Bali: First Post

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI've been in Bali since Wednesday afternoon, and having been able to shrug off some of the jet-lag and its resultant disorientation, I've been quite busy in Ubud and its environs. For starters, I'm working on a feature covering a famous Wayang Kulit in Sukawati and other projects.In the meantime, Komang (my driver and fixer) suggested that...

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Foundry Photojournalism Workshop's Stats

It's been almost a month since the wrap-up of the very successful Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (FPW) in Istanbul, which achieved an impressive degree of multi-ethnicity amongst its participants...a veritable United Nations of photojournalism.According to Neal Jackson, FPW Istanbul was attended by about 130 photojournalists (excluding instructors) from 41 countries.The largest...

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On My Way: Bali!!!

I'll shortly be on my way to Bali to lead my Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition™, which officially starts on August 1 to August 15. I'm in London for a short stop over, then on to the Thai Airways flight from Heathrow to Bangkok and onwards to Denpasar.I'll spend a few days before the start of the photo-expedition in Ubud where I'll work on a short two-day assignment, renew my friendship...

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POV: Robert Fisk Is A Mensch

What does Robert Fisk of The Independent have to do with photography? Probably nothing, but he's a mensch, which in Yiddish means "a person of integrity".And why do I think that? Well, it's about his opinion piece on Octavia Nasr of CNN (or I should say, previously of CNN) and the British ambassador to Beirut, Frances Guy (still at her post, as far as I know).Here's a quotation...

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Mongolian Racer

Reading and posting Stan Greene's excellent interview yesterday will probably satisfy my photojournalism interest for this week, so for a change in pace here's a lovely travel multimedia piece titled Mongolian Racer by The Guardian photographer Dan Chung, and narrated by Tania Branigan. (click the arrow).The multimedia piece is on a horse trainer and his 10-year-old jockey who face the biggest day of their year at Mongolia's Naadam festival, which...

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LENS: Stanley Greene Talks To Michael Kamber

Photo © Stanley Greene/Noor-All Rights ReservedStanley Greene’s Redemption and Revenge on the New York Times' LENS blog is one of the most interesting (and candid) interviews with a photojournalist/photographer I've read in a long time. Having met Stanley Greene in Mexico City, I don't think I'd be wrong in describing Stanley as an iconoclast, as someone who doesn't mince words...

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The 710th Google Follower

My list of Google Followers have now grown to over 700 people. This list is distinct from my Twitter and Facebook followers and/or friends, Feed subscribers or from the subscribers to my newsletters.To commemorate this milestone, I've decided to feature the 710th Google Follower whose screen name is Ruma2008. There not much on background information on his/her blog except that...

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PBS Features "Starved For Attention"

PBS' Need To Know is featuring a Starved For Attention slideshow with 19 large photographs by Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer.It's based on the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and...

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Andrea Pistolesi: The Rohingya Refugees

Photo © Andrea Pistolesi-All Rights ReservedAndrea Pistolesi is a pro in the full meaning of the word...a my kind of guy...a photographer who fuses travel and editorial imagery, and who's candid enough to say that professional travel photography as it existed is now extinct, and that travel publications and ancillary glossies are a dying breed. He espouses the view -like I do-...

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Mervyn Leong: Hammams, Spreader of Warmth

Here's a lovely audio-slideshow by the gifted Mervyn Leong W.Y. which you can either view on Vimeo (click above) or via his website here. The quality of the latter is better.Mervyn attended the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul (he also attended last year's in Manali), and participated in Rena Effendi's Telling A Human Story Through A Compelling Portrait class. I spent time with Mervyn as he prepared to photograph inside the less-than-hospitable-for-photography...

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Mugur Vărzariu: Pillars of Faith

Photo © Mugur Vărzariu-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Mugur Vărzariu-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Mugur Vărzariu-All Rights ReservedMugur Vărzariu is a photojournalist based in Romania who attended the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul, and was in Adriana Zehbrauskas' On Assignment class.It's a testament to Mugur's intrinsic talent that he started as a photographer less than...

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Daniel Berehulak: Kashmir

Photo © Daniel Berehulak-All Rights ReservedDaniel Berehulak is based in New Delhi, working for Getty Images News Service and covering the South Asia region and beyond. He joined Getty Images in 2002 in Sydney and relocated to London as a staff news photographer in 2005. Daniel’s work is regularly published in major newspapers and magazines worldwide, including The New York Times,...

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Bali Photo~Expedition™: Two Weeks To Go!

