BBC's Human Planet: Timothy Allen

I was pleased to receive an email from Timothy Allen announcing that he is writing a weekly blog for the BBC documenting his work with indigenous societies around the world for the documentary Human Planet.

Human Planet is a new 8×50 minute documentary series being made by BBC Television. The series celebrates the human species and looks at our relationship with the natural world by showing the remarkable ways we have adapted to life in every environment on earth. It is due to be transmitted in the UK in October 2010 and will be rolled out across the world soon after.

Timothy Allen is a English photographer with a hefty professional background, including the Sunday Telegraph, The Independent and Axiom Photographic Agency, and who has won prestigious awards such as 6 Picture Editors' Guild Awards including the title of Arts Photographer of the Year. More recently he was the recipient of the 'One Planet, Many Lives' award in Travel Photographer of the Year for his work with the indigenous cultures of the Himalayas. The focus of his recent work has been on the planet's remaining tribal societies, and he currently devotes his time to documenting the diversity of humanity's cultural heritage. He has worked with indigenous communities throughout the world , most extensively in India and South East Asia.

This is a blog which is certain to enchant, educate, and delight those of us who are passionate about travel photography, ethno-photography and interested in our humanity's cultural heritage. Bookmark it, and visit it often!

For Canon 5D Mark II fans: check out the short video made with a Canon 5D II during a tribal dance in Niger.

A previous TTP post on Tim Allen's Nagaland work is here.

Easter & Holy Week

©REUTERS/Henry Romero-All Rights Reserved.
A masked Catholic penitent flagellates himself during the start of a procession through the streets of Taxco in the Mexican state of Guerrero, in observance of Holy Week celebrations. Hundreds of penitents, bound and flagellating themselves, walk the labyrinthine cobblestone streets of Taxco, an almost 500-year-old silver mining town built into a mountainside, in one of the most dramatic and heartfelt Easter rituals staged in this fervently Catholic country.

Flagellation is also practiced by some Shi'a Muslims, who whip themselves on the holiday of Ashura to commemorate the martyrdom of Hussein Bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the Battle of Karbala in 680.

The Boston Globe's The Big Picture has remarkable photographs of Holy Week (Link).

It's a little unfortunate that a foot appears in the top left corner of the above photograph!!

David DuChemin: Within The Frame

David DuChemin of The Pixelated Image is in the final phases of having his new book Within The Frame available at major bookstores everywhere. This a 260 page book in which David shares his experiences and knowledge acquired from years of working as a travel photographer.

Peachpit Press are publishing the book, and have posted a free down-loadable chapter of Within The Frame as a teaser.

I look forward to review David's opus soon, and expect that it'll be a must-have for all of us who are interested in travel and adventure photography. More to come soon!

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop: Another Scholarship!!

Eric Beecroft, co-founder of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, announced that the dispatches 2009 Foundry Scholarship in Memory of Alexandra Boulat will award one woman photographer from South Asia (India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan, and Tibet) a full scholarship to attend the workshop as well as $100 toward travel expenses.

Eligibility: Any woman photographer from South Asia (no dual nationals from outside South Asia) may apply, including those that have applied unsuccessfully to other scholarships for the workshop.

Deadline: May 7, 2009

Winners Announced May 21, 2009

Judges: The judges are dispatches’ contributing photographers Antonin Kratochvil, Yuri Kozyrev, and Seamus Murphy.

How to Apply:
Please send a link to TWO photographic essays, each containing from 6 to 20 images, to fpw [at] rethink-dispatches [dot] com.

Write “Foundry Scholarship” in the subject line.

Also include one to two paragraphs in an attached Word doc or pdf summarising your photography background, career goals, any other workshops you’ve attended, and what you hope to get out of the Foundry workshop. Please also include the links to your galleries in the attachment.

NB: Please make sure that the images are captioned. Galleries that are fast-loading are appreciated.

Kiran Ambwani

Kiran Ambawni is a freelance photographer based in Montreal, and she specializes in editorial and commercial photography. A graduate of McGill University and the Dawson Institue of Photography, her background in anthropolgy has clearly influenced her work as evidenced by her travel portfolio.

