Dima Gavrych: Holi

Image © Dima Gavrych-All Rights Reserved
Hopefully this will brighten up the wintery day we have here in New York!

Dima Gavrych is an Ukranian-born New York City based documentary and travel photographer. Over the past decade, he has works for MSF/Doctors Without Borders, the UN Population Fund, and major news organizations such as the Associated Press, Agence France Presse, European Press Photo Agency, Reuters and Bloomberg News.

He has also been published in the New York Times, TIME, People, The Independent, Marie-Claire, Stern and Newsweek.

His documentary portfolio include varied topics, from Nigerian prostitutes to Uganda's Forgotten War, but from his travel portfolio I chose to feature Dima's Holi gallery for its explosive colors.

Holi is also called the Festival of Colours, and is a popular Hindu spring festival. People throw colored powder mixed with water at each other. It is said that the playful throwing of the colored powders has a medicinal significance, as the powders are traditionally made of Neem, Kumkum, Haldi, Bilva, and other medicinal herbs prescribed by Āyurvedic doctors.

TTP's Photo Expeditions: Update

It has been an extraordinarily busy 2-3 weeks for my photo-expeditions. As readers of this blog and subscribers to my monthly newsletter know, I'm planning three amazing photo-expeditions for 2009.

Since I've announced the three itineraries almost simultaneously, I've been receiving commitments to participate, a torrent of questions, requests for testimonials, queries as to flights and hotels, etc. from various interested photographers.

The first to start is the Theyyams of Malabar photo-expedition and it is oversold.

The Gnawa Festival in Essaouira photo-expedition in June 2009 also seems to be on its way to be fully booked as I just received bookings for the last available two spaces.

The Bhutan: Land of Druk Yul photo-expedition is close to be filled up, although it's scheduled for September...nine months away!!! Some of the participating photographers have already booked their Druk Air seats.

Incredible!

NGS: 2008 Photos of the Year

The National Geographic's Editor in Chief Chris Johns selects some of his favorite photographs published in the magazine in 2008.

The French believe, rather surprisingly, that tastes and colors are not issues to be discussed, and being certain that there were much more arresting photographs published in the 2008 NG magazines, I wholeheartedly agree in this case. To each his own.

If you expect detailed descriptions and explanations as to how each photographer captured the images shown in this clip, you'll be disappointed. It's aimed at readers of the National Geographic magazines who like photography, rather than serious or advanced photographers.