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Tibet’s Great Prayer Festival

Terry — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:45:04 +0000

Tibetans recently observed Monlam, or The Great Prayer Festival, with prayers, ritual dances, traditional foods and giant tapestry-like paintings. Ethnic Tibetans are maintaining their traditional culture while change slowly comes their way. Chinese officials have prohibited the festival in the past, and still discourage participation, and more change will be arriving soon by rail as the Qinghai-Tibet railway between China proper and Tibet is scheduled for completion three years from now. Chinese government officials are now preparing for possible trouble in March, on the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when the Dalai Lama fled into exile, and tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed. Foreign travelers have now been banned from large parts of western Tibet until late March. Several portraits in today’s entry come courtesy of photographer Hugo Teixeira. (33 photos total)

Footprints carved in wood, which locals believe were made by a worshipper who prayed at the same spot for decades, are seen at a monastery near Tongren, Qinghai province February 5, 2009. Local Tibetan monks and pilgrims gather to celebrate Monlam, or Great Prayer Festival, one of the most important festivals in Tibetan Buddhism. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed.(REUTERS/Reinhard Krause)

China’s Lantern Festival, and an unfortunate ending

Terry — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:17:50 +0000

Marking the end of the Chinese New Year, the Lantern Festival takes place on the 15th day of the year - during the first full moon. People across Mainland China and Taiwan celebrate the festival in many colorful ways, from fiery folk traditions to firework displays and laser shows. Unfortunately, this year’s festival ended on a somewhat sour note as an unauthorized fireworks show set an unoccupied skyscraper on fire in downtown Beijing, and one firefighter lost his life fighting the blaze. Collected here are 27 photos of the festival, and a handful from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel fire in Beijing. (27 photos total)

A performer dressed in traditional costume sings during the celebrations for the lantern festival in the city of Tianjin, located 100 km (62 miles) east of Beijing February 9, 2009. The lantern festival marks the last day of the two-week Chinese lunar new year celebrations. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed.(REUTERS/David Gray)

Scenes from Indonesia

Terry — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:51:23 +0000

Ecologically blessed, economically challenged, vast and diverse, Indonesia is a country of contrasts. made up of 17,500 islands (only about 6,000 of those inhabited). Indonesia is populated by over 230 million people, speaking over 740 different languages and dialects within 300 distinct native ethnic groups - it is the fourth most populous country, after the United States. Impoverished conditions amongst people living in an area so rich with natural resources has also put extreme pressure on the environment, as increased mining and deforestation make more of an impact. Collected here are only a handful of photographs from Indonesia over the past several months - again, it’s impossible to sum up such a diverse subject in a single collection. (32 photos total)

An elephant keeper collects food for the elephants at the Elephant Conservation Centre in Way Kambas National Park on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island January 25, 2009. Since 1998, 22 elephants were born at Way Kambas Elephant Conservation Centre. Sumatran elephants, the smallest of all Asian elephants, are facing serious pressures arising from illegal logging and associated habitat loss and fragmentation in Indonesia, said Conservation Centre authorities. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed. (REUTERS/Beawiharta)

Sailing, around the world

Terry — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:58:15 +0000

Last December the maxi yacht “Wild Oats XI” won the 2008 Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, sailing 630 nautical miles (1,170 km) in one day, 20 hours and 34 minutes. The Volvo Ocean Race, a 10-leg round-the-world race started in October and will continue until June. The Tall Ships Atlantic Challenge 2009 will start in April, and training sessions are now underway. Sailing as a modern and historic undertaking is alive and well around the world, here are a few photos of sailing events from the past year. (30 photos total)

A figure from Antony Gormley’s “Another Place” welcomes one of the Tall Ships to Merseyside as it sails past the Burbo Bank windfarm on the approach to the Port of Liverpool on July 18, 2008, Liverpool, England. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Bell Harbor Marina in Seattle

Terry — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:15:40 +0000

Had a chance to shoot in Seattle this afternoon and thought I’d try shooting some panorama’s. This is 12 images stitched together with a hand held shot at 18 mm on a wide angle Nikon lens. Shutter was at 1/180 with an F6.7 aperture.

When shooting a shot like this with the intention of stitching together, it is important to make sure you are set on manual mode for shutter and aperture. Since I mostly shoot aperture mode, I took a test shot and then read the settings and then moved my camera to manual mode. If I was to do this over, I would have probably shot 24 photos to make sure the lower part of the marina made it into the image. The aluminum boat in the center was in my initial shots, but you have to crop about a 1/3 of your final results to get a panorama as the stitching is not aligned with the way the frames were shot. I also overlap about 1/3 of the frame to the next, to make sure I don’t miss any details.

