Common Sense and Whiskey

Rainy Day Reading

We've been a little scarce here at CS&W as we try to finish up some longer-form writing and get set for a trip to Rapa Nui that's about a month away. More on that as we get closer.

For now, here are ideas of interest from all over, if you're so inclined:

- Not long ago, my pal Rick Lewis moved to Cotacachi, Ecuador. He blogs about it at brokedownpalette.
- Alfred Molon, a Dane, has some 23,000 photos here, from much of the world.
- Albanian Tourism Project Puts Beds in Bunkers, from Der Spiegel.
- Kebabistan, a Eurasianet food blog, is worth a look.
- Update on the state of things in Ukraine, from Salon.
- The Enclaves and Counter-enclaves of Baarle, on the Dutch/Belgian border, from Big Think's Strange Maps.
- And you might have seen that the British have invaded nine out of ten countries, from an upcoming book.

New Photographer Link

I've added Justyna Mielnikiewicz to the category Photographers, with Respect in the sidebar, below right. When you have a few minutes, please go see her work. Her bio says she began her career in Poland before moving to Tbilisi. Our photos of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan don't match the grit, the real, I-live-here feel of hers.

 

Fine Photo Link

Check these guys out: The Photo Society. From their site, "We are a group of contributing photographers for National Geographic Magazine, committed to telling the world’s stories through pictures."

Outstanding, quality photography you'd expect, and there's a bit about the "Most Dangerous Countries for Journalists," which includes a link to the Committee to Protect Journalists' creepy "Impunity Index."

 

Accomplished Traveler Inspires Countries-Visited Envy

In his review of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book, editor of Perceptive Travel magazine writes that I'm "one of those 'been to 100 countries' types." I'm not entirely sure in what spirit that was meant, but I take it as high praise.

Of course, whenever you find yourself feeling self-satisfied, it's healthy to be humbled a little bit.

And so I present to you Gordon Kilgore, a fellow Georgian who has traveled to all 50 states, 7 continents, the North Pole, and 181 countries. I mean, Antarctica FOUR TIMES. And he has taken pictures. Enjoy his site, Picture Perfect. I'm putting him in the "Photographers, with Respect" sidebar on the right.

Hard to Beat This Photographic Effort

Just an outstanding effort and a pleasure to watch. Time lapse photography from Dominic Boudreault.

Timelapse - The City Limits from Dominic on Vimeo.

Africa: Couple of Things

Along the lines of the previous post, once you've used the Global Rich List to see how you're doing, consider:

We once met a Canadian man in Johannesburg. He had been contributing to the cause, working with the U.N. in southern Congo and now he meant to earn it back, in private business in the Copper Belt around Lubumbashi, in Katanga Province near Zambia. He was bringing his wife to approve the deal, and he promised they would live well, right on a golf course.

This Reuters article suggests he was right. It says that some 50 million of Congo's 67 million people live on less than two dollars a day, but in Lubumbashi,

"Membership at the governor's new gym costs $300 (193 pounds) a month, the gastronomic menu at the new $350-a-night hotel is going down a treat and traffic guided by lemon yellow-uniformed police runs smoothly under sunny skies."

*****

And just a quick note - spend a few minutes with the wildlife portfolio of Tobias Seiderer. Some outstanding stuff. This photo of one of the tree climbing lions in the Ishasha Wilderness in Uganda, is from EarthPhotos.com's Uganda, Animals & Wildlife and HDR Galleries, but Tobi's been there too. Here's his Flickr Photostream.

 

New Photo Blog Link

Linking CS&W to another photo blog, in the links called "Travel Photography: Resources." It's a blog by Jeff Bartlett called PhotoJBartlett. You might remember we linked to Jeff's separate site The Camping Cook a couple of weeks back. On PhotoJBartlett, Jeff combines travel writing with travel photo tips.  It's worth spending some time with. Check it out. I've subscribed to it's feed.

HDR Photographer

Adding another photographer to the list of photographers we admire, in the next column, below. He's Brian Matiash, a commercial architecture photographer from Framingham, Mass. He's also an editor at HDRSpotting. Great HDR work, and some tutorials, on his HDR photo blog. Check out his stuff at brianmatiash.com/blog.

BeetleCam

Fun idea. Great results.

Tibetan Nomads in Pictures

Back in the spring of 1999, we set off to travel over land from Kathmandu to Tibet. Sometime next week, I'll post the story of that drive, in the course of which we met a group of nomads. Among them were the young people in this photo.

Our trip was a mere trifle - three nights from Kathmandu, over the Friendship Bridge into Tibet, and across to Lhasa. Here, on the other hand, is a lady who has spent five years focusing on nomadic Tibetans. Check out the work of Alison Wright in today's Lens.

(See more photos from our drive across Tibet, and from all over China, in the China Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Eyjafjallajokull

Definitive photo coverage.

Up to His Neck in His Work

Remarkable.

Photography from China, India, Tibet

If you click this link, chances are you'll find yourself spending at least several minutes exploring the portfolio of Shanghai based documentary photographer Ryan Pyle.

Afghanistan in Pictures

Apropos to the President's recommitment to his "good war" last night, don't miss this tremendous photojournalism from photographer David Guttenfelder in the Denver Post.

CS&W Interview: Sean Gallagher on North Korea

Sean Gallagher is unlike most people. He has been to Pyongyang. In September the award-winning, Beijing-based photographer and the Canadian Globe and Mail's Asia correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, entered North Korea as tourists. Gallagher wrote about his experience in an article for The Digital Journalist titled Inside North Korea, and now he talks further about North Korea with Common Sense and Whiskey:

- Sean, thanks very much for answering a few questions about your trip to North Korea. First, you're a British photojournalist working in China, right? Tell us a little about your work.

