Mongolian Racer

Reading and posting Stan Greene's excellent interview yesterday will probably satisfy my photojournalism interest for this week, so for a change in pace here's a lovely travel multimedia piece titled Mongolian Racer by The Guardian photographer Dan Chung, and narrated by Tania Branigan. (click the arrow).

The multimedia piece is on a horse trainer and his 10-year-old jockey who face the biggest day of their year at Mongolia's Naadam festival, which dates back to before Genghis Khan's time and celebrates the 'manly sports' of wrestling, archery and racing.

The Mongolian traditional festival of Naadam is also called in the local dialect as "the three games of men". These are Mongolian wrestling, horse racing and archery. The festival is held throughout the country during the midsummer holidays, however the largest is in Ulaanbaatar.

For the geeks, the piece was shot using Canon 1DmkIV, 5DMkII, 550D and GoPro HD camera, and a load of ancillary gear which is described in length in Dan Chung's blog DSLR News Shooter.

Apart from it being gorgeous videography, I noted the simple and clean font used for the title of the piece, and how it's placed against the dark cloud in a red sky...nice touch, that. And I also liked how the voice-over expertly blended with the ambient sound/voice.

Jacob Maentz: The Infanta Penitents

Photo © Jacob Maentz-All Rights Reserved
I've been terribly remiss in covering the Philippines on this blog, but Jacob Maentz's fine work on this Asian nation will go a long way to rectify this.

Originally from the United States, Jacob is based in the Philippines from where he does considerable amounts of travel, working on freelance assignments and shooting stock photography. His travels to Latin America whilst in college is where he discovered his passion for the camera. He was brought to the Philippines in 2003 when he joined the United States Peace Corps and has found himself repeatedly drawn back to this part of the world since then.

Most of his galleries are of the Philippines, and I chose to feature the very interesting Infanta Penitents here.

Jacob writes that "Self flagellation practices were adopted by Filipinos during their Spanish colonization almost 500 years ago. Flagellants are practitioners of an extreme form of mortification of their own flesh by whipping it with various instruments. Today, you can still see some Christians practicing flagellation in the Philippines as a form of devout worship and personal sacrifice, sometimes in addition to self-crucifixion. In the Philippine province of Quezon there are still a number of men who wear elaborate costumes while preforming their act of self flagellation."

When you've looked the Infanta Penitents, continue exploring Jacob's galleries. I did, and learned much about the cultural wealth of the Philippines.

PBS Features "Starved For Attention"

PBS' Need To Know is featuring a Starved For Attention slideshow with 19 large photographs by Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer.

It's based on the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition.

As an aside, I also noticed on Need To Know an article by Kavitha Rajagopalan on the buffoonish remarks made by Palin on the plans to erect a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero.

All I have to say is that it is New York and its inhabitants who suffered on September 11, 2001....and it's they who have the voice in this.

No one else.

Photojournalism From SE Asia

For those who are hard-core fans of South East Asian photojournalism, OPEN-i hosted a live webinar a few months ago which featured work from photographers living and working in South East Asia, and who discussed the challenges and rewards of working in that region.

The webinar (moderated by Paul Lowe) is unusually long (about 105 minutes), and the acoustics are not great, but it offers insight into the work and working conditions of 4 photographers/photojournalists.

Jack Picone - Thailand
Justin Mott - Vietnam
Veejay Villafranca - Philippines
Rony Zakaria - Indonesia

OPEN-i is a global online community of practice for the professional photojournalism industry where members can discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the industry in live webinars and online forums.

Kate Baumgartner: Religious Asia

Photo © Kate Baumgartner-All Rights Reserved
Kate Baumgartner describes herself as an avid photographer, and that may well be an understatement.

Based in Hong Kong, she photographed to Cambodia, Burma, India, China, Namibia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam...returning with splendid photographs, like the one above of the Cao Dai monks. Cao Dai is the relatively new, syncretist, monotheistic religion established in 1926 in Vietnam.

