travling photography

Photo � Mark Bennington - Courtesy Huffington Post � Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on ,� his campaign said in a release. June 28, 2016 I never thought I'd see a fascist running for President of the United States, and win the election on a platform of hatred, misogyny, racism and discrimination...but one did. I was thrilled to see Mark Bennington's America 2.0 portraits which, as he describes them, are his direct response " to the politicized images of American Muslims depicted as a plagued foreign diaspora ". He found it to be the time to start this project that dealt with the aspirations of ordinary people, and give them a voice through his portraits and interviews. Reading these young and accomplished people's thoughts is an eye-opener. It is what our country is all about :  E pluribus unum, the 13-letter traditional motto

Travel Photographer Society (Kuala Lumpur) has announced its annual travel photography contest, as well as its schedule of unrivaled workshops. The travel photography contest is known as TPS Awards 2017 , and having seen and judged the 2016 entries, I can confirm that the quality of the submissions were spectacular...and I expect the 2017 submissions will surpass them. So submit your best work, and impress us all! I am also pleased to invite photographers to enroll in my workshop " Storytelling With Photographs And Audio "  during which I shall share my thoughts on how to weave still photography into stories, how to use ambient or other recorded audio to enhance the stories, and how to use these images and audio to produce cogent photo stories under the simulation of publishing deadlines. The workshop will be from  27 April 2017 - 02 May 2017 , and will push its participants to unleash their inner creativity by producing short (3 minutes) multimedia stories; whether documenta

Photo � Dina Goldstein | Courtesy The Guardian My visual sensibilities, undoubtedly influenced by my just completed trip to Hanoi and my brief foray in "street fashion" portraiture, were tickled by the recent work of Dina Goldstein, as seen in The Guardian newspaper in its China Girl feature. According to Ms Goldstein, her  Modern Girl gallery   is inspired by Chinese tradition and the evolution of international commercialism. With a photographic/design sleight-of-hand (and in a tongue-in-cheek manner), she reworks the iconic advertising posters of 1930s Shanghai, China. Actual models replace the girls shown in such adverts, which followed the societal emergence of the Asian women chipping away at Confucius traditions that demanded total obedience. Women were expected to demonstrate obedience before all other virtues, and at every stage of life. Girls were required to obey their fathers; wives required to obey their husbands; widows required to obey their grown-up sons. At n

The Autumnal Nymph by Tewfic El-Sawy on Exposure (scroll down on cover image to view the gallery)  Yes, I've been absent from updating my blog for almost a month...but as I've explained in my earlier post, I've been extraordinarily busy setting up three photo talks in Hanoi. These took place for November 5, 11, and 12 at well known and popular venues in the capital's art scene, and were attended by Vietnamese TV stations and its newspaper media. More about that later. I used the little downtime I had to try my hand at street fashion photography. I accidentally met Zhang Mansi near Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake, and asked her to pose for me during the few free hours I had. Mansi is a native of Dali, one of Yunnan's most popular tourist destinations in China. She is a third year student in Hanoi University. She reminded me of Luo Shen, a mythical figure of ancient China, who became popularly known because of a poem, Ode to the Nymph of the River Luo (Luo Shen Fu), comp