CPN: Editor's Choice Selection

Canon Professional Newtork (CPN) is featuring Volker Lensch, the photo editor at Stern magazine, who has picked images from the photographs submitted to the fourth edition of Editor’s Choice - an entry that showcased the talents of emerging photojournalists and the power of black and white imagery.

CPN produced an audio-visual presentation, in which Lensch describes his editing approach on a daily basis, and explains in detail his choice of the photographs.

If the above link doesn't work for you, try this one: CPN

It is an interesting insight in how photo editors choose photographs...to me, it sounds more like a personal and instinctive reaction to the submissions.

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Book: Ronald Lake: Madagascar

I was very glad to receive Ronald Lake's beautifully designed book titled "Glimpses of Madagascar" as I knew next to nothing of this intriguing island. All I knew was that it's an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa, and there was an entertaining animated movie with the same name (I exaggerate, but you get the drift...it's just not a country in the news).

I also visited Ronald Lake's website, where one can sample some of the pages of his Madagascar book, and order it directly, as well as view his other galleries.

It's also called the Red Island, The Eighth Continent, Eden on Earth, and a World Out of Time, and is like no other place on earth. One of the world’s poorest nations, it is one of the planet’s richest stores of biodiversity, which was the main reason behind Ronald Lake's decision to join a trip to Madagascar with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

In Ronald's own words:

"Madagascar is one of the poorest countries on earth. It also is one of the richest homes of biodiversity on the planet. The juxtaposition of these two facts is what makes Madagascar so beautiful, so tragic, so compelling and so promising. But very few people in modern consumer societies are aware of Madagascar's unique story - few even know where it is.

I enjoyed shooting pictures in Madagascar because the place and the people were so special. It certainly got the creative juices flowing. But I felt that just taking pictures wasn't good enough. I had to give some meaningful expression to what I saw. Thus the book, which is meant to convey more than images. For me, this is the purpose of photography, or at least the kind of photography that I am interested in pursuing."

An investment adviser in Greenwich, Connecticut with photography as his passion, it's immediately obvious from this book that Ronald Lake fell in love with the island of Madagascar.

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POYi: 67th Annual PJ Competition

Pictures of the Year International (POYi) is to launch its 67th annual competition in documentary photography, multimedia, and visual editing.

POYi plans to release a preview of the 2009 "Call for Entries" on Tuesday, Dec. 8, offering an overview of all the contest categories and guidelines. Online registration and the entry uploading platform will be available at POYi's website on Friday, Dec. 18 and will conclude on Friday, Jan. 15.

The judging period will take place from Feb. 14 through March 5, and in June the POYi Exhibition, Education, and Awards Program will be at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles.

(via The Click)

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POV: Is TTP The New "Nerve"?

Having installed Google Analytics almost since the inception of this blog, I saw that a noticeable cluster of daily hits on specific pages of this blog came from (not listed in any specific order) the following countries:

India
Dubai
Qatar
Kuwait,
Bangladesh,
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates

All the hits from these countries are clustered on these two posts:

Beyond The Frame: Nepali Circus Girls

Q. Sakamaki: Bangladeshi Sex Workers

Now, it doesn't take an agile mind to know why. These visitors have access to Google and are obviously trawling for sex sites, so these terms are just catnip for them. It also explains why the total time they spend on these TTP's posts is just under 2 seconds which, in my reckoning, is about 1.5 seconds too much. These links are obviously not what they seek. I know it's tempting to pass judgment on them, but I won't.

There are millions of South Asian workers in the Gulf, and they are the ones who in essence built Dubai, among others. With Dubai's economic meltdown, possibly affecting all its neighbors, I'll be interested to see if the anticipated eventual repatriation of these workers is felt in The Travel Photographer's statistics.

Man, this blog of mine is not only about travel photography but is also tracking globalization, financial events, porn trends and international employment flows!!!

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Pictory: Innovative Concept?

Pictory is a photo magazine, and claims to be re-imagined for the web. Photojojo describes Pictorymag as one part Boston.com’s Big Picture, one part This American Life, and one part Laura Brunow Miner.

I didn't know who Laura was but I found out she had been the Editor-in-Chief of JPG Magazine, and Pictory is her brainchild.

Pictory's premise is a simple one: it's a showcase for people around the world to document their lives and cultures, and anyone can submit a picture and a story. The best are featured in large sized photo essays.

Is it a commercially viable project? Time will tell.

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Gilles Sabrié: Chinese Traveling Opera

Photo © Gilles Sabrié-All Rights Reserved
It's by pure coincidence that I stumbled on Gilles Sabrié's website, in which he dazzled me with his many documentary galleries ranging from The Traveling Opera and the Kham (Eastern Tibet) to Faiths of Asia, and passing through Calcutta Prostitution. Large sized photographs on the web always make me happy, and these are large!

As I have just photographed street Chinese opera singing in New York's Chinatown, I thought it worthwhile to highlight Gilles' gallery titled The Traveling Opera. It covers a small opera group (or troupe) trying its best to keep alive one of China's oldest traditions, despite the low pay and dismal living conditions.

The website is flash-based, so you'll have to look for the gallery, but I encourage you to look at and study all of his galleries of large sized images.

Gilles Sabrié is a freelance photographer based in Beijing, China. After years spent working in television, he switched careers to embrace his passion — documentary photography. Since then, he has focused on news and social issues in China. In particular, he spent months documenting the life of China’s migrant workers as well as the fate of the inhabitants of the Three Gorges area. Sabrié’s images have been featured in numerous publications including Newsweek, TIME, US News, The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, L’Express, Focus, Le Point and more.

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Photogs Slang

I thought I'd lighten the mood here on The Travel Photographer by introducing you to some of the more colorful slang used by photographers and photojournalists (according to a lighthearted post on Lightstalkers).

So learn the slang, get yourself a pre-used keffeiyeh or krama, a third-hand Leica M7 (it doesn't have to work) and join the group! You'll be welcomed with open arms.

Photog: short for photographer
Shooter: slang for a photojournalist.
Snapper: rather derogatory term for amateurs.
Chimping: shooting a digital image, looking at it in the LCD, shooting again, looking...
Machine Gunner: A South African term for a photographer who always shoots at 6 fps and above.
Hail Mary: Photographing while holding the camera above one's head without looking through the viewfinder.
Big-Footing: Describes when a famous or staff photographer arrives at a location which has become newsworthy, and thereby pushing the freelancer who has been covering it aside.
Bang Bang: war or conflict, catastrophe, etc.
Goat Fuck: My very favorite expression! When a dozen photographers all elbow each other to photograph one person weeping at a funeral, or holding her dead child, or even (in the case of travel photographers) a preening monk-dancer holding a wooden penis at a Bhutan festival. A similar expression is “cluster fuck".
Fuck Job: Any scene overly set-up, arranged, posed, or directed. Also applicable to many top-end travel photographers, by the way.
Spec: To work without guarantee of pay. We see a lot of those recently.
Guarantee: Some pay but not an assignment.

Now go out there and look the part!!!

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