PlanetPic Does Ramadan Images

Photo © Daniel Berehulak - AFP/Getty Images

PlanetPic is the new photo blog of GlobalPost, and has impressed me by its variety and the large size of its photographs.

It's one the first large photo blogs that featured images from around the Islamic world on the occasion of Ramadan. Sundown on July 31st marked the beginning of Ramadan, the month when Muslims all over the world are supposed to go without food, drink, smoking and abstain from sex from sunrise to sunset. It is intended for Muslims to purify themselves and concentrate their minds on Islamic teachings.

At sunset each day, Muslims break their fast with a meal known as Iftar, which many start by eating three dates. This holy month, sees a spike in charity, and it is not uncommon to see people marking Ramadan by giving food to the homeless.

As a footnote, I see that the Governor of Texas has backed a prayerapalooza in Houston today, and since he claims he will be fasting all day, I wonder whether he's considering joining the millions of Muslims in their fast. Just sayin'.

The Travel Photographer Is On PhotoVerse

I am pleased that Photoverse will be including The Travel Photographer blog on its application. Photoverse collects information from multiple news sources and blogs related to photography, pools them and presents them to you in an easy to read scrollable list. It enables you to  choose the view you want to see, be it from a single news source or blog or a time-sorted collection from multiple sources that you can select. All pages are rendered locally within a web view so that you never have to leave the application.

Photoverse also allows you to share any interesting article you read via Twitter, Facebook or email. It even allows you to bookmark articles for later perusal.

Photoverse is a utility application developed for the iPad, iPhone by photographers for photographers and is available from iTunes. All i need to do is to get an iPhone!

Omar Mullick: See No Evil

Photo © Omar Mullick-Courtesy Foreign Policy Magazine

Foreign Policy magazine has featured See No Evil,  the work of Omar Mullick in Afghanistan, which was largely made with iPhones and using the Hipstamatic app. When Mullick's embed with the US Army ended, he proceeded to make trips in and outside of Kabul, documenting the lives of ordinary Afghans affected by the grim toll of war. The images in this gallery are from his travels during six weeks from March and April 2011.

Omar Mullick was born and raised in London, and studied politics, philosophy, and economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in New York. He spent six years in fashion photography and the film industry, shooting music videos and commercials before turning to documentary photography. He has received fellowships and awards from the M100 Foundation, the Western Knight Center for Journalism, and the Annenberg Foundation.

Perhaps I'm old hat, but I'm still ambivalent about the fad of using the iPhone by photojournalists to document conflicts. My ambivalence is for purely aesthetic reasons...I'm still of the view that documenting conflicts (especially) needs to be as "pure" as possible, without being tainted by manipulative processing. An iPhone with Hipstamatic and similar software certainly produce interesting images and that, I suppose, is what counts for many photographers.

PS: I've recently noted that even David Alan Harvey seems to have a lot of fun with Instagram photography...but so far these are personal snaps.

Milongas: The Seduction of Tango

I'm pleased to feature an audio slideshow titled "Milongas! The Seduction of Tango" of my still black & white photographs made in various tango halls and milongas of Buenos Aires during the week I spent there  teaching with the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop.

Note: You have two viewing options: either to view it as a Vimeo movie (above) or as a SoundSlides, which has better resolution images.

I am equally pleased in having broken many of my self-imposed rules which I religiously followed when producing such multimedia pieces. For this piece, I applied panning (Ken Burns effect) on a few occasions to give the semblance of motion, and to bring the eyes of the viewers to a specific part of the still. Rules are made to be broken, and I hope the photographers who attended my class do not take me too much to task for that.

"the silent and imperceptible gesture by men inviting women to dance..."

I chose to photograph the milongas and the tango at these venues for many reasons. Perhaps it was mainly because of my appreciation for international music, but as I observed the people who were at the milongas...I call them 'actors' because they were, wittingly or unwittingly, acting a part in a pre-ordained old fashioned ritual of almost courtship...the silent and imperceptible gesture by men inviting women to dance...I was reminded that their actions mirrored what occurs between men and women in their quotidian life.

