Camera Bags

WIRED has a recent post on what it describes as three of the best camera bags you can buy. One of these is the Billingham 550. As most of us know, finding the 'perfect' camera bag is tantamount to finding the holy grail...and may be even harder.

I have owned the Billingham 550 for a few years now, but used it infrequently. It's a British classic, sturdily built based on a fishing bag design and, similar to the famous Barbour rain jackets, gives off an assurance of indestructibility. The downsides to these attributes are that it's heavy, the leather straps are hard to handle and it's fiddly to open.

I have no doubts that the Billingham would be a delight to use after a decade (or more) of steady rough usage, when the canvas gets softer, the straps more malleable and easier to fit in the brass buckles. Frankly-speaking, when the bag is new, it's a pain. It used to be that English aristocrats gave their new shoes to their butlers to break them in...I wonder if that concept would work with the Billingham bags?

Naturally, with the current weak dollar, these bags (which are manufactured in the West Midlands) are singularly expensive....but they'll last forever. Just be prepared to have to break them in for a long time.

I used a Lowepro Stealth Reporter AW until I noticed I was starting to walk crab-like because of its weight on one shoulder. I then switched to a Lowepro CompuTrekker AW backpack until I noticed I was walking hunched like Quasimodo, so I switched to a roller bag made by Wenger. So far so good. My still new Billingham 550 is in my closet.

NY Times: Gnawa Festival in Essaouira

Photograph © Ed Alcock/NY Times-All Rights Reserved
The New York Times brings us a slideshow of photographs (and narrated by photographer Ed Alcok) featuring the Gnawa Festival of Music in Essaouira, which is scheduled for June. The Gnawa are the descendents of slaves originating from Africa who established brotherhoods throughout Morocco. They are made up of master musicians, metal castanet players, clairvoyants, mediums and their followers.

They are at the same time musicians, initiators and healers, blending African and Arab-Berber customs. Despite being Muslims, the Gnawa base their rituals on African cults of possession...a sort of sufism merged with voodoo rituals.

During the celebration the master musicians and his group call on saints and on supernatural entities to take possession of their followers who eventually go into deep trance.

The accompanying article in the NY Times is written by Steve Dougherty.

I'll be putting Essaouira and the Gnawa music festival on my list of possible destinations for a 2009 photo expedition. I've been to Essaouira when traveling in Morocco...only as a day trip, so the prospect of a photo expedition scheduled for the festival, with all the visuals and ambient music is irresistible.

The NY Times feature seems to me to have been produced half-heartedly, with no background on the Gnawa themselves. Since the festival is an annual event, these photographs and audio must've been available for almost a year and I would've thought that with all that time, the NY Times could've produced a comprehensive multimedia feature. On reflection, I'm too harsh...the NY Times is not the National Geographic and I shouldn't expect much more from what is essentially a travel feature.

Julian Love: Editorial Travel

Photograph © Julian Love -All Rights Reserved
Julian Love is a travel and lifestyle photographer in London, who specializes in photographing boutique hotels, adventure sports and editorial travel assignments. You'll recognize his distinctive style from the various photo galleries on his website

His latest gallery is of Sri Lanka, and it largely consists of Julian's editorial travel photographs of this lovely island. On his blog, Julian shares with his readers his mishaps when setting up his photo shoots of the stilt fishermen north of Galle. I'm glad he was careful to photograph a fisherman wearing a traditional straw hat rather than the ubiquitous baseball caps. I recall having had a difficult time excluding the fishermen who wore these ugly caps from my shots while photographing there.

Julian is the 2008 National Geographic Traveller / Photo District News "World in Focus" Winner, the 2007 Wanderlust Professional Photographer of the Year and the 2006 Travel Photographer of the Year.

No Words

Photograph © Karim Kadim/AP Photo-All Rights Reserved
Two-year-old Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of his family's home in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. The child, who later died at the hospital, was in one of four homes destroyed by U.S. missiles.

Elie Wiesel once said "...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..." or is that only applicable to non Iraqis, non Afghanis and non Palestinians? If the death of 2-year old Ali Hussein is not a war crime, what is?

Sean Macleod: China

Photograph © Sean Macleod -All Rights Reserved
Sean Macleod is a Canadian photographer living in Geneva. He's also a self taught painter. His formation as photographer started in India and Nepal where he traveled early on in his career. He eventually returned to the sub-continent, and expanded his travels to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Southwest China and Vietnam.