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedI've started to think about gear packing for the forthcoming Bali: Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition™, which is to start on August 1.A brief stop-over in London, then it's a grueling 16 hours aggregate flight time from Heathrow to Bangkok, and onwards to Denpasar to reach it on July 28. This will give me a couple of days for a personal...

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Photojournalism From SE Asia

For those who are hard-core fans of South East Asian photojournalism, OPEN-i hosted a live webinar a few months ago which featured work from photographers living and working in South East Asia, and who discussed the challenges and rewards of working in that region.The webinar (moderated by Paul Lowe) is unusually long (about 105 minutes), and the acoustics are not great, but it offers insight into the work and working conditions of 4 photographers/photojournalists.Jack...

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Amy Johansson: Lethal Leather

Photo © Amy Johansson-All Rights ReservedAmy Johansson is a Swedish photographer, who's currently about to move from her Bangladesh base to attend an international photojournalism course at the Danish School of Media and Journalism . After completing a degree in fashion design, Amy worked as a designer for several years, until moving to Dhaka as a product developer.Upon her taking...

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The Travel Photographer: Updated Website

I updated The Travel Photographer website with a new slideshow of more recent photographs made during my 2009-2010 trips, and added details of my planned In Search of Sufis Photo~Expedition™, which will be the first scheduled for 2011.It's well on its way to being sold out, as I am restricting it to only 5 photographers.The In Search of Sufis Photo~Expedition™ is not for first-timers to India, nor is it for photographers expecting choreographed photo-opportunities....

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Andy Spyra: The Shadows of Srebrenica

Photo © Andy Spyra/Courtesy FP Magazine-All Rights ReservedI don't think of Foreign Policy magazine as one to feature top notch photojournalism, but it unfailingly does.Its latest feature is on the 15th anniversary (if we can call it an anniversary) of the Serbian army entering the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in the days that followed killing 8,000 Bosniac...

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Pierre Claquin: Surviving Dreams

Photo © Pierre Claquin-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Pierre Claquin-All Rights ReservedWhilst attending my Introduction To Multimedia class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (Istanbul), Pierre Claquin divulged that he had been a photographer at the age of 16 through a younger brother who owned a Foca camera and let him use it. Matters progressed, and Pierre graduated to an Asahi...

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One Day On Earth: Participate!!!

One Day on Earth Participant Trailer from One Day On Earth on Vimeo.On October 10th, 2010, thousands of people from every nation around the world will film their perspective and contribute their voice to one of the largest participatory media events in history. The event will result in a feature documentary and online video archive that will showcase the diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that can occur in one day on earth. The more people...

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Dilla Djalil-Daniel: The Istanbuli Silversmith

Photo © Dilla Djalil-Daniel-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Dilla Djalil-Daniel-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Dilla Djalil-Daniel-All Rights ReservedDilla Djalil-Daniel is a photographer currently living in Jakarta, and attended the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul. She participated in Andrea Bruce's class, and chose me to review one of her portfolios of the Cap Go Meh celebration...

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POV: I Don't Kneel To A Golden Calf

A few days ago, I posted an opinion piece (or POV) on a renowned photographer about to engage in a project which I deemed unrelated to his travel documentary specialty.As a consequence, I was criticized by a half dozen people in the blogosphere who, perhaps having misread the gist of my opinion, disparaged my photography, my prior career, my being Egyptian-born (as if that made...

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Dede Pickering: Bhutan

Photo © Dede Pickering-All Rights ReservedDede Pickering has just returned from Bhutan with a collection of new photographs, which she posted on her Bhutan Gallery. She traveled in that Himalayan country from its west to its east and trekked in the rarely visited Sakten Valley.I chose Dede's lovely photograph of the unfurling of a thongdrel for this post. The thongdrel is a large...

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NPR: Ed Kashi On Pakistan

Photo © Ed Kashi/National Geographic-All Rights ReservedApart from joining the agency VII, Ed Kashi was also featured on NPR's The Picture Show in a piece titled On Photographing Pakistan. He also has more of his photographs on the National Geographic blog.Ed Kashi's objectives were to show how the people of Punjab live, and how millions of Pakistanis just try to live their lives...

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WSJ Photo Journal: Sayyida Zeinab Shrine

Photo © Suhaib Salem/Reuters-All Rights ReservedReaders and followers of this blog know that I am always interested in religious rituals of all sorts because it's during these rites, festivals and traditional events that devotees are devoid of day-to-day artificiality.The WSJ Photo Journal recently posted the above photograph of devotees praying at the Sayyida Zeinab shrine in...

