Short Hiatus

The Travel Photographer Blog will enjoy a brief respite from daily blogging....probably a week or so.

Frequent readers know that I'm leading a two-week photo-expedition to Bali starting July 15, so I'll be busy with its last minute arrangements, travel and will sneak in a few days of downtime.

See you soon!

Tewfic

Gilles Perrin: Tibet

Copyright © Zone Zero/Photography by Gilles Perrin
Gilles Perrin was born in Paris, and has a master in photography. Since 1972 he works as an author-photographer, specializing in large format photography (4x5" and 8x10"), and in panoramic and panoscopic cameras. He also works in commercial photography in the fields of still life, portraits, industrial reportage. He taught photography at Paris VIII University for over 20 years.

Gilles traveled to Tibet in 2004 and 2006. He tells us that he witnessed the impact of Chinese and western tourism in many ways, particularly with the introduction of the train Beijing-Lhasa, on the Tibetan culture. The Chinese colonization is evident in both cities and countryside, bringing with it the development of increasing transit infrastructure.

The traditional ways of Tibet so cherished in the western psyche will eventually die out. The economic and tourist exploitation of Tibet will obliterate its ancestral cultures, and will impose a new political and cultural order. These social, artistic and religious traditions will degenerate into folkloric shows organized for Chinese and “western foreigners”.

It is for these reasons that Gilles Perrin wanted to record the Tibetans' way of life before it disappeared altogether. For this series, he used a 4”x5” folding camera on a tripod and had his subjects pose for him. All photographs were taken at a low shutter speed (from one second to 1/8 of a second).

A remarkable and a timeless piece of work, the photographs of Tibet are part of an attractive flash-based slideshow produced by the incomparable Zone Zero.

Gilles Perrin's Tibet

NY Times: Bali

Image Copyright © Frank Pinckers for The New York Times
The New York Times decided to publish this mini-feature on Bali in a slideshow, presumably because it's currently high season for tourism. Quite a few photographers believe that the newspaper's weekly Travel Section is aimed at consumer photography, ie. how to take better vacation snaps of sunsets, etc. I don't go that far, since it also publishes wonderful incisive travel photo essays with remarkable work from first-class creative photographers...but I suppose features like this one are designed to sell space for travel ads.

Unfortunately, this feature on Bali doesn't qualify as anything much. The only reason I'm posting it here is to show what photography without soul and direction looks like. I can't blame the photographer at all...it seems that this is an editorial decision. This feature is aimed at individuals who join package tours, stay in luxury hotels and like shopping.

To each his own....

Bali

POV: Quick Tip

Popular Photography magazine (the web editions) usually has a plethora of reheated tips and techniques...but in light of my forthcoming Bali Photo Expedition, I though this one was both timely and relevant.

In the article Conquer the World (How to bring home pictures the way top travel photographers do), Jad Davenport writes:

"The greatest peril in travel photography is also the easiest to avoid -- the cliche. When asked adventure photographer Cory Rich how he freshens up familiar subjects, he said, "I shoot 360 degrees around my subjects, and then I hold the camera up overhead and shoot down. When I'm done with that, I lie on my back and shoot up at them."

Peter Guttman has another trick. I watched him set his battered Nikon on autofocus and self-timer, then clip it to a rickety tripod. He extended it out over the bow of the ship as it crunched through ice for a shot of the ship that only a puffin could take.

As I expect to photograph numerous religious festivals and celebrations in Bali, the "360 degrees" tip is very relevant. The frenetic activities at such events will surround me, and the most interesting action may not always be the one that's happening in front of me, but along the peripheries.

Susana Raab: Mongolia

Image Copyright © Susana Raab- All Rights Reserved
Susana Raab is a photojournalist based in Washington DC whose work regularly appears on the pages of the New York Times. Her work has received recognition from PDN, the Camera Club of New York, the White House News Association, the Ernst Haas/Golden Light Awards as well as the Sante Fe Center.

Her latest work, a feature on Aveiro (a village in Portugal) appeared on the pages of the New York Times, however having visited her website, I chose her feature on Mongolia. It's a mix of travel and editorial style photographs...as Susana chose not to add captions to her photographs, I can only guess that some of the latter images must have been made in orphanages and hospitals.

Susana Raab

LA Times: A Step Back In Time, Cuba

Gail Fisher for The Los Angeles Times-All Rights Reserved
Here's another multimedia feature from The Los Angeles Times. This one is on Cuba, and the photographs and narration are by Gail Fisher, who's the Senior Photo Editor for the newspaper.

Gail has spent the past twenty years of her career traveling extensively throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America covering social issues, and has won numerous awards.

I expected much more from such a renowned photographer/editor, but the feature verges on a 'ho-hum' collection of photographs of Cuba that any photographer without Gail's experience and access could have easily captured. A few photographs stand out (like the one above), but the large majority are pedestrian. Although Cuba receives over 2,000,000 tourists a year, only 40,000 are from the United States and are generally not tourists but journalists and human rights staff, so who is the target of this consumer-oriented travel feature...our Canadian neighbors?

As Gail says, Cuba has a legendary mystique which makes it a great tourist destination. Yes, we know and most of us want to go! As I wrote in an earlier post, how can anyone justify political isolation, impose economic sanctions and literally prevent its citizens to visit this enchanting island because of trumped up political ideology is beyond comprehension.

Here's Gail Fisher's A Step Back In Time, Cuba

LA Times: Uganda

Francine Orr for The Los Angeles Times-All Times Reserved
I don't read The Los Angeles Times often, but it is rapidly joining the ranks of the daily newspapers that offer multimedia slideshows from top photojournalists on a variety of topics. This post features Horror In Uganda, a four part slideshow photographed and narrated by Francine Orr.

Francine is a photographer at the Los Angeles Times since 1999. She traveled and worked extensively in Asia and the Pacific, and in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, Angola, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She has received numerous awards for her photography and writing.

Uganda has been home to some of the more gruesome atrocities in modern African history since its independence in 1962, particularly under Idi Amin, but since 1987 things have consistently improved. A major concern in the northern part of the country, is the Lord's Resistance Army, which although now appears to consist of less than two thousand combatants, the government has been unable to end the insurgency to date. The LRA have been known to kidnap children, and forced to become child soldiers, porters and sex slaves.

I found the last part of the series, The LRA's Victims, to have the most powerful and compelling, but disturbing, imagery.

Here's Francine Orr's Horror In Uganda