My work in China over the past 3 years has focused mainly on social and environmental issues although recently I have been focusing more on the environmental side. My biggest project of note so far has been on the issue of desertification in China, for which I have received a number of grants and awards. This is the work people probably now know me most for.

- So, you and a colleague crossed the China/North Korea border into North Korea in a bus with Chinese people, right? Since you're not Chinese, did you attract extra attention from the border guards?

Well, we stood out like sore thumbs to be honest. Our entry into North Korea was all a bit ‘cloak and dagger’, so we were getting handed from one person to the next, just doing what we were told. When we got told to get on a bus full of Chinese tourists, we did it. The border guards saw us but we think they obviously knew we were coming, so they didn’t do anything.

- Sounds like you were maybe bringing in a camera that was a little more than a point-and-shoot? How did you manage that?

I broke my camera up into as many parts as possible, to make it look less suspicious. When they went though my bags they found my relatively large 16-35mm Canon L lens and took a good minute looking it over. I was a little nervous at this point as it would have been pretty tricky taking pictures without it. Eventually, they put it back into my back and waved me past.

- We read of visitors to the DPRK never being outside of the gaze of their minders. Was that the case for you? Did you ever try to slip away for a walk? Did you and your minders speak English? Mandarin?

We were constantly shadowed by our minders. We had two. One who was our translator and guide, the other just hung in the shadows and followed us around, always within earshot. To my knowledge, both of our minders spoke English and Mandarin.

- We always imagine vast, Communist block style buildings with no heat and dim lights, but it looks from your photos like there are some tolerably nice hotels in Pyongyang. True?

The only hotels you see in my images are either the one that we stayed in in Pyongyang, which houses all foreign guests, or ones which house foreign guests at various tourists sights across the country. They weren’t for the average North Korean citizen. Our hotels were opulent, however the reality for most North Koreans is completely different. Regular power cuts, even in the capital, occur. I noticed however, they always leave the electricity running for the lights which light up various portraits of the leaders about town.

- Outside North Korea, it's safe to say we have an overall impression of paranoia and fear there. Would you say that's accurate? And if they'd have you, would you visit again?

I can’t really speculate on what the average North Korean thinks because we were given no chance at all to speak to the average person. Sometimes we got close and I was able to grab some images but we were quickly whisked away by our minders before we could interact any further. I know for sure though, that I felt a high level of paranoia and fear there but that was because I felt we were under constant suspicion. Even between groups of other foreign visitors (who we were kept separate from) there was a level of distrust, born from where we were.

Would I like to go back? Sure. It’s a photographer’s paradise really. I’m not sure they’ll have me back anytime soon though.

- One more thing - since you've returned from North Korea, have you learned when the Tower Bridge was built?

Ha. I must admit, I went on the internet to check that when I got back. I wasn’t that far off. They were a bit tough on me!

*****

See Sean's photography at his web site Gallagher-photo.com, keep up with Sean at his blog, and if you're in Beijing, check out his workshops for amateur photographers.

(Top photo: Sean Gallagher. The others, of North Korea, are from Sean Gallagher's web site.)

Photo Essay: Liberia

Love this photo from Glenna Gordon's blog, Scarlet Lion Liberia. It was taken in the international section of the Monrovia, Liberia post office, and I think it's just so darned evocative of exotic travel. Admire the seeming arbitrariness of which places get a slot. Entebbe, Kigali, Kinshasa, sure, they're in the region. But Oslo? Montreal?

Makes me smile.

Glenna Gordon is a friend of CS&W. We did a post about her work in Africa back in February that you can read here. She currently lives and works in Liberia. Her blog is Scarlett Lion, and the photo above is part of her feature story in BBC Focus on Africa magazine. We've published the photo with her kind permission.

Prize Winning Photographer

AWARDS:
PULITZER PRIZE, 2009: Awarded the Pulitzer Prize as part of the New York Times team for International Reporting.  Her photographic work was part of  the New York Times coverage of the war in Afghanistan for the magazine cover article Talibanistan, Sept 7, 2008.

So reads part of her biography. See some of her work at lynseyaddario.com.

Fine Fowl Photography

Two really great sites to recommend for avian photography:

Scream Savers has a just unbelievable shot of a short eared owl heard the photographer's shutter going off and took a look, and Jean-Luc Vaillant's Avian Photography site is tremendous.

Our much more modest offering here. The ostrich pictured here lives in Namibia.

Slum Clearing Clears Giant Art Project?

News that the Kenyan government is clearing what the press calls Africa's biggest slum is a good opportunity to revisit the remarkable work there of the photographic artist "JR."

This photo is a screen grab from JR's site 28 millimeters. On the 28 millimeters site, click on Kenya on the map, then click "Kenya actions" for a series of clickable thumbnails.

Calm, Patience & Clarity

Met a man named Nigel Gaunt in Broome, Australia a couple of weeks ago. He might have preferred to be elsewhere on a Sunday afternoon, but some behemoth Princess Something cruise liner was due to inflict hundreds of passengers on Broome's Chinatown, so there he sat behind the desk in his photo gallery.

I think Nigel's work reflects calm - or patience, maybe - and the clarity of the outback. He used a camp fire, a flashlight and a long exposure to draw the most striking lighting effects from a photo (that I can't find on his web site) of a boab tree at dusk.

Nigel also puts on photo tours into the outback that would just have to be fun. Drop by and enjoy his web site, Red Dirt Photography.