Pop Photo's 25 Best Places To Photograph

Photo © Carolyn Drake-All Rights Reserved
Popular Photo Magazine has published a feature titled 25 Best Places To Photograph after running a poll amongst various documentary and travel photographers who are drawn to cultures far-removed from ours both geographically and chronologically.

The photographers are, amongst others, Chris Rainier recommending New Guinea, Carolyn Drake recommending Xinjiang, and Andrea Pistolesi recommending Sicily.

Jaipur was recommended as one of the best places to photograph but in my view, that city pales in comparison to a hundred of other more picturesque places in India.

I could have easily straighten that out had I been asked.

And what about Nepal, Bhutan, Bali, Vietnam, Ethiopia....?

Gulf Photo Plus Responds

Mohamed Somji of Dubai's Gulf Photo Plus (GPP) has responded to my criticisms which I raised in my earlier post. Here's his response:

Hi Tewfic,

Thanks for your blog post about our annual event. We had a quick email exchange last year and believe me, I would like nothing more than to have more local/regional Arab and Asian photographers but please understand a couple of things:

(i) The event caters mainly to commercial photography interests: lighting, fashion, photoshop, landscape, etc. - we have always struggled to fill in the documentary workshops.

(ii) The tutors we bring in have international acclaim in their respective genres. I would be very happy to invite Arab/Asian photographers for these particular type of workshops

But, I'm afraid in those genres, I have yet to come across photographers who I would have considered inviting and as someone who teaches workshops, you will appreciate that a good photographer does not necessarily make a good tutor.

I know Munem Wasif well and I had invited him to come to Dubai but I guess he was/is busy with his projects and the same with Farah Nosh so please understand that we are always open to the idea of bringing regional photographers and we do our best to promote local talent. I have reached out many times to Arab photographers to teach/present and we started a Slidefest evening which we aim to repeat again in Feb/March where we promote Dubai based photographers.

We are a young organisation and slowly making a foothold in the photography scene and I'm fully committed to nurturing photography in the region and promoting the work of Asian, Arab and African photographers.

Thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

Mohamed Somji

POV: Gulf Photo Plus (Dubai)

If anyone thought Dubai's financial difficulties would diminish its appetite for hosting international cultural hooplas, they ought to think again. Dates for the annual Gulf Photo Plus (GPP) event have been confirmed as the 1st to the 6th March 2010. This is trumpeted as the region’s only hands-on dedicated photography event.

It will be a week long event packed with over 50 workshops, 90-minute seminars and panels, an exhibition featuring work by the invited photographers, etc. The event will start with an exhibition featuring selected works from the 12 visiting photographers including Joey Lawrence (TTP's Travel Photographer's of 2009), David Nightingale, Robin Nichols, Bobbi Lane, Joe McNally, David Hobby and Zack Arias. Also scheduled is a video SLR workshop presented by Vincent Laforet, and a fashion photography seminar by Melissa Rodwell.

Scanning the list suggests that if you expect to see local, Middle Eastern, or regional names amongst the invited photographers, you'd be badly disappointed. It's sad, isn't it?...but this has always been a symptom in the Gulf, and to a lesser degree in the rest of the Middle East. Some would call it the pathetic legacy of colonialism, and a habit of cultural dependency.

Here are questions the organizers may want to think of. Why aren't the talented and courageous Palestinian photographers, who risk their lives to document the daily horrors of Gaza, also invited? Why doesn't GPP also invite some of the immensely talented Bangladeshi documentary photographers who document the impact of poverty and floods on their homeland? Why don't you invite the Kashmiri photographers...why don't you also invite the emerging Afghan photographers...the incredibly prolific Indian photographers? The Malaysians...the Iranians?

What's the point in promoting the work of well-established Western photographers who already get more than their share of exposure in Europe and the United States? Aren't the local, Mid Eastern and regional photographers also entitled to get their work exposed in Dubai? Why don't you use Dubai as a hub to expose native and regional talent to the world? Dare to break the cycle of this addictive dependency on Western talent and promote your own...and that of your region. Yes, perhaps GPP won't attract as many Western sponsors at first, but it will attract the best non-Western photographers...and the sponsors will return soon enough. This is the future...leave the past where it belongs.

By the way, I have the feeling that GPP's organizers haven't caught up with the news that the old boys club has crumbled. And by the way #2, TTP's vented in a previous post about the same issue here.

I know, I know, I digressed...so let me get back to the event. Details have yet to be posted on Gulf Photo Plus's website, but can be seen here.

GEO Magazine Closes NY Office

Photo © GEO. Courtesy PDN
It's a real shame that the German GEO Magazine has closed its New York office effective yesterday. Nadja Masri, GEO's New York bureau chief, and Tina Ahrens, a photo editor in the New York office, both well-known in the photo circles here in NYC, will leave the magazine.

Its office was a regular venue for documentary photographers to show their portfolios, especially as the magazine was known for publishing lengthy photo essays, often devoting 20 pages to a story.

While GEO NY will no longer have a physical presence here, its photo editors in Hamburg will continue to work with U.S. photographers.

Via PDN online.

One of Top Ten Blogs is TTP!

Tripbase Blog Awards 2009
I checked into Bob Krist's wonderfully informative and entertaining Photo Traveler blog this morning as I do everyday, and to my surprise read that The Travel Photographer was amongst the top ten in the Travel Photography Blog division of the Tripbase.com competition! Actually, The Travel Photographer came in Fourth place. Way to go, me!

Checking the Tripbase website, I read that its Travel award is only given to the blogs that are the top of their respective class and are some of the best in the field. These are selected based on how informative the blog is, the overall writing style, the actual blog appearance and how well that blog performs in its given category when compared and contrasted to other, similar blogs.

