The Travel Photographer's B&H Photo's VIP Tour

B&H's Isaac Buchinger with Tewfic El-Sawy

B&H's Yechiel Orgel with Tewfic El-Sawy

I'll preface this post by saying this:...despite my spending over an hour at B&H SuperStore on a VIP tour, I managed to reach deep in my inner reserves of self-discipline and will power, and emerged without buying a single item from one of my favorite retailers! It took a super-human effort, and a high degree of self-negation. A note to Santa:  Write this down in my plus column.

My hosts on this exhaustive tour on Thursday were Isaac Buchinger and Yechiel Orgel of the company's Affiliate Marketing Department. I visited every nook and cranny of the SuperStore, and even though I'd like to think I'm a frequent visitor, I was shown areas I didn't know existed.

Nothing was left out; Isaac must've guessed I had a flashlight fetish and showed me one that doubles up as a weapon and that sells for many many dollars...he showed me headphones that cost almost as much as my car, and ushered me into B&H's TV studio...a jaw-dropping environment which made me feel I was at one of the networks.

All that, and we were still in the ground floor of B&H's 70,000+ square feet building. The second floor is, of course, where the photography stuff is...and where I frequently spend more than what I can afford.

Nothing new on the second floor that I hadn't seen before, except for two areas of interest to me. The first is that B&H has a new (at least to me) section for DSLR video rigs, and that it produces and offers a full line of affordable line of photo/video support gear under the name Pearstone.

For instance, I noticed a Pearstone intervalometer or shutter release for a very reasonable $50 instead of the pricier Canon. I recently bought mine from an eBay vendor in Hong Kong, and while it's perfectly fine, I would've chosen to buy it from B&H had I known about this product line.

Following the tour, we returned to B&H's corporate offices for a meeting.

Oh, and another thing...I still don't know what B&H stands for.  Now I know...see below.

Addendum: A number of readers informed me that Wikipedia lists B&H's ownership and history.

Some Beautiful Images From Koh Lipe, Thailand

Hi Friend,

Today is Friday and i have not post about images of the place that i've visited for a long period of time. You may know that i've just visited Koh Lipe in Satun on the ealier of December last year as you may read my post about my first day of Koh Lipe Here. However, I'm still not post for my next day journey in this wonderful island yet but i promise to continue my story as soon as possible.

For today, i would like to show some images that i've taken from this beautiful island of Koh Lipe in Satun, province in the southern region of Thailand. Let See the images form my Sony DSC WX1 and See You Then!



Koh Lipe Sunset Beach




Panorama View of Mountain Resort



View from the Mountain Resort



Restaurant at the Mountain Resort, Lipe Island

Mountain Resort, Koh Lipe Island



Long Tail Boat



Palani Mohan: Kolkata's Rickshaw Pullers

Courtesy Getty Images' Reportage

Palani Mohan describes the rickshaw pullers of Kolkata as "human horses" who work for 18 hours a day, hand pulling/carrying people and goods for a pittance. There are over 18,000 rickshaw wallahs in Kolkata, and although the state government declared this "inhuman" and "barbaric", and tried to ban rickshaws from the city's streets. This was rejected by the pullers themselves, and huge protests ensued.

Most of the rickshaw pullers are impoverished Biharis, who come to Kolkata to earn money to feed their families back in Bihar. Some describe their lives as "cursed". with most of their earnings going to rent the rickshaw itself, leaving almost nothing for their families.

I love these black & white environmental portraits, and as documenting rickshaw pullers will be one of the aims of my Kolkata Photo~Expedition/Workshop, I'll be providing this post's link to its participants.

Palani Mohan was born in Chennai, India, and moved to Australia as a child. His photographic career started at the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, and since then he has been based in London, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and now Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia.

His work has been published by many of the world's leading magazines and newspapers including National Geographic, Stern, Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. He also published three photographic books. His work has been recognized with awards from World Press Photo, Picture of the Year, National Press Photographers Association, American Photo and Communication Arts. He is represented by Getty Images' Reportage Group in New York.

Books: Robert Van Koesveld's Bhutan Heartland

Robert Van Koesveld has published a wonderful book on Bhutan, and entitled it Bhutan Heartland. The details of the book are available on a sub-section of Robert's website.

When I got it, I experienced a twinge of envy at Robert's talents as a photographer, and how well produced this book was. Joining Robert in the task of putting this book together is his wife Libby Lloyd.

Bhutan Heartland explores the culture, history, beliefs and dazzling Himalayan landscapes of this wonderful country, known as Druk Yul...and where smoking in public places is against the law!