His photographs are sepia-toned and square, giving them an old-world feel. Don't miss "Pathways" (in my opinion his best work) gallery of portraits of ethnic Chinese minorities, as well as others in Kerala, Laos and Cambodia. This is really lovely ethno-photography work by a talented photographer.

A New York City Story

Photo: Michael Falco for The New York Times

While not really an item relating to travel photography, I thought that Jill Freedman, a street photographer from New York city, meeting one of her subjects some 30 years after she photographed him, is a wonderful story.

In 1979, Jill Freedman pointed her Leica M4 at a young couple in the flower district and almost 30 years later, Mario Pesa of Brooklyn saw himself in the photograph which appeared with an April 27 article in The New York Times' The City section about Ms. Freedman.

Jill Freedman and Mario Pesa were reunited at an Upper East Side gallery, where an exhibition of the photographs is being held. Here's the full article

What The Duck: Contests

Anthony Kurtz: India

Photograph © Anthony Kurtz:-All Rights Reserved
Anthony Kurtz started to photograph in 2003, and went on from there to garner over a dozen photographic awards, and has exhibited his work in numerous galleries in the Bay Area.

I've discovered his remarkable work from Px3: Prix De La Photographie in which he won 2nd Place for "India: Beautiful Struggle"in the Book Proposal category.

Here's his website, which I encourage you to explore in full. Apart from his work in India, Anthony has lovely (and unusual) photographs of the back streets of Thailand, and of the world of Today and of the Future. It's possible that some may view his photographs are depressing, but his style is certainly distinctive. As he himself says, he finds beauty in the texture and decay of urban landscapes. This is the work of a photographer who will continue to impress us.

My Show-Off: Wat Bo Monastery

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
I'm introducing a new occasional feature to The Travel Photographer's blog, and it'll show off examples of my personal photography.

Although I like Blogger as a blogging platform, I find that photographs could be better displayed in terms of quality and size. The latter can certainly be increased by adjusting the template's code...but I thought it'd be easier if I kept the template as is, but uploaded my "show-off" photograph in a larger size. It would be just a matter of clicking it on the blog, and it would open in its original size.

The first photograph of Show Off is of Kim Suen, an 81 years old sweeper/gardener, early morning at the Wat Bo monastery in Siem Reap. I used Lightroom's Aged Photo Preset on the original photograph, and adjusted various settings until I got the look I wanted.

Here are more of my photographs of Angkor and Siem Reap.

VII's Humankind: Hasted Hunt Gallery

The Hasted Hunt Gallery announces Humankind a photo exhibition by the members of VII on April 17- June 7, 2008 with a reception for the photographers on May 15 (6-8 pm).

Works by Marcus Bleasdale, Alexandra Boulat, Lauren Greenfield, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim Ladefoged, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey, Franco Pagetti and John Stanmeyer are on display.

Hasted Hunt Gallery is on 529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor New York, New York 10011.

Burma: Cyclone Nargis

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
The latest news is that at least 22,000 Burmese have died and up to a million people have been left homeless by the catastrophic cyclone that battered the country. The death toll from the disaster includes 10,000 people in the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta region alone. It's also reported that Rangoon has been badly hit.

Regrettably, it's expected that the death toll will rise further.

I hope that my photograph of a Burmese nun praying at the Schwedagon Paya in Rangoon is an appropriate choice for this post.

Px3: Prix De La Photographie

The stated mission of the "Prix de la Photographie, Paris" (Px3) is to "promote the appreciation of photography, to discover emerging talent, and introduce photographers from around the world to the artistic community of Paris. Winning photographs from this competition are displayed in Paris and published in the high-quality, full-color Px3 Annual Book.

The competition is juried by leading editors, publishers, curators, gallery owners consultants, creative directors, and art directors.

As readers of this blog know, I'm not enthusiastic about photographic competitions since most of them are poorly managed, some have outright dubious agendas and are generally rights-grabbers, but Px3 2008 impressed me with the quality of its results.

Here are some of my favorite results:

Photojournalism: Photographer of the Year: Balasz Gardi. "The Valley"

Photograph © Balasz Gardi-All Rights Reserved

Photojournalism Pro: First Place: Eddie Gerald. "The Cave Dwellers"

Photograph © Eddie Gerald-All Rights Reserved

Travel: First Place: William Huber. "Abu Dhabi"

Photograph © William Huber-All Rights Reserved

Portraiture Pro: First Place: Reimar Juul. "Hijras".

Photograph © Reimar Juul-All Rights Reserved

Book Proposal: 2nd Place: Anthony Kurtz. "India: Beautiful Struggle".

Photograph © Anthony Kurtz-All Rights Reserved

Photo Journalism Non Pro: 3rd Place: Larry Louie. "Tibetan Women".

Photograph © Larry Louie-All Rights Reserved

Portraiture Non Pro: 1st Place: Faisal Almalki . "A Thousand Stories".

Photograph © Faisal Almalki -All Rights Reserved

TTP Recap of the Week

For your convenience, here's the past week's (April 28 - May 4, 2008) most popular posts on TTP:

Photog's Togs
PDN's 46 Reasons To Love Photography
John Stanmeyer:Malaria: NG Award

Frederic Lagrange: Travel

Photograph © Frederic Lagrange-All Rights Reserved
Frederic LaGrange is based in Brooklyn, and specializes in portraiture, travel, and fashion photography. He started in fashion, but found his true calling in travel photography. He balances his commercial assignments for international magazines, such as Travel and Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Destinations, and Vogue, with personal projects, such as a reportage on the people and land of Mongolia.

This is the meticulous work of a commercial photographer, and from his many galleries one can immediately sense that these carefully composed images are destined for the pages of glossy travel magazines.

I suggest you visit all of his Voyage galleries, then his Portraits where his Mongolia images are. Lagrange says that he became obsessed with Mongolia, especially because of Genghis Khan, because of its historical dominance of the known world from Europe to Japan and Siberia to Indonesia; its beautiful landscape; and the amazing faces and features of its people.

Terry Sebastian: 30 Days Africa

Photograph © Terry Sebastian-All Rights Reserved
Canadian photographer Terry Sebastian is involved in the international educational, arts and travel & tourism community, and his images have appeared in a large number of published projects, in the private and public sector, and in the tourism industry in Africa. He creates multi-image shows, utilizing music, video and photography, and completed many audio-visual projects and print material for various industries.

30 Days Africa features a Soundslides gallery (why is it the demo version?) of some of Terry's images from a photographic journey into the wilds of the countries of Botswana, South Africa, and Tanzania.

New York Photo Festival

New York City is finally getting its very own major photo festival with the inaugural New York Photo Festival on May 14-18, 2008. Despite its countless galleries, photo agencies, studios, history of magazine publishing and reputation for breeding leading photographers, New York lacked its own a major festival of photography, but powerHouse Books and VII Photo Agency are launching the new, annual New York Photo Festival, and the first international-level festival of photography to be based in the U.S.

The New York Photo Festival will be headquartered in DUMBO, an easily accessible neighborhood on the Brooklyn waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

PDN's 46 Reasons To Love Photography

The May 2008 issue of Photo District News magazine landed in my mailbox with a thud. The magazine has 264 pages so it's quite heavy...and it has a number of interesting articles including the Photo Annual 2008. But the one that immediately caught my eye is the "46 Reasons To Love Photography Now"; a compilation by the magazine's editors and writers of things that make photography as rewarding and exciting as ever. Most of the 46 reasons are predictable to some degree, many are sensible and some are quirky.

I won't list all the 46 reasons here, but those I liked are:

#4. National Geographic magazine. (Nobody else does what the National Geographic does, and after its impressive awards this year, no one can argue with that choice).

#6. The Multimedia Triumvirate: Soundslides, Final Cut Pro and Flash. (Tools that revolutionized documentary photojournalism. I'm an unabashed fan of Soundslides).

#15. You Don't Have To Wear A Necktie. (A long scarf or Kaffiyeh is considered a part of the uniform. I laud the values of having a Khmer scarf in a previous post).

#26. B&H Photo's Overhead Conveyors. (Anyone who shopped/visited at B&H knows how efficient -and futuristic- these overhead conveyors are).

#44. Online Photo Essays. (The Web made it possible for photographers to publish long form photo essays).