NPR: Traveling Down The Amazon

Here's Traveling Down The Amazon, an intelligently produced NPR multimedia feature that combines audio, stills and graphics to tell the story of transcontinental highway being built in Peru and Brazil which promises to bring economic opportunities, and also acute environmental problems, to one of the most remote places on earth.

NPR correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and staff photographer John Poole traveled the Peruvian route to produce this series.

I found this via a Twitter post (aka a "tweet") by Tracy Boyer, the editor of the excellent Innovative Interactivity blog, that deals with new multimedia and which she appropriately calls "a digital watering hole for multimedia enthusiasts".

Traveling Down The Amazon is not the kind of feature that one can watch in one sitting...it's too long and too dense to absorb in one go. So bookmark it for whenever you have the time to follow it properly.

I haven't had the time to watch except the first chapter The Road, and found it surprising that the producers of the piece haven't sync'ed the stills and the narration by Garcia-Navarro together. It hasn't bothered me much because I could return or go forward to the still photograph I was interested in, and still keep the narration going on.

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Moises Saman: Machu Picchu

Photograph Moises Saman-All Rights Reserved
I noticed that The New York Times' featured a slideshow of Machu Picchu's photographs by Moises Saman, who's better known as a conflict photographer, having covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The slideshow is titled The Lost City of the Incas while the accompanying article is written by Simon Romero.

The article's premise is that while Hiram Bingham (a model for the fictional Indiana Jones) has always been credited with discovering the Incan city of Machu Picchu in 1911, evidence has emerged that a German adventurer may have preceded him. Some records show that the German adventurer bought land in the area in the 1860s. It's an interesting read for those who feel (like I do) that many countries' heritage and patrimony have been pillaged by colonizing Western powers (especially European). For instance, I read that Ethiopia is now demanding that Britains museums return some of its most significant religious treasures and artifacts, including the Ethiopian royal crown, 140 years after they were looted by marauding British troops.

As for Moises Saman, he became a staff photographer at New York Newsday from 2000-07, and is currently a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. His work received many awards and recognitions, including in the 2007 World Press Photo contest and the UNICEF Photo of the Year awards. He also received a World Press Photo award for his coverage of the presidential elections in Haiti, as well as being named Photographer of the Year by the New York Press Photographers Association.

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NY Times: Medicine Hunter

Image ©Jennifer Szymaszek/New York Times - All Rights Reserved
The New York Times seems to have recently enhanced its multimedia features available through its website. These appear to be better edited (except for some of its "fluff" travel slideshows) and are more interesting both visually and content-wise. Let's hope this continues since it provides creative opportunities and avenues to photojournalists and photographers.

A recent multimedia feature is on the efforts of an ethnobotanist who calls himself the Medicine Hunter and about his quest in Peru to study indigenous medicinal plants. His goal is for people to use safer medicine, and by that he means plant medicine.

In Peru, he is studying maca, a small root vegetable that grows in the country's central highlands. He describes it as �a turnip that packs a punch. It imparts energy, sex drive and stamina like nothing else.�

If this is true, the maca will catch like wildfire in the United States, where about 36% of all adults ingest some form of complementary and alternative medicine. The baby boomer generation will provide an enthusiastic target market for the enterprising companies that will make maca pills.

The photographs are by Jennifer Szymaszek, who also recorded the audio. Note to photographers: start learning (and start using) audio recording techniques as soon as you can, if you haven't done so already.

NY Times' Multimedia Feature: Medicine Hunter in Peru

NY Times' Article: On a Remote Path to Cures

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NY Times: Medicine Hunter

Image ©Jennifer Szymaszek/New York Times - All Rights Reserved
The New York Times seems to have recently enhanced its multimedia features available through its website. These appear to be better edited (except for some of its "fluff" travel slideshows) and are more interesting both visually and content-wise. Let's hope this continues since it provides creative opportunities and avenues to photojournalists and photographers.

A recent multimedia feature is on the efforts of an ethnobotanist who calls himself the Medicine Hunter and about his quest in Peru to study indigenous medicinal plants. His goal is for people to use safer medicine, and by that he means plant medicine.

In Peru, he is studying maca, a small root vegetable that grows in the country's central highlands. He describes it as a turnip that packs a punch. It imparts energy, sex drive and stamina like nothing else.

If this is true, the maca will catch like wildfire in the United States, where about 36% of all adults ingest some form of complementary and alternative medicine. The baby boomer generation will provide an enthusiastic target market for the enterprising companies that will make maca pills.

The photographs are by Jennifer Szymaszek, who also recorded the audio. Note to photographers: start learning (and start using) audio recording techniques as soon as you can, if you haven't done so already.

NY Times' Multimedia Feature: Medicine Hunter in Peru

NY Times' Article: On a Remote Path to Cures

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Atacama Desert: Multimedia

Here's a lovely combination of photography, audio, interactive maps, and design in a multimedia package that will inspire all of us who see this type of media as being one of the inevitable next steps in photojournalism....and in editorial or documentary travel photography.

It centers on the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, which is the driest place on earth. Stretching 600 miles from Peru's southern border, there are parts where rainfall has never been recorded. However the Atacama is also home to more than a million people who find refuge in coastal cities, mining camps and oasis towns. There are vibrant communities, artisans, toughened workers and a devoted group of astronomers taking advantage of this unique environment.

It's really too long to view in one sitting as it's a comprehensive study of the Atacama desert, so I started off with the section on the people...always the more interesting. The main backing for the project is from the Institute for Science Learning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Atacama Desert

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Miami Herald: Latin American Hip Hop

Image Copyright © Noelle Theard-All Rights Reserved
The Miami Herald just produced a brilliant multimedia feature on the hip-hop culture in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The feature is part of a larger many-layered and equally brilliant feature titled A Rising Voice: Afro-Latin Americans which examines social and racial tensions in Nicaragua, Cuba, Honduras (just listen to the beat of the Garifuna music!), Dominican Republic and Brazil.

The Latin American Hip Hop feature is a Soundslides production, with the photographs of Noelle Theard, a Miami-based photojournalist, whose talented lenswork and great sense of color/movement allows us to enter the hip hop world in these Latin American countries. The able narration is by Alvaro Cuello who describes for us how hip-hop creates a cultural bond above race and social class.

A highly recommended multimedia feature, here's Miami Herald's Latin American Hip Hop.

Noelle Theard's website is here

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