NG's Traveler: 2008 Photo Contest Results

The National Geographic Traveler announced its annual photo contest winners. The photo contest received over 14,500 entries from 4000 "amateur shutterbugs" (The Traveler's terminology, not mine).

Traveler's Photo Contest Winners

Not to diminish the quality of the winning photographs, but had I been the judge, the above photograph would have won first prizes.



Separately, in the National Geographic International Photo Contest, the Viewers Choice (which is picked by viewers, not by judges) is the above photograph which seems to have been manipulated to add the clouds' reflections.

Update: NGM.com just posted a statement on the above photograph, which essentially says that it appeared altered, which is against the rules of the contest. It has now been taken down.


The Winners of the Viewers' Choice

Mustafah Abdulaziz: Patagonia Cowboys

Photograph © Mustafah Abdulaziz-All Rights Reserved
When you finish viewing his portfolio (especially his new Patagonia Cowboys series), you'll agree with me and many others...Mustafah Abdulaziz is a damn good photographer. Not only is he good, but he realizes the power of large images which populate his website, and it's quite an experience to be able to enjoy his craft through them.

Born in New York City, Mustafah is self-taught (always a huge plus for me), and worked as a freelancer for three years before moving to Philadelphia, his current base. He photographed for the Tribune newspapers, The Morning Call, Newsday, Baltimore Sun, and worked for a myriad corporate clients to include Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Olympus Cameras and others.

He attended the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico City in June where I was teaching a multimedia class and, as I was flying back to NYC with some of the rest of the instructors, the consensus was that Mustafah would reach the pinnacle of his profession soon.

Canon 5D Mark II: DxO Lab

(Credit: DxO Labs)
CNET's Underexposed, a blog by Stephen Shankland, has posted an article with a bunch of interesting news on the Canon 5D Mark II. For instance, it reports that the camera's sensor ranks very high on DxO Labs' test of sensor performance. This is especially significant since there's been an ongoing debate as to whether the $2,700 5D Mark II performs better than the $6,500 1Ds Mark III, which has the same resolution of 21.1 mps.

Although the DxO tests give the edge to the 1Ds Mark III based on its better color and dynamic range, the 5D Mark II has a better low-light performance. In my view, this is particularly welcome news considering that the price of a 1Ds Mark III is 2.4 times that of 5D Mark II.

The blog post also mentions the black-spot issue reported afflicting some of the new 5D Mark IIs. It also reports that Chuck Westfall of Canon will make an official comment on the issue.

Detailed image quality measurements for the Canon 5D Mark II: (DxO Labs)

As an aside, I was shopping at B&H today, and noticed a few things:

1. During my visit, the customer traffic at the cashiers' lanes were light in comparison to others occasions I was there. I didn't have to wait for a salesclerk to help me.

2. There was quite a crowd surrounding the Nikon island, where new models are on display. In contrast, the Canon island had a much smaller number, mostly around the point & shoots (ie the G10).

3. If I'm to believe the salesclerk, B&H had no 5D Mark II in stock and had even ceased taking pre-orders via email since there were too many.