Showing posts with label Adventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adventures. Show all posts

Thursday, November 15, 2012

National Geographic 125 Years: Legendary Photographs, Adventures, and Discoveries That Changed the World







National Geographic 125 Years: Legendary Photographs, Adventures, and Discoveries That Changed the World Overview


Featuring show-stopping imagery and thrilling behind-the-scenes tales, National Geographic 125 Years captures the heart of National Geographic's fascinating history, from its earliest days as a scientific club to its growth into one of the world's largest geographic organizations. The book reveals how much we've come to know about our fascinating world through the pages and unforgettable imagery of National Geographic, and taps key voices from the forefront of ocean and space exploration, climate science, archaeology, mountaineering, and many other disciplines to peer with us over the horizon and see where we are heading in the future.

Organized thematically, chapters focus on major accomplishments in each of the three realms of Earth, Sea, and Sky (featured on the National Geographic flag). Author Mark Collins Jenkins will present the subject matter chronologically, focusing on great leaps forward that dramatically changed our understanding of the planet, from summiting Everest to landing on the moon to discovering Titanic. Sidebars will feature famous names including Jared Diamond, Sylvia Earle, Buzz Aldrin, Bob Ballard, Jane Goodall and more, contributing thoughts about big questions of exploration, key frontiers in research, and enduring mysteries. We'll ask beloved characters like Zahi Hawass whether or not there's anything left to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings; Paul Sereno if we'll be able to create a dinosaur from DNA; Jared Diamond when society faces the next "collapse;" and many more questions designed to be relevant for many years to come.

The focus throughout the book will be on the impact the National Geographic Society has made on the world and how it has reported and reflected a dramatically changing planet, not an insider's account of internal affairs.

Special galleries between each of the sections will focus on storytelling techniques pioneered by National Geographic, including photography, television, and digital reportage. These will offer behind-the-scenes glimpses at the process of telling the greatest stories on earth.

National Geographic 125 Years: Legendary Photographs, Adventures, and Discoveries That Changed the World Specifications


A Sample from National Geographic 125 Years

Japan
JAPAN | 1912 In a hand-tinted picture, a Japanese girl
has a “wail” of a good time playing her traditional
three-stringed samisen. (Eliza R. Scidmore, p. 77)

Click here for a larger image

Afghanistan
AFGHANISTAN | 1984 Editor Bill Garrett had a fabulous
eye: It was he who plucked this Kodachrome frame from a
pile of rejects and made it the most famous cover image in
the magazine’s history. (Steve McCurry, p. 244)

Click here for a larger image

Canada
CANADA | 1909 Portrait of the explorer as a cold
man: Whether Robert E. Peary and his assistant,
Matthew Henson, reached the North Pole in 1909
or not, they came closer to that goal than anyone
before them. (Robert E. Peary Collection, NGS, p. 61)

Click here for a larger image





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Friday, May 21, 2010

Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War







Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War Overview


Fresh out of college and passionate about photography, Deborah Copaken Kogan moved to Paris in 1988 and began knocking on photo agency doors, begging to be given a photojournalism assignment. Within weeks she was on the back of a truck in Afghanistan, the only woman—and the only journalist—in a convoy of mujahideen, the rebel “freedom fighters” at the time. She had traveled there with a handsome but dangerously unpredictable Frenchman, and the interwoven stories of their relationship and the assignment set the pace for Shutterbabe’s six chapters, each covering a different corner of the globe, each linked to a man in Kogan’s life at the time.

From Zimbabwe to Romania, from Russia to Haiti, Kogan takes her readers on a heartbreaking yet surprisingly hilarious journey through a mine-strewn decade, seamlessly blending her personal battles—sexism, battery, life-threatening danger—with the historical ones—wars, revolution, unfathomable suffering—it was her job to record.



Customer Reviews


This very unusual book is fascinating whether you are interested in pursuing a career in journalism or just curious about what life is like as a woman covering war for a living. This "Shutterbabe" tells the story of her life from behind the camera across different battle zones around the globe. She also tells of the men she meets and gets involved with. There has been some criticism of the book for these tales of sexual escapades, but this is the raw story of a real person's life, and I think that they reflect a complete story, instead of one massaged to make the author look better.

My only disappointment with the story is that she finally gives it all up for motherhood, but that is real life too. Before that, Kogan was a producer for "Dateline" on NBC after her return to the United States. She speaks of tiring of wartime weariness and equates photojournalists to vultures who prey on others' misery--all of which I find disingenuous for someone who made her own living this way for many years. It's ok to change your mind, but I believe that photojournalism is an important way of bringing news to people, and I think Kogan would agree or she would have pursued another way of making a living with her camera in the first place.

Despite these claims, I highly recommend this book to everyone, particularly young women interested in journalism. This book is a real insider's look at covering war, from a woman's point of view, something (unfortunately) we still don't hear that much of, even in the 21st century. Don't miss it.


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