POV: TTP Scarf: Missed Business Opportunity?

While in Siem Reap, I dropped by the Old Market and stocked up on traditional Khmer scarves with the intention of having them embroidered with The Travel Photographer logo, and making a fortune selling them online.

While having lunch at The Soup Dragon, I showed the manager my The Travel Photographer's pouch that had that logo, and asked if he knew of a store that could duplicate it...and indeed he did! Scribbling the name and address of the place in Khmer on a scrap of paper, he said it wasn't too far from the restaurant, and that it was just opposite a secondary school which used it to embroider its tshirts etc. Perfect!

I hired a tuk-tuk driver (Chen, who was to remain as my driver for the duration of my stay) and we went looking for the embroidery shop. I expected to see a computer-driven embroidery machine, but all I saw was an electric sewing machine and a woman who assured me (through Chen) that she could duplicate the logo quite easily. I wrote it down in my best capitalized handwriting, gave her my old krama for a trial run and was told to return in 20 minutes. Perfect!

Spending these ensuing 20 minutes thinking of having all my stack of kramas embroidered with my logo, returning to the US and selling them online at a monumental profit, was very enjoyable. However, these dreams of untold riches came tumbling down when I was returned my old krama with the logo as you can see from the above photographs...the L in Travel was deemed superfluous by the semastress and I got The Trave Photographer instead.

The poor woman was mortified and tried to convince me she could fix the error...but I just laughed it off. Yes, my get-rich-quick scheme collapsed because of a dropped letter. The moral of the story is this: make sure your outsourcing contractor can write English.

That being said, the mistake on this scarf (especially as it has been worn for a number of years) could well make it very valuable. As an example, the mistakenly inverted Jenny stamp was auctioned for $1 million!

Brenden Allen: Mandalay To Mytikina

Photo © Brenden Allen-All Rights Reserved

Since Myanmar is all in the news, with Aung San Suu Kyi meeting with Hillary Clinton during her official trip to that country -- the first visit by a U.S. Secretary of State in half a century -- which is described by some as a breakthrough moment in U.S.-Burma relations, I thought it timely to feature some fresh photographic work from Myanmar.

Brenden Allen's Mandalay To Mytikina is the result of 27 hours aboard a train (described as a 'rattler') from Central Burma to Kachin State in December 2011. Myitkyina is the capital city of Kachin State in Myanmar (Burma), and is located 1,480 kilometers from Yangon, and 785 kilometers from Mandalay. Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma, and 700 kilometers north of Yangon.

Brenden is a photographer from Brisbane, Australia. From his sparse biography, it seems he can be found mostly in South East Asia, or moving around Burma and its borders. His galleries also include square format photographs (possibly Holga) of South West Bolivia.

Aditya Kapoor: As They Are

Photo © Aditya Kapoor-All Rights Reserved

I met Aditya Kapoor at the Delhi Photo Festival in October where he asked me astute questions regarding multimedia, and then at the Angkor Photo Festival in Siem Reap a few weeks ago. 

I thought i'd feature his work titled As They Are which underscores the fact that only the unintelligent and unthinking resort to stereotyping others. Aditya had the opportunity to photograph Indian Muslims posing in sets decorated with plastic flowers, against backdrops of gaudy colors and life-size cut-outs of Bollywood stars as "partners". He also showed this work during a portfolio review in Siem Reap.

Based in Delhi, Aditya covers socio-political issues and undertakes reportage, portraiture and photo features for the likes of The Independent, Getty Images, Financial Times, Hindustan Times, Mint (WSJ), Aljazeera, Tehelka magazine, andOutlook. He also worked on commissioned assignments for Pepsi, Cartier, Ferrari, Ericsson, United Nations, CARE, Star News, The Indian Ministry of Tourism and The Common Wealth Games Federation.

The Travel Photographer's Best of 2011

Most of the big picture blogs and news outlets such as The WSJ Photo Journal, Boston's Globe's The Big Picture, The Denver Post's PBlog and Reuters' Full Focus, amongst many others, will soon feature their version of the best photographs of 2011. So taking their lead, I am featuring what I liked best of my own photographs made during the past 12 months. I'm not saying these are the best photographically speaking of all my 2011 images, but I like them...and I suppose that counts for something. They are a mix of pure travel photography and documentary/reportage style.

The 20 or so images were made during my two 2011 Photo Expeditions/Workshops to Gujarat and Kolkata. I've added traditional Turkish music to provide the accompaniment to the slideshow.

