How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet

This essay looks inside the traditional Nepalese Hindu rituals and cycle of death at Kathmandu’s Holiest shrine for cremation, Pasupatinath. From the hospital located right alongside the ghats where patients come to die, the washing and blessing rituals for the dead, hair cutting ceremonies and the cremation of the bodies. Pasupati is the second holiest place for Hindu’s to be cremated outside of Varanasi in India. The mourning and burning rituals take place on the ghats lining the Bagmati River that eventually leads into the Ganges River. The cremations are open to the public and as bodies  are cremated there are other Hindu practices taking place throughout the temple complex, with bathings, pujas and pilgrimages. There is an atmosphere of humanity clashing with ancient traditions and the environment. Animals roam freely among the people and wood is still used for the body cremations causing plumes of toxic smoke to constantly hover around the temples and its surroundings. Due to environmental damages caused by the fires the Nepalese Government is planning to ban the ancient practice of using wood this year and replace the cremation ghats with electric ovens instead.

http://timemachinemag.com/

Photo © Stephen Dupont

Louise Whelan Head On Portrait Prize

“Rhein II” was created in 1999 by famed German artist Andreas Gursky, who’s known for his large, colorful and richly detailed photographs. The 81- x 140-inch print greatly exceeded expectations — the picture was only estimated to sell for between $2.5 and $3.5 million. It also broke the previous record set by Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #9,” which sold for $3.89 million in May.

MOSCOW (AP) — A demonstration by at least 20,000 people on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as president turned into a battle with police Sunday after some protesters tried to split off from the approved venue and march to the Kremlin.

Club-wielding officers wearing helmets seized demonstrators and hauled them to police vehicles, dragging some by the hair, others by the neck. Several protesters were injured, including one man with blood dripping from his head down the left side of his face.

Three leaders of the opposition movement that gained new life over the winter were among those arrested: Sergei Udaltsov, Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov.

More than 400 people were arrested, and Russia’s chief investigative agency said it was considering filing criminal charges of inciting riots against some of them. Police reported that 12 riot police officers were injured.”

Photo by Associated Press Photographer Sergey Ponomarev

Photo Bohdan Warchomij

Mona is more a destination than a museum. Situated on a peninsula on the Derwent River it is attracting international attention and tourism because of a revolutionary approach to art.

Mona’s London-born director, Mark Fraser, whom Walsh poached from auction house Sotheby’s, says it would be a mistake to think Mona was anything other than “about David – one man and one man’s views”.  It’s not a museum to David, but I do think it is a museum of David.” (from  The Australian).

The name apparently comes from the satirical novel Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut in which Mona, (or the Museum of Old or New Art, Walsh’s baby), is the adopted daughter of an island dictator. The exhibitions are revolutionary and contemporary at the same time and incredibly stimulating in Walsh’s subterranean temple to secularism. The visitor has no time to be lulled into apathy. From the coffin of Pausirus to Sydney Nolan’s Snake to Cloaca, a machine of the human digestive system with the same byproduct by Wim Delvoye, the art opens our eyes and minds and confronts us in a hugely positive way.

The 99 steps from the ferry and the reflective mirrors at the entrance to Mona are part of a contemporary experience that many art museums would kill for. Visitor figures since it opened are astonishing and will continue to grow but it is the David Walsh vision that will cement Mona’s reputation.

“My passion has always been to photograph landscapes during interesting weather events,” Mitch Dobrowner told BJP. “Mainly because they offered the most interesting lighting conditions. So I asked myself, ‘Why not try to experiment?’ which brought me to research photographing storm systems in Tornado Alley.” Tornado Alley is a loosely geographically defined area located between the Rocky and the Appalachian Mountains in the US, and Dobrowner has now been shooting there for a couple of years, creating a portfolio of photographs that has won the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards.

 Dobrowner was selected from more than 112,000 entries from 171 countries, and a shortlist of more than 120 photographers. He received the top prize in the Fine art/Landscape category, as well as L’Iris d’Or worth $25,000 at a high-profile ceremony in London on 26 April.

Dobrowner says he had to adapt and grow in order to be able to shoot storms the way he wanted to. “At first I didn’t know what to expect, but after the first few days I realised that shooting these storms was somewhat different from shooting a landscape,” he tells BJP. “The gear I initially used was not really capable of high ISO speeds which limited me in freezing the action, so I had to adapt my style and ended up being happy with what I captured. I also had to be prepared to make fast decisions with both exposures and composition. Sometimes you step out and all hell is breaking loose. So I retooled my gear and rebooted my brain. Both gave me the additional flexibility I needed and made it totally fun.”

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2170555/mitch-dobrowner-wins-2012-sony-world-photography-awards-title#ixzz1tZI4wpPl

The images appeared in the Weekend AFR and are on the www.afr.com website.

Somewhere between Eugene, Oregon and The West Coast, two young girls sit on top of an old shack drinking from a giant bottle of bourbon whiskey.

At dusk, a flock of birds fly over Austin’s Catholic Church near downtown Austin, Texas

A young girl plays with a hoola hoop while an older lady roams with her guitar on a foggy afternoon in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Dean Tirkot

The 2012 Moran Prizes call for entries for the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize is on again. The photography prize is worth $100,000 this year.
There were many well known photographers on the list of finalists from 2011, including Tamara Dean, Katrin Koenning, and Natalie Grono, all of whom have been involved with Foto Freo in Perth.
All entries are to be submitted online via the Moran Prizes website.
The closing date for entries is the 21st May, 2012
www.moranprizes.com.au
Here are a sample of images from last year’s finalists:

Gerard O'Connor

James Alcock

Katrin Koenning

Natalie Grono

Tamara Dean

Peter Rossi

Winner Jack Atley