New York University's j-school has a terrific resource for working journalists. Scroll down the page to “Get Up To Speed.”

“Momaya Press began with two literary-minded girls up late in a boarding school dormitory, dreaming big. Ten years down the road, we've started a successful writing contest and publishing house. We're glad to contribute to the community of writers around the world, and to have others take part in our dream.”

For more information, write to Monisha Saldanha. Tell her Tiffinbox sent you!

Relax your restless mind here. Part commentary, part art. At least, that's how I see it. If you would like to take part in this web project, click here.

If you are newspaper photographer it's easy to be disgruntled with your assignments, with the subjects you photograph or with the business of photography.

Here are a few web sites to get you juiced up again:

Pictures Of The Year 2004
Past POY contests

Best of Still Photojournalism 2004

College Photographer Of The Year 2004:
Past CPOY contests

“You've no need to believe a photograph made after a certain date because it won't be made the way Cartier-Bresson made his.”

I hope this sparks up some debate. David Hockney, a photographer of some repute suggests that thanks to software programs like PhotoShop, photography is dead.

What do you say?

Great resource for the emerging photographer – ShootSmarter.

I have been saving up for an Apple G5 for quite some time now. Yes, they are expensive but given how intuitive they are when it comes to using graphical programs like Adobe's PhotoShop, it's worth the price. Plus, my handy Powerbook (Apple's laptop) is starting to show signs of wear. It's a little over 4 years old now (in Internet terms, it's a grand-daddy).

I have been doing some research. True to form, every six months or so, Apple releases a new version of either a machine or an operating system. There was Jaguar, which is what I use. Then came Panther (Apple wanted $129 for it and I said “let's see … let's see”). To be released in early part of next year is “Tiger”. Well, at this rate, they'll run out of big cats. But back to my G5 purchase. It will happen this year and I am sure of it. Unless of course Apple releases a G5 laptop. Then it will be back to the drawing board to see the pluses and minuses of each configuration. What joy!

As a photographer, I need the RAM and the disk space. But I also need to edit images in 16-bit color. According to Kevin Yank of Sitepoint.com, Adobe's PhotoShop CS works wonders in that regard.

16-BIT COLOUR IN PHOTOSHOP CS

Photoshop CS is the first version of this venerable product to fully support 16-bit colour across its entire toolset (with the exception of some filters). But what exactly does that mean to Web developers, who continue to publish to an 8-bit medium?

A 24-bit image (e.g. a JPEG or PNG image) uses 8-bit RGB colour — 8 bits each for the amount of red, green and blue that goes into each pixel in the image — allowing for up to 16.7 million colours. Simply put, 16-bit colour means more bits per pixel, and more colors. 16-bit RGB colour produces 48-bit images, which allow for 281.5 trillion colours!

But in the arena of Web publishing, everything is displayed on a computer screen, where the operating system typically supports only 24 bits per pixel (i.e. 8-bit RGB colour). So what use is it?

The advantage of 16-bit colour lies in the ability to make significant changes to an image without losing as much image information as you would working in 8-bit colour.

Allow me to illustrate: Say you've got a digital photo and you want to apply a spotlight effect to it, cloaking the