Nine chapters make up this hardback book of 210 pages. Robert and Libby have taken their readers from Paro in the west of the country to its east, traveling through the high passes of Dochu La and others, meeting monks, nuns, lamas...stopping at Ogyen Choling and documenting the various exuberant tsechu festivals...and end up with silk weavers and yak herders.

If you decide to visit Bhutan (and you must!!!), this is the book you ought to read. It's not a guidebook, but the amount of informed research in it was new to me, informative and interesting...and I've already been to Bhutan about 4 times!!!

Well recommended. You can buy it from Robert's website or order it from major booksellers such as B&N.

Cropping...What's That?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Photographers who've accompanied me on my photo~expeditions, have photographed alongside me and perhaps those who've seen my galleries, know that I don't crop my images except in-camera. I don't know if that qualifies me as a purist or not, but in general terms, I'm loath to remove what is already in the frames I've captured.

Naturally, if there's an offending finger creeping in the side of a frame, I'd crop a few pixels out of the frame to remove it (or very very rarely use the clone tool instead)...however depending on the subject/scene and its intended purpose, if it's a whole hand, arm or face that intrude, I'd still leave the frame intact. In a moving situation, there's always the possibility that I can't (or if I'm not quick enough) alter my position to exclude what I don't want from my frames. If I have the luxury of a few seconds, then I crop in-camera.

I also photograph what I call "pretty pictures"...the smiling posed faces...the like you see in stock libraries and on covers of travel/geographical magazines. In those, an extraneous object would be certainly be...well, extraneous. However, as I take as many photographs of the same person as I can, I rarely resort to cropping unless the expression/body posture in a particular frame is one of a kind.

Having said all that, I thought the photograph above of the three Balinese rice farmers was perfect for a panoramic crop, which works much better than the original frame. (I've added my copyright symbol in its center since it occurred to me that it'd look very nice as a blog header for some travel blog). Click it to enlarge.

So do I crop outside of the camera? Sure, although 99.9% of the time I don't.

Eirini Vourloumis: Latino Muslims

Photo © Eirini Vourloumis-All Rights Reserved

Eirini Vourloumis is a freelance photographer who has recently been featured on The New York Times' LENS blog for her photo essay on Islamic communities in the United States. She is a graduate of Parsons and the Columbia Journalism School, and her work has been published on Lens and in The New York Times, New York Magazine, FT magazine and The Village Voice. She also attended the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul where I met her this past summer.

There are an estimated 200,000 Latinos in the United States who have converted to Islam. Most of them live and work in New Jersey and in New York City. They represent a unique fusion of religious and cultural identity, as they're attracted by Islam's simplicity and the absence of a clergy...in direct contrast to Catholicism.

Eirini has a couple of photo essays on her website featuring Muslim communities in the United States; the Great Muslim Adventure Day and the Indonesian Community Mosque in NYC. She managed to present an insight in a small community, but part of a larger community which has been -and still is- unfairly maligned in this country.

As Eirini says in her interview with James Estrin:

"It is challenging to live in the U.S as a Muslim. There is a heightened sense of Islamophobia, which can be aggravated by the general portrayal of Muslims in the media. Negative images of Islam — drawn from associations with fundamentalism and terrorism — have begun to marginalize Islamic communities, accentuating the prejudice that many Muslims face in their daily lives."

Good work!

Photo Matters: An Educational Resource

Jon Sachs is the creator of Photo Matters, an educational resource for photographers who want to learn about creative photographic variables. Most of my readers are professional and semi-professional, and may consider an educational website such as this one to be for beginners...but that would be a mistake. Photo Matters is different, and aims at all levels of photography proficiency.

It's true what Sachs says on his website. Many times, we reach for a lens, or adjust the shutter speed/aperture value without even thinking...and can't explain it. We just know...or just feel it. However, Photo Matters explains it visually.

Trust me...you'll like this website. A lot.

Daniel Berehulak: Holi

Photo © Daniel Berehulak-All Rights Reserved

Daniel Berehulak documented the kaleidoscopic Indian festival of Holi in the holy city of Vrindavan in February 2010, and the power of his photographs in terms of composition and color is enhanced by his website...large colorful photographs; who can resist?! His photographs are a feast for the eyes, especially to those who love pink!

Many of his photographs were made in the streets of Vrindavan, and in the temple of Bankey Bihari which is virtually subsumed in colored powder thrown by the devotees and the revelers. Holi is the Hindu festival of color, and Vrindavan is especially famous for its observance of the festival since it's said that Krishna celebrated Holi with his consort Radha there.

