Minimalist Photo Gear

I'm planning to travel to Cairo for around 10 days, and finally took the plunge in reducing the load of photographic gear I normally take with me. Since the trip is not one of my group photo~expeditions nor a workshop, but will involve a couple of self-assignments, I can afford to pare it down.

Here's my list:

1. Acer Aspire One 8.9-inch Mini Laptop (1.6 GHz Intel Atom, 1gb RAM, Windows XP) on which I downloaded Soundslides (my favorite slideshow maker), Audacity (free audio editor) and GIMP (instead of power-hungry CS). I may add Lightroom but download it on a memory stick. I'm a hard-core Mac user, so I'm still very uncomfortable using XP, but the netbook's feather-like weight is incredible. The display while small, is magnificent and I look at it as a souped-up Epson P7000 at less than half its price.

I read on the internets that hardy souls install OSX on it, but that's above my tech pay grade, so I'll keep using the XP for a while.

2. A 250gb G-Tech Mini G-Drive External Hard Drive with both FireWire and USB 2.0 for increased portability. I formatted it be used for both Mac and Win, and it works like a charm. It's a tiny little thing, that weighs less than 9 oz.

3. My new Domke F3-X will take the above gear, plus my Canon 5D2 and two lenses (I'll leave the 70-200mm 2.8 behind), and my Marantz PMD620 audio recorder. It has other pockets in which I can put mt CF cards, and whatever other whatsits I carry with me. All I need to do is to put it in a washing machine and dryer, and it'll be broken in just fine. Maybe cover the Domke logo with gaffer tape, and I'm set to go.

I just read this in the New York Times:

Apple’s COO Tim Cook :“They have cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience, and not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. And so, it’s not a space as it exists today that we are interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in. It’s a segment we would choose not to play in."

Damn!

Are You Doing Audio Slideshows Yet?

©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
I've published an article asking this very question on Photocrati.com, a pro photographers' blog, gear review site, and community, which includes this:

"Multimedia is not a panacea for ill thought out or badly produced projects. It still needs good stories, great photographs and certainly, audio that is part of the story and part of the photographs. Adding a song downloaded from an online music store to a set of unrelated photographs is not what I’m taking about."

If you're interested in producing your own audio slideshows, I encourage you to read it here, and by having a look at an earlier POV post of mine here on TTP.

Stefano Torrione: The Rituals of the Gnawa

This is a post that'll be particularly appreciated by participants in my forthcoming Gnawa Photo~Expedition as photojournalist Stefano Torrione has documented the Gnawa in Essaouira and Marrakech in one of his many interesting galleries titled The Rituals of the Gnawas.

Stefano is a photojournalist who started his career at the magazine Epoca in the early nineties, and that led him to be awarded the Panorama European Kodak Award in 1993 in Arles for his reportage on the street children of Bucharest. He is particularly interested in geographical and ethnographical reportage, and traveled and worked in many countries for magazines like Geo, Panorama Travel, In Viaggio and others.

In 2005 he participated in Obiettivo Uomo Ambiente, the first International Biennial Photography Exhibition in Viterbo, with a reportage on the Gnawas rituals in Morocco.

Exploring his many galleries, I wished his photographs had been larger to better appreciate his reportage and photo work on Nubian Women, Kham, Kolkata, and Kyrgyz faces.

Guest Editorial

And here's an editorial from a former Moon travel guidebook writer:

OUTSOURCING MOON
by X-Moon, Delhi bureau

Bill Newlin has announced that he is outsourcing all guidebook writing to a company based in Bangalore, India. Further questioning reveals that this company is in fact a plantation where monkeys have been trained to climb trees and twist off coconuts. With the recent rapid decline in world coconut production, unemployed monkeys have been ingeniously retrained by the Bangalore plantation owners to modify content for Moon guidebooks.

There are estimated to be 2,000 monkeys typing away on 2,000 typewriters.

They are divided into huts by continent: North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

"The maps have proved problematic," said Bill, "but otherwise, the gibberish is adequate for most travel needs. It's an ideal match for Moon because we pay them peanuts." Bill also mentioned that he is pleased that the monkeys will not dispute the format of the material. They apparently do not go berserk if print-size is drastically reduced, or the work is printed on paper so thin you can see through it. They tend to go berserk, however, if the peanut supply dwindles.

Bill spoke further: "The disconnect we were having with the human writers was causing a lot of aggravation in our editorial offices. What the chimps do is take older editions and change one word on each page, which then passes for the new edition. That's all we need really. Most of our readers don't give a fig about content anyway. What they need is the security blanket of some sort of guidebook to hold. And that's what we give them."

