Audio: New Zoom H2 Digital Recorder

The Japanese Samson company has just announced the Zoom H2 digital audio recorder, which follows its successful Zoom H4. Few details are available at this time, but it's assumed that it is SD based. The price is estimated at $199.

More details at Photoethnography

Olivia Arthur: The Ramnamis

Image Copyright Olivia Arthur
After a degree in Mathematics from Oxford and a diploma in photojournalism from the London College of Printing, Olivia worked in India for two years, freelancing for British publications, including The Observer Magazine, The Independent Magazine, and The Telegraph Magazine.

I was very interested in her brilliant gallery In The Name of God, which documents the Ramnamis in central India. These are members of the untouchable caste, who are prohibited from entering any temple with any Hindu. They tattoo the name of God (Ram) on their faces and/or bodies to announce that they have God with them at all times. This angers the upper caste who see this as polluting Ram's name with their 'untouchable' bodies.

I contacted Olivia for more information about the Ramnamis, and she was gracious to give me some guidance.

Olivia Arthur's In The Name of God

PhotoShelter Storage

PhotoShelter announced that photographers could access 1 terrabyte of redundant storage for an annual fee of $1000, or 1/2 a terrabyte for $600 a year. I don't think that's a bad deal at all...since it currently costs more than that to just buy the drives, and have them in safe locations. I wonder if the annual fee will change, remain the same or drop. It ought to be the latter since the cost of manufacturing storage has been declining over the years.

PhotoShelter warns that the average lifespan of a hard drive is 4 years, and that storing images on computer's hard drive or on DVD/CD's is an extremely risky proposition. (!!!)

PhotoShelter's Press Release

Darfur: Travis Fox/Washington Post

Image Copyright Travis Fox/Washington Post
The Washington Post has a brilliantly-produced multimedia piece on Darfur by Travis Fox.

The government of Sudan is accused of arming and supporting the Janjaweed, an Arab militia in Darfur, who are accused of being guilty of brutal attacks on civilians. More than 450,000 people have been killed by violence and disease. Millions more have been forced off their land in what the US government calls genocide. Recently, attacks have spread to eastern Chad, where the ethnic make up is the same and the border porous.

I find that the panoramics in the piece were extremely well chosen, and give the viewers/readers the sense of actually being there. The more I see panos of that kind, the more I think that they will become an integral part of future photojournalism productions, since they impart such a sense of effective immediacy in the storytelling. Certainly, travel photographers would be well advised to learn the technique as well.

I also watched the movie, and it's as effective as anything I've seen on this on television. Watch the emotional recounting of the unfortunate woman who was raped by the Janjaweed. I could understand enough of what was said that I can confirm that the translation in the subtitles is accurate.

The Washington Post multimedia features are really terrific, and are probably among the best on the web.

Crisis In Darfur Expands

Antonio Mari : The Yanomami of Brazil

Image Copyright Antonio Mari
Antonio Mari is a Brazilian journalist and photographer based in New York City, specializing in ethnographic subject matter--documenting peoples and cultures outside the mainstream of western civilization.

He has completed documentaries on the vanishing folklore festivals in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, the historic architecture of Brazil's colonial towns and the Amish community of Sugarcreek in Holmes County, Ohio. He has also spent almost a decade documenting the fragile existence of the Yanomami Indians in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest. His reportage on the subject has been widely published throughout the world, including multipage spreads in Newsweek , TIME Magazine, Science Magazine and the Boston Globe.

Naturally, I chose his work with the Yanomami to feature on TTP. The Yanomami generally refers to the indigenous tribespeople who live in an area that spans parts of the northwest Amazon Rainforest and southern Orinoco,

Antonio's website is Flash-based, as most photography websites are these days, and you need to choose his gallery The Yanomami: Children of Eden. It's an automatic slideshow of 27 photographs, and captions are available when clicking on the little arrow at the bottom.

Antonio Mari