Among the top ten travel photography blogs are Chase Jarvis in First Place, My Marrakech in Third, Bob Krist's Photo Traveler, and the beautiful Stuck In Customs.

I'm gratified that The Travel Photographer blog has earned such recognition, and it encourages me to do even better in the weeks, months and years ahead...and Bob, thank you so much for the generous comments.

DISPATCHES & Foundry Workshop

A couple of news bits from Dispatches:

The Dispatches 2009 Foundry Scholarship in Memory of Alexandra Boulat has awarded Sabhanaz Rashid Diya (Dhaka, Bangladesh) a full scholarship to attend The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop as well as $100 toward travel expenses.

So congratulations to Sabhanaz, and I look forward to meet her in Manali.

Filmed on 22 May 2009 at VII Gallery, Brooklyn, here's a discussion on war & photography, photojournalism and its future involving Gary Knight, Tim Hetherington, MaryAnne Golon, and Ashley Gilbertson.

The NY Times: Sebastião Salgado

© Sebastião Salgado -All Rights Reserved
The New York Times seems to have caught a photojournalism bug these days. Its photographic offerings are getting better by the day. The recent launching of its LENS blog as well as the ever improving One in a Million multimedia series, have made it a must-go-to destination for photo journalistic fix.

It just published an interesting article entitled Back to Nature, in Pictures and Action on the famed photographer Sebastião Salgado written by Jori Finkel, as well as a gallery Nature, Nurtured of his photographs.

Mr Salgado is working on his epic environmental 8-year project named Genesis, and for which he travels to remote jungle and desert locations. He's photographing the most unspoiled parts of the planet, and visited the semi nomadic Zo’e tribe in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest, trekked desolate stretches of the Sahara, and spent two months in Ethiopia, hiking from Lalibela into Simien National Park to shoot the mountains, indigenous tribes and rare species of animals.

His goal for “Genesis” is to produce a total of 32 visual essays, which he hopes to display in major public parks as well as at various museums starting in 2012.

In my view, one of the best photographers of his generation, if not more. Quite a number of posts on this blog were on Mr Salgado and his photographs, such as Ethiopia's Nomad Warriors, and Amazon Tribes.

PDN Photo Annual 2009 Winners

PDN presented the winning images of the 2009 PDN Photo Annual, which were submitted by an international group of photographers.

Apart from the obvious talent so amply displayed by all the photographers, I was gratified to see that most of the winners in the Web Sites category have used large images...and some like David Maitland and Dani Brubaker have used enormous images on their websites' landing pages.

I've been advocating that larger is better for a long time. My previous posts can be found here, and on Photocrati as well.

The Travel Photographer's 2009 Tours

Here's a post to plug my 2009 upcoming photo-expeditions-workshops, including my participation in the Foundry photojournalism Workshop in Manali, India.

For further information and details:

Theyyams of Malabar Photo Expedition

Gnawa Festival In Essaouira

Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul 2009

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop 2009

For a feel on how I conduct my photo-expeditions, and how they compare to others, drop by The Travel Photographer, and also read my previous posts on this blog.

Amanda Koster: Salaam Garage

Photograph © Amanda Koster-All Rights Reserved
Amanda Koster is the force behind Salaam Garage Adventures, which connects travelers and enthusiasts with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Travelers commit to creating and sharing unique, independent social media that raises awareness and causes positive change. The rest of the adventure is spent touring around the region, experiencing and exploring the culture and environment with an entirely new context.

I've written about Amanda and her work with Moroccan women in an earlier post on TTP, and she's an internationally recognized photographer whose mission to raise the general public's awareness by documenting some of the world’s more compelling issues.

Her biography speaks for itself, but I'd like to highlight that "she combines her anthropology background with photographic and media-making skills to create inspiring media content as a means for powerful communication, storytelling and learning."

I couldn't have described her work any better, but I would've certainly added that her work is immensely sensitive.

Pulitzer Prize: Breaking News Photography

Photograph © Adrees Latif -All Rights Reserved
The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced a short while ago, and Adrees Latif of Reuters was awarded the $10,000 2008 Pulitzer Prize in the Breaking News Photography for his photograph of a Japanese videographer, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar.

Mahmud Hams of Agence France-Presse was also nominated as finalist in this category for his picture of a missile, caught in mid-air, as it falls on a target in the Gaza Strip while young Palestinians scramble for safety.

2008 Pulitzer Prizes

Bhutan: Photo Expedition

Following the success of the 2006 photo expedition to Bhutan, I'm pleased to announce my photo expedition to this Himalayan Kingdom on October 3-17, 2008.

The Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul photo expedition is set to travel to its heartland, and timed to culminate with the Tamshingphala Tsechu, and the Tangbi Mani festival in the Bumthang valley.

While this is not a workshop per se, interested participants will be helped to create multimedia projects from their inventory of photographs of these festivals.

For those of you who've missed my posts regarding photo travel to Bhutan, I would encourage you to read this post. It will give you something to consider if you're planning to join a photo tour to Bhutan.

To log on to the photo expedition website for further details, go to:

Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul

Reuters' Pictures of 2007

Image Copyright © REUTERS/Desmond Boylan-All Rights Reserved
Another "Best Pictures of 2007" from Reuters

From the collection, this gruesome photograph is of an Indian Shia Muslim flagellating himself during a procession on the final day of the week-long annual Ashura mourning rite, the highpoint of the Shia religious calendar, in Old Delhi. The self-flagellation is a ritual to mourn the martyrdom of Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala.