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Travel Photographers

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Curated by Stillmind 

August 3rd -2011-

Photo Tips from Nat Geo Travel

Photographers

Posted by IT Blog August 1, 2011 
Ralph Lee Hopkins/National Geographic

Ralph Lee Hopkins/National Geographic

  • Have you always dreamed of becoming the next great National Geographic photographer, traveling on assignment to some of the world’s most exotic and exciting destinations? Well here’s your chance to learn from the pros and get one step closer to realizing your goal. Beginning in September, our popular photography seminar series returns. At these day-long events, hear from National Geographic Travelerphotographers as they share tips and advice about these topics: Using Light to Make Powerful Images; Putting the WOW in Your Nature and Outdoor Photography; A Passion for Travel: Photos That Tell the Story; and Becoming a Versatile Travel Photographer. Sign up today through August 7 using the coupon code EARLY10 to receive 10 percent off  your registration.

The first seminar doesn’t begin until September, so in the meantime we asked Travelerphotographer Ralph Lee Hopkins to give us a sneak peek into his fall lecture, Becoming a Versatile Travel Photographer. Here’s what Ralph had to say about mastering the art of travel photography:

Intelligent Travel: Your seminar is about becoming a versatile travel photographer by learning to shoot all the different elements of a travel story: portraits, architecture, festivals and celebrations, landscapes and cityscapes. Does having to capture all these different elements make shooting a travel story easier or harder? What element do you prefer to shoot?

Ralph Lee Hopkins: Shooting all the different elements of a story is what makes travel photography so much fun. Obviously, some subjects are more challenging to capture than others. I find photographing people, for example, to be the most difficult to do well. Photographing people requires finding approachable people in a pleasing situation in good light. That takes a lot of time and effort and being out at different times of day when people are out and about and things are happening. I’m most comfortable shooting landscapes and wildlife, but I also enjoy photographing festivals and celebrations with all the different photo opportunities.

What is your favorite piece of equipment or accessory that you’ll never be caught without while on assignment?

Interesting question, since I rely on my gear almost on a daily basis. I guess I would have to say my 24-105mm lens is the one piece of equipment I can’t live without (attached to a camera body of course). The 24-105 is the most versatile lens and my workhorse for photographing people, landscapes, and for aerial photography.

 

 

Ralph Lee Hopkins (NGS)

 

What’s the number one thing you want the audience to take away from your seminar?

The major point I want people to take away from the seminar is that, in the end, it doesn’t matter what camera you use, or how much equipment you carry. It’s all about knowing how to use your camera, knowing its strengths and limitations, and being there in the moment, at the right time and the right place, to get the shot. The actual practice of clicking the shutter is the easy part. It’s doing the research, getting to location, and taking the time to find good situations to make images.

Best piece of advice you’ve received as a travel photographer?

The best advice I ever got was from my good friend and colleague Bob Krist who says that, in photography, it’s not your batting average that counts, but whether you get the shot, so shoot to exhaustion and don’t be satisfied thinking that you nailed it. Keep working until the situation is over, or until exhaustion, whichever comes first.

If you could choose your next assignment for Traveler where would it be?

This is a difficult question, since there are still so many great places in the world to visit. Near the top of my list would be driving the Ring Road around Iceland in mid-summer, when the days are long and the sun barely sets, being so close to the Arctic Circle. This 830-mile adventure circumnavigating the island would be the ultimate road trip, and something that anyone could do (with time and money, that is). Iceland has great photographic variety, from rugged coastlines, expansive volcanic landscapes and hot springs, to interesting people and wildlife (puffins, puffins, puffins…).

For more information about Traveler‘s Fall Photo Seminars and to register, visit: www.ngtravelerseminars.com


  1. August 2, 4:44 pm

    I love to travel, but I must admit one of the hardest parts about traveling is actually trying to capture it on camera. I’ve made that mistake in the past and a pricey trip didn’t come out with as many souvenir photos as I had hoped. This photo seminar is a good idea.

Cuba Part 1.

Posted by Stillmind on

¡Vamos a guarachar!.

A while ago we made a request for 7 “lost” Muñequitos tracks that had never been released on CD.

We soon found 4 of them.

