Travel

initiating relationships is never an easy task.. often tense nervy it asks an awful lot questions of ones ego sense of self worth not to mention the fear of rejection. meeting a new city is always an epic thing.. some ppl believe planning is the best way others are a little more reckless on the edge.. we got off the plane collected our bags spent several minutes trying to work out how to

Today we set off on an Outback Adventure to the Flinders Rangers. We hope to visit Lake Eyre.First stop Katoomba. Katoomba is situated in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.We arrived here at lunchtime and set up the van. After lunch we drove to Scenic World which was only a few minutes away from the Caravan Park. At Scenic World you have a few choices. There is a cable car which travels out ove

Friday was the last day of the Health and Safety week in Lagos it was also the last day of my Risk Assessment training. The morning started with a quiz and reflection on the week with all 350 employees there was an amazing atmosphere with lots of energy laughing shouting and singing sadly I had no idea what was going on as they talk too fast and their accent was lost on me. Victor had ask

This story begins with a little girl a girl who while her friends collected fuzzy bagworms on a dusty Oklahoma playground and put them into cute jars and tried to feed them grass cowered in a corner horrified. This girl can39t tell you where or when or how it developed but she suffered from a blinding fear of caterpillars. They haunted her waking and sleeping hours covering floors with

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights ReservedComfortably ensconced in a lovely room at the New Delhi's Claridges Hotel, raising my feet up and watching utter drivel of the television, while hoping for my nasty viral/bronchial infection to resolve itself, I decide to write this post in a rare moment of un-fevered lucidity.What to write about the experience of photographing at the annual observance of the Sufi Saint Moin'Uddin Chisti's death...except to say that it was mind-blowing. Some parts of it were staid and commonplace such as the times of prayers (called namaz in India and South Asia), while others caused my jaw to drop almost to ground level. The all too short theatrical entrance of the malang, a group of very unusual characters, who crack whips and pop their eyeballs from their sockets to scare the bejesus out of people, was one of these extraordinary sights.I intend to write more at length on the whole of the Sufi Saints Photo Workshop at a later stage, but I must say it was a uniquely memorable experience, even for someone like me who has seen and photographed weird stuff like that for quite a while.My multimedia production of the Urs is almost ready, and subject to some fine tuning, will be made public in a few days.I met a number of characters who were at the Nizam Uddin dargah in Delhi before the start of our workshop, such as Bilal the pankiwallah, Junnaid the black-clothed fakir, and of course the awesome malang (below) with the unique style sense. Sadly, I didn't come across the latter, although some in my group photographed him in Ajmer.Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved.I have to thank Tahoor Chisti, a young khadim and a descendant of Moin'Uddin Chisti who was the epitome of grace and hospitality during our visits to the dargah, and made it possible for all of us to obtain photo permits that are normally only available to the media/press.My thanks also to Shuchi Kapoor who assisted me on this workshop, making it much easier in so many respects, as well as introducing me to a group of hijras in Ajmer. I hope she gained some insight from this workshop that will help her progress in her career.I should also mention the thrilling event of my iPhone being pickpocketed by a rather muscular thief, and I shaking it loose off him without regards to my personal safety.My lucidity is now waning...so it's best to close this post now.Subscribe to The Travel Photographer ©2012 Tewfic El-Sawy

Sometimes highways are more than only a means of transportation. Is racism rearing its ugly head when it comes to budget hotels? And, taking another look at frequent flier programs.

Gokyo to Gokyo Ri to Gokyo up 570m down 570mWe won.The plan... get up at 0600 for a 0630 departure we won39t get to do sunrise but we might get to have the view to ourselves. I would estimate that there are maybe a maximum of 20 trekkers in the village so this plan has merit. Based on our time on Kala Patthar and then EBC the whole solitude thing continues to appeal.At 0710 staffing probl

Today decided to visit the Ballarine Peninsula as I had one day left of the car hire before I left for Adelaide. The drive took about an hour and twenty minutes. Visited both Queenscliff and Portarlington both very nice little sleepy seaside towns. I had thought about going on the ferry to Mornington Peninsula but by the time I got there it didn39t leave enough time as the ferry only goes once

Thore 4290m to Gokyo LakeWarm in my sleeping bag with lots of intense dreams I think of them as my altitude dreams. Have to make 1 toilet run in the night cold but so worth it the night sky is so clear and starry. No yaks to contend with only a few snowy steps. Fall back to sleep easily for another couple of hours. Breakfast is a treat last nights leftover birthday cake has been fried up a

On This Week in Tech Today I’ll be on with Leo Laporte, Om Malik, and Dwight Silverman today (Sunday) at 3 PM PT, 6 PM ET. You can watch live at http://live.twit.tv/ . If you’re around Petaluma and want to say hi, stop by! I’ll be sharing some new photos from travels and the Glass. We’ll probably also talk about stuff from Google I/O and other random tech geeky awesome stuff… HDR with Google Glass? I think I figured something cool out, although it is an absolute hack. But, that’s okay. I mean, if you can get the light, then you get the light. If you think about it, using Auto-bracketing on a regular camera (like a DSLR) to get an HDR is kind of a hack, since that’s not even the purpose of auto-bracketing. Today’s photo below shows the hacked effect working from a Google Glass photo. I have a lot more testing and research to do, and I’ll share it soon. It’s different than the usual HDR Tutorial (which was just re-written from the ground-up less than two weeks ago, by the way!). An All-Glass Album I made an All-Glass album over on Google+. I’ve been experimenting a lot with taking photos with Glass. And before you ask, regular visitors to the site (hi!) know that I post-process unapologetically. To me, the first photo is just a sketch. As long as you get enough light and color with an interesting composition, the rest of the light is yours to bend to your will. But yes, all these photos were taken with Google Glass. Some were taken on the San Francisco PhotoWalk a few days ago! Daily Photo – Running down to the Beach I was going down to the beach when I decided to get some quick photos up here with Glass. It didn’t take too long. Man, I sure do wish they were RAW files, but sadly they are just JPGs. It’s not the end of the world, but still… it’s a little limiting. Anyway, as you can see, the waves were crashing in and the weather was wonderful… I guess that makes up for the lack of RAW files! After I got down there, I took a photo of the Natural Bridge, which you can see in the album above. Order a Limited Edition print of this photo