Take a look at Kate's gallery of photographs under the Religion category, and you'll find many of the different faiths and traditions of Asia, including the unusual rituals during the Thaipusam festival in Singapore, which is celebrated mostly by the Tamil community. On the day of the festival, devotees will shave their heads and undertake a pilgrimage during which some will engage in self-mortification by piercing their skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers.

MSF's Starved For Attention

"this year 195,000,000 children will suffer from malnutrition"

and so starts “Starved for Attention” the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition.

The campaign aims to present a series of multimedia documentaries of still photography and video from the well-known photojournalists at the VII Agency, such as Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer.

The first multimedia reportage is titled Frustration and is by Marcus Bleasdale, who narrates it out of Djibouti.

Bookmark this website, since the remaining reportages will be featured over the course of the coming months.

For more background on the project, JournalismNow features an interview with Ron Haviv, which touches on his work in Bangladesh for Starved For Attention.

Ian Lloyd: Asia

Ian Lloyd is an Australian photographer who has undertaken commissions for magazines such as National Geographic, Time, Fortune, Gourmet and Conde Nast Traveler and multinational companies as diverse as ExxonMobil, Pepsi, Motorola and Singapore Airlines have commissioned Ian for commercial photography assignments. He has photographed 36 books on countries and regions around Asia including large format books on Kathmandu, Bali and Singapore and a four volume series on Australian wine regions.

You'll see from the Spirit of Asia video that it's a retrospective look at 20 years of his photography in Asia. Perhaps somewhat different from most of the travel photography I have featured here on The Travel Photographer blog, but certainly of high quality that we expect from photographers who work with the National Geographic.

Matjaž Krivic: Earth Temples

Photo © Matjaž Krivic-All Rights Reserved
Matjaž Krivic describes his whereabouts as traveling with his camera somewhere between the Sahara and the Himalayas...and having seen his portfolio of photographs, I believe him. He just returned from an overland road trip from Slovenia to Nepal via Senegal (Dakar to Katmandu), which took him 13 months of living and photographing out of a 4x4 Nissan Patrol.

For 20 years, he globe-trotted the world capturing the personality and grandeur of indigenous people and places, and found the time to be awarded many prizes, and recognized in various venues and exhibitions. He traveled in Yemen, Mali, Tibet, North and West Africa, Iran, Mongolia, China, Nepal and India.

I particularly liked his lovely Earth Temples portfolio, which consists of over 60 photographs of various temples, places of worship and still (or silent) places in India, Tibet, Morocco, Bolivia, Nepal and Kenya...to name but a few. These are so beautiful that I wish they were twice the size to appreciate them even better.

A Journey Through Asia: Canon 5D II

a journey through asia from ivan vania on Vimeo.

Here's a short movie shot with a Canon 5D Mark II titled "A journey through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The photography/videography (and editing) is by Ivan Vania, a filmmaker from Italy. The lens was a 24 mm-70mm 2.8, while the software was Final Cut Pro.

Simple and effective...and an increasingly important component of travel photography. I think that ambient audio (instead of the current soundtrack) would have strengthened it considerably. And better titling would have been nice too.

My thanks to Ralph Childs for sending me this.

Grenville Charles: Tribes of West Papua

Grenville Charles is a freelance photographer, whose main body of work is in TV and film stills for the BBC and Granada Television amongst others. Passionate about tribal cultures led him to travel to Asia where he photographed the Vietnam Hill Tribes of the central highlands, and to the remote jungles of West Papua to document the Dani, Korowai, Mek, Kombai and Asmat tribes. His portfolio of the Tribes of West Papua is featured on ZoneZero.

He was shortlisted in 2004 and was the runner up in 2008 for the Wanderlust Travel Photographer of the Year Award. In 2008, he was one of only 22 photographers selected from international applications to participate in a 5 day Magnum Workshop led by Magnum photographers Carl De Keyzer, Mark Power and David Hurn.

West Papua is the former Irian Jaya, and is home to more than 300 tribes. They have inhabited the island for more than 40,000 years. The Dani tribe are by far the most populous and probably the best known ethnic group in Papua. Another of the highland tribes are the Mek who live in the area surrounding Kosarek, despite there being an airstrip, the area is still very remote and very little visited by tourists.

