Amongst the 20 shortlisted entrants, Akash was unanimously voted the outstanding entrant in the 2009 awards by the judging panel. His two portfolios demonstrate an ability to work with movement and a range of different light. They are vibrant and engaging whilst still managing to tell stories about the people and places in his images. Judges’ Panel 2009, Travel Photographer of the Year.

Ship breaking in Pakistan

Ships purchased on the basis of their light displacement tonnage (ldt) are demolished in ship breaking yards and sent to steel re-rolling mills for reuse as raw material for production of steel. Currently, the international ship demolition market is cantered on the Indian subcontinent. While a large number of tankers find their way to scrap yards in Pakistan and Bangladesh,

The workers in Gaddani, Pakistan are mostly Pashtu people from the Northern Territories close to the Afgan border, they are seasonal workers, in their home they work as farmers, they are quite poor, they are what you would call fundamentalists in their Islamic believes, they veil and lock up their women, they are hard workers, they are tall and strong, they are soft spoken but proud. G.M.B. Akash.

Take me Home

Due to Bangladesh’s large population, inadequate seats on the trains and poverty, it is quite common to see a thick layer of people occupying the roof of a train. Frequent accidents, which occur when a free rider slips, are not enough to deter these stowaways of the railway. G.M.B. Akash.

Hat Tip: The Guardian.

If you’re a photographer you might well think so

While the use of anti-terrorist stop and search powers has fallen in recent months, a succession of high-profile incidents involving the use of the legislation against photographers has embarrassed senior officers, who privately concede that the rank and file are misusing their powers on the ground.

Recent examples include Jeff Overs, a BBC photographer who told the Andrew Marr Show he was stopped under suspicion of terrorism reconnaissance while photographing St Paul’s Cathedral, and Andrew White, an amateur photographer questioned by two police community support officers for photographing Christmas lights in Brighton.

In April two Austrian tourists were forced to delete their shots after being stopped by police in Walthamstow; and Alex Turner, an amateur photographer, was arrested under section 44 after taking images of a fish and chip shop in Kent.

Earlier this week Grant Smith, an architecture photographer, was apprehended under section 44 by City of London police while photographing Sir Christopher Wren’s Christ Church, around the corner from the Gherkin.

Smith, a critic of the stop and search policy, had been wearing a badge that read “I am a photographer not a terrorist” when police approached him. To top it off, when an ITN London Tonight crew arrived in the area to cover the story they reportedly found themselves subject to similar treatment. Paul Lewis, The Guardian.

Perhaps I’m being over dramatic, but you have to wonder how we’ve ended where photographing a chip shop can get you arrested. Haven’t the Police got something better to do with their time? You’d hope so.

Emilio Morenatti won the 66th POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year Award – whilst his photos are visually stunning they’re all tinged with sadness.

A Pakistani child looks on as women covered with burqas from the tribal region of Bajur and Mohmand agency wait to be registered at the Jalozai refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Jan. 30, 2009. More than 200,000 people have fled the fighting in Bajur and Mohmand agency to camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Afghan Niurkhan, 11, stands next to his tent in Afshar refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan. Niurkhan who lost his parents two months ago during fighting between coalition forces and Taliban militants fled his village in Helmand province to seek shelter in the refugee camp in southern Kabul.

An Afghan man carries a bundle of balloons as he walks along a street on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, June 27, 2008

See more at the Denver Post.

Hat Tip: Very Short List.

Made of steel rails from bookshelves. On October 10, 1994, inmates Gerhard Polak and Raimund Albert used this ladder during their successful escape from ‘Santa Fu’ prison in Hamburg, Germany.

Mark Steinmetz photographed some of the tools German prison inmates created in their spare-time – as Mark writes These examples bear witness to man’s love of freedom. See more of Marc’s photos

Hat Tip: Very Short List.

Clarisse d’Arcimoles unearthed some old family photos and has restaged them. The results seem to ask us questions about our own relationships and mortality.

Hat Tip: BBC.

A Boeing 747 used by the president was escorted over lower Manhattan by a US air force fighter jet today as part of a government photo opportunity and training mission, causing a brief panic among office workers near the site of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Guardian.

As no-one had thought to inform New Yorkers workers unsurprisingly they poured onto the streets in panic.

What PR executive came up with that idea?

On The Official Google Blog software engineer Paco Galanes
writes:

We’re excited to announce availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.

Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive – about 10 million photos.

Just add the text “source:life” to your Google Images search to specify images from the archive.

Hat Tip: A Fistful of Euros.

Climate Change is the big environmental issue, but what are the effects, here in the UK it’s expected that our climate will become Mediterranean although looking at our last two summers that’s pretty hard to believe.

With his series “The Chinese Dust Bowl” Benoit Aquin, the winner of the first Prix Pictet, what is claimed as the world’s richest photographic prize, shows the brutal effects in northern China which is turning 400,000 square km of once-fertile farmland into desert.

Sanggen Dalai, Inner Mongolia, China, 2006

Gansu Province, China, 2006

Wuwei Region, Gansu, China, 2006

Wuwei Oasis, Gansu, China, 2006

Wuwei Oasis, Gansu, China, 2006

Hongsibao, Ningxia, China, 2007

Bayannur Region, Inner Mongolia, China, 2006

Xilinhot City, Inner Mongolia, China, 2006

Hongsibao, Ningxia, China, 2007

Lanzhou, Gansu, China, 2007

Source: BBC.

Steve Winter's snow leopard photo

Steve spent 10 months in remote Indian mountains using remote-controlled cameras to take pictures of snow leopards. One freezing May morning, he found this snow leopard gazing back at him. “I was thrilled to have finally captured the shot I had dreamed of – a wild snow leopard in its true element”

Source: The Guardian.