Engelbert Humperdinck was born in Madras.

How to be creative.

De-mythifying copyright.

Counterspace. Understanding the use of type for the web and print.

Color, Contrast & Dimension in News Design.

Newseum: The Interactive Museum of News.

The 2005 SAJA Photo Award winners have been announced. Congratulations to all the winners.

Via Sree Sreenivasan

The celebrated film maker Ismail Merchant has died in London. He had been unwell and admitted to a hospital for stomach ulcers.

Merchant and his partner James Ivory were known for such movies “Remains Of The Day,” “Room With A View,” and “Howard's End.”

Anyone read Merchant's auto-biography “My Passage From India”?

Language Of The Image
News University
Ta-da Lists
Mother Of All Search Engines

Posted on behalf of my friends Prof. Sandeep Junarkar and Srinivas Kuruganti

In March 2005, India passed a new patent law that is likely to have global ramifications in the treatment of AIDS patients – especially those in the developing world –who depend on India's generic drug industry to provide drugs well below the prices charged by multinational pharmaceutical companies. In order to join the World Trade Organization, India had to fulfill the obligation to recognize and protect global patents. The bill that was passed in March meets this requirement. Much of the mainstream press has emphasized a business perspective when reporting this development, focusing on India's opportunity to tap the Western generic drug market while only briefly acknowledging the potentially devastating impact of the new rule on vulnerable populations.

During the summer of 2005, we plan to create a baseline record that establishes how India's HIV-infected populations depend on the Indian versions of Western patented Anti-retro Viral (ARV) drugs to survive. The baseline will also establish how they think they will manage as drug prices surge and any stockpiled drugs are depleted.

Using audio recorders, photographs and video, Sandeep Junnarkar and Srinivas Kuruganti [see team information here] plan to document the lives of families struggling to buy ARV drugs to keep a family member healthy; the challenges that stigmatized AIDS patients face in trying to earn enough money to buy the lifesaving treatment; activists desperately searching for new sources of inexpensive ARV drugs or lobbying the Indian government to grant compulsory licenses to continue producing cheap drugs. We plan to visit AIDS shelters and hospices in and around Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai.

The project will harness the Internet to showcase an issue with global ramifications — not just as information but as a way to involve viewers.

A multimedia grassroots expose can completely bypass the traditional media gatekeepers to help people gain awareness of a pressing issue. We hope the project will not only inform people around the world that India's new patent law is likely to have a global impact, further aggravating the AIDS health crisis, but also allow them to spread the information widely using built-in Internet technologies. We also hope the multimedia slide presentation moves them to take the next step by clicking on the links to send emails to the appropriate officials or organizations to acknowledge the potential health crisis.

The expenses for this project are primarily travel costs to and within India. As a grassroots effort, Srinivas and Sandeep plan to stay with family, friends and at inexpensive hotels. We strongly believe that this issue will be ignored by the mainstream media but is of global importance because of the ramifications of the new patent law on the AIDS treatment. Nonetheless, the total cost to report, record, photograph and video is in the range of $5,000.

Indiana University has kindly provided $2,000 of the total $5,000 required for helping to defray the cost of air travel, video tapes and other minimum necessities. Please help by donating any amount you can afford.

Please visit our web site to help support this project.

Been a long time since I posted an entry under PhotoBlog, so here is something I shot recently.

Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography

Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories

“I don't think a photo inspires murder.”

Via Srinivas Kuruganti

The powers that be in NYC have seen the light. No pun intended. But the MTA subway ban on photography has been scrapped. Can I hear a collective Amen?

I remember one very hot summer driving past the Old Woodlands drive-in restaurant [good God those masala dosas were good weren't they when that place was hummin'?] and I saw a rather curious advertisement on the road. It was an image of a Badminton shuttlecock with a condom on the cork end of it. I can't quite remember the tag line but man did that image stick in my head. Obviously it was a progressive, pro-active public service message. But unlike the ubiquitous Nirodh or family planning advertisements that one can see on many an unwelcome compound wall in Chennai, this advertisement was self-financed by Sharad Haksar, a Chennai-based commercial photographer.

A mutual friend, Keshav Prakash (an exquisite cinematographer), reintroduced me to Sharad which was how I came to know about the advertisement being his creation. I haven't been in touch with Sharad recently but I know he and his business has been booming; mostly due to his interesting and off-beat perspective on things.

Now Popular Photography has announced the Photographer of the Year award and Sharad is in the running for the top spot. In fact, out of thousands of applicants, he has made it into the top-ten. That's quite a feat.

Sharad's entries can be seen here. I wouldn't urge you to vote for him if I didn't think his work was up to snuff [to vote for him please click the link and then click the radio button next to photographer number 9]. The fact is Sharad's innovative and creative thinking on a slew of campaigns has deservedly brought him fame. It has also placed Chennai (Madras to most of us) on the map for extremely high quality commerical photography.

The deadline to vote is May 31. The winning photographer receives a plane ticket to NYC and $5000 prize to be presumably spent on a project of the photographer's choice.

Starting today I am going to post links here in a style that echoes Jason Kottke or Dave Winer. These will be quick links to interesting information, or at least what I consider interesting.

I am doing this partly because I have little time to navel gaze or stew over large chunks of text. You might still hear from me when time presents itself but this is where things are going to go from now on.

So let's begin … [the way I think this works best is if I just post what I have so far and then go back and keep adding to this one post for the day]:

Actress Penelope Cruz plays Mother Teresa in a documentary.

Indian government acknowledges the role of bloggers and moves to accredit “net journalists.”

Don't take pictures of a picture. You'll get cited [at least in California].

Cult camera-maker Leica is fighting for its life. [Does this news make my M6TTL worth more or less?]

‘Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity,' documentary “… film explores how media imagery fuels association of the turban with terrorism, leading to widespread discrimination against Sikhs.” Watch it at New York City's Asian American International Film Festival in July.

FILE magazine. Unexpected photography. Nevermind the obvious anagram, anyone notice the creative nod to LIFE magazine?