The lowland jungles are home to the Korowai, since the mid 1980's some of the Korowai have moved to the missionary villages such as Yaniruma and Yafufla, but the majority of them live as they always have, in their treetop homes in the jungle swamps.

NPR: The Mekong, A River

Here's a wonderful multimedia piece The Mekong: A River And A Region Transformed, which is produced by NPR, as only a sterling institution such NPR would know how.

It documents the Mekong through a 3,000-mile journey from the river’s source on the Tibetan plateau to its mouth at the South China Sea, relying on Michael Sullivan and photographer Christopher Brown examine the turbulent history and uncertain future along the Mekong.

The Mekong is one of the world’s major rivers, and is its 12th-longest, and the 7th-longest in Asia. According to Wikipedia, its estimated length is 4,350 km or 2,703 miles, running from the Tibetan Plateau through China's Yunnan province, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

I've traveled to most countries through which the Mekong runs, and it was at its most spectacular at Khone Phapheng, in southern Laos with its borders with Cambodia, during monsoon season.

NYTimes: 31 Places To Go In 2010

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved
The New York Times published a feature on the 31 places to go in 2010, as well as an interactive world map listing its readers' (and its own) top recommendations.

I suppose the results, which so far list Istanbul as the readers' first choice, will provide the editors with assignment ideas for its photographers and writers to work on this year. It follows that interested travel photographers may want to look at these results which could predict eventual gigs, or photo editors' interests.

I'm not at all surprised that Istanbul is the top readers' recommended destination, but I slightly puzzled by the following choice of Colombia. I've been to Istanbul a few times, and I can understand the choice...and as I haven't visited Colombia or any of the northern South American nations, I must profess ignorance as to its attractions.

As for Sri Lanka, which is one of the top 31 places to go to, I must say that I'm of two minds. In March 2004, I found Sri Lanka a little bland. Let me be quick to qualify this by saying that I'm referring to its visual blandness relative to the sensory overload that is India. This is patently unfair as few countries can compete with the colors of India. The country has also been in the throes of a nasty civil war between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority, as well as being badly hit by the tsunami, both events which have had a negative impact on tourists who visit.

Notwithstanding, the New York Times article on the island nation mentions a number of singularly attractive boutique hotels such as the Sun House in Galle. I can vouch that this small property is incredible, and seemed to be extremely well managed by a British expatriate. Its sister venture is The Dutch House, which is equally lovely.

Asian Geo: Photo Contest 2009 Results

This is a belated post on the results of the Asian Geo magazine Photo Contest 2009 results. Some exceptional photographs have been compiled by the magazine in a flash-based flip viewer which is mildly irritating to use, but the quality of the photographs more than compensate for this. Sometimes simplicity is best, but the desire for innovative presentation techniques trumps reason.

Graham Crouch has won the Grand Prize in the Faces of Asia Category with his photograph of a malnourished infant being weighed in Mahdya Pradesh, India. However, don't stop at his compelling photograph...and continue to the remaining submissions, which are all of very high quality.

The main Asian Geographic magazine website is here.

Michael Bednar: Eagle Hunters of Mongolia

Photo © Michael Bednar -All Rights Reserved
I like big pictures, and Michael Bednar's website galleries have such large photographs, that viewing them is a virtual immersion into his imagery. His photo story about the Eagle Hunters of Mongolia is a visual treat...especially since it features not only environmental portraits of the hunters and their eagles, but also breathtaking imagery of the stunning Mongolian landscape.

For Kazakhs, hunting with eagles is ingrained in their cultural heritage, and historians believe hunting with birds of prey was practiced by nomadic tribes in Central Asia almost 6000 years ago.

Michael Bednar is a travel and documentary photographer based in Vancouver. He started by discovering the diversity of life and cultures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. After some years of globetrotting, Michael returned to Canada to attend the Western Academy of Photography and secured a diploma in Professional Photography.

He worked at daily newspapers in Southern Alberta, and eventually turned freelance, with his photographs published internationally.

