BACK FROM TURKEY

I've just got back from an assignment in Turkey shooting lifestyle food and travel photography for a magazine here in the uk. I've just edited down the pictures now before uploading them to the editor for their final choices which I shall photoshop. Before I do I just wanted to post one of my favourite pictures from the trip. It was a man minding his own business in his shop and he caught me taking a picture of him. Most of the time I immediately pull the camera down but I thought I'd carry on shooting while he was wondering what I was up to and got something I quite like. 

TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR.....

I've just been told that I've been nominated for Travel Photographer of the Year by the Italian Tourist Board for this set of pictures that appeared in Food and Travel magazine. So quite pleased at the moment. The awards ceremony is in London on the 21 Feb at Vanilla so will be going along and keeping my fingers crossed. 

TRAVEL WRITING & PHOTOGRAPHY

Today I tweeted a blog article http://pauldymond.blogspot.com/ from Paul Dymond as he talked about the difficulty of doing both the photography and writing on an assignment for his editorial clients. If you have time you should really read his entry but the gist of the piece was that when doing both there is a compromise in the end result - poorer pictures and words.

What prompted his post was his recent job for DestinAsian Magazine where he was working solely as a photographer and he stated how unusual it was these days. With editorial budgets being cut magazines are looking for writers to be photographers and photographers to be writers and, while cheaper, the end product isn't nearly as good.

I can testify to this as I've done a fair bit of photography and writing to know that one always suffers. Being a photographer I concentrate on my strengths so the writing suffers. Like DestinAsian, I do a lot of work for Food & Travel magazine, and they know the value of sending a photographer and writer on most of their features and it makes the magazine all the more stronger for it especially when food writing is such an art form to do well. Long may it continue.