Next on the horizon, Newlin is thinking seriously about outsourcing cover designs to elephants in northern Thailand. "I have heard that they are quite capable artists and very adept with their trunks. Of course, the cost of feeding them is far higher than the monkeys, but still well below human designer rates, even those of starving artists in garrets." Newlin is currently looking into cheaper sources of feed for the mammoth designers, in order to cut costs.

The Travel Photographer's FPW Awards

©Jyotika Jain (L)- ©Martyn Aim (R)-All Rights Reserved
In February 2009, I offered two scholarships to the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, and both Eric Beecroft and I (as jurors) had the difficult task to choose the recipients of the scholarships, which were announced on April 15th.

The above are photographs by Jyotika Jain and Martyn Aim, both winners of the two scholarships.

Jyotika Jain is a Mumbai-based freelance photographer, who recently started her photographic career. One of her documentary projects is on the ladies compartment of the local trains in Mumbai and Zaveri bazaar (old and traditional jeweller’s market). She exhibited her series on the local trains "Ladies Special: Myriad Moments" at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai, in February 2009.

Martyn Aim's background is that of an anthropologist. He has a MA Visual Anthropology from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester. His education is in fieldwork methods and documentary/stills photography and film. As an ethnographer, he spent a year documenting the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations peoples of western Canada, living in isolated reserve communities. The above photograph is from his series of Balinese cock-fighters.

Felice Willat: The Spirit of Burma

©Felice Willat-All Rights Reserved
Felice Willat is founder and president of Tools With Heart, a company that develops products to enhance personal discovery and well being. A successful entrepreneur, and with a strong background in network television production, Felice is also an accomplished photographer, as evidenced by the recent publication of her photographs of Burma on the pages of Matador, an online international travel magazine, in a feature titled In Focus: The Spirit of Burma.

From Felice's many lovely photographs, I chose the one above of evening traffic over the famed U-Bein bridge in Amarapura.

Her photographs are on display in an exhibit titled ALMS - "Offerings" at the Topanga Canyon Gallery (Los Angeles) from April 7th - May 3rd, 2009. Further details on the venue are here. The photographs also inspired her new book, "The Quiet Between - Song Of Burma".

Felice is one of the photographers joining my Gnawa Photo~Expedition due to start on June 19, and I look forward to see her work from this Moroccan extravaganza!

Her website with more photographs is here.

Joyce Birkenstock: Kathakali Paintings

©Joyce Birkenstock-All Rights Reserved

Joyce Birkenstock is a remarkable artist and photographer, and a peripatetic international traveler who visited most countries of the world. She received her training at the University of Dallas, the University of Iowa, the Norton Art School, the Art Students League, and the Vermont Studio Center, and her awards, achievements and professional affiliations are too many to list here.

She traveled on most of my photo expeditions, and I take much pleasure in featuring three of her superb paintings of Kathakali actors. The paintings are inspired by, and based on, her own photographs made during our private photo-shoot in Thrissur, during the Theyyams of Malabar photo-expedition which I organized and led in February.

I can still hear Joyce's exclamations of wonder as she photographed these actors while they were dressing up for the performance. She must have been visualizing her paintings as she clicked the shutter!

More of Joyce's work can be seen on Artistic Journeys

NYT: Colombia's Displaced Indians

©Moises Saman for NYTimes-All Rights Reserved
Here's an audio slideshow "Colombia's Displaced Indians" with photographs by Moises Saman, and narrated by Simon Romero (also the author of the accompanying article) concerning the misery affecting the indigenous population of western Colombia caught in the crossfire from a new breed of criminal armies is pressing deeper into the jungle, fighting with guerrillas who have been long in the Chocó region for control of the cocaine trade.

The objective of these groups is dominance over coca-growing areas and routes to ship cocaine abroad, predominantly to the United States.

The narration is rather flat in parts, but the photographs are really powerful.

Pulitzer Prizes For Photography

Photojournalists Patrick Farrell of The Miami Herald and Damon Winter of The New York Times have just won this year's Pulitzer Prizes for Photography. Farrell won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, and Winter won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.

Farrell won for his coverage of Hurricane Ike's devastation in Haiti and the humanitarian disaster that followed the storm, and Winter won for his coverage of President Barack Obama's campaign to the White House.

View the photographs on Pixcetera.

Read the article on the NPPA website.

Via Imaging Insider.

Chico Sanchez: Holy Week In Oaxaca

I've been waiting for Chico Sanchez's photographs of Semana Santa and as I predicted, he just came through with another of his well produced SoundSlides slideshows featuring Holy Week in Oaxaca. As you'll see, Easter for devout Oaxacans is the most important religious celebration of the year, which is demonstrated by processions and ceremonies that take place throughout the city of Oaxaca itself, and in the whole southern state.

