Matt Brandon: Bangla Sahib Gurudwara

Photo © Matt Brandon-All Rights Reserved
Matt Brandon of The Digital Trekker blog has produced Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, a SoundSlides photo essay on the most prominent Sikh gurudwara (or Sikh house of worship) in Delhi. The gurudwara is known for its association with the eighth Sikh Guru, Guru Har Krishan, and for the pond inside its complex, known as the "Sarovar", whose water is considered holy by Sikhs. It was built by Sikh General, Sardar Bhagel Singh in 1783, who supervised the construction of nine Sikh shrines in Delhi in the same year, during the reign of Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam II.

It is situated in the Connaught Place area of Delhi, and is instantly recognizable by its stunning golden dome. While in Delhi for the Foundry Workshop, I was told of a massive Sikh religious festival occurring at the gurudwara, but I was too tired to attend it. Perhaps next year.

Tyler Hicks: Afghanistan's Elections

Photo © Tyler Hicks/NYTimes-All Rights Reserved

The New York Times is featuring Tyler Hicks' photographs of the currently under way Afghan elections in a slide show titled A Precarious Election. The accompanying article is by Carlotta Gall, and this caught my eye:

"With Taliban insurgents active in half the country, many Afghans remain doubtful that the Aug. 20 election will take place at all. The Taliban issued a statement last week calling for a boycott, a threat that could deter voters in much of the south, where the insurgency is strongest."

Reading the rest of the article, i couldn't help wondering if what we describe as the so-called Taliban are merely Pashtuns who are alienated from the increasingly corrupt government infrastructure. The pervasive and venal governance of Hamid Karzai and his acolytes is well documented, and the electoral results will surely reflect not only "irregularities" (as the New York Times rather quaintly describes them) but outright fraud. This does not bode well for Afghanistan.

I was also struck by the above photograph showing the portrait of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, prominently displayed. If he hadn't been assassinated in 2001, Afghanistan would look very different than it is today.

National Geographic Photo Contest 2009

The National Geographic Society has announced its international photography contest 2009, for which English-language-edition readers in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom are eligible to enter up to a total of six photographs across three categories: People, Places and Nature.

The contest began Wednesday, Aug. 5, and ends Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009. The entries will be judged at National Geographic headquarters by a panel of three judges: National Geographic staff photographer Mark Thiessen; design editor of the international editions of National Geographic magazine Darren Smith; and White House photo editor Jenn Poggi. First-place category winners of the English-language-edition competition will win a digital camera kit.

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.

Via Imaging Insider.

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop

Here are the photographers/photojournalists who volunteered to teach at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Manali.

From left to right: (instructors in bold) Tewfic El-Sawy, Jerry Mossy, Kael Alford, Michael Robinson-Chavez, Mansi Midha, Guy Calaf, Eric Beecroft (FPW founder), Andrea Bruce, Adrian Fisk, Neal Jackson, Kirsten Luce, Adriana Zehbrauskas, Ron Haviv. Missing from the line up are Ami Vitale and Henrik Kastenskov.

Yes. mother...it's a beer bottle in my hand.

Ami Vitale Does The New Nikon D300s

While I was in the wilderness of Manali last week, the buzz amongst the workshop's participants was about Nikon's new D300S, an updated version of its successful mid-level DSLR. The D300S offers full 720p HD video recording at 24 fps, a 7 fps (see that, Canon?) continuous shooting and Dual CF and SD card slots, and its selling price is $1799.

As it happens, Ami Vitale was one of the instructors at the workshop, and she has done some video work with the D300S. It now appears here on the Nikon website.

I'm always skeptical of advertisements of that type, but if push comes to shove I'd rather have a photographer like Ami showing her work, than having a corporate-generated clip showing how great the camera is. In reality, it's not simple to move from still photography to videography, and it certainly takes more than flipping a switch at the back of a camera to produce a reasonably successful movie. It requires a different mindset, and different disciplines...and training.

The Nikon D300S specifications can be found here on DPReview.

Photo Plus Expo: New York City

Keynote speakers and seminar presenters have just been announced for the PDN PhotoPlus International Expo and Conference, which takes place October 22 to 24 in New York City. The event will be located at the Jacob Javits Center and will bring us hundreds of exhibitors, thousands of new products and a conference with over 100 seminars.

I haven't been to this event for a number of years now, as it coincided with my fall photo~expeditions, however this year my Bhutan photo~expedition will be over by October 7, and I ought to be back home in NYC and perhaps attend this year's event. Who knows? I might be lucky and land myself a free t-shirt or something.

I see that James Nachtwey, Phil Borges, Ron Haviv and others will be giving talks during the conference. The schedule of these seminars are here.

Masaru Goto: Sri Lanka

The conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has lasted nearly 30 years, and is one of the longest-running civil wars in Asia. The Tamil Tigers want an independent state for the island's Tamil minority but after a year-long military offensive, the Sri Lankan government recently claimed that it had defeated the separatist group, and killed its leader.

Here's Masaru Goto's Invisible Victims: Sri Lankan War Scars, powerful and incisive photographs, documenting the war-affected individuals who bear the wounds from this conflict.

Masaru has 19 years experience photographing social and human rights issues in Southeast Asia and South America, and he made it his mission to highlight the plight and resilience of ordinary people who are caught in conflicts, suffering under oppression or economically disadvantaged.

In 2002, Masaru won the prestigious Fifty Crows Foundation award for Documentary Photography for his photos essay on Human Rights in Colombia “got rights? Human Rights in Colombia”. His photography books include “My Journal of Cambodia 1997-1998”, a photographic essay about the final years of civil war waged by the Khmer Rouge and “Smile in Despair: Stories from a Cambodian AIDS ward” on the HIV/AIDS crisis in Cambodia. In 2004, his images of HIV/AIDS in Cambodia won two of the category, "LOVE" and "ILLNESS" for "the River of Life" World Health Organization (WHO) photo competition.