TRAVEL IDEAS

Human Rights Watch: Burma Defenders

The Human Rights Watch feature Burma Defenders is timed to coincide with the first elections to be held in the repressed country in more than 20 years. Burma has been run by a junta of army generals who have silenced any opposition to their brutal regime with human rights abuses and by silencing any dissent.

Political observers are awaiting the elections and wondering if civil unrest flare up after what is widely perceived as a sham election on November 7, and whether Burma's pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, be released when her sentence ends on November 13.

Human Rights Watch and photographer Platon have teamed up to photograph opposition members, former political prisoners, and journalists who have sought political refuge in neighboring Thailand.

Platon is a photographer who attended London's St. Martin's School of Art, holds a BA in Graphic Design and a MA in Photography and Fine Art from the Royal College of Art. Now living in New York, he continues to shoot portrait, and documentary work for a range of international publications, including The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, and The Sunday Times Magazine.

Panasonic's Lumix DMC GF2

Aaaaargh! It seems that engineers love to spoil a good thing. Panasonic has just announced the Lumix GF2, the updated version of its excellent mirrorless, lens-swappable GF1.

According to WIRED's Gadget Lab, the new GF2 comes with an updated image processor for a maximum ISO to 6400, a do-all touch-screen control, and an upgrade to the HD video mode.

The spoilers? Well, the mode selector on the GF1's top plate is gone, as well as the lever that allowed the user to choose between burst, timer and bracketing modes. The AF/MF selector is gone as well as the DOF preview button.

Moreover, the GF2's body is said to be 18% smaller and 7% lighter than its predecessor....which I think won't provide the satisfactory feel of holding a "serious" small camera as in the GF1.

The GF2 will go on sale in early 2011 but no price was announced yet. Thank you very much Panasonic/Lumix engineering staff...but I'll keep my GF1.

For a video comparison between the GF1 and the GF2 with a British perspective, drop by this website.

Evan Abramson: When The Water Ends

Ethiopia's government is building a new dam in the Omo river projected to be the largest hydropower project in sub-Saharan Africa. Almost 50% of its electrical output has already been sold to neighboring countries, but it will reduce the water flow to the Omo River and threaten the lives of some 500,000-800,000 nomadic pastoralists.

Evan Abramson's When The Water Ends photo essay examines the impact of such a massive infrastructural on the lives of the Omo Valley tribes.

Evan's photographs were also used in a 16-minute video When the Water Ends produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm. It tells the story of the increasingly dire drought conditions facing parts of East Africa, and the eventuality of conflict.

Evan Abramson is a 32-year-old photographer and videographer based in New York, who spent two months in the region, living among the herding communities. His project focuses on four groups of pastoralists — the Turkana of Kenya and the Dassanech, Nyangatom, and Mursi of Ethiopia — who are among the more than two dozen tribes whose lives and culture depend on the waters of the Omo River and the body of water into which it flows, Lake Turkana.

Quite a number of photographers have photographed the tribal people of the Omo Valley, and I'm certain they, as well as many non-photographers, are lamenting the change that will befell the region.

Jimmy Williams: Music Makers

I couldn't find much in the way of background on Jimmy Williams except the brief biography on his website which tells us that he's a narrative storyteller. That is true, but to me he also captured the essence of the remarkably talented southern music makers.

The series began with an assignment and led to an organization named the Music Makers Relief Foundation which supports musicians who are the true representations of southern music, whether blues, bluegrass, gospel and so forth.

A wonderful section of Jimmy's website groups all the musical genres, and is narrated by him. It will thrill all of us who love authentic blues and its derivatives.

I've promised myself that I would fly down one day to Clarksdale, Mississippi and spend time with blues musicians, and document their music making...yes, an item on my bucket list, if you will.

My Bali Island of Gods Book: Update

I've been working on my book for a few days now, and I've just sent it to Blurb for publishing. I've chosen for it to be in large format landscape 13x11 inches, and with 82 pages of black & white photographs, it'll be a large coffee-table style book.

I fixed the variations in tone, sharpened the "soft" photographs and those that seemed "muddy" to me. So I'm crossing my fingers. Its shipping date by Blurb is November 9 so I ought to actually get the final product a few days later.

As I was setting up the book, I erred while saving it and Blurb's software just gobbled it up, and it promptly vanished! So I had to start almost from scratch...I say almost because all the photographs had been saved on my laptop's hard drive....so perhaps not a total heart-stopping event, but annoying all the same.

I think that Blurb ought to provide the option for book publishers (especially for photographs and other visual arts) to order a one-time 2-3 pages mock-up for $10 or so. Perhaps it's not commercially viable to do this in a printing business, but it would certainly go a long way to reassure people that their eventual book will look the way they expect. Just a thought.

Maya Elise Joseph Goteiner: Dia De Los Muertos

I just saw lovely photographs by Maya Joseph-Goteiner on PDN Photo of The Day, and thought I'd feature her work from Oaxaca and elsewhere relating to the Dia de los Muertos festivities, which was featured on PDN here as well. You can also see more of Maya's work on her blog.

The Dia de los Muertos is a Catholic celebration of the memory of deceased ancestors celebrated on November 1 (All Saints) and November 2 (All Souls). Its origins can be traced back to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, such as the Zapotec, Aztec, Maya, Purepecha, Nahual and Totonac. Rituals celebrating the lives of dead ancestors has been observed by Mesoamerican civilizations for at least 3,000 years.

Taking A Day Off...Because.

I'm taking the day off because I feel like it.