The slideshow is a co-production of Chico Sanchez and Leslie Mazoch (who has co-produced many of these slideshows).

A number of Chico Sanchez's documentary/travel photography slideshows have been featured on The Travel Photographer blog; and can be found here.

La Santa Muerte

In total contrast to the above feature by Chico Sanchez, this post is about La Santa Muerte; a growing cult in Mexico whose core is the worship of the Santa Muerte or Holy Death, a kind of female incarnation of the Grim Reaper. In this short movie clip. Ioan Grillo and Journalist Daniel Hernandez go deep into Santa Muerte's spiritual center in Tepito, an old market neighborhood in the heart of Mexico City, which has long been associated with the criminal underworld to learn more about this new religious movement gaining traction at the fringe of Mexican culture.

This is extremely interesting to me as Tepito is the rough neighborhood of Mexico City where a couple of my students from the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop and I spent time in, photographing at some of the shrines of La Santa Muerte. Alex Espinosa, Christine Sommers and I photographed the very church and priest shown in the movie clip...and it's a deja vu for me, as it will be to them. We almost got mugged, but that's another story...

My gallery of photographs of La Santa Muerte is here.

Sandra Chandler: Carnevale, Fantasy of Venice

Sandy Chandler has just published her new book ‘Carnevale, Fantasy of Venice' of her beautiful photographs of Venice and its magical Carnevale. One can preview the book here.

Her introduction in the book reads :

Venice is one of the world's most picturesque cities and as a backdrop, Carnevale is shown as a vivid, vibrant colorful dream. The excitement of this twelve day celebration is all part of a spectacular journey. It was my dream to photograph and capture the spirit of the magic and excitement of this real life fantasy - Carnevale.

Sandra is a photographer and interior designer based in San Francisco. She tells us that color, smells and sounds drew her to world travel. Her city's Asian culture first enticed her to China in 1978 when the People’s Republic first opened. She then continued her exploration of Asia by traveling to Bhutan, India, Japan, Singapore, Nepal, Thailand, Tibet, and on to South America and Europe. Her website is here (LINK).

The book will be celebrated on May 7th at:

Tufenkian Artisan Carpets
515 NW 10th Avenue (in the Pearl)
Portland, Oregon
5-8

The Travel Photographer blog had a previous post on Sandra here. (LINK)

WLIW21: In The Footsteps of Marco Polo

I missed In The Footsteps of Marco Polo, a delightful and unusual travelogue on WLIW21, most probably because I was traveling and not in New York. However, I now have the chance of watching it on its website, and it promises to be a great televised yarn.

The series chronicles the journey of two men – Belliveau, at the time a wedding photographer, and O’Donnell, an artist and former Marine – as they set out to follow Marco Polo’s route. Equal parts travelogue, adventure story, history trek and buddy movie, the 90-minute film weaves footage from the duo’s often perilous voyage with Marco Polo’s descriptions and experiences. Richly enhanced with Belliveau’s photographs, the program details their highs and lows as they retrace Polo’s path, trying to see what he saw and feel what he must have felt.

Wayang Kulit

WSJ: Bob Krist's 'A Focus on Storytelling'

You actually need to think about what kind of photos you want. I say inspiration is for amateurs. Even though you aren't working for a magazine, you can still give yourself a little assignment...When you shoot with a mission, you start to think in terms of a storyteller, rather than a person walking around waiting to be hit with a bolt of, "Wow, that's beauty."
-Bob Krist

The Wall Street Journal (yes, The Wall Street Journal...imagine that!) has an insightful interview with the legendary travel photographer Bob Krist with his take on visual storytelling, and suggestions to make better travel photographs.

As for his quote, Bob's right on the money. Photographing with a predetermined and well researched mission will force you to become a visual storyteller.

The WSJ not only offers us an interview, but also an audio slideshow (SoundSlides format) of Bob's photographs and his narration.

Previous posts on Bob Krist have appeared here on The Travel Photographer.

Travel Photographer Of The Year Contest

The Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) has announced its 2009 international travel photography awards. TPOTY is run by photographers for photographers, judged by photography experts, and provides prizes, including foreign travel, photographic equipment and photography tuition.

As in all and every photography contests, I strongly encourage all interested photographers to make sure they carefully read the contests' terms and conditions, especially since misunderstandings between organizers and contestants over terms, prizes and other issues sometimes occur.

Whilst on the subject of photo contests, Bob Krist has just uploaded this post on his Photo Traveler blog.