Larry Nighswander, a former image editor at the National Geographic magazine put it succinctly about selecting images for publication or general display. He said that the image(s) has to satisfy two out of the three following conditions: 1) Have editorial merit, 2) Be qualitatively superior and 3) Be created in an interesting and unique manner. Satisfying all three would make it a great image indeed.

The Phenomena of Displacement – India, a photo essay by Preeti Singh is a wonderful concept.

“Migration statistics show over sixty percent of all moves occurring at the (rural to rural) intra-district level. However, the steep increase in rural to urban migration in the past four decades is also staggering. Over 200 million people now live in the crowded cities of India.”

Well meaning as it may be, I am not sure that this photo project has been executed or displayed properly (on the website). For one, I am not able to emotionally connect with anyone of her subjects. People's faces are much farther away from our view, blurred or cropped off completely. The images all appear to have been shot with a wide-angle lens, more than an arm's length away from her subjects or behind the secure confines of a car. It's only in the image called “Joyride 1” that we get any sense of who these displace people might be.

I am led to believe the photographer travelled great distances to capture these images. But why only limit the gallery selection to 10 images? Is this a case of editing too tightly? It's not like there isn't enough space on the web to display a greater variety. Qualitatively, the black & white images are rather poor. They have a lot of digital noise (scanned improperly), which makes identifying and, to repeat this issue, connecting with people very difficult. I also get far less information from the photographs than I do from the accompanying captions. The images lack any sort of hook to have me better understand the plight of millions on the move.

This is a project with great potential. I truly hope it can be redone after addressing the failures in both the technical and methodological approaches offered to us.

While Singh's images certainly have editorial merit, in my opinion they fail to satisfy all of the conditions espoused by Nighswander. I am sure she has an explanation for this and Tiffinbox would love to hear from her.

Via Stefanie Hsien Liang (Art Director at Hyphen Magazine)

COMMUNICATION ARTS PHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATION COMPETITIONS

Now is the time to promote your talent to the creative community and potential clients worldwide by having your work selected for the largest
and most important juried competitions for illustration and photography.

Communication Arts invites you to enter your work in the 45th Annual Photography and Illustration competitions.

Selected, award-winning pieces will appear in Communication Arts magazine, in either the July Illustration Annual or August Photography Annual. More than 72,000 copies of each Annual will be distributed worldwide, assuring the selected entries important exposure to professionals in the fields of advertising and design.

The deadline for both competitions is March 15, 2004.

For submission guidelines, PDF entry forms and FAQs, click here.

Via Auditi Guha (SAJA/Boston chapter coordinator)

Please join us for a screening of Anand Patwardhan's documentary “War and Peace: Nuclear Nationalism and its Antidote.”

When: Wed., February 25, 2004, 7:30 p.m.
Where: ASEAN Auditorium, Cabot Hall

A discussion with the filmmaker will follow the screening.

This is FREE and open to the public … and is TODAY!

For details on the film: www.patwardhan.com
Directions to Cabot

Sponsored by Comparative Religion, Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, Peace and Justice, International Relations, Political
Science, History, Asian Studies, TASA, and the Office of the Provost

Yes, I am MAD about jazz and madder still when one of our own makes it onto the charts. If you haven't heard Vijay Iyer or Rudresh Mahanthappa, you are in for a treat.

For New Yorkers – Vijay Iyer's quartet will be performing at Sweet Rhythm next week, Fri-Sat March 5-6.

“We'll be playing music from “Blood Sutra,” instrumental versions of a couple of songs from “In What Language?”, and some new piano trio pieces too.”

The musicians are Vijay Iyer, piano – Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto saxophone – Stephan Crump, bass – Marcus Gilmore, drums.

The NPPA sponsored Northern Short Course 2004 will be held March 11-13, 2004 at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Warwick, RI. It's the 23rd such gathering of photojournalists.That's three days of education and inspiration from some of the leading photojournalists in the country. The early-bird deadline for registration is February 28. So, jump to it.

Download the registration form here and enter the NSC 2004 photo contest here.

I'll be attending two out of the three days, and you can be sure that I will blog my impressions of the event on Tiffinbox. I have signed up to take a couple of location lighting workshops and a seminar on digital photography (workflow and business issues).