Andy Isaacson: Central Asia

Andy Isaacson is a writer and photojournalist whose work The Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan has just appeared in The New York Times, and was published in Slate and National Geographic Adventure, among others.

He seems to have made a specialty of photographing Central Asia after traveling in Asia for over a year. He considers Brooklyn and the San Francisco Bay Area as his home.

I visited his photography website WorldWebEyes, and greatly enjoyed his diverse portfolios, and was slack-jawed at the beauty of the uncredited music he added to his web site. It must be Tajik or Uzbek, as many of his photographs are from that region, and there are many inflections in the song that sound Persian or Turkic. This plaintive song is just wonderful. Normally, I always turn off the audio embedded in non-multimedia websites, but this time I kept it on and replayed it many times.

Magnum In Motion: Alex Webb's Istanbul

With the third Foundry Photojournalism Workshop scheduled to be held in Istanbul in June 2010, I thought of featuring Alex Webb's Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names showcased on the Magnum In Motion website as an inspiration to those interested in registering for the workshop.

The audio slideshow shows us Alex Webb's vision of Istanbul, a city of minarets, ATM machines and designer jeans. A historical and imperial city, Istanbul was the capital city of the Roman Empire, of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. As one sees from the slideshow, the storytelling possibilities available in such an ancient city are just enormous, and will provide a wealth of exciting visual opportunities to photographers.

As for the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, it has just posted details of my class: Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling.

Matt Brandon: Penang's Pulau Tikus

Matt Brandon has been photographing since he was 10 years old with his father’s Cannonet QL Rangefinder, and now specializes in NGO, relief and humanitarian projects. He recently moved to Malaysia, and frequently features audio slideshows on his The Digital Trekker blog.

Here's one of his latest production which he titled The Hands Of Rat Island. This self-assignment was completed over the course of 3 days, and was centered on a small market in Penang called Pulau Tikus or “Rat Island”. Matt decided he'd only feature the hands of the people in that market.

As interesting as hands (almost as faces) are from a visual standpoint, it's also interesting to hear the market hubbub captured by Matt's recorder. You'll also hear the inflections of Hokkien Chinese, one of the most common Chinese languages overseas, which is spoken by the Chinese-Malay.

Having traveled in Malaysia, I still recall the aromatic smells and exotic tastes of the wonderful Malaysian street food, which I've experienced in KL, Malacca and Penang...but I digress.

There are quite a number of posts on TTP on Matt Brandon, and these can be found here.

Yuri Kozyrev: Yamal Peninsula

Photo © Yuri Kozyrev/NOOR-All Rights Reserved
Coinciding with the global climate talks in Copenhagen, Yuri Kozyrev (among the 9 photographers of NOOR photo agency) photographed climate stories with the purpose of documenting the consequences of global warning. Produced during the last two months, the project named Consequences is being launched during the United Nations Climate Summit, Monday 7 December through Friday 18 December 2009.

The Yamal Peninsula is one of the world's largest wildernesses where the indigenous Nenets people have migrated across for the past 1000 years. It is here that traditional large-scale nomadic reindeer husbandry is preserved. The Yamal Peninsula also holds Russia's biggest natural gas reserves. The Nenets have a shamanistic and animistic belief system which foments respect for the land and its resources.

MSNBC has featured Yuri Kozyrev's photographs as a photo essay titled Russia's Reindeer Herders.

Also check Consequences by NOOR.

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.

Denver Post: The Last Tribes

Photo © Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images-All Rights Reserved
The Denver Post is another newspaper website that brings us large photo galleries from varied sources, including parts of the world that are less well known.

This particular gallery documents the Penan; a tribe found mostly in the northern parts of Sarawak near Miri, Baram and Limbang. The nomadic hunter-gatherers Penan are one of the last in South East Asia. Out of the 10,000 Penan living in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Borneo, only 200 nomadic people are left. They are a gentle and softly spoken people with a highly egalitarian society and little gender division.

Nomadic Penan move in groups of up to 40 people, but groups form and split regularly as sago palm flour and game is sought from different areas in their territory (roughly 100 sq miles on average).

For further information of the Penan, go here.