travling photography

� Zarni Myo Win -Courtesy Travel Photographer Society It has been a pleasure and an eye opening experience to be part of the jury that adjudicated the Travel Photographer Society Awards 2017. The entries were incredibly powerful, beautiful, compelling and imaginative. And it's extremely gratifying to have Zarni Myo Win of Myanmar winning the overall prize with his monochromatic photograph of three boys jumping off a mythical lion statue into the Irrawaddy river near Mandalay's Mya Thein Tan Pagoda, . It is infrequent to see a monochromatic image submitted to travel competitions, and the composition of the scene is "balanced". The sense of timing is perfect. I also liked the toning done to the photograph...it gives the clouds an ominous look, but the waters are dark but calm, and the unmistakable insouciance of the youths gives the overall image a wonderful feeling. Congratulations to all the winners, and for more of the top 45 TPS Awards, click here . Some of the ot...

� Flore-A�l Surun - All Rights Reserved After my return from Hanoi where I launched my  H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam  photo book, I am naturally keen to start on a new long term project, and researching Asian spirit mediumship, I found Korean shamanism to have many similarities to the Vietnamese H?u �?ng rituals I spent almost two years photographing.  By the way, it is said that shamanism is what humans followed before the advent of organized religion. The Korean shamans are called " mudang ", and are usually female (in contrast to the "gender equality" amongst Vietnamese spirit mediumship practitioners). They are known to perform  ceremonies called  gut   in local villages, to cure illness, bring good luck or plentiful harvests, banish evil spirits or demons, and ask favors of the gods. After a death, the mudang  also help the soul of the departed find the path to heaven. They communicate with ancestral spirits, nature spir...