G M B Akash: Gordon Parks Center

Image Copyright © G M B Akash-All Rights Reserved
I was pleased to learn that G M B Akash has won first place in the 2007 Gordon Parks International Photo Competition with the above remarkable photograph of a young girl on a train in Bangladesh. Akash tells us that because of Bangladesh’s large population, inadequate number of seats on trains, and inherent poverty, many people are stowaways. This often results in terrible accidents.

I've posted about Akash's photographic talents on TTP here, where in contrast to other mindless agenda-driven blogs, I chose to adopt a less venomous approach to his photograph of a chained Muslim child in a Bangladeshi madrasa.

The Gordon Parks International Photo Competition has been conducted by Fort Scott Community College since 1990. More than 3,100 individuals from around the world have participated in this annual program that, inspired by the photography of Gordon Parks, reflects important themes in life such as social injustice, the suffering of others, and family values.

G M B Akash's Website

Gordon Parks Center's Contest Results

Michael Robinson Chavez: India

Image Copyright © Chris Ramirez -All Rights Reserved
Michael Robinson Chavez is a staff photographer at the the Los Angeles Times after many years at the Washington Post and Boston Globe. In addition to domestic stories, he covered wide-ranging international assignments in over 45 countries. He was twice named Photographer of the Year (in 2004 and 2007) by the White House News Photographers' Association, and his work has been exhibited in his native California, the Visa Pour l'Image festival in southern France, Washington DC's Corcoran Gallery, and many other galleries around the world.

I chose Michael's remarkable work on the Jain festival of Mahamasthakabhisheka. This is an important Jain festival held once every 12 years in the town of Shravanabelagola (between Mysore and Bangalore) in Karnataka state, India. The festival is held in veneration of an immense 18 meter high statue of the Bhagwan (or Saint) Gomateshwara Bahubali. The anointing last took place in February 2006 where at least 1.2 million Jains attended, and the next ceremony will occur in 2018. I visited the sacred site, however it wasn't at the time of the festival.

As the Mahamasthakabhisheka begins, consecrated water is sprinkled onto the participants by devotees carrying 1008 specially prepared vessels. The statue is then bathed and anointed with libations such as milk, sugarcane juice, and saffron paste, and sprinkled with powders of sandalwood, turmeric, and vermilion. Offerings are made of petals, gold and silver coins, and precious stones. Most recently, the ceremony's finale has included an enormous shower of flowers from a waiting helicopter.

In my view, the above photograph perfectly illustrates the devotional submission by this Jain pilgrim to the saint. Incidentally, the Jain pilgrim is a Digambar or sky-clad...who wear no clothes following the practice of the Jain saint Mahavira. The Digambar believe that this practice represents a refusal to give in to the body's demands for comfort and private property. Digambara ascetics have only two possessions: a peacock feather broom and a water gourd.

Michael Robinson Chavez's India Gallery

NYC: No Photography Permits!

Image Copyright ©Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved
New York City has now given up on its ill-thought out attempt to to rein in street photographers, videographers, and independent filmmakers by dropping regulations that would have regulated capturing public images of the city. New York will now allow photographers and filmmakers to operate without a permit as long as they don't prevent use of public spaces or obstruct more than half of pedestrian walkways.

The original (ludicrous) permit plan called for a required $1 million insurance bond for photographers who planned on using a tripod in a single spot for 30 minutes, or ten minutes if filming involved five people or more.

So back to the streets...and photograph away! The weather in New York City is forecasted to be beautiful for a few days...so what are we waiting for?

Mirjam Evers: Global Beat

Image Copyright © Mirjam Evers-All Rights Reserved
Based in New York City, Mirjam Evers is a Dutch freelance photographer specializing in environmental portraits, travel, documentary and adventure photography. During the course of her career she traveled to over 50 countries capturing the diversity of people and cultures in some of the most exotic places in the world.

Her photographs were published in American Photo Magazine, Popular Photography Magazine, Hamptons Magazine, Photographer's Forum "Best of Photography Annual" and International Expeditions. Her corporate clients include Epson and Visa Card.

I chose Mirjam's Global Beat gallery on her website, but do explore her other galleries as well. Her portraits in the Global Beat gallery are luminous...her portrait photograph of an Egyptian man above is exactly that....radiant, but I think that using Lensbabies on close up portraits -as Mirjam did in some samples- is somewhat disconcerting...maybe I'm old-fashioned.

Mirjam Evers' Global Beat Gallery

Chris Ramirez: Trinidad

Image Copyright © Chris Ramirez -All Rights Reserved
Chris Ramirez is a New York-based photographer whose pictures are seen on the pages of The New York Times, most notably the Travel section where Chris has done over 15 cover stories in the past 5 years. He has traveled extensively, from the northernmost points in United States to Europe and throughout the Caribbean, which has become one of his favorite corners of the globe. He has been a faculty member at the Eddie Adams Photography Workshop since 1999, where as a team producer, he produces 10 stories annually to be photographed by students and presented at the workshops final slide show.

He recently photographed in Trinidad and, along with reporter Sam Sifton, experienced one of the great eating towns in the Caribbean, the greatest of the Lesser Antilles, and the fount of some of the finest rum in the world. This multimedia reportage is about culinary tourism: combining photography with the food and wine industry...and is a rapidly expanding genre in the travel photography industry.

NY Times' Multimedia on Tasting Trinidad

NY Times' Article on A Culinary Pilgrimage on an Island of Contrasts

Chris Ramirez's website

The Pod

The Pod is a bean bag with a bolt attachment, which is claimed to offer a platform for cameras and camcorders that is compact, strong, flexible, portable and simple. It can be taken anywhere and set up on virtually any surface. The manufacturer claims that it has the stability that small tripods lack, and that it can be used by anyone, even the non technically minded.

The pod uses the industry standard ¼" x 20 mounting bolt which comes standard on all makes and models of consumer cameras, and is customizable by removing an amount of stuffing (plastic pellets) in it, to conform with surfaces and cameras.

Having a pathological hatred for tripods, I am certainly intrigued by the pod, and wonder whether it really lives up to its claims. Nothing can replace a really sturdy tripod, but it may be do in a pinch. The website has sunny testimonials, but nothing is like testing it oneself. In the meantime, if any TTP readers has used it, drop me an email and tell us of your experience.

The Pod

One Shot: Tatiana Cardeal

Image Copyright ©Tatiana Cardeal -All Rights Reserved
Tatiana Cardeal is a Brazilian independent photographer based in Sao Paulo, who spent her early career as an art director and graphic designer for international magazines. She decided to shift her focus to photography and document social, cultural and human right issues in 2003.

Her particular interest in South American indigenous people started at an early age, when she studied indigenous traditions and cultures. She calls her photography "social photography" because of the consequences and possible social changes that evolve from it. Her photographs can be interpreted as a denunciation, a call for action or a petition to help indigenous people by respecting them, respecting their land, their economy, their needs and their culture.

Tatiana says that her projects are long term in nature...some take at least 4 years to complete...but despite the difficulties, the lack of funding and the skepticism and frequent bureaucratic obstacles, she perseveres in documenting the various South American indigenous people. With the quality of her photography and her tenacity, I hope she is successful in her noble objectives.

Tatiana Cardeal's Blog

Micro Track II Audio Recorder

M-Audio has redesigned its popular MicroTrack digital recorder, and dubbed it the MicroTrack II. The company says the redesigned version brings even more professional features to the original high-fidelity mobile digital recorder that’s used by audio and film professionals.

The new recorder has an extended input gain range, analog input limiter, 48V phantom power, faster file transfer rate, seamless recording of files beyond 2GB in size and other enhancements. It allows the recording of WAV (BWF) and MP3 files to CompactFlash or Microdrives through balanced line inputs or built-in microphone preamps—which can be dragged and dropped to computers via high-speed USB 2.0 for immediate editing or Web posting. Its MSRP is $299 and it's expected to be available in the stores in November.

I have used the older MicroTrack for about 2 years, and while I can't complain about its performance and operations, I wish it had a built-in microphone like its Samson Zoom competitor. The MicroTrack and its successor are sold with a small separate removable microphone. Sooner or later, I will lose this dinky microphone and I'll be stuck. An alternative is to get an Audio Technica ATR25 microphone to use with the recorder instead of the supplied mike.

M-Audio MicroTrack II

B&H's M-Audio MicroTrack II

Hidden Seafood Restaurant

Family Sunday outing as usual......we like to try out the seafood at Gelang Patah, almost 40km away from my house. And it's took us about an hour to reached.

Location of Restaurant Chua Kee

1645 hrs, we walked around the Gelang Patah old town, just simple as only 2 rows of shops and houses. It's unique that you won't easily see it at the Johor Bahru city.



At the end of the shops, that's the one! - Restaurant Chua Kee. (N1°26.787 E103°35.340)

The drink serve at the side.......

The reason I call this hidden restaurant, is because the special location along the river side. You will easily miss out if you don't notice the small lane.

While waiting for the foods, we can see customers walk in non-stop after 1730 hrs. The restaurant is full of customers between 30 minutes only.......

We ordered :-
* Sweet sour clam
(Fresh and delicious!)
* Honey Fried chicken wing
(Special recipe, worth trying!! My wife loves it very much!)
* Black pepper butter crab
(Fantastic! The pepper taste perfectly while you bite it! And I love the butter flavor that stuck around your mouth!)
* S'pore mee hoon
(Better than average)




Because of the environment so nice, it's make me took a bottle of Heineken.
The Restaurant serve great foods and the prices are cheap, compare with JB area.
The total damage was only MYR51.00 (Foods only)

After finish, we walked around the restaurant, and discover this old wooden house beside the river.