I know...I ought to have chosen some Indian sitar music instead, but I couldn't find a track in my library that matched my mood today. My apologies to the purists.

Venice By FKY

For a complete change of pace this Sunday, I feature a wonderful short movie on Venice produced by FKY, presumably a French videographer from Nantes.

What hooked me to watch this movie was the opening song by Charles Aznavour "Que C'est Triste Venise"...a romantic but sad song whose lyrics start:

Que c'est triste Venise,

Au temps des amours mortes,

Que c'est triste Venise,

Quand on ne s'aime plus.

Charles Aznavour is is an Armenian singer, songwriter, actor and a public activist. He's one of France's most popular and enduring singers, is known for a gravelly voice and is also one of the best-known singers in the world.

The camera used in the movie is the Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 50mm f/1.4, 100mm f/2.8L - 24-105mm f/4L  and the 70-300mm f4-5.6L lenses with a Rode Videomic pro.

POV: Encore Angkor?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

As readers of this blog know, I recently traveled to Siem Reap in order to attend the Angkor Photo Festival where one of my photo essays The Possessed of Hazrat Mira Datar was featured on its opening night.

I was greatly impressed by the Angkor Photo Festival's evenings at the FCC, and by the quality of the curating. As I mentioned in previous posts, both Francoise Callier and Jean-Yves Navel were instrumental in making a success of the event, while tireless Camille Plante and Jessica Lim made it tick. However, this is not the main purpose of this POV post.

It's been the third time I'd been in Siem Reap and to the temples of Angkor, and I am chagrined that, while Siem Reap itself still has traces of a bohemian feel to it, despite the high number of tourists invading its bars and restaurants, its temples have lost their mystique due to exuberant commercialization.

For example, both the Angkor Wat and the Bayon temple in particular are overwhelmed by hordes of tourists. The tour buses disgorge Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese tourists by the thousands each day. This not only mars the aesthetic of these temples, but also has long term negative effects on the integrity of these historic monuments. The lay nuns all clad in white robes who could be found in some areas of Angkor Wat and the Bayon are now gone, replaced by men in Western shirts and trousers who sell incense sticks to tourists. To add insult to injury, there are now groups of students who dress up in apsara costumes, and who clumsily pose for pictures with tourists (see above picture). I assume these changes are approved and "endorsed" by the Siem Reap police and tourist authorities.

In my view, the Angkor Wat temple complex experience has deteriorated over the past 5 years. Both the influx of tourists and the need to maximize revenues from this world heritage site by the Cambodian authorities are the causes for this deterioration. If any of my readers haven't visited the Angkor Wat temple complex, I advise you to go as soon as possible and perhaps choose to do so when it's off-season (monsoon season may be an intelligent choice).

If and when you do, forgo the many established restaurants for dinner and try an area where there are lots of outdoor restaurants specializing in Khmer barbecue (BBQ Lover is one), and sample the grilled squid, giant prawns and fried morning glory. The area is opposite The Red Piano  and is between Street 11 and Street 8. You won't regret it.

Ed Ou: The Egyptian Youth

Photo © Ed Ou-All Rights Reserved

The news that "Islamists" seem to have won a majority in Egypt's first Parliament since the ouster of Mubarak is being reported by the US media in disquieting vocabulary, especially since it came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution.  Many secular Egyptians are expressing alarm and anxiety at the result of the initial round of Parliamentary elections, while others shrug off these results by predicting that the Muslim Brotherhood (as one of the factions described as Islamists) may well have a majority, but will either choose or be forced to exert its political clout in a moderate fashion.

Ed Ou has covered the momentous events in Egypt ever since the start of the revolution, and has recently featured his work in progress of The Egyptian Youth.

Ed is a Canadian photojournalist who has been working in the Middle East, former Soviet Union, Africa, and the Americas. He started his career as a teenager, covering the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the fall of the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu, Somalia. He worked for Reuters and the Associated Press, and was also an intern at the New York Times.

He is the recipient of a Global Vision Award from POYi, a 1st Place Contemporary Issues award from World Press Photo, and other recognition from the Overseas Press Club, Ian Parry Scholarship, Best of Photojournalism, PDN Photo Annual, UNICEF, among others. He has been selected for a Getty Images Editorial Grant, PDN 30 Under 30, and took part in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. He was recently awarded the City of Perpignan Young Reporter Award.

via PhotojournalismLinks