I've also used only two audio tracks...one is by the legendary Carlos Gardel singing the beautiful A Media Luz, and a short poetic narration by Paula Acunzo, a Buenos Aires based photographer who attended my class, and is also a terrific tango dancer. She deserves much credit, not only for writing this evocative poem, but also for suffering some of us at the tango halls and milongas.

But back to A Media Luz....which means 'half-light'. I decided I'd use it as main soundtrack for the slideshow because I was humming it in Buenos Aires almost all the time...and because I photographed these images in the penumbra of the tango halls, and accentuated their darkness even further by vignetting some....so it seemed eminently appropriate.

So turn your speakers on...full volume...and enjoy the seduction of tango.

Johannes P. Christo: Tajen; Ritual & Pleasure

Photo © Johannes P. Christo-All Rights Reserved

Johannes P. Christo is an Indonesian self-taught photographer who has been developing his own vision in visual storytelling. Currently based in Bali, Johannes works as a freelance photographer for editorial, documentary and portraiture projects.

His work has been published in The Jakarta Globe, The West Australian, National Geographic Indonesia, National Geographic Traveler (Indonesia), Travel and Leisure Magazine (Thailand), TEMPO Magazine English Edition (Indonesia), Forbes Indonesia Magazine, Wall Street Journal Photo Blog, Agence French Press, Reuters, ZUMA Press, etc. and he has been recognized with various awards.

I met Johannes in Istanbul where he attended the 3rd Foundry Photojournalism Workshop on a scholarship, and subsequently in Bali where he shared with me his projects which are currently shown on his website. I highlight Johannes' well composed black & white photo essay on cockfighting in Bali, which he titled Tajen: Ritual & Pleasure.

An extremely talented photojournalist, with an interesting collection of photo essays, which, while eschewing color, captures Bali's exotic and ancient traditions in edgy black & white photographs.

Dominic Nahr: Travels Through Islam

Photo © Dominic Nahr-Courtesy TIME

With good reason, I've become skeptical of mainstream Western magazines abilities or interest to present non-stereotypical (and non-judgmental) features dealing with Islam, but I found TIME International's Travel Through Islam five-part series in its Summer Journey issue, to be interesting and insightful.

In this first installment, photographer Dominic Nahr followed the footsteps of famed 14th century explorer and traveler Ibn Battuta into sub-Saharan Africa. In February 1352, Ibn Battuta set off from the city of Sijilmasa at the edge of the Sahara to journey with a camel caravan to lands far to the south.

A few years ago, I was fascinated by Ibn Battuta (whose full name is Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta), and read anything I could find about his life and his travels, to the point that I went to the New York Public Library to read some older manuscripts.

Ibn Battuta's journeys took almost thirty years and covered almost the entire known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance far surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo.

For an interesting book on Ibn Battuta and his exploits, Tim Mackintosh-Smith followed the traveler's footsteps as well, and wrote Travels With A Tangerine. Not to be confused with the fruit, Tangerine is a resident of Tangiers...as Ibn Battuta was.

Egypt's Revolutionaries: Platon Style

Photo © Platon-Courtesy The New Yorker

The month of Ramadan has dawned on the Islamic world, and I thought I'd mark the event by posting Platon's images of the Egyptian revolutionaries, and in so doing wishing the Egyptian people a future they want and certainly deserve.

Be sure to view the accompanying short videos. You'll first have to suffer Goldman Sachs adverts, but just close your eyes while they play.

According to the news, Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, former interior minister Habib el-Adli, six of his aides and businessman Hussein Salem, are all charged with being involved in the killing of protesters during the 18-day revolt.

I'm not optimistic that the trial will be a speedy one, nor thorough. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's postponed for a myriad of reasons...but the Egyptian people will eventually get justice. They must.