The last three have finally been found.

LP Siboney 420 “El guaguancó de Matanzas…Los Muñequitos” grabado en Santiago de Cuba, 1988, from which the following tracks were left off the “Rumba Caliente 88/77″ CD:

Canto Para Ti (Guaguancó de Florencio Calle) (Earlier we uploaded a version of this one by Guaguancó Matancero.)
Ese Señor (Guaguancó de Gregorio Díaz). (This one was later recorded on the “Vacunao” CD.)
Mayeya (Guaguancó de Jesús Alfonso). (This is a version of the same song from “Rapsodia Rumbera.” The LP attributes it to Jesús Alfonso but with all due respect I am skeptical.)

As far as I can tell we have now posted all vinyl tracks recorded by Los Muñequitos (or Guaguancó Matancero), which have never been released on CD, with the possible exception of their recording of “Xiomara” which plays in the closing credits of Oscar Valdes’ “La Rumba” documentary. Also, our copy of “Ya están sonando los güiros” is incomplete.

(Big thanks to Mark Sanders at Fidel’s Eyeglasses for digitizing and cleaning up the sound files and cover scans.) Download here.

POSTED BY BARRY AT 10:29 AM 2 COMMENTS LINKS TO THIS POST 

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MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2010

Sara Gómez article on rumba: Cuba Vol 3, No. 2 1964


We came across this article by Sara Gómez (1943-1974) in the December 1964 issue of “Cuba,” which seems to have been the Cuban equivalent of the USA’s “Life” magazine.

Sara Gómez is most known today for her films “…y tenemos sabor” and “De cierta manera.” I am not aware of any other articles she has written. The article also contains historic photographs of the old “Clave y Guaguancó” by Mário García Joya, “Mayito,” who also had a distinguished career in Cuban cinema and now lives in Los Angeles. Some of them we have seen before in a book by Olavo Alén Rodríguez, but others are new, such as this one of Agustín “el Bongocero” Gutiérrez:

Agustín Gutiérrez, c. 1964
Photo by “Mayito”

Sara Gómez would also include this group in her film “…y tenemos sabor.”

The text of the article takes a bit of an unusual form, with narrative information in small text alternating with quotations from Agustín Pina “Flor de Amor” in larger text.

LaRumba_SaraGomezhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/35965555/content?view_mode=list&start_page=1&access_key=key-2hxjhssvl9cqu55xpj3c&

POSTED BY BARRY AT 10:19 AM 1 COMMENTS LINKS TO THIS POST 

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Osama Bin Laden — Everyone’s Missing the Point

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Osama Bin Laden — Everyone’s Missing the Point | Common Dreams.

Published on Monday, May 2, 2011 by TruthDig.com

Osama Bin Laden — Everyone’s Missing the Point

by Barry Lando

The jubilation of Americans and Western leaders at the death of Osama bin Laden, though understandable, misses the point. In many ways, the figure gunned down in Pakistan was already irrelevant — more a symbol of past dangers than a real threat for the future.

Indeed, from the point of view of America and many of its allies, the most menacing symbol in the Arab World today is not Osama bin Laden but another Arab who recently met a violent death — Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor who chose to set himself on fire after being harassed by corrupt local police.

His act, of course, ignited the storm that has spread across the Arab World and proven a much more serious threat to America’s allies in the region than al Qaeda ever was. Ironically, his sacrifice probably also dealt a far more devastating blow to al Qaeda’s fortunes than the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

The Arab world today bears no relationship to the situation a decade ago after 9/11. Obsessed with bin Laden and al Qaeda, the U.S. has been sucked into a vast quagmire — a disaster for the Americans, their economy, and their standing in the Arab World.

What particularly provoked Osama bin Laden — a Saudi — was the decision of Saudi rulers to accept the presence of more than a hundred thousand “infidel” U.S. troops and their allies in Saudi Arabia following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. In general, he and his followers were outraged by U.S. support for corrupt, repressive regimes from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Yemen, as well, of course, for America’s backing of Israel.

As Osama himself told CNN in 1997, “the U.S. wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us and then wants us to agree to all this. If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists… Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world.”

