Australian Open, Day 2
Day 2 brought lots of sunshine, and some pretty huge crowds. That’s more like it. I was assigned to the backcourts, which I actually kinda like. It’s a looser, more intimate atmosphere, and there’s more room for photographers to move around and work angles. The flipside is that there’s no vertical mobility -you’re stuck on [...]
Australian Open, Day -2
I arrived yesterday in Melbourne for the Australian Open, which starts in two days. I covered the tournament two years ago (missed last year due to wintry baby-making in Canada), and it’s great to be back. I love tennis. I know it’s not terribly cool, but I’ve been a big tennis fan since I was [...]
Anatomy of a five second Obama handshake photo-op
I recently got home from a week in Singapore shooting the annual APEC Summit, which culminated in the Leaders Conference over the weekend, with head honchos from 21 Pacific Rim countries in town to schmooze. I’ve shot a few of these over the years, and while they have their perks, they are a lot of [...]
Asian Indoor Games, or “Possibly the world’s most obscure multinational sporting event”
Vietnam is hosting the Asian Indoor Games this week. After covering a few days of indoor track and field, it quickly became apparent that very few people around the globe were taking any notice (ie: I was filing pictures into thin air). Fair enough. It just doesn’t have the flavor of, say, the Asian Beach [...]
Return of the military honor guard
Anyone who shoots for a wire agency in a capital city knows the Groundhog Day routine that happens when a visiting dignitary (PM, Prez, King or Queen) drops in for a cup of tea on their watch. It means an official state reception and rolling out the red carpet with a military honor guard. It’s [...]
TIME Magazine: Typhoon highlights illegal logging in Vietnam
TIME picked up an image from my coverage of Typhoon Ketsana a few weeks back. The story is about illegal logging, and how the Typhoon washed thousands of logs down from the mountains to the coast, pretty much exposing the illegal logging industry for all to see. Literally. Heard about this story a few weeks [...]
The Prime Minister and the General
This morning the 6th session of the National Assembly XII opened at the Ministry of Defence in Hanoi. Nothing particular titillating to photograph, mostly just a few hundred delegates sitting down listening to a few opening remarks by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. However, before the start of the session, I caught up with the [...]
Lens Blog Pictures of the Day
An image of mine popped up last week on the extremely tasty NYTimes LENS Blog. The New York Philharmonic was in Hanoi for a pair of shows at the historic opera house (whose doors first opened in French colonial Indochina in 1911), but instead of focusing on the performance, I concentrated on the reactions of [...]
China Beach blues
The first time I visited China Beach (the famous American R’n’R stretch of coastline outside Danang) was in 1997. Aside from the Furama, which opened that year, and a decaying old Soviet hotel, the beach was essentially 30 kilometers of undeveloped, windswept sand. Fishermen went about their business every morning, making the short walk from [...]
Hoi An floods – before and after
A few diptychs from the flooding this past week in Hoi An. “Dry” images were taken three days after the “wet” ones. As bad as this storm was, they get battered here by tropical storms and severe flooding almost every year, and it’s amazing how quickly the community recovers. In a few days, it’s almost [...]
Do Son Buffalo Fighting Festival 2009
A little slow getting this set up here. Had to drive down to central Vietnam earlier this week to cover Typhoon Ketsana. There are a few images of the buffalo being butchered, so be warned. Check out some of Aaron’s images from the same festival here. Enjoy! Do Son Buffalo Fighting Festival 2009 – Images [...]
The hardest working men in showbiz….
A shout out to Aaron Joel Santos and Justin Mott, as you can see the hardest working photographers around. Had a great weekend with them (and a few other friends) at the Buffalo Fighting Festival in Do So, Vietnam. More to come…..
Joe McNally – doing a photography blog, the right way
I doubt there’s a photographer out there who is more generous with sharing his creative vision and wisdom than Joe McNally (or maybe its a tie with David Alan Harvey). Between assignments for National Geographic and jam-packed lighting workshops, Joe somehow finds time to blog – extensively – about photography. Joe’s at a point in [...]
NEWWORK MAGAZINE & Communication Arts
Those Olympic Diving images are still making the rounds late in the year. Very happy to see them picked for ISSUE #4 of NEWWORK MAGAZINE, a fantastic fine art photography magazine in NYC, and Communication Arts 2009 Photography Annual. Its nice to see the images in a different forum (fine art) than they were originally [...]
Montreal World Press Photo
The traveling World Press Photo exhibit landed in Montreal last week, and some of my friends dropped by to check out the snaps. Thanks to Dom, Mike, Steve, Laure and of course Mama Cookson!
The Guardian changes terms and conditions for commissioned photography
For anyone making a living through photography, this is bad. Real bad. Thanks Marcus for posting this on LS. I’m reprinting the message here: Dear Contributor, Re. Change to terms and conditions for commissioned photography You will no doubt be aware that we, like every other media outlet in the UK, are experiencing very difficult [...]
Reflections of a new father visiting an Agent Orange orphanage
Yesterday I went to an orphanage outside Hanoi, to work on a story about Agent Orange. There’s a new report out from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, saying the chemical defoliant could be causing heart disease and Parkinson’s in US Vietnam veterans. Of course this means it would be having the same effect on [...]
Reportage by Getty
Once in a while I like to point viewers towards great photography sites they might not otherwise find on their own. Although Getty certainly doesn’t need any extra web traffic from here (“Six hits from that Wainwright guy’s blog! Sweet!”), I’m not sure you’d know about their Reportage site unless you were in the industry. [...]
50th anniversary of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
50th Anniversary of the Ho Chi Minh Trail – Images by Julian Wainwright 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a supply line of roads, paths and jungle tracks largely responsible for defeating American forces during the Vietnam War. With much of the trail now disappearing into overgrown jungle, and large [...]
And just when you thought you’ve shot something original….
The image on the left of Major Shove Gilby was taken by Charles McQuillan, and recently awarded with a selection in the British Press Photographers Year 2009. The image on the right of Rafael Nadal is by Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum photographer extraordinaire. Although I’m certain neither photographer knew of the other’s image, its amazing to [...]
NYTimes: All the (digitally altered and posed) News That’s Fit to Print
I’m a huge fan of the New York Times. Growing up, heading out to the corner store to pick up the gargantuan Sunday edition was a real weekend treat. And I think that, for the most part, they’ve done a great job of adapting to the Internet. Their digital edition – in both content and [...]
Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense during Vietnam War, dies aged 93
McNamara was famously remourseful about his role in the Vietnam War in his later years, as recorded by Errol Morris in “The Fog of War“. His critics said that was much too little, too late. Though unlike Donald Rumsfeld, he did seem to genuinely carry the burden of his role in the deaths of thousands [...]
Balazs Gardi and Teru Kuwayama talk at the Frontline club
Two great photographers discuss their work in and around Afghanistan. Both shoot primarily black and white film, Teru often with a plastic Holga, and Balazs often with a Hasselblad X-Pan. They both create haunting, affecting images, very different from much of the conflict work coming from the area.
Story of the year! Now if only we could find a good cover photo….
Interesting discussion going on over at Photo District News about Time Magazine’s recent Iran cover. Yes, the editors did put a disclaimer stating the image was digitally altered, and the PDN people are trying to figure out how (best guess is they turned a horizontal into a vertical by adding sky etc). But I think [...]