But maybe I should be more positive in my achievements this year? Katie and I have edited more than two-dozen assignments which in real terms means we can basically now look at the sun without blinking. We’ve generated a reasonable amount of metadata although a little less than I’d have hoped, and created new social media and web portals all amongst the odd shoot.

I will be the first to admit I started out strongly in the social media domain monitoring it all the time but then discovered I couldn’t shut down from it. I was a wired little bunny so Katie put me on a restricted diet so that I have enough brain cells left to focus on other things i.e. getting the cork out of a wine bottle or was that the top off the scotch? So please forgive me if I seem to have disappeared a little it was out of self-preservation not from a lack of interest. I’ll try and find a healthier balance in 2012.

So in short I’m working right through, except the Christmas weekend, and then I’ll board a plane at 11.59pm New Years Eve for Zanzibar, Tanzania and South Africa. No rest for the wicked but the Serengeti is my soul-place so it will be like going home. To everyone and their families and friends I wish you all the very best of times over the Festive Season and in 2012.

Jason

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I’d like to congratulate Walid on his wonderful series featuring men working in a toxic sulphur mine. His images are a collection of wonderful compositions that strive to place the labourers within their environment whilst communicating their struggle and obvious dedication to their families. I was very pleased to see such a well-balanced mix of environmental portraiture and landscape within the set. I was also very happy to see Walid avoid the cliché mining image so common today, very well done!

Every year I marvel at all that I’ve had the privilege to experience and photograph and also all of the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. I feel that way about this Scholarship now, we’ve become somewhat of a family finding long lost cousins and making new friends every year.

For myself 2011 has been a little different, for a start I have been shooting but a lot less; I’ve been travelling but also a lot less. I lost four months to illness, possibly penance for my wayward lifestyle, and in between smaller photographic projects attempted with my wonderful assistant Katie to edit a couple of hundred thousand frames, about 27 shoot folders to be exact. And we’re still going…

I was also back in Washington meeting with Editors and friends at National Geographic so if it’s any consolation the harsh eye I’ve focussed on your entries has likewise been turned inwardly. The result was a mix of surprise, frustration, pride and pinch of self-loathing and flagellation.

The quality of entries rose again this year so the judging was even more cutthroat if that was at all possible. It was wonderful to see such a variety of stories told in so many ways and from so many countries. However, it still surprises me how few people focus the eye on their local community but there you have it, you all like to travel it seems!

Winning the Scholarship is not simply a matter of selecting the best imagery but in finding the individual we felt would benefit the most from time with me and in turn what they hoped to achieve through their photography. This year that element of the judging became more difficult as people chose to ignore the judging criteria in far larger numbers.

Many people seemed troubled talking about themselves wasting valuable words describing things that should have been in their captioning. So many people didn’t tell me what they wanted to gain from the experience or even what they hoped to learn. Some people chose not to even caption their images, a major omission… Ignore the judging process criteria at your own peril!

In closing congratulations to everyone that took the time to produce a portfolio and enter. This in itself is a great exercise and strengthens your photographic ability in ways you may not realise. Please remember, what is most important about your images is what you capture at the time, not what you do in postproduction. Enjoy your photography as a creative expression of who you are and your place in the world. I hope to see you all again next year!

Best Wishes

Jason

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Jason Edwards with Anna Zhu, winner of the 2009 Travel Photography Scholarship

It is amazing how fast time has passed and the closing date for the 2011 National Geographic World Nomads Photography Scholarship is upon us (8th of November). I thought I’d post a few reminders for those still preparing their entry and for people a little more organised who may wish to check their submission again.

Now I don’t want to confuse anyone so this post is simply a reminder about certain elements of the Scholarship and it does not circumvent nor replace everything that is on the World Nomads site.

So let’s go over a few things:

1. The closing date and time is calculated on Australian time. Be sure you know when that equates to your local time so that you don’t miss the cut off!

2. Don’t leave it until the last minute to upload your entry, as there may be a backlog.

3. Remember to supply image captions!

4. Use the 300-word essay to tell me about yourself, your photography, and what you hope to achieve through your photography. It’s your opportunity to sell yourself! Do NOT use this text to tell me about the images you submitted that’s what image captions are for.

5. Revisit the Judging Process and read all ten points to be sure you have done what is asked.

6. DO NOT EXCEED THE 300 WORD ESSAY LIMIT! Entries that exceed the limit CANNOT win!!! Seriously, just do a word count on your text.

7. This is not an event for professionals, be sure you do not qualify as such (see Am I Eligible video).

8. Don’t include a weak image in your submission, if you have four great images and one weak image leave it out.

9. Your images are meant to illustrate a PLACE you have visited, and the SENSE OF PLACE must be palpable.

10. The ‘place’ does not have to be exotic it can be your neighbourhood, your bedroom or the other side of the planet it really doesn’t matter.

11. If you are a finalist I WILL penalise you for excessive treatment of your images. Losing a single point might cost you the Scholarship so please be conservative when preparing your images! If in doubt please re-read the Digital Adjustment Guidelines.

12. We are looking for an individual with potential, and the greatest desire to listen and learn. I am working on this assignment and will need your assistance; this will take patience and focus.

Have fun and good luck!

Jason

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It was also pleasing to see the ease with which students can create and display works that in the past may have been frowned upon. My mother once demanded I remove a set of testicles from a surrealist drawing I’d created for my portfolio only to have the art teacher reprimand her at parent-teacher night. That seemed a far cry from the sculptured fetus wrapped tightly in clear plastic hanging in an installation piece before me!

Well done to all involved!