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2011 Photo~Expedition™: In Search of Gujarat's Sufis

I've just announced my first photo~expedition™ of 2011, and it'll be once again in Gujarat, but much different in context and objectives than the one I led earlier this year. As I always do, its details are shared to those who subscribe to my newsletter, and after a week or so, I make them public.It will involve photographing tribal life in western Gujarat, the hijras at the famed...

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Saleem Ahmed: Kyoto

Photo © Saleem Ahmed-All Rights ReservedNirja Desai is a follower of my blog, and suggested that I take a look at Saleem Ahmed's photographs. I did and immediately agreed with her that his work would be shown on this blog which is one of the platforms for emerging photographers to get some additional exposure.Saleem is an undergraduate student (photojournalism major) at Temple...

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Dani Salva: Tibet's Kham

Photo © Dani Salva-All Rights ReservedI can only guess that Dani Salva is a Spanish (possibly Catalan) photographer from his website, but there's no biography that I could find. It's a pity because I am sure that photo editors would like his work (they probably do already) but, except through his blog, he doesn't make it easy to know a little bit of him. He has quite a few galleries...

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Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (Istanbul)

Photo © David Storey-All Rights ReservedPhoto © Brenda Bravo -All Rights ReservedI thought I'd post these two photographs of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop for posterity. The top photograph is of the instructors, assistants and staff who all donated their time, talent and knowledge to make Istanbul such a success. (I'm in the back as usual).The bottom photograph is of some...

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New Banner!!!

This is an expression of unbridled gratitude to the half-baker's dozen who dismissed my posts as rants and "pontifications". As promised, I've changed the banner of this blog to include this lovely descriptive word, which suits my blog and posts just perfectly. I regret not having thought of it first, but a banker-turned-photographer is not necessarily a wordsmi...

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POV: Les Chiens Aboient La Caravane Passe

My post on McCurry's taking a celebrity photography project was criticized on another blog by a handful of readers as being misplaced, rude and judgmental...which puzzled me since I specifically wished him the best of luck with his new project, and described him as a pioneer and an inspiration to many.The thrust of my post was not about McCurry or his future but to stress the need...

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Travis Dove: The Holy Mountain

Photo © National Geographic/Travis Dove -All Rights ReservedTravis Dove interned on the photo staffs of several American newspapers including The Boston Globe and The Charlotte Observer, and was named the 2007 College Photographer of the Year by the Missouri School of Journalism. He also completed a prestigious photo internship at National Geographic Magazine.His work has been...

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Stijin Pieters: Durga Puja

Stijn Pieters is a self taught freelance photographer based in Gent, Belgium whose work focuses on under-reported social, political and environmental issues. He completed projects in Nepal, Kashmir, Palestine, Northern Ireland, Swaziland, Yemen, Morocco, Iran, Vietnam, The Philippines, India and Bangladesh; most of which tackle diverse issues, from HIV/aids in Swaziland to the...

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FPW Istanbul: Intro To Multimedia Class

I was privileged to teach a class titled Introduction To Multimedia for the third straight year at this year's Foundry Photojournalism Workshop which was held in Istanbul June20-26.As a couple of my class attendees are in the process of shopping their projects to publishers, I'm unable to publish them until they're made public by their creators. However, I am able to show an image...

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Toby Morris: Animal Charmers

Photo © Toby Morris -All Rights ReservedToby Morris is a photographer based in Los Angeles and New York. Having attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin, he worked for various newspapers in Chicago, New York, New Hampshire and Connecticut.I liked his environmental portraits of animal charmers in India. These are mostly of snake (cobra) handlers,...

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POV: From Afghan Girl To Martin Scorsese?

Photo Courtesy The Guardian -All Rights ReservedI was saddened by reading an interview with Steve McCurry recently published in The Guardian in which he shares the news that he's preparing a project in which he would be taking portraits of 30 celebrities in their home cities: Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese in New York, Amitabh Bachan in Mumbai. A sort of project that Annie...

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Jon Guido Bertelli: Last of Zapatistas

Photo © Jon Bertelli -All Rights ReservedJon Bertelli is an international photographer, who currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, but was raised in Florence and academically trained in the visual arts there and in Oslo.He lived in Mexico in the late nineties, and documented the last surviving Zapatista fighters; the veterans of the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution of the...

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