Below is one of the original images, flat and boring, so you can see why I needed to add some tweaks.

In Photoshop CS2-CS4, this is real easy to create. Go to File>Automate>Photomerge and choose all the images you want to create the panorama. Click Ok and PS will do the rest. Once I cropped, I then did a few things to get rid of the muted tones as the light was real flat. I created another layer and ran Filter>Other>High Pass. I then set opacity to 30% and fill to 25% with a color dodge screen. This brings out a bit more of the detail in the image. Bumping up the saturation a bit to bring out the color, completed the image.

Icy days and nights

Terry — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:24:27 +0000

Today is the opening day of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, in Harbin, China. The festival lasts for one month, and features large ice and snow sculptures, ice lanterns, swimming in the icy Songhua River and more. The northern hemisphere is a hospitable place for ice festivals these days, so in that spirit, here is a collection of recent photographs of all things frozen, and some of the ways we live and play with ice. (34 photos total)

People visit an ice sculpture for the 25th Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival at a park in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province December 23, 2008. The 25th Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival will kicked off on January 5, 2009. Picture taken December 23, 2008. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed.(REUTERS/Sheng Li)

Ski Jumping World Cup

Terry — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:53:41 +0000

The International Ski Federation (FIS) is now holding the 2008-09 Ski Jumping World Cup - the 30th season to date. This World Cup season began on November 29th in Kuusamo, Finland, and will run through 28 competitions ending on March 22nd in Planica, Slovenia. Top jumpers can regularly make jumps of about 140 meters (460 feet). The current overall leader (individual) is Simon Ammann of Switzerland. (30 photos total)

Austria’s Thomas Morgenstern performs during the qualifying run of the World Cup Ski jumping HS 142 (hill size 142 meters) on November 27, 2008, in Kuusamo-Ruka, Finland. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed. (OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Israel and Gaza

Terry — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:38:05 +0000

Back in June, 2008, Egypt helped broker a 6-month cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the ruling body in the Gaza Strip. Though the cease-fire was broken several times by both sides, it largely held. Toward the end of the cease-fire in December, Israel, while closing Gaza’s borders since November, indicated that it might extend the agreement, if Hamas ceased all Qassam rocket attacks. Qassam rockets are the crude but deadly homemade missiles often launched towards Israeli territory (over 3,000 times in 2008 alone). Hamas leaders, angered by the blockade and seemingly little political headway made over the past 6 months, recently stepped up rocket attacks on Israel once again. Israel has now responded with five days (so far) of air attacks and Naval bombardment on Gaza, resulting in over 350 dead, nearly 1,500 wounded and countless buildings and smugglers’ tunnnels destroyed. Hamas has threatened to increase the rocket attacks send suicide bombers into Israel in retaliation, and Israel is massing troops and tanks around Gaza for a possible ground assault. (37 photos total)

A trail of smoke is seen after the launch of a rocket from the northern Gaza Strip aimed towards Israel on December 27, 2008. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed. (REUTERS/Baz Ratner)

The Wayback Machine

Terry — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:10:37 +0000

I was going through some old hard drives, archiving files for my kids so they would have copies should anything ever happen to me or the data. I ran across tons of files for shoots and stuff I had forgotten about. It is a bit crazy how much I have shot in the past 8 years or so and I thought I’d share some of the more interesting images in the next month or so.

Back in 2001, Seattle was still the protest capital of the Northwest. I forget what this one was about, something to do with Somali illegals being detained for too long. Not sure why I Sepia toned them, but maybe I was thinking it set a dark mood.

A message to the media?

2008, the year in photographs (part 3 of 3)

Terry — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:40:21 +0000

2008 has been an eventful year to say the least - it is difficult to sum up the thousands of stories in just a handful of photographs. That said, I will try to do what I’ve done with other photo narratives here, and tell a story of 2008 in photographs. It’s not the story of 2008, it’s certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months. This is a multi-entry story, 120 photographs over three days. Look for part 1 and part 2 earlier. (40 photos total)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama waves to the crowd at a rally in the rain at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va. Saturday, Sept. 27, 2008. This post does not come under the Creative Commons License as this is from an outside feed. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)