travling photography

Photo � Nagi Yoshida-All Rights Reserved "Some children want to become pilots, some models, but my dream was pure and simple, to become African." -Nagi Yoshida Looking back over my 10 years of authoring The Travel Photographer blog, I have seldom featured the work of a Japanese travel photographer. The reason is unclear since I'm always on the look out for fresh travel photographers, and particulalry those of Asian provenance. It's perhaps because the websites featuring Japanese photographers are mostly in Japanese? I don't know...all I know is they haven't crossed my radar screnn as often as I would have liked. But this is now somewhat put right by my featuring the work of Nagi Yoshida , who set out to document African tribes in Namibia, Tanzania and Ethiopia to show to her audiences and viewers that the African continent is wonderful, and is worthy of visits. She tells us that every time she travels to Afican, the locals tell her that she's more African ...

This is one of the best video-documentaries I've seen so far of a religious event/festival. Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Spain is the annual tribute of the Passion of Jesus Christ celebrated by Catholic religious brotherhoods and fraternities that perform penance processions on the streets of almost every Spanish city and town during the last week of Lent, the week immediately before Easter. This annual tribute has been observed for the past 500 years. The start of the documentary and its soundtrack reminded me of the blockbuster movies franchise; Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Inferno. The documentary clocked over 25,000 views on Vimeo, gained its Staff Pick and deservedly so. Brandon Li describes himself as a nomadic filmmaker on an endless world tour to document various cultures. For those interested, his film-making kit is here . 

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy - All Rights Reserved I had the pleasure to be asked to photograph the fabulous Mandarin Hotel Kuala Lumpur (MOKL) during the Travel Photographer Society events in Malaysia a few weeks ago, and having spent the better part of day doing so, I can vouch that hotel photography is most certainly not as easy as it may appear to be. Having the DNA of a travel-documentary photographer meant that I sought to have people in most -if not all- of my photographs. I recalled a ad campaign by Annie Leibovitz for The Peninsula Hotel (Hong Kong and New York City) some years ago, in which she produced monochrome photographs of the hotel's staff, and it was hailed as a huge success in the hospitality industry. That was to be my inspiration, and I determined I'd produce both color and monochrome versions of my images and leave it to the hotel's managerial staff to decide which to use. There are innumerable photographers who specialize in producing stunning...

Readers of this blog will know that I've been interested in adding another arrow to my quiver  -photographically speaking-  for quite a while, and I'm now earnestly starting a "chinoiserie" phase  in my photographic trajectory.  As I wrote in an earlier post , " ..it is not really about fashion and/or attractive models (although it's obviously nice to include them), but about a theme. The theme of "Shanghai-1940" is one that I seek to recreate through still photography and audio, and weave a narrative into stories...akin to short movies. " Whilst in Kuala Lumpur in 2016 participating in the annual Travel Photographer Society event,  I was introduced to The Old China Cafe; an old caf�-restaurant that serves a combination of Straits Chinese and Malay dishes, and whose untouched pre-war ambiance and large traditional feng shui mirrors gave me the idea of constructing a fantasy story about a beautiful Chinese woman dressed in a clinging red qi pa...