That's end our Sunday outing by another hour driving back home.

They had swifted to the new location : N1°26.807' E103°35.271'

Map of the new location


View Larger Map

Sunday Rant

Since this is my blog, and I can pretty much write about anything I like, here's a rant for this Sunday morning.

Whenever I visit London, I always try to spend a weekend there so I can read the Saturday and Sunday newspapers...or the broadsheets as they're called over there. Early morning, on both weekend days, I walk to my newsagent and buy the Times and the Independent....and quickly return home carrying an armful of newsprint and the accompanying magazines.

My next hours are spent reading and absorbing the news and editorials written by true professionals...in-depth, intensive and intelligent analysis of current events and foreign news. Every time I do this, I come to the same conclusion: our mainstream print media is superficial and naive. In London, I read the Times and the Independent from cover to cover, both politically distinct from each other... one more in keeping with my political alignment than the other...but I read each newspaper's point of view with equal relish and respect. Back in New York, I avoid reading the op-eds from the like of Brooks and Friedman because they're vacuous, predictable, repetitive and full of cliches. The only op-ed contributor I have time for is Frank Rich...and even he goes overboard on occasions. If forgot to name other columnists, it's on purpose.

But my rant this morning is not really about the superficiality of our news...but about the long disappearance of solid serious photojournalism from our printed press. Last weekend, the Sunday Times of London had a magnificent feature on the tragedy of Africa with the powerful black & white photographs of Sebastiao Salgado...in the style of LIFE magazine...12 pages of African scenes. I kept it because it's a wonderful issue on so many levels.

In comparison, this morning's New York Times' Sunday Magazine has 8 glossy pages of fashion titled The Others...showing overpriced clothes and diamond necklaces hanging on sickly-looking models made up to look like Halloween ghouls.

New York Times: Khmer Torture House

Image Courtesy Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide
The New York Times brings us an article on a Cambodian photographer Nhem En, who was on the staff of the Tuol Sleng prison, the most notorious torture house of the Khmer Rouge regime, which caused the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979. Nhem En was called to be a witness at a coming trial of Khmer Rouge leaders, including his commandant at the prison, Kaing Geuk Eav, known as Duch, who has been arrested and charged with crimes against humanity.

Mr. Nhem En’s career in the Khmer Rouge began in 1970 at age 9 when he was recruited as a village boy to be a drummer in a touring revolutionary band. When he was 16, he said, he was sent to China for a seven-month course in photography. He became the chief of six photographers at Tuol Sleng, where at least 14,000 people were tortured to death or sent to killing fields. Only a half dozen inmates were known to have survived.

A chiiling must-read. The article is by Seth Mydans.

The article: Out From Behind a Camera at a Khmer Torture House

The podcast: Back Story

External link: Photos at Tuol Seng Prison

Beyond The Frame: Orang Asli

It's been a while since I've written up a Beyond The Frame post for TTP, so here's one.

On my way to the Cameron Highlands in the heart of peninsular Malaysia, I chanced upon an orang asli, an aborigine, who was quite amenable to my photographing him near his hut. He was a hunter, showed off his traditional blowpipe, and demonstrated his skills by blowing a dart at a small target about 50 feet away. Although he wasn't far from the main road, he gave me the impression that he had little contact with the modern world... it may have been an act and he actually went to his real home at the end of the day to watch television...but we communicated in sign language during our encounter.

The term "orang asli" signifies "original people" or "first people" in Malaysia, where there are about about 60.000 orang asli , most of whom still live in the rain forest. Some of the northern orang asli groups speak languages suggestimg a links with the indigenous peoples in Burma, Thailand and Indo-China.

The aborigine I met is in all probability a member of the Negrito group or possibly a Senoi. They live in the jungle and rain forests of the Malaysian peninsula, and are thought to have arrived some 8000 years ago. They hunt with bamboo blowpipes for birds and little monkeys. The darts which I saw are made from the leaf-stalks of palm cones, and are coated with a lethal concoction made from the sap of toxic trees. Fear of the spirits of dead ancestors and hunted animals is very strong among them, and it is an unwritten law that all animals caught in the forests suffer no pain.

Canon 24mm 1.4L USM Lens

Following the highly scientific results of the poll recently conducted on TTP, I am happy to report that I'm now the proud owner of a Canon 24mm 1.4L USM lens. This is my first prime lens (I've always used the Canon f2.8mm L zooms) , and one that I hope will serve me well in the years to come.

