Chobi Mela V: Photo Festival

Chobi Mela V is in full swing in Dhaka, with over sixty exhibitions, thirty-five participating nations, well over a thousand images, and over fifty visiting artists from Asia alone. There are live broadcast of important events, especially the video conference between Mahasweta Devi, Noam Chomsky and Stuart Hall, as they provide their take on 'Freedom'.

According to founder Shahidul Alam, mobile exhibitions, now a trademark of the festival, 10 rickshaw vans driving through the streets of Dhaka, will move the festival away from galleries to the more public spaces of football fields and open air markets.

Chinese New Year

Photo ©REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad-All Rights Reserved
I've been remiss in acknowledging the Chinese Lunar New Year which was just heralded a few days ago, and which is being observed by ethnic Chinese and others around the world...so Gong Xi Fa Cai!

The above photograph is courtesy The Big Picture blog of The Boston Globe, and is of a Chinese man reciting prayers at a temple in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop 2009

I've posted about the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop 2009 before, and it continues to progress very nicely. If you're passionate about photojournalism, this workshop offers a unique opportunity to access extremely interesting classes. The workshop's costs is kept as low as possible and the instructors provide their services for free.

Some of the instructors are Michael Robinson-Chavez, Andrea Bruce, Tewfic El-Sawy, Adriana Zehbrauskas, Ben Rusnak, Ami Vitale, Poul Madsen, Henrik Kastenskov, Eros Hoagland...

My class synopsis is as follows:

Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling

"Tewfic El-Sawy will teach a multimedia class that allows its participants to concentrate on the story, rather than on the application. The purpose and aim of the class is to show photojournalists how to make quick work of slide show production, using their own images and audio generated in the field, to produce a cogent photo story under the simulation of publishing deadlines. Most of the class’s time will be spent photographing in the field, while indoors time will be devoted to weaving the material into photo stories.

This class will require will use Soundslides software, and either Audacity or GarageBand for audio. Participants will need to have Digital Audio Recorders (such as the Zoom H2).

Here’s a sample of a SoundSlides produced by Mike Hutmacher (who attended Tewfic’s class during the Mexico City Foundry Workshop) for The Wichita Eagle newspaper".