Some of her projects deal with one of the largest slums in Asia; Mumbai's Dharvi, a Trek for Peace documenting the Himalayan mountain women of Nepal, and Tibetans in exile.

Apart from her talented Travel portfolio, drop by her Landscape gallery and see how lumimous its first frame is!

liveBooks Photojournalism Websites

liveBooks has launched liveBooks Photojournalism, a cost-effective, pre-designed website offering and community for photojournalists launched in partnership with FiftyCrows and the National Geographic All Roads Photography Program.

This partnership will include eight additional leaders in international photojournalism and documentary photography in the near future, and will provide photojournalists worldwide with an opportunity to have a professional web presence at an affordable price.

The sites are available via subscription for $44/month or $444/year, or they can be purchased for a one-time fee of $1,144. I don't have a liveBooks website, but I know of many photographers who have. More examples are also found on its website. Further details are available directly from liveBooks Photojournalism.

liveBooks also has a very informative blog called RESOLVE, which is edited by Miki Johnson and Carmen Suen. I've bookmarked it for regular follow up...you may want to do so as well.

Canon 5D II Does Theyyams (VIDEO)

Here's a short snippet of raw video captured on my Canon 5D Mark II during one of the many Theyyam ceremonies witnessed during my Theyyam of Malabar photo expedition in Kerala (India). The camera used was the new Canon 5D Mark II...Nothing fancy. I just pointed and pressed the button. I still have quite a few others that are lengthier which will be worked on using iMovie etc. Audio was captured via the camera's microphone. However, I've recorded excellent audio with my new Marantz PMD-620 which I'll use for forthcoming projects.

Theyyam rituals are indigenous to north Kerala, and the actor-dancers incarnate local deities to foretell the future to devotees. Incredible imagery and action! For more information on the Theyyams photo expedition, go here.

I chose not to embed the video in this post because it looked a bit jerky when I did, so click on the link instead of the image. This will open my video page on Vimeo. You may want to go full screen to get a better feel for the action.

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop: News

Eric Beecroft, co-founder of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, has recently announced a new tuition deal for South Asian students and others.

The tuition deal runs from March 28 to April 18, 2009...so hurry and register before it expires!

South Asian:
Two for $800 — If two students sign up and pay together, tuition is $400 each/$800 total. (The students need to note whom they are signing up with when they do so to get this deal).

Standard:
Two for $1600 — If two students sign up and pay together, tuition is $800 each/$1600 total.(The students need to note whom they are signing up with when they do so to get this deal).

Canon 5D Mark II Batteries

A recent post on a professional photo forum complaining about the non-availability of extra Canon LP-E6 Camera batteries for the Canon 5D Mark II was joined by a rep for a retailer whose post reveals how Canon completely dropped the ball by not supplying sufficient extra batteries to its authorized retailers; totally mismanaging a critical component of the camera's launch, and which eventually gave rise to price gouging by unscrupulous vendors.

Why was Canon caught with its pants down? It had to know that the camera would appeal to serious photographers who would need an extra battery.

I've ranted about this in a previous post. (LINK)

Note: This post was redacted on April 20, 2009.

Sylvain Savolainen: The Afars

©Sylvain Savolainen-All Rights Reserved.
Sylvain Savolainen is a photographer and reporter based in Geneva, and is regularly published by international newspapers and magazines such as Geo, La Stampa, IHT, The New York Times and Le Figaro. In Paris, he worked with Sygma and Gamma agencies, and currently Cosmos and Grazia Neri partly distribute his work. He is also a contributor to the French and Swiss national radios. In 2007, he won the Swiss Press Photo award for the best foreign feature of the year.

Sylvain has documented many ethnic groups, including the Afars. The Afars, or Danakil, are an ethnic group in the Horn of Africa, residing principally in the Danakil Desert in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, as well as in Eritrea and Djibouti. They constitute over a third of the population of Djibouti, but the majority still remain nomadic pastoralists, raising goats, sheep, camels and cattle in the desert.