Bin Laden’s message resonated throughout the Muslim world. But U.S. officials remained deaf to its meaning, and continued obsessed with al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. The upshot — U.S. policy was the best recruiter Osama could have asked for. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, CIA killer teams, mercenaries, predators, and “diplomats” swarmed across the region from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia, supported by sprawling new bases and pharaonic embassies.

The bill for all this — for an America crippled by cutbacks in health, infrastructure. and education — will be in the trillions of dollars. But despite this massive effort, none of those targeted Arab countries could by any stretch of the imagination be considered a success story. Hostility to the U.S. is high throughout the region. In polls, the majority of those Arabs queried consider the United States a greater threat than al Qaeda.

In Pakistan, despite the U.S. lavishing tens of billions of dollars on that country’s military, it turns out that Osama bin Laden, rather than groveling as an outlaw in the isolated tribal regions, has been living in a fortified villa near the country’s major military academy and a large army base, just a few miles away from the capital city.

America had also launched an ambitious civilian aid program: $7.5 billion over five years, designed to win Pakistani hearts and minds and bolster the civilian government. But, corruption is so rife throughout the Pakistani government, and its officials so incompetent, that the U.S. has been unable to disburse most of the aid. As the New York Times reports:

Instead of polishing the tarnished image of America with a suspicious, even hostile, Pakistani public and government, the plan has resulted in bitterness and a sense of broken promises…

The economy is failing. Education, health care and other services are almost nonexistent, while civilian leaders from the landed and industrialist classes pay hardly any taxes.

Pakistanis see the aid as a crude attempt to buy friendship and an effort to alleviate antipathy toward United States drone attacks against militants in the tribal areas.

The same reports come from Afghanistan. A decade after the U.S. invaded, tens of thousands of American troops are still fighting what seems to be, at best, a see-saw battle against the Taliban. There also, according to another report in the New York Times , the U.S. is backing incompetent, corrupt, unpopular leaders. Millions of dollars of U.S. funds actually get diverted as payoffs to the Taliban and their allies — bribing them not to attack U.S. projects, such as $65 million highway that may never be completed in Eastern Afghanistan.

The vast expenses and unsavory alliances surrounding the highway have become a parable of the corruption and mismanagement that turns so many well-intended development efforts in Afghanistan into sinkholes for the money of American taxpayers, even nine years into the war.

Now back to Mohamed Bouazizi the Tunisian fruit vendor whose death unleashed the Arab Spring that is still roiling the region.

Though Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have yet to be credited with overthrowing an Arab regime, the spark provided by Bouazizi has already led to the downfall of American-backed tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, and continues to threaten other despots in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

Ironically, most of the leaders overthrown or desperately trying to hang on to power had declared themselves implacable enemies of al Qaeda. Yet, again, it was not bin Laden, but Bouazizi, who turned out to be a far greater menace.

Precisely for that reason, it is Bouazizi’s Arab Spring, not sophisticated U.S. killer teams, that most threaten al Qaeda and its allies. By demonstrating that secular uprisings can succeed in toppling the aged, crusty tyrannies, young Arabs across the region have — so far — undercut the appeal of the Islamic radicals.

So far, because despite the early successes in Tunisia and Egypt, the future of the Arab Spring is far from clear. The current process will take decades to play out. The political and economic establishments have been decapitated in Egypt and Tunisia, but not decimated. In the rest of the region, though seriously shaken, the old order still reigns supreme.

The same corrupt Saudi regime that fueled bin Laden’s outrage is still in power, still backed by the United States. Indeed, they have been doing their utmost to tamp the spreading revolt, spending millions to bribe Yemen’s tribal leaders, dispatching their troops to Bahrain to help crush the uprising of the Shiite majority in that country.

Indeed, that brutal repression may radicalize thousands of young Shiites, generating hosts of new recruits for al Qaeda or other extremists Islamic groups — even as the corpse of Osama bin Laden lies somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

© 2011 TruthDig.com

Tibet : Monks at a monastery besieged by Chinese police are running out of food.

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Tibet : Monks at a monastery besieged by Chinese police are running out of food | dossiertibet.

