography Gear?

Yes, I caved and got an Voigtlander 40mm optical viewfinder for my Panasonic GF1. It's well suited to the Panasonic 20mm 1.7 lens.But this is not about the viewfinder or how much better the GF1 feels with it...it's about the above 'minimalist' gear which is an option when I'm planning an assignment or a photo trip. I can have all this in a small Domke bag, and have spare room for...

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Mark Thomas: Haridwar Kumbh Mela

Here's another feature from the recent Kumbh Mela which was held earlier this year in Haridwar, North India. This body of work by photographer Mark Thomas is titled Kumbh Mela 2010, and is mainly of portraits he made during that religious event.Mark Thomas is a photojournalist and a multimedia expert, whose work appeared in various publications, including The Boston Globe and National...

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Jehad Nga Talks to BJP

Photo © Jehad Nga-All Rights Reserved"I respond more to fashion and fine-art, carrying these fields and variables in photojournalism." -Jehad NgaThe British Journal of Photography (which revamped its website) published an interview with Jehad Nga, one of my favorite photographers. This blog featured many posts on Nga, and his distinctive chiaroscuro style. Titled From Kansas To...

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Kate Baumgartner: Religious Asia

Photo © Kate Baumgartner-All Rights ReservedKate Baumgartner describes herself as an avid photographer, and that may well be an understatement. Based in Hong Kong, she photographed to Cambodia, Burma, India, China, Namibia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam...returning with splendid photographs, like the one above of the Cao Dai monks. Cao Dai is the relatively new, syncretist,...

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Test Shots: Panasonic GF1 + 20mm f1.7 Lens

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Tewfic EL-Sawy-All Rights ReservedHere's a couple of "on-the-go" photographs made with my brand-new Panasonic GF1/20mm 1.7 lens on Bleecker street in NYC's West Village. There was a couple of garbage bags on the sidewalk which I had to frame out of the top photograph by chopping off the woman's shoes. The second is of a woman balancing...

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Paolo Evangelista: Zanzibar

Photo © Paolo Evangelista-All Rights ReservedPaolo Evangelista holds degrees in music and anthropology, but decided to pack his bags, his espresso machine (after all, he's Italian) and his cameras to live in Australia for a while. Currently based in Perugia, he traveled to Zanzibar where most of his galleries are of.Most interesting are Paolo's street photographs in Stone Town....

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MSF's Starved For Attention

"this year 195,000,000 children will suffer from malnutrition"and so starts “Starved for Attention” the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition.The campaign aims to present a series of multimedia documentaries of still photography...

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New Handheld Recorder Zoom H1

Photo Courtesy Samson AudioAy...I hate innovation. Well, not really of course, but a new (and occasionally improved) gadget always turns up a few months after a purchase, and this is annoying. Why can't the stuff I buy stay fresh and on the cutting edge of things all the time?I'm kidding...sort of. But here's the H1, a new handheld audio recorder from Samson Audio, which may not...

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Interview: The Travel Photographer on the Matador Network

In a new series on Matador Network's Notebook which features periodic interviews with professional photographers, MatadorU faculty and travel photographer Lola Akinmade caught up with me to discuss my perspectives on travel photography, and my insights on the industry as well as on my photo~expeditions. You can also leave your comments if you wish.Read the interview, in which I...

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Got it! Panasonic GF1 + 20mm f1.7 Lens

Having lost patience with Amazon's delivery system, and the fact that its delivery was now estimated to be between June 1 and June 14, I called yesterday and canceled my order. The customer service lady was extremely pleasant and nice, making me feel somewhat guilty for a while.My guilt didn't last too long after I saw that Adorama had a Panasonic GF1 with a 20mm/F1.7 for $847...

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Darren Ornitz: East Africa

Today I'm featuring the work of Darren Ornitz, who as a freelance photographer, traveled for 14 months in Africa and Asia including Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Yemen and Oman. Quite a number of photographs in Darren's East Africa gallery are of Lalibela, one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, and a center of pilgrimage for much of the country. The population of Lalibela is almost completely...

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One Million Visitors!

I'm immensely gratified that since inception in mid-January 2007, The Travel Photographer blog has now received a total of 1,000,000 visitors!What originally started as a lark has taken a life of its own, and The Travel Photographer blog seems to have its comfy little place place amongst other photography blogs. A million visitors is a drop in the ocean for blog behemoths, but...

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