Photo © Diego Vergés-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Diego Vergés-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Diego Vergés-All Rights Reserved

As I indicated in an earlier post on The Travel Photographer blog, Diego Vergés is back from his 4 months trip to Indonesia (and PNG) and its various islands, and is currently working feverishly on his inventory of images.

He tells me that he has so far edited and readied only one of his expected 8 or more photo essays on the various indigenous groups of Indonesia, and that's the gallery on the Mentawai. The images are spectacular, and I encourage you to view them as they provide a window into a culture which I suspect will soon vanish.

You'll notice Diego's characteristic lighting techniques from the above photographs, and which he told he learned from The Strobist. Photographing the Mentawai, he used off camera lighting, a reflector and a softbox. For cameras, Diego uses a Canon 5d and a 5d Mark II, with prime lenses (24mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.4).

The Mentawai are the native people of the Mentawai Islands, which is a chain of about seventy islands and islets off the western coast of Sumatra. They live a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the coastal and rain forest environments of the islands, and number about 64,000. They are known by their deep spirituality, body art and the tradition of sharpening their teeth for beautifying reasons.

The Mentawai practice traditional animism, and as with other indigenous cultures, are threatened by encroaching modernism.

Tom Bourdon was recently in Java, Indonesia where he photographed a traditional Dayak dance near Borobodur. He captured the ambient sound with the new and popular Zoom H1, and put together this audio slideshow. You can also view it here.

The Dayak are the native people of Borneo, who live principally in the interior of Borneo, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory and culture. Dayaks also live in Indonesia, and have their distinct culture as Tom Bourdon documented.

The Dayak were animist in belief, however many converted to Christianity, and more recently to Islam. Estimates for the Dayak population range from 2 to 4 million.

Tom is a documentary travel photographer specializing in recording cultural festivals & celebrations across the globe. His work has been published in the national & international press as well as guide books & numerous online locations.

I thought I'd add this review of the Zoom H1. It's by B&H, and while it's short and to the point, it gives a reasonable appraisal of the device.

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.

Hamid Sardar-Afkhami is a photographer and a scholar of Tibetan and Mongol languages with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After moving to Nepal in the late 1980’s and exploring Tibet and the Himalayas for more than a decade, he traveled to Outer Mongolia, and determined to document its nomadic culture by setting a mobile studio ger camp in Mongolia. With his arsenal of cameras and different formats, he mounts yearly expeditions into the Mongolian outback to document her nomadic traditions.

Apart from the two movie documentaries (these are not short, and run for almost an hour), take a look at Hamid's photographic gallery titled Dark Heavens, which has color and platinum portfolios.


Impressive, huh? Especially since Hamid is able to combine the two imagery disciplines so well.

I was introduced to Hamid Sardar's work and website through The Empty Quarter Gallery newsletter.

Photo © Julie Aucoin -All Rights Reserved
I've already mentioned Julie Aucoin on this blog, but I've thought of re-posting her recent work which includes a number of South East Asian countries to include Vietnam, and this image of a Bac Ha woman.

Julie who's based in Nevada, describes herself as a passionate photographer, an adventurous traveler and experienced stage manager. She's one of those photographers who, as a child, perused the pages of the National Geographic magazine and this implanted peripatetic seeds in her.

The earlier post on Julie is here.

Reading and posting Stan Greene's excellent interview yesterday will probably satisfy my photojournalism interest for this week, so for a change in pace here's a lovely travel multimedia piece titled Mongolian Racer by The Guardian photographer Dan Chung, and narrated by Tania Branigan. (click the arrow).

The multimedia piece is on a horse trainer and his 10-year-old jockey who face the biggest day of their year at Mongolia's Naadam festival, which dates back to before Genghis Khan's time and celebrates the 'manly sports' of wrestling, archery and racing.

The Mongolian traditional festival of Naadam is also called in the local dialect as "the three games of men". These are Mongolian wrestling, horse racing and archery. The festival is held throughout the country during the midsummer holidays, however the largest is in Ulaanbaatar.

For the geeks, the piece was shot using Canon 1DmkIV, 5DMkII, 550D and GoPro HD camera, and a load of ancillary gear which is described in length in Dan Chung's blog DSLR News Shooter.

Apart from it being gorgeous videography, I noted the simple and clean font used for the title of the piece, and how it's placed against the dark cloud in a red sky...nice touch, that. And I also liked how the voice-over expertly blended with the ambient sound/voice.

Photo © Kate Baumgartner-All Rights Reserved
Kate Baumgartner describes herself as an avid photographer, and that may well be an understatement.

Based in Hong Kong, she photographed to Cambodia, Burma, India, China, Namibia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam...returning with splendid photographs, like the one above of the Cao Dai monks. Cao Dai is the relatively new, syncretist, monotheistic religion established in 1926 in Vietnam.

Take a look at Kate's gallery of photographs under the Religion category, and you'll find many of the different faiths and traditions of Asia, including the unusual rituals during the Thaipusam festival in Singapore, which is celebrated mostly by the Tamil community. On the day of the festival, devotees will shave their heads and undertake a pilgrimage during which some will engage in self-mortification by piercing their skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers.