In Focus Does Lantern Festival

Photo © Jason Lee-Courtesy In Focus-All Rights Reserved

The new photo blog In Focus by Alan Taylor for The Atlantic featured about 33 photographs of the festivities on the occasion of the Lunar New Year. The Lantern Festival (known as Yuan Xiao Jie) was observed yesterday in China and wherever there are Chinese communities. It's the last day of the Chinese Lunar New Year festivities.

The blurb accompanying the photographs informs us that it's the most important annual celebration in China, and welcomes the Year of the Rabbit...which is a year of caution and calm.

Calm and caution? I guess the Arab nations revolting for their freedom are unconcerned with the Year of the Rabbit!!

I sense In Focus will soon be one of the favored destinations for those of us who appreciate photojournalism at its best...especially as I just noticed that it offers two choices for its image size: 1024 or 1280 pixels! Nice touch...very nice touch!

Global Post: Ali Sanderson's Mekong River

Photo © Ali Sanderson- Courtesy Global Post-All Rights Reserved

Global Post periodically publishes a photo feature called Full Frame, which showcases some interesting work by emerging photographers. This one is on the Mekong River and is by Ali Sanderson, an Australian photographer from Australia who was based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She worked on productions with leading broadcasters such as National Geographic TV and Radio Free Asia.

In Phnom Penh, Ali, with three other Australian filmmakers, formed a film production company focusing on documentary films dealing with environmental and human rights issues. This led to projects commissioned by Radio Free Asia.

The Mekong is the 10th-longest river in the world, and the 7th-longest in Asia. Its estimated length is 4,909 km (3,050 mi) and runs from the Tibetan Plateau through China's Yunnan province, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

POV: The Part I Like In Travel Photography

The part I like a lot during my photo-expeditions/workshops is when I revisit an area or a village, and bring prints of the photographs I had previously made there. More often than not, the people remember me either before or after I hand out their photographs. It's a small way to give back to the community, and demonstrates to those who were willing (or unaware) subjects that I keep my promises when I tell them I'd be back with their portraits.

In Ahmedabad, I returned to the area of Ahmed Shah's mosque and his shrine, and found the keeper of the tombs as well as the woman who makes and sells paper flowers. They were thrilled with their photographs. It didn't stop one of them to cheekily but smilingly ask me for "baksheesh" but I laughed it off.

Photo © Kantilal Doobal- All Rights Reserved

In a tribal village close to Bhuj, I was very popular with a group of women and children as I handed out their pictures, and one woman was extremely proud to show off a picture of her in all her finery.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

It takes a little effort to find, edit and print these pictures before each trip, but it's well worth it. It goes a long way to gain the trust of the people I photograph and will photograph anew. There were some areas I didn't revisit this time, but I still carried some prints of those I had photographed, which I gave to either hotel keepers, fixers or locals I know will eventually pass them on to the rightful people.

Photo © Kantilal Doobal-All Rights Reserved