Ian Lloyd: Asia

Ian Lloyd is an Australian photographer who has undertaken commissions for magazines such as National Geographic, Time, Fortune, Gourmet and Conde Nast Traveler and multinational companies as diverse as ExxonMobil, Pepsi, Motorola and Singapore Airlines have commissioned Ian for commercial photography assignments. He has photographed 36 books on countries and regions around Asia including large format books on Kathmandu, Bali and Singapore and a four volume series on Australian wine regions.

You'll see from the Spirit of Asia video that it's a retrospective look at 20 years of his photography in Asia. Perhaps somewhat different from most of the travel photography I have featured here on The Travel Photographer blog, but certainly of high quality that we expect from photographers who work with the National Geographic.

NGM's Top Ten Photo of 2009

Photo © John Stanmeyer -All Rights Reserved
Chris Johns, the National Geographic Magazine's Editor In Chief, has listed the magazine's Top 10 Photos of the Year, which starts off the process by which its best 2009 photograph is picked. The photos cover a broad range of subject matter, from unexplored caves and endangered freshwater dolphins to the global food crisis and vanishing cultures.

In 2009, National Geographic’s photographers took more than one million images from which only 1,000 could be published in the magazine. From 1,000, these 10 were singled out for lasting significance. The photographers are John Stanmeyer, James Nachtwey, Nick Nichols, Martin Schoeller, etc.

I'm always at a loss at understanding (or rationalizing) photo editors' choices, and this list is no help at all. In my view, I've seen thousands of photographs in the 2009 issues of the National Geographic that should have made the list. So I shrug it off, and call it for what it really is...a way to generate publicity for the magazine.

NGS: India's Nomads

The National Geographic has just published an online feature on India's Lost Nomads. I consider this to be a highly auspicious coincidence as I am about to embark on the Tribes of South Rajasthan & Kutch Photo~Expedition™, whose objectives is to document some of these tribes in a similar geographic area of India.

The informative article is by John Lancaster, who was East Asia bureau chief for the Washington Post, with pictures by Steve McCurry. Here's an excerpt:

"Gadulia Lohar (their name comes from the Hindi words for "cart," gaadi, and "blacksmith," lohar) are among the best known; others are herders, such as the Rabari, famous throughout western India for their bulky turbans and familiarity with all things camel. Some are hunters and plant gatherers. Some are service providers—salt traders, fortune-tellers, conjurers, ayurvedic healers. And some are jugglers, acrobats, grindstone makers, story­tellers, snake charmers, animal doctors, tattooists, basketmakers. All told, anthropologists have identified about 500 nomadic groups in India, numbering perhaps 80 million people—around 7 percent of the country's billion-plus population."

80 million people in 500 nomadic groups??? Our CF cards will melt from the overuse, and we'll run out of storage space!

National Geographic Does Big

© Harikrishna Katragadda/Courtesy National Geographic-All Rights Reserved
The National Geographic Society's website been completely rejigged to present what its SVP Rob Covey describes as having a new, super-clean look with high-tech underpinnings.

Using well chozen buzzwords, the website is described as having "high impact visuals with uncluttered typography to provide a new standard in usability". I just love the wordsmithing used here!

What I'm pleased about, and what it really boils down to, is that the National Geographic’s photography can finally be seen in a large format, and it joins other print media such as the Boston Globe and the WSJ (among others) that have been bringing us larger pictures on their photography blogs for a while.

Here is the National Geographic's new, improved and larger Photo of the Day. The photograph I chose is by Harikrishna Katragadda, a photojournalist at Hindustan Times and a participant in the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (Manali).

The photograph is of 10-year-old Savita holding her little brother, protecting him from rain showers in Uttar Pradesh in India.

NGS' Traveler: Best of 2009

National Geographic Traveler's Editor-in-Chief Keith Bellows presents his favorite pictures published in his magazine throughout 2009. The audio slideshow features 14 photographs made by various photographers in countries ranging for Malaysia to Peru.

I'm always intrigued how photo editors choose the photographs that are published, but I haven't learned much from Bellows' narrative. This collection actually mystifies me...sure, there is a bunch of lovely photographs but many are pedestrian and unimaginative, to say the least. The photograph of the four women on a bench in Shanghai is one of those. I looked at it for a while, trying to figure out the reason(s) for its inclusion here, but honestly couldn't.

I don't know if this was rush job put together by novice interns, but it's certainly not a shining effort by the National Geographic.

NGS: Results of Photo Contest 2009

The National Geographic has selected the winners in its Fourth Annual Global Photography Contest from more than 200,000 submissions.

Each country held national contests and, in the final round, sent one photo from each of the three categories to National Geographic's Washington headquarters for judging. Judges were National Geographic staff photographer Mark Thiessen; design editor of the international editions of National Geographic magazine Darren Smith; and photojournalist Maria Stenzel.

While the first prize went to Debra Jansen of the US for her picture of a 97-year-old woman waiting for a bus in her Sunday best in Georgia, I thought that the above picture by Arie Yudhistira of India (honorable mention) was visually more compelling.