You can also see Daniel's photographs on The Frame.

Daniel Berehulak is an Australian photographer, who initiated his photographic career in 2000. He started working for Getty Images in 2002 as a sports photographer. In 2005, he assumed a staff position for Getty Images as a news photographer based in London. He's currently based in Delhi, covering South Asia and beyond. Apart from many awards, Daniel's work was featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Guardian and other publications.

Joey Lawrence: Omo Valley Portraits

Photo © Joey Lawrence-All Rights Reserved

There's no question that Joey Lawrence (aka Joey L) is one heck of a photographer...travel photographer, ethno-photographer and portrait photographer as well. He recently added more photographs of Lower Omo Valley tribes to his blog that are breathtaking in their simplicity.

These are different than what we come to expect to see from Joey, who had accustomed us to environmental portraits of endangered tribes people, whether in Ethiopia or Indonesia. This latest crop of incredibly beautiful photographs have been posed, and the subjects set against a simple black background. According to Joey, these will be part of a fine art book with all his work from the Omo Valley.

The tribes depicted in this series are the Karo, the Nyangatom, the Mursi, the Daasanac. the Hamer and the Arbore.

Joey used a PhaseOne/Mamiya 646 with a 80mm prime lens, a light setup and a collapsible reflector.  The combination of the medium format and the lighting technique produced these remarkable results. 

The Coptic Man on "Tiananmen Square"?

Photo © Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

A photograph by Amr Abdallah Dalsh, a Reuters photographer, stopped me in my tracks. It shows an Egyptian young man (presumably a Christian Copt) menacing or hurling a piece of iron at the cowering Egyptian police. This came about as a consequence of the heinous bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve which killed 23 and injured 100.

Egypt is still reeling from the violence, and its government has quickly blamed external Islamist terrorism, promising to bring the perpetrators to justice.  I'm not holding my breath on that eventuality, and neither are the Copts, who have been subject to discrimination at all levels in their very own country.

High on the Copts' grievance list is Egypt's policy to make it extremely difficult for them to build churches.  The country's prime minister recently rejected demands for Copts to be free to build churches, claiming that the government will make sure that there are enough worship places for both Muslims and Christians. A joke.

And this is one of our so-called stalwart allies in the Middle East. Another joke.

But let's go back to the photograph for a minute. A half-naked man confronting a phalanx of well armed, well protected security forces...and seemingly single-highhandedly making them cower like rats. This is truly an example of a picture being worth a thousand words.

Photograph courtesy Reuters Full Focus Blog

POV: More Branding For Free

I think I knew very early on in life that one of the most critical and fundamental factors in any business, whether online or not, was branding. As I entered the online world for my photography business, I realized that online personal branding was key to generate a distinctive internet personality/presence, and that's how I snagged The Travel Photographer label...for my blog, a backup blog, website(s), social media such as Twitter, Facebook and everything in between including an email address, business cards, and even items of my own clothing.

If I had a penny for each time I hear other travel photographers how clever I was in snagging The Travel Photographer label/brand before they did, it'd pay for a new Canon 5D Mark II...I exaggerate of course, but I heard that said a lot.

I also knew that my name was not the easiest to pronounce (at least for Americans...it's no problem with other nationalities), so an alias was the smart thing to do. It always gives me a kick when I'm in a photography function and I'm introduced as "Tewfic...y'know, The Travel Photographer".

All right, I rambled enough about personal branding. Through one of my Twitter followers, I learned of About.me which is a free website (technically still in beta) that allows anyone to build a an attractive personal profile that points users to one's content from around the web.

Naturally, I snagged The Travel Photographer and now have my very own personal profile. Will it be useful? I don't know yet but at the very least I appropriated and protected my brand by doing so.

If you have a personal brand, you may want to do the same.

Next Week On The Travel Photographer

What's on tap for the week starting Monday, January 10? Here's what:

1. The work of an emerging photojournalist featuring Muslim Latinos in the United States.
2. A very well done educational resource website for photographers. Whether advanced or not, you'll find this resource very useful.
3. The work of an interesting photographer/photojournalist on Holi.
4. An inside view as to how a young photographer sets portraits of members of tribes in Ethiopia.

There'll also be some "shooting from the hip" posts...I'll also be touring the incomparable (and gigantic) B&H on an exclusive visit, and getting ready for my end of month photo~expedition in Gujarat.