Bhutan Photo Expedition: Novice & Dahlias

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy/All Rights Reserved
Here's a photograph made at the Dechen Phadrang monastic school in Thimpu. We had the necessary permit to visit the school, and spent a number of hours photographing and interacting with the novitiates. The photograph is obviously posed, and I chose a spot at the school's lakhang where the light was just right.

The novitiates involved in the photo shoot had a bunch of dahlias, and were glad to pose for us. I usually much prefer spontaneity and movement in my travel portraits, but posed portraits are often useful for stock purposes.

David Lang: Street Photographers

Photograph © David Lang/All Rights Reserved
David Lang worked in New York City for a well-known photographer specializing in portraits and celebrity shoots, but moved on to work for the International Organization for Migration. He documented the organization's relief efforts following the tsunami in Sri Lanka. He also worked with UNICEF in the Maldives, and Internews in Pakistan.

David has an interesting collection of galleries of his work in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Morocco...for TTP, I chose to highlight his work on Street Photographers in Kabul. In many countries of the world, street photographers perform their craft in cities' streets, on corners and in "holes-in-the-wall", and they provide a public service by producing passport-sized photos for IDs etc.

Afghanistan is one of these countries, as well as India, and a myriad of others. The technique in processing the prints is -by our digital standards- prehistoric, and may well be considered as a dying art.

My thanks to Emmanuelle Rey for the link to David's work.