New Canon 500D?

1001 Noisy Cameras reports of rumors/buzz that a new Canon 500D Digital Rebel will probably be announced on March 25. The specs are a 15-megapixel sensor, full high definition video recording, ISO 12800, DiGiC 4, and 900k+ dots LCD.

Do I care? Not really. I've had such great results from my new Canon 5D Mark II that I'm deliberating whether to buy a second body, relegating my venerable Canon 1D Mark II to an assisted living home (aka my closet). I'm still angry at Canon for not having supplied enough LP-E6 Rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries for the 5D Mark II, but having experienced how long my battery lasted in the field, I've calmed down a bit.

POV: Simple or Flash?

Photos/Layout ©Anna Wolf-All Rights Reserved
I recently read an interesting article on Photopreneur which deals with what catches the eyes of photo editors.

The point made by the article reaffirms my belief that the simpler the website the better. With photographers' websites so easy and cheap to create, how do photo editors choose which online portfolio to spend time looking at, and decide to contact its owner? The answer? The simplest. I'd also add to that that the images have to be large...as large as those on the Boston Globe's The Big Picture (which, in my view, will revolutionize the way images are displayed on the web).

The Photopreneur article says it very clearly: "Despite the whiz-bang features and slick animation offered on so many sites, simple is usually best. Editors are short of time, and faced with a large number of images they want to gain an understanding quickly of what the photographer can do. They’re less interested in what the photographer’s Web developer can do."

A great example for a photographer's online travel portfolio is by Anna Wolf. Large images and clean scans of articles with Anna's images to show how her images fit in an editorial context is the perfect example of what photo editors are attracted to.

Flash? Fuggetaboutit

British Museum: Between Assam & Tibet

I neglected to mention that during my visit to the British Museum a few weeks ago, I dropped by its exhibit Between Assam & Tibet, which displayed a collection of cultural artifacts and photographs of two tribes from the remote Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, the Apatani and the Monpa.

The Apatani live in the hills of Arunachal Pradesh, and are animists. Their economy depends on growing rice in a unique way which maximizes the yield in their enclosed upland valley. The Monpa live on the Bhutan-Tibet-India border at high altitude. They are ethnically different from the Apatani and are Buddhists, in the past more closely linked to Lhasa in Tibet, than India to the south.

The photographs are by Michael Aram Tarr, an anthropologist and photographer, who has just spent the last five years living and working in Arunachal Pradesh, which is still pretty much an isolated region.

An interesting interview with Michael is here.

Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland are regions of India which I haven't seen yet, and I wonder whether 2010 will see me leading a photo-expedition there.