Here's Sylvain's Those Who Gaze Into The Horizon: The Afars

Geisha Peeping!

Photo ©Hiroshi Yamauch-All Rights Reserved.
How awful! The New York Times has an article on how Kyoto, the historic and former imperial capital, is attracting hordes of tourists wanting to photograph the geisha and maiko, who, with their "elaborate dress, white-painted faces and stylized gestures, exercise a special allure for Western imaginations as the seeming embodiment of Japanese tradition."

Further on in the article, I read that a record 927,000 foreigners spent a night in Kyoto in 2007, a substantial growth over the preceding year. On the other hand, the estimated number of geisha is only 1,000 to 2,000, as compared to 80,000 in the 1920s.

I'm saddened, but not surprised, that the Kyoto residents, and the geisha, are now complaining that tourists with cameras are aggressive, and even "ambush and surround the young women for close-ups. Sometimes, they say, the tourists block their way, pull their sleeves, and at times have even caused them to trip over."

On the other hand, I'm not fussed by the fellow in the above photograph. He's maintaining a reasonably respectful distance from the two geisha, and I don't see that as harassment. However, I can imagine the behavior of tourists with small compact cameras wanting to get close-ups on the geisha faces! Disgraceful.

The article is authored by Miki Tanikawa.

Matthieu Paley: Lal Shabaz Qalander Festival

Here's a multimedia feature by Matthieu Paley titled Pakistan's Love Parade. I initially thought it dealt with a Pakistani gay parade of some sort, but it turned out to be a remarkable (and lengthy, at almost 12 minutes) reportage on the annual festival of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar when, as writes Matthieu:

"For three days and nights, over one million Sufi pilgrims, devotees and onlookers join an infectious chaos of swirling and dancing; a firework of emotions and sensations; non-stop rhythmic drumbeats echoing through a heady hashish haze."

What an incredible way to describe it! I certainly wouldn't need the hashish to be exhilarated by the sound, sights and smells!

A bit of background: Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (1177-1274) was a Sufi saint, philosopher, and a poet, born in Afghanistan and who settled in Sindh (Pakistan). He preached religious tolerance among Muslims and Hindus, and is buried in the dusty desert town of Sehwan Sharif, where thousands of pilgrims visit his shrine every year. Hindus and Muslims alike express their devotion through trance dances and devotion for Lal Shabaz Qalander, who is considered as one of Sufism’s most venerated saint, whose message of love and tolerance some 800 years ago still powerfully resonate with his followers.

Matthieu Paley is an Asia-based (living in Hong Kong) photographer specializing in editorial and documentary photography. His work appeared in Geo, National Geographic, Newsweek, Time, Outside, Discovery and various others.

My Work: Kochi's Chinese Nets

Photo ©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved.
Here's one of the many images of Fort Kochi's famous Chinese fishing nets I made during my Theyyam of Malabar Photo~Expedition. Post processing was with Lightroom 2.3RC

These are interesting structures which, according to legend, were introduced by Zheng He, a Chinese Hui Muslim naval admiral who was ordered to explore the seas by the emperor Kublay Khan.

Each structure is about 10 meters high, consisting of a cantilever with an outstretched net suspended over the water, and stones suspended from ropes as counterweights at the other end. Each structure is operated by a team of up to six fishermen. The nets are locally called Cheena Vala.

Justin Mott: Hanoi

Photo ©Justin Mott/NYTimes-All Rights Reserved.
The New York Times' Travel section features Justin Mott's photographs of Hanoi. The accompanying article (by Naomi Lindt) highlights how the capital city of Vietnam experienced remarkable growth since the 1990s , by shedding its grimness and morphing into a sleek metropolis with high-rises, world-class cuisine and art.

I've photographed in Vietnam for an NGO in 2003, and had one week to cover various assignments from Hanoi to Can Tho in the south, and consequently acquired a limited view of this country and of its people.

Justin Mott and his work were featured quite often on this blog; for instance Saigon, Cremation in Bali, Cambodia, and a 1 on 1 Interview.