Tibet : Monks at a monastery besieged by Chinese police are running out of food

Redazione – Mar, 19/04/2011 – 08:00

Tensions were running high on Monday at besieged Kirti monastery, where Chinese security forces are enforcing a lockdown in an attempt to get hundreds of monks to move out.The siege of the monastery, which is home to some 2,500 Tibetan monks, was sparked by the death of a monk last month in a self-immolation protest against Beijing’s rule.”If any of the monks leave, they will be detained and returned [to the monastery],” said a Tibetan resident of Ngaba, who asked to remain anonymous.”There were [some detained],” he added. “If any of those monks come out without an identity card, they get taken away.”

“They want to take those monks away somewhere and have them study, but their relatives don’t want them to go,” he said.

He said monks inside Kirti were still very short of food.

Strong police presence

A number of monks had left the monastery by disguising themselves as ethnic Han Chinese, though some were discovered and detained by local police, the Tibetan resident said.

“They are being taken to a local jail, where they check to see if they had anything [to do with the protests],” he said. “They lock them up for many days.”

A second Tibetan resident confirmed there was still a strong police presence around the town and monastery.

“Yes, [they are still surrounding it],” he said. “There are dozens of police on each street.”

Interrogation sessions

A Tibetan named Tsering living in exile in Dharamsala said nearly 800 government employees were involved in the campaign.

“The monks were forced stand alone in the middle of the group and subjected to grueling interrogation sessions,” he said.

Previous campaigns have required participants to denounce the Dalai Lama and pledge allegiance to China’s ruling Communist Party.

Exile Tibetans with links to Kirti said local officials had visited the monastery and warned monks that they could face closure or destruction of the monastery.

Monks are currently being confined to their dormitories after 8 p.m., with beatings for any found breaking the curfew, the paper said.

Around 300 local people had signed a petition vowing to protect the monks with their lives, with officials intervening to stop the signing process because of gathering crowds lining up to sign.

A great little gift from Saragoza. Hip-hop music!

Posted by Stillmind on

Curated and recommend it by

Stillmind;  19th March, 2011

Check this little vid and pls. leave me your opinion at the comment box. Enjoyed it? I did.

<iframe title=”YouTube video player” width=”480″ height=”390″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/oPzwM7zlHwM” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

Narayanan Krishnan: A Companion To The Forgotten.

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Stillmind 

N.Krishnan: A Companion To The Forgotten.

If you’re looking for a little inspiration today, actually a ton of inspiration, watch this video

about a simple man changing the world.

It will make you question the purpose of our all too short lives.


CNN Hero Narayanan Krishnan gave up a career as a chef to feed the homeless three meals a day in Madurai, India.

Maple Leaf Sikh: Narayanan Krishnan: A Companion To The Forgotten..

20 Quotes to Inspire Change

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They’re profound thinkers who spoke powerful words. But they also lived their lives as an example, putting these words into action every day. From Africa to the Americas, here are quotes from 20 famous–and not so famous–people, living and dead, who spent their lives thinking about and contributing to social justice movements.

1. “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” -Audre Lorde

2. “We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.” -Archbishop Desmond Tutu

3. “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?” -Eleanor Roosevelt

Photo: Sepperer Markus

4. “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”- Paulo Freire

5. “People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other.” -Jane Jacobs

6. “We have a world to conquer…one person at a time…starting with ourselves.” -Nikki Giovanni

7. “We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photo: meanestindian

8. “It is not enough to be compassionate – you must act.”- His Holiness The Dalai Lama

9. “The people are the only ones capable of transforming society.”- Rigoberta Menchu

10. “Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.”- Jean Paul Richter

11. “There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure.” -John Perkins

12. “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.” -Helen Keller

13. “Take your easy tears somewhere else. Tell yourself none of this ever had to happen. And then go make it stop. With whatever breath you have left. Grief is a sword or it is nothing.” -Paul Monette

14. “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.” -Reinhold Neibuhr

15. “During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -George Orwell

16. “To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.” -Cornel West

Photo: Amor Ministries

17.”If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.” -Adrienne Rich

18. “Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.” -Octavio Paz

19. “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” -Elie Wiesel

20. “The more you move, the stronger you’ll grow….” -Ha Jin

h.koppdelaney

20 Quotes to Inspire Change.

yours truly,

Stillmind