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Today’s photography site of the day is that of Steve McCurry. He is probably most well known for the picture of the Afghan girl, Sharbat Gula, that was on the cover of National Geographic, but his photography is so much more than that one image.

His photographs remind me that people are people regardless of where they are, and that all people, no matter the culture, have an inherent dignity. In many of his pictures, you will note the importance of family and the presence of children. There is a wonder and playfulness of children despite their circumstances and that the great destroyers of those are war, religious, and political oppression.

When you go to the galleries note that there are 7 different galleries with groups of photographs in each. It might be easy to overlook that fact and not see as many as you might like to see.

One notable item on the site is the ImagineAsia link. ImagineAsia is a non-profit company that was set up to provide school books and other resources to the children of Afghanistan.

For aspiring photojournalists, I can’t think of a better workshop than the one McCurry is conducting in 2011. It is a trip to Myanmar for 13 days. It seems like that would be an incredible trip if you have the resources to do it. Remember to do your research on Myanmar to make sure that you are up to that type of environment. I am not planning on going.

Aside from these, there is also a bio, a bookshelf, fine art prints and posters.

The site does have a few issues. The text that accompanies the fine art prints has non-functioning click here links underlined. I suspect that he may be missing out on some sales. Also, the books have no links to purchase them. Since they aren’t available there, you can follow Amazon Links to Steve McCurry Books and Videos

In conclusion, Steve McCurry’s site, www.stevemccurry.com, is well worth your time to explore. I’ve been working through this site for a few hours this morning. There is a lot to see.

Don’t forget Steve McCurry’s blog. Remember, just because many of these shots are unpublished, doesn’t mean they aren’t worth seeing.

Today’s Photography Site of the Day (which, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t published daily) is photoethnography.com. This site is the work of Karen Nakamura, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Studies at Yale.

On her site, Ms. Nakamura says “Photoethnography can be considered both an applied methodology of an academic social science discipline (Visual Anthropology) as well as a form of artistic expression and social critique, akin to street photography or documentary photography.”

While not necessarily always dealing with photography, you will get a good sense of the person and photoethnography by reading her blog. As would be expected, she has photography and covers social justice issues. This is the part of the site that continues to be actively updated. The rest seems to not be updated often, unfortunately that includes the gallery. That’s OK though. There’s still some great info here.

She has a good, though short, links page.

I like her Equipment page. In it she recommends inexpensive equipment, mostly film based cameras, to get into photoethnography. There are some great recommendations here. I’d give you direct links, but the site is frame based so I’ll just mention some of the content available here.

-Buying classic cameras
-Recommendations
-SLR vs Rangefinder
-35mm vs. MF
-Instruction Manuals
-Batteries / Books
-Camera Bags / Tripods
-Light Meters / Finders
-Repairs / Humidity & Fungus

A few of the links are broken and most of the content is a few years old. But I think it’s still valid. There is a lot of information on this site.

She has a set of pages devoted to her camera collection. These include pictures and text describing the camera. Very nice work. Again, this is a link on the equipment page.

She talks about her favorite street cameras:
Canon P
Yashica Electro 35 GX
Olympus XA
Nikon FE
Nikon S2
Leica M3
Leica M7

and her favorite cameras overall:
Bolsey C22
Canon P
Canonet GIII QL17
Kodak Retina
Leica M3
Leica lenses
Nikon S3
Olympus XA
Pentax 6×7
Spotmatic II
Yashica GSN

While she lists these as her favorites, she has information on about a hundred cameras.

One thing that I wish she would promote more, is her video work. She has films available on Amazon that she mentions in her blog, but she doesn’t seem to have good pages devoted to them on her site. She might get more sales and bring more attention to the issues she has covered with some better marketing.

Her videos are:
Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan
and
A Japanese Funeral

I’ve spent hours here and will spend some more. I’ve only touched on a bit of the site. I recommend that you check it out.

Here is a very interesting documentary by the BBC. This covers the development of a lomography society as well as the history of the Lomo company in Russia. There are some great examples of lomography, some footage of the Russian revolution as well as World War II footage from Russia, and the story of how Vladamir Putin became involved in this movement.

Lomo Documentary part 1 of 7

Lomo Documentary part 2 of 7

Lomo Documentary part 3 of 7

Lomo Documentary part 4 of 7

Lomo Documentary part 5 of 7

Lomo Documentary part 6 of 7

Lomo Documentary part 7 of 7

Check here for Diana, Holga and Lomography items.