NGM: Martin Schoeller: The Hadza

The National Geographic brings us The Hadza, a collection of photographs by Martin Schoeller. He is a German photographer who assisted Annie Leibovitz in New York in the early nineties. He continued on his own and worked for The New Yorker under contract since 1999 and also for Rolling Stone and GQ.

According to Wikipedia, the Hadza people, or Hadzabe'e, are an ethnic group in central Tanzania, living around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. The Hadza number just under 1000, and they are the last functioning hunter-gatherers in Africa.

The New York Times LENS blog also features Schoeller's work, which was based on an assignment for Travel and Leisure magazine. The Hadza were not re-enacting a lifestyle for tourists, but living in a way that had basically not changed for thousands of years.

Pablo Corral Vega: Andes

Pablo Corral Vega is a photojournalist from Ecuador whose work is published in National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, the Smithsonian Magazine, the New York Times Sunday magazine, Audubon, the French, German, Spanish, and Russian editions of Geo, and other international magazines.

His work has been exhibited in Perpignan, Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Tokyo, Seville, Washington, D.C., and Houston, and he has published six books of photography: Tierra Desnuda, Paisajes del Silencio, Ecuador: De la Magia al Espanto, Ecuador, Andes and Twenty Five. For the book Andes, published by the National Geographic Society, famed Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa wrote twenty short stories inspired by the photos.

It is Andes that I choose to feature today on the pages of TTP.

Kent Kobersteen, former Director of Photography for the National Geographic Magazine wrote the following text about Corral for his book "Twenty Five":

"Pablo Corral Vega brings to his photography great passion, an unparalleled aesthetic, and a high degree of concern for both his work and his subjects. (He) is a world-class photojournalist, and in my opinion one of the finest Latin American photographers working today." "

There's no question that Pablo Corral Vega's work is incredibly beautiful, and his imagery of the various cultures depicted in Andes is passionate, emphatic and in many cases, superb. The photograph of the man and the shadows is certainly one of those.

I also greatly enjoyed Pablo's video work showing the same places he photographed for the National Geographic. Yes, I recommend viewing Pablo's personal view of this musical genre and its associated sensuous dance form. But be careful...after viewing the video, you will want to book your flight to Buenos Aires, and spend the rest of your life in these cafes and restaurants, immersed in tango atmosphere.

My thanks to Eric Beecroft for the heads-up.

NGS: 2008 Photos of the Year

The National Geographic's Editor in Chief Chris Johns selects some of his favorite photographs published in the magazine in 2008.

The French believe, rather surprisingly, that tastes and colors are not issues to be discussed, and being certain that there were much more arresting photographs published in the 2008 NG magazines, I wholeheartedly agree in this case. To each his own.

If you expect detailed descriptions and explanations as to how each photographer captured the images shown in this clip, you'll be disappointed. It's aimed at readers of the National Geographic magazines who like photography, rather than serious or advanced photographers.

NGS: International Photo Contest 2008

The National Geographic announced the 2008 winners in its International Photography Contest. Frankly, the NGS lumped so many contests together that I lost track of what is what but in any event, here's another one.

The winner of the International Contest is Ilvy Njiokiktjien of the Netherlands for a photograph of elderly women in Mozambique. Quite a nice photograph with everything coming together, as one of the judges said.

NG's Traveler: 2008 Photo Contest Results

The National Geographic Traveler announced its annual photo contest winners. The photo contest received over 14,500 entries from 4000 "amateur shutterbugs" (The Traveler's terminology, not mine).

Traveler's Photo Contest Winners

Not to diminish the quality of the winning photographs, but had I been the judge, the above photograph would have won first prizes.



Separately, in the National Geographic International Photo Contest, the Viewers Choice (which is picked by viewers, not by judges) is the above photograph which seems to have been manipulated to add the clouds' reflections.

Update: NGM.com just posted a statement on the above photograph, which essentially says that it appeared altered, which is against the rules of the contest. It has now been taken down.


The Winners of the Viewers' Choice

National Geo's Photo Contest: Results

Photograph © Van Nguyen/Courtesy NG-All Rights Reserved
The National Geographic's website just featured the winners of its International Photography Contest. Its categories were People, Places and Nature. However, to see all the submissions, one needs to download some program called Silverlight from Microsoft...which is not compatible with Power PC Macs. Too bad...and sort of shortsighted from National Geographic's deciders.

The above photograph is my favorite amongst those I could see on my treasured Power PC Mac. It combines a compassionate and candid moment by photographer Van Nguyen of a Vietnamese girl during a journey to America for medical treatment....she's probably a burn victim.

National Geographic Assignment

liveBooks, Inc., a provider of customized portfolio websites and marketing software for professional photographers, announced the creation of a new website for National Geographic Assignment, a division of the publication that handles commercial representation for its photographers. The site was recently awarded the Gold Award at this year's 38th Annual Creativity Awards.

National Geographic Assignment features work from more than two dozen National Geographic Assignment photographers, and "is a resource for organizations looking to hire assignment photographers in fields like still life and travel to underwater and landscape."