Kalpesh Lathigra: Transmission

Photograph © Kalpesh Lathigra-All Rights Reserved
As previously noted in The Travel Photographer blog (see below for link), Kalpesh Lathigra is an enormously talented London-based freelance photographer, working for most of the United Kingdom's newspaper magazines, including the Sunday Times Magazine, and The Independent Magazine. His work ranges from photographic essays of the American Midwest to the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, as well as social issues related photography projects such as The Brides of Krishna, the widows in Vrindavan.

He has recently published a series of photographs titled Transmission on his website which portray women prostitutes (including some hijras, or eunuchs who dress and identify themselves as female) outside of their usual environment in Mumbai, India. Kalpesh chose to photograph his subjects, not in the brothels as many photographers have done, but in his studio.

In an accompanying article in the Independent, Kalpesh says: "They were really surprised that I wanted to take their photographs in the studio and not in a brothel, but I did it because I wanted to isolate the women visually in a direct way. The photographs are for me a way of breaking away from visual clichés – and more importantly, a way of breaking away from the taboos and stigma of HIV, which in India are still very prevalent."

Viewing these dignified portraits, I'm reminded of Sebastiao Salagado's "If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things."

Previous post on Kalpesh Lathigra (Link)

WP: Mumbai Attacks

Photograph © Altaf Qadri/AP-All Rights Reserved
The media is full of reports of the attacks on Mumbai's landmark hotels and others areas. This is the third day that militants and Indian security forces are battling, with reports of about 150 dead, and over 300 wounded. The majority of the casualties and wounded are Indians. The situation still appears confused, with continuous news of blasts and gunfire still being heard in areas.

Here's a slideshow of images by various photographers which appeared on the Washington Post's website. The one above is by Altaf Qadri, an AP photographer. I wonder what the blurry figure on the right of the photograph is doing....putting his life in danger in such a fashion.

(Registration may be required by The Washington Post, and some images are graphic).

Nikon Outs Its DX3

Image Courtesy Engadget
In the pursuit of fair and balanced reporting, here's a Nikon item. According to the Engadget website, Nikon has outed its yet to be formally announced DX3 DSLR. It's said that it will have a 24.5mp FX sensor, 5:4 and DX crops, 5fps at full resolution; DX crop shoots 10mp images at up to 7fps, ISO 100-1600, with an extendability of down to 50 and up to 6400 along with 16 bit EXPEED processor.

This Nikon model targets Canon's 1DS Mark III as its main competitor, but whether photographers will ditch their high-end Canons and lens investments in favor of the new Nikon is doubtful. We'll have to wait and see.

Price and delivery date are unknown.

Via BJP's 1854

National Geo's Photo Contest: Results

Photograph © Van Nguyen/Courtesy NG-All Rights Reserved
The National Geographic's website just featured the winners of its International Photography Contest. Its categories were People, Places and Nature. However, to see all the submissions, one needs to download some program called Silverlight from Microsoft...which is not compatible with Power PC Macs. Too bad...and sort of shortsighted from National Geographic's deciders.

The above photograph is my favorite amongst those I could see on my treasured Power PC Mac. It combines a compassionate and candid moment by photographer Van Nguyen of a Vietnamese girl during a journey to America for medical treatment....she's probably a burn victim.

Makin' Babies: A Laugh

I think a joke will lift our collective spirit on this Thanksgiving day. It's a bit long, but you'll get into it pretty quickly. Of course, it's a good thing the photographer is a Canon user...it wouldn't work otherwise. Thanks to Ralph Childs for relaying it to me.

***

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, 'Well, I'm off now. The man should be here soon.'

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale.

'Good morning, Ma'am', he said, 'I've come to...'

'Oh, no need to explain,' Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, 'I've been expecting you.'

'Have you really?' said the photographer. 'Well, that's good.Did you know babies are my specialty?'

'Well that's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat'.

After a moment she asked, blushing, 'Well, where do we start?'

'Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is fun. You can really spread out there.'

'Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work out for Harry and me!'

'Well, Ma'am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results.'

'My, that's a lot!', gasped Mrs. Smith .

'Ma'am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I'd love to be in and out in five minutes, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed with that.'

'Don't I know it,' said Mrs. Smith quietly

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. 'This was done on the top of a bus,' he said.

'Oh, my word!' Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.

And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with.'

'She was difficult?' asked Mrs. Smith .

'Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look'

'Four and five deep?' said Mrs. Smith , her eyes wide with amazement.

'Yes', the photographer replied. 'And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in.'

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. 'Do you mean they actually chewed on your, uh...equipment?'

'It's true, Ma'am, yes... Well, if you're ready, I'll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away.'

'Tripod?'

'Oh yes, Ma'am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big to be held in the hand very long.'

Mrs. Smith fainted.

Social Documentary Website

I've stumbled across the Social Documentary website, a new addition to documentary photography on the web, and which features documentary photography from around the world.

According to its self-description, Social Documentary welcomes "professional and amateur photographers, journalists, NGOs, students—anyone with a story to tell and a collection of good photographs" and who seek to create easy and affordable websites on SocialDocumentary.net.

Its secondary goal "is to create an online image bank of quality photographs documenting all aspects of the world created by an international collection of photographers. "

The Terms & Conditions are here, and, as usual with such ventures, make sure you read and accept these before deciding.

Yan Seiler: The Outsiders

Photograph © Yan Seiler-All Rights Reserved
Yan Seiler travels allows him to document the plight of people in several Asian countries, an experience that provides his work a strong humanitarian slant.

His biography on his website is sparse, but it appears the Swiss national’s interest in photography is very recent, and was kindled by the gift of an old film camera in 2004. He discovered his indisputable talents quite rapidly, bought a digital SLR and took a break from his office job to leave for Asia.

I feature this SoundSlides slideshow titled The Outsiders of Yan's work amongst a community of lepers in India.

By way of background, leper colonies still remain around the world, in countries such as India, Japan, Egypt, Nepal and Vietnam. It is now commonly believed that many of those segregated into these communities were presumed to have leprosy, when they actually had syphilis. Leprosy is not highly infectious, as approximately 95% of people are immune and sufferers are no longer infectious after only a few days of treatment.

A New Canon 5D Mark II Video

Canon EOS5DmkII, One night in Beijing. from Dan Chung on Vimeo

Here's a video filmed by the UK's The Guardian newspaper photographer Dan Chung entirely on a production Canon EOS5DmkII and adapted Nikon and Zeiss lenses using manual focus. The camera was purchased to use solely as a video camera with existing Nikon kit.

The film was shot an edited in about twelve hours directly after picking the camera up from a Beijing camera store and charging the battery.

What can I say? It's very impressive. It's reported that the Canon 5D Mark II will be shipped to US retailers starting November 25. It'll be interesting to see how well this camera does in this economic environment...will they fly off the shelves at B&H, Adorama, J&R. Amazon and the rest of the stores? There is significant pent-up demand for this model in particular, but the holiday shopping season is predicted to be dismal....time will tell.

via PDNPulse (Link)

Sacramento Bee: The Chhat Festival

Photograph © AP / Bikas Das-All Rights Reserved
The Sacramento Bee website has recently joined the list of large-image blogs with its The Frame. Two of the others are the Boston Globe's The Big Picture and WSJ's Photo Journal.

The Frame has featured photographs of the Chhat festivities in India last week. Hindu devotees worship the sun god and fast all day for the improvement of their family and society during the festival.

Chhat is celebrated twice a year, once in summer (May-July), called the Chaiti Chhat, and once during October-November, six days after Deepawali, called the Kartik Chhat. The first day of Chhat begins with a ritual bathing (preferably in the Ganges River), followed by a period of abstinence by the worshipers. Photographs are by a number of photographers such as Altaf Qadri and Bikas Das among others.

I expect more large-image blogs will be imitated by many newspaper websites across the country. I don't know how these will be monetized other than through accompanying adverts, but they certainly are an excellent platform to show off work by deserving photographers.

Tom Hoops: Wai Kru Ceremony

Photograph © Tom Hoops-All Rights Reserved
Tom Hoops' biography is sparse....very sparse. His website only says that he's a freelance photographer, based in Bangkok and available for worldwide assignments. That's it.

However, his work speaks for him. Mostly black & white, with a few in color, Hoops has a natural affinity for portraits...striking portraits. A few of his subjects display enormous magnetism, and his Heads gallery is a must-see on his website.

But the gallery I liked best is the Documentary one because Hoops displays his work on the annual Wai Kru (homage to the teacher) ceremony at Wat Bang Phra, a Buddhist monastery 25 miles west of Bangkok. It is here that thousands of laborers, taxi-drivers, truck drivers, mobsters, small time crooks arrive once a year at the temple to take part in ceremony known as wai kru. They receive new tattoos, refresh faded ones, and get high or drunk.

(Tom Hoops gallery via Penelope Gan's blog)

I'm very familar with Wat Bang Phra (or Phro) and its tattooing monks. I photographed the monks at the monastery, and have a blog post here.

POV: Photographers & Recession Part 2

In contrast to my previous Photographers & Recession, today's POV post strikes a happier note, and here's why:

I was emailed last night by a potential buyer looking for a travel/documentary photographer (he'll remain anonymous to respect his privacy) who, among his many travels, photographed in Tibet. It seems the buyer wanted to buy his photographs of Tibet, searched the net for them, and found a post on The Travel Photographer's blog featuring his work, website, etc.

I was asked for this photographer's email (I don't know why the buyer didn't see it on his website), so I provided it with great alacrity, and hopefully the deal will be done soon.

This is certainly not the first time (or the last) that I've been contacted for information on photographers who appear on this blog...some from buyers, some publishers...many ask me the whereabouts of certain photographers....for some I know and for others I don't...but I always try to help. In many cases, my posts on photographers appear on top of the Google search pages, so buyers, collectors and publishers try The Travel Photographer's blog first.

I'm gratified that The Travel Photographer's blog serves such a purpose. When I started it, this never crossed my mind, so it's doubly gratifying.

Online Guided Tours

One of the most commons tasks when studying English for Tourism is to be asked to make a guided tour about a certain place. This website is a great source for students where they can see examples and learn how to give a tour. All the continents are represented.