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Jason Edwards Shooting Animal Specimens at Museum Victoria

So the last thing I felt like doing was shooting preserved mammal specimens in jars. Don’t get me wrong I’m incredibly grateful to Museum Victoria who are so knowledgeable and always accommodate National Geographic’s obscure needs but it just seemed like a forced march mentally. If it hadn’t been for Andrew Noble assisting me I doubt I’d have captured a suitable frame, so Mate a big thank you! Photographers are notorious for not crediting their assistants but without the right person holding you vertically at the right time you’d just fall in a heap, quite literally.

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One of countless infections suffered by Jason Edwards

September saw three months of immobility, cortisone had the desired effect and a prolapsed disk in my neck returned to it’s preferred position. October and I was back in the field with fifty kilograms of equipment on my back stalking Saltwater Crocodiles. I found myself in the bush meat markets of Northern Peru in November, running from gangs with four-inch nails dipped in human excrement attached to broom sticks. Then in December I became blind in my right eye after an insect in the Amazon Basin set up home behind the eyeball. Eventually it emerged or my body expelled it, take your pick, in a gelatinous ball and my eyesight returned.

The New Year arrived and with it storm chasing over the Andes in an open cockpit helicopter flown by an ex-military Top Gun, Carlos, who informed me we’d broken his record for staying aloft in such terrible conditions. That was comforting! Fifty feet (15m) seas, force ten 100 kph winds and blizzards south of the Antarctic Circle, the street gangs of Buenos Aires and home for edit, or was that Swine Flu?…

Ever conscious of the many jokes about ‘Man Colds’ I realised I was uncomfortable telling my wife I was coming down with something. After all she’d barley seen me in months and my son, who was three at the time, was desperate for a worthy sparring partner after realising his mum was not up for him jumping on her chest like a trampoline.

Her initial response was “get some sleep” and my rapidly deteriorating chest, throat and muscle strength weren’t quite enough to sway her from a family weekend at the beach. Sympathy crept in when I almost collapsed and let the icy Southern Ocean waves draw me off into the darkness my son deciding we could chase more waves when the sun came up.

My condition deteriorated rapidly and a doctor quarantined me in my son’s bedroom with a bag of medication some of which would make me “quite nauseas”.  Ironically the doctor had just been listening to ABC radio that were promoting a piece I’d done for their television network. As he elaborated on the commentator talking about my adventures I smiled grimly trying not to hack a lung onto his desk.

I won’t go into gruesome details about my liaison with Swine Flu suffice to say I never thought it was possible to cough so hard and yet still have my eyeballs resting in their sockets. In the end exhaustion overcomes everything and you sleep, partly out of necessity and partly out of fear. Fear of the pain, the hacking rawness in my respiratory system and then there was that fear for the safety of my family.

And that’s what it all boiled down to in the end, what was I risking with them still in the family home? My wife had a vague memory she’d been vaccinated at her company; my son was too young for the vaccination. We’d been together as my illness evolved usually the worst time for contagion, and he was desperate to blow kisses to me through the partially opened door. It occurred to me that if he became this unwell he would not survive and rightly or wrongly that thought imbedded itself in my mind like a hook.

I was on a fast train to ‘worst case scenario land’. It was at this point that it entered my feverish brain that my son was now looking at me as the feeble, sickly father too fragile to play, cajole or even fend for himself. “Mum likes firemen doesn’t she, yep let’s find her one of those!”

But probably the greatest revelation was when we realised we’d been keeping my illness secret from everyone. I wasn’t even a dirty little secret; I was the rat spreading the plague. My wife and I discussed whom we had told and when, marking time and fearful of the story spreading. If she slipped and told someone inadvertently they would visibly recoil before composing themselves. We were uninvited from events even further down the calendar. We had no intention of putting others in harms way but the damage was done. Conversations with doctors convinced us our son had survived my contagious period and was therefore safe to go to crèche. And in my mind if he was no risk to the other children he was safer there than at home.

And that’s what you do when you find yourself alienated from the world that you’ve built for yourself, a world of Google self-diagnosis, where rumour and paranoia govern logic and compassion. You become survivalists, rating and ranking scenarios and decisions on their potentially disastrous outcomes. Weighing up what are acceptable losses and how far and for how long to stay the course.

Swine flu, hell I’ll add it to the list of diseases I’ve had. The worst no, but the only time I’ve feared hurting the ones I love. Give me a long black bug with pincers living behind my eye any day of the week!

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A young Fijian girl stands poised, hidden between the colourful saris of her mother and relatives at a hindu temple

Welcome to the first in a series of small tutorials on my approach to photography. I’m frequently asked questions by students and other aspiring photographers how I go about my work and what to do in specific situations. I’ve spent considerble time in my career mentoring and advising individuals about the ins and outs of the business and thought that perhaps it’s time that I started to put it all in writing…

Now before you get too excited and start tapping away at that keyboard, as much as I’d really love to answer every question and e-mail that I get (and actually have to fight the urge to do so) I simply don’t have the time. But here I intend to address the most common and perhaps what I believe poignant topics that arise. So with that in mind today I will be writing about something that comes up all the time – Photographing people. Please keep in mind my responses will focus directly on questions and issues raised by followers of this blog and so might be brief in nature. However, that does not mean I will not elaborate on those issues again in a later more detailed blog.

Janine writes:

My name is Janine and I am a student photographer. I am currently working on a project documenting the small city I live in, where my university resides. I am finding it difficult to photograph people in public places. I know that with a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in mind, I can photograph people in public places with out their permission, however, I feel likeI should explain my presence and reasoning for photographing them. Is this reasonable? If so do I take the photo then explain, or explain then shoot? What do you find the best way to photograph strangers who may or may not care to have their photograph taken? How do you approach your unknowing subjects?

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Whilst I’d love to get back to everyone personally, its just not possible.

Cheers

Jas

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