New York Times: Another Kurdish Front

Image Copyright © Warzer Jaff/New York Times -All Rights Reserved
The New York Times brings us a slideshow feature about a less publicized Kurdish militant group, which is engaged in guerilla warfare against Iranian forces. This is separate than the deadly raids into Turkey by Kurdish militants holed up in northern Iraq. The latter is the focus of urgent diplomacy, with the United States begging Turkey for restraint.

As the accompanying article states: "Yet out of the public eye, a chillingly similar battle has been under way on the Iraqi border with Iran. Kurdish guerrillas ambush and kill Iranian forces and retreat to their hide-outs in Iraq. The Americans offer Iran little sympathy. Tehran even says Washington aids the Iranian guerrillas, a charge the United States denies. True or not, that conflict, like the Turkish one, has explosive potential.

I chose the above photograph (all photographs are by Warzer Jaff) for this post for a purpose. It shows a purported Iranian soldier captured by the Kurdish guerillas. The photograph's caption tell us that the prisoner sits under "a picture of Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish guerrilla imprisoned in Turkey. "

No, Mr Caption Person at the NY Times....you need to be more accurate than that. Mr Ocalan is not just a "Kurdish guerilla"...he's the founding leader of the Kurdish militant group Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and is currently imprisoned in Turkey where he is considered a child murderer and a terrorist, directly responsible for countless terrorism acts in Turkey. Another of Mr Ocalan's attributes is that he's a Marxist, and espouses a socialist agenda as do his followers. The PKK is branded a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union as well as Turkey.

So why are we applying pressure on Iraq to prevent the Kurds in the north from attacking Turkey, and we're not asking the same from the southern Kurdish front?

The slideshow: A Second Kurdish Front

The article: A Second Kurdish Front

Per-Anders Pettersson: South Africa

Image Copyright © Per-Anders Pettersson -All Rights Reserved
Per-Anders Pettersson is a Swedish photojournalist, who tells us that he's a a photojournalist of the old generation and that he was never been just interested in photography or photography as an art, and that his main aim is not about capturing the most outstanding or award-winning images but to understand the story and to capture it fairly and with respect.

He started his career by covering major stories around the world for the likes of Stern, Geo and Newsweek, and now lives in Cape Town and New York where he is contracted to Getty Images. He has gained several international awards for his work. His desire to document the survival of people in hardship zones has taken him to more than 50 countries over the past 16 years.

His most well-known work, In Transition, is a 10-year project to capture life in South Africa, has won him awards and been exhibited at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’image.

Per-Anders Pettersson's In Transition

Scouring North India

In India, I remember we traveled a lot by train. From New Delhi, we took a train down south to Agra and then Jaipur. Then, it was by train too that we went further down to Varanasi, before going up again to New Delhi, Simla and back again to our starting, New Delhi, that is. Some of the journeys seemed to last so long. We usually traveled at night. When we slept in the bare bunk, it was terribly, terribly cold. Once, while going to Varanasi, the train was delayed for one whole day and we shivered as we sat on a bench that night, waiting for the train which never seemed to come. Then, we realized that there was actually a warm room for passengers to wait in. In fact, there are also hostels in train stations for passengers to put up the night too but if you do not book in advance; getting a place to sleep may sometimes be a hassle. In any case, if you have nowhere to put up, you can always sleep anywhere convenient. In Varanasi, an ancient city which attracts a lot of Hindu pilgrims, there was such a big crowd and many had to sleep on the floor of the train station. Do be prepared then if you are backpacking to India. Bring a sleeping bag along! You may encounter a man carrying a large container of hot water and several clay cups, shouting Cayer! Cayer! You can count on him for some cheap hot tea if you decided to sit up and stay awake.

Traveling Tip: Bring a sleeping bag.

Jaipur...

New Delhi...



Simla...

National Geographic: Alexandra Boulat

Image Copyright © Jerome Delay/AP-All Rights Reserved
The National Geographic Magazine is featuring a tribute to Alexandra Boulat who passed away Ocober 5, 2007. Touching eulogies from fellow photographers Alexandra Avakian, Jose Azel, Pascal Maitre, Jodi Cobb and colleague John Stanmeyer as well as many others, underscore and reaffirm how much she will be missed.

Alexandra's tribute includes some galleries of her great work with National Geographic Magazine.

(My thanks to Marilyn Terrell)

NGM's Tribute to Alexandra Boulat

EVOSS 25th Oct 2007

It's was a HP Customer Day Conjunction with ACE Archery Center from Skudai Parade and held at Austin Hill Resort.



The GPS session was over when I reached......the briefing was conduct by Mr Mark Teh (The owner of the Archery Center).
And follow by the archery game......







The buffet dinner started at the same time when Gerkeng & his family arrived......



During the dinner, Mr Mark giving out the prizes for the top 3 Archery Contest, follow by Q & A goodies......then The Lucky Draw of the night.


Everyone go back with prizes.......