New York Times: Afghan Kites

Image © Tomas Munita/NY Times-All Rights Reserved

From Afghanistan, The New York Times brings us Tomas Munita's photography in a (too) short slideshow titled Back In The Air.

Kite-flying is a traditional pastime in Afghanistan, however it was banned during the Taliban’s rule. Now, flying kites is once again the main recreational escape for Afghan boys and some men. It still remains largely off limits to girls and women. The big kite-fighting day is Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, and the objective of the kite fight is to slice the other flier’s string with one's own, essentially disabling it from flying. Kite-fighting string is coated with a resin made of glue and finely crushed glass, which turns it into a blade.

With the release Friday of the film “The Kite Runner,” based on the best-selling novel of the same name, a much wider audience will be introduced to Afghan kite culture.

Kites were invented in China some 2800 years ago, and its use migrated to Japan, Korea, Burma, India, Arabia, and North Africa, then farther south into the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, and the islands of Oceania as far east as Easter Island. In Bali, annual kite-flying festivals draw teams from all over the country to compete.

Tomas Munita's photographs of Afghan kites on Back In The Air

Marantz PMD 620 Digital Recorder

Thanks to the MediaStorm Blog, I learnt that Jeff Towne on Transom.org has thoroughly reviewed the new Marantz PMD 620 Digital Recorder. The PMD 620 is Marantz's smallest recorder to date, and the overall verdict is positive.

While the PMD 620 is very small and light, the reviewer reports that it felt very sturdy and well-built. While mostly plastic, there's some well-placed metal components, and the switches and buttons feel solid. It sells for about $400 US.

This digital recorder joins the lineup of small digital recorders such as the MicroTrack II and the Zoom H2 that are ideally suited for multimedia work in the field, and to record ambient sounds for slideshows.

Check the PMD 620's specifications on Transom.org

Timothy Allen: Nagaland

Image © Timothy Allen-All Rights Reserved
Timothy Allen's bio page of his website tells us that he spent 3 years in Indonesia where his interest in photography began. Upon returning to England he spent 2 years traveling the British Isles until, in the late nineties, he joined an aid convoy to Bosnia in order to work on his first year reportage project. Six months later he had left college, moved to London and begun working for the Sunday Telegraph which lead to commissions from all the British broadsheet publications and finally to a 6 year position at The Independent, working predominantly on features and portraits for the newspaper and magazine titles. Timothy now devotes his time to documenting the diversity of our world's cultures.

His photographs have appeared in many editorial publications, and his work has been included in books and exhibitions. He was also announced as the winner of TPOTY's "One Planet Many Lives" category for his photographs of Bhutan and North Eastern India.

I have just voiced the need for travel photographers to "connect" with their subjects in a recent post, so I'm glad that many of Timothy's photographs show how well he bonded with his subjects. His photographs are largely ethno-photographic in style, and those I like the best are those composed in the shadows and darkness, reminiscent of Jehad Nga's beautiful work.

Timothy Allen's Nagaland, Tripura, Majuli Island

Bangli Tourism Info
Bangli regency is one of regencies in the Bali province that doesn't have sea area, but Bangli regency has the number of the human resources of the power that is to say, among other things the panorama of the beauty of the Mount Batur and the Batur lake that located in Subdistrict Kintamani.....

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Buleleng Tourism Info
The regency of Buleleng consists of 9 Subdistrict that covers 146 administrative village and traditional village 163 with width near 1.365.88 kilometers. The distance between Buleleng Regency and the Denpasar is about 88 km (53 miles).

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Gianyar Tourism Info
The regency of Gianyar like the famous one of the artistic and high culture, has interesting areas because the areas of a tourism, have the opinion of the.

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Karangasem Tourism Info
The regency of Karangasem is one of the nine regency in Bali, situated in the eastern part of Bali. The distance between Karangasem Regency and the International Airport located in Denpasar is about 88 km (53 miles).

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Tabanan Tourism Info
Tabanan regency is one of 8 districts/1 city which have agriculture characteristic, with width of the area about 893.33 km² (19.9% from width of Bali island). Administratively Tabanan regency divided into 8 subdistricts, 10.

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Jembrana Tourism Info
The bamboo instruments have become special characteristics of Jembrana regency, which is located in the west side of Bali Island.

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Badung Tourism Info
The Regency of Badung, which is located between 08 degrees south latitude and 115 degrees east longitude, is shaped liked a “kriss”. The Regency, which has only 418.52 square kilometers of land, is divided into sixth districts (kecamatan), 40 administrative villages (desa dinas and kelurahan), and as many as 117 traditional villages (desa adat).

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Denpasar Tourism Info
Capital of Bali propinsi (province), south central Bali, Indonesia, 40 miles (70 km) south of Singaraja. The largest city on the island of Bali, it is also the capital of the Badung kabupaten (regency).

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Aneka Info & Tips - Aneka tips kecantikan & Kesehatan
Disini akan diulas mengenai beberapa tips kesehatan yang akan sangat membatu anda dalam mengatasi masalah yang berkaitan dengan kesehatan diri dan ketahan serta manfaat dari beberapa jenis tanaman yang tersedia di alam. semoga apa yang saya sajikan dapat bermanfaat bigi para pembaca dan semua kalangan tentang.

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Gadis remaja Seksi - Gadis Indonesia dan Sex Education

Berisi tetang informasi seputar wanita yang berkaitan dengan sek education, astrologi, fashion, wanita dan kehamilan, life style, news & article dan masih banyak info yang menarik untuk di baca..

Jessica Dimmock: The Ninth Floor

I have to preface my review of Jessica Dimmock's powerful book, The Ninth Floor, by describing its photographs as raw, unflinching, many of which are frightening and that have dragged me into the depths of a world heroin addicts, for whom there's seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. In a way, I'm glad to have been given the chance of reviewing that book because it forced me out of my"comfort zone", both personally and photographically-speaking.

Jessica's forceful photographs document the drug-addled lives of residents on the ninth floor of a Manhattan's flat-iron district apartment building. For almost three years, she follows these drug addicts in their day-to-day activities, managing to become invisible in the process. While she gained access to the ninth floor residents through the help of a cocaine dealer, how she managed to gain the trust of her subjects is a tribute not only to her photography abilities, but also to her interpersonal skills. It appears that her subjects forgot about her presence, and she effectively became invisible while documenting their vortex of self destruction.

Deservedly, her work is receiving a copious amount of media attention before and following the publishing of The Ninth Floor.

This is documentary photography which, in my opinion, is best described as voyeuristic. Photographs of the apartment dwellers injecting the drugs, sleeping, arguing and fighting, having intercourse, being beaten up by their partners, hospitalized, and begging in the streets are all gripping and repellent at the same time. The self destruction of these people (I almost described them as unfortunate, but I can't) is palpable through Jessica's lens.

As many have said before, I wonder who is the audience for this book. Some in my immediate circle found the photographs to be disturbing and weren't able to go through the whole book, others have found it to be a gripping documentation of hopelessly wasted lives, and others have even suggested that it ought to be mandatory reading for college students.

The book is published by Contrasto, and is very well designed. Its many gatefold pages come almost as a surprise and probably have the best photographs in the book.

There's no question that we will be seeing more of Jessica Dimmock's work in the near future.

MediaStorm has just published a multimedia feature of The Ninth Floor

New York Times: Afghan Suffering

Image © Tyler Hicks/NYTimes-All Rights Reserved
This is how the New York Times' article starts:

"The Afghan boy crouched near a wall in this remote village, where the Taliban’s strength has prevented the government from providing services. His eyes were coated by an opaque yellow sheath. Sgt. Nick Graham, an American Army medic, approached. The villagers crowded around. They said the boy’s name was Hayatullah. He was 10 years old and developed the eye disease six years ago. “Can you help him?” a man asked.

Sergeant Graham examined the boy. He was blind. There was nothing the medic could do."

The photographs in the accompanying slideshow feature is by Tyler Hicks, one of my favorite photojournalists, and they ram home the fact that Afghanistan is strangled by underdevelopment, governmental corruption and incompetence, poverty, illiteracy and by the regressive ideology of the Taliban.

There's no question in my mind that the only way to defeat this repellent ideology is by doing exactly what the American Army medics are doing...and expanding it further. Not only is it the humanitarian thing to do, but it offers what the Taliban seem incapable of providing: compassion for human beings and for fellow Muslims...a fundamental tenet of Islam.

Tyler Hicks' photographs are here

The article is by C.J. Chivers, and is here

Pop Photo: 2007 Readers' Photo Contest

Image Copyright © Snehendu Kar-All Rights Reserved
Popular Photography magazine has announced results of its 2007 photo contest, and awarded one grand prize and six stand-outs in the categories of Action/Sports, Architecture, Candid/Humor, Nature, People, and Travel.

In the Travel category, I particularly liked the photograph of the Chinese fishing nets in Cochin (India) by Snehendu Kar of Los Angeles.

Popular Photography 2007 Readers' Photo Contest

Mardis Gras Photo Event

This event is a terrific concept, and a tribute to those who engineered it.

“Mardi Gras 2008, 360 Degrees” is a hybrid photo event and workshop that seeks to bring photographers together to document the ritual that defines New Orleans and illuminates the city’s culture two years after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Activities are planned the week before Mardi Gras, including workshops and presentations by established professionals and industry parters. Photographers will team together to edit their own work and uploaded to the event's servers, then reviewed by a team of editors. The selected photographs are toA terrific idea be printed for immediate display, salon style, and offered for sale to the public, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the New Orleans Photo Alliance.

This program is intended for professional and advanced photographers who want to further hone their artistic and editorial skills in the context of a competitive environment.

The grassroots project “Mardi Gras 2008, 360 Degrees” is partnership of members of the Lightstalkers virtual photographic community, 100eyes, an organization created to promote collective work of photographers, and the New Orleans Photo Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising the profile of the New Orleans photography community.

Mardi Gras 2008, 360 Degrees

WP: China's Divider of Sexes

Image © Andrea Bruce/Washington Post-All Rights Reserved
The Washington Post featured Andrea Bruce's brilliant work in a slideshow titled China's Great Divider of Sexes: Poverty. Andrea's photograph above of Chen Maiya preparing breakfast for her neighbors is Vermeer-like in its luminosity. Deservedly, this slideshow feature received an award in the Best of Photojournalism 2007 (Feature Photo Gallery).

Andrea Bruce graduated with a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and joined the staff of the Washington Post, where she began to chronicle the world's most troubled areas. Her pictures from the Iraq War have been published widely and have garnered international acclaim.

The accompanying article by Maureen Fan reports on Dacitan, a village in the foothills of China's poorest provinces, run almost entirely by women, mothers who work the fields while their husbands are away. Dacitlan is a Muslim village populated by members of the ethnic Hui minority, and is a stark example of the cost of China's blistering economic growth.

The combination of Andrea's slideshow and Maureen's article makes for a fascinating read.

The Washington Post's China's Divider slideshow.

The Washington Post's China's Divider article.

TPOTY Results 2007

Image © Timothy Allen-All Rights Reserved
I just received notice from the organizers of the Travel Photographer Of The Year contest announcing the 2007 winners.

According to TPOTY's announcement, it received entries from 51 countries in 2007, covering every continent and, for the first time, we saw entries from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine. Over the three rounds of judging, 14 judges assessed this year's entries.

The overall winner of the Travel Photographer Of The Year title is Cat Vinton, a UK-based photographer for her work in a Mongolia.

However to me, the most interesting category was "One Planet Many Lives" won by Timothy Allen for his work in Bhutan and Nagaland, followed by Larry Louie's work on Tibetan worship. It's been an excellent year for the talented Larry, since he also won recognition in the National Geographic contest as I wrote last week.

TPOTY's One Planet Many Lives

TTP: Recap of the Week

For your convenience, here's the past week's (December 2- December 8) most popular posts on TTP:

National Geographic Photo Contest
Sunday Rant III
Origami Flash Diffuser

South Pacific Handbook R.I.P.

One of Moon's original authors has parted ways with Avalon Travel Publishing after 28 years but will continue to post South Pacific content on his website. The list of authors cut from Moon Publications now ranges from yours truly to David Stanley, Bill Weir, and even the founder, Bill Dalton. And it's all about money, or lack of, due to declining sales, poor marketing and distribution, and the relatively high royalty rates granted to early authors such as myself and David.

South Pacific Handbook RIP

I regret to inform you that a 9th edition of Moon Handbooks South Pacific will not be published. After 28 years and eight editions, Avalon Travel Publishing and I have decided that it will not be practical to produce a new edition.

There are a number of reasons for this, beginning with the numbers. Over the past 10 years, sales of Moon Handbooks South Pacific have dropped. The 7th edition (2000) sold a third less copies than the 6th edition (1996), and the current 8th edition (2004) has thus far sold just over half as many copies as the 7th.

Why are sales going down? Competition from other guidebooks and the internet is the obvious answer. Many people believe they can find enough free information online to make a printed guidebook unnecessary. What they don’t realize is that much of what is found on websites is dubious and incomplete, or just one-sided advertising. A majority of travel websites are run by companies which want to sell you their products or individuals eager to share travelers tips with their peers. The discipline and quality control exercised by a professional book editor is usually missing.

Since 2000 my book has faced strong competition from Lonely Planet South Pacific and Micronesia. It would be inappropriate for me to criticize that book here, but suffice it to say that the coverage there is far less consistent and detailed than that in Moon Handbooks South Pacific. Lonely Planet is a monopolistic corporation which has pushed Moon titles off the bookshelves in Australia, New Zealand, and much of Europe. Doubtless they’ll be pleased to learn of Moon Handbooks South Pacific’s demise because with no remaining competition other than Frommers South Pacific, they’ll be able to space new editions of South Pacific and Micronesia further apart and cut back on the cost of researching off-the-beaten-track locations.

South Pacific Handbook RIP by David Stanley

Beyond The Frame: Bhutanese Granny

Image Copyright © Ralph N. Childs-All Rights Reserved
This image of me chatting up a Bhutanese grandmother was photographed by Ralph Childs, a friend and participant in my Bhutan Photo-Expedition.

We were walking towards the Jambay Lakhang monastery before the start of the annual tsechu, and I was trying to convince the grandmother to allow me to photograph her...but with no success. It was in good humor, and we had many laughs as I conveyed to her that I would marry her and she'd fly back to New York City with me. I guess she understood my meaning but kept gesturing me away with flicks of her hand...naturally, to the great hilarity of her companions, who had urged her to take me up on my offer....but she wouldn't budge. Not terribly uplifting for my ego, but occasional rejection does teach one humility.

Our exceptional guide/fixer, Sagar can be seen walking behind us, keeping a wary eye on the going-ons, and wearing his traditional orange cho, the typical garb worn by most Bhutanese.

I use this photograph to make the point that travel photographers know well: to make good photographs one must make contact...establish a dialog and make friends. I saw many tourists at these festivals, photographing away from a distance...mostly standing back and unwilling/unable/not thinking of engaging the local spectators. Had they chatted with the locals, exchanging good humored banter and even hand gestures, their photographs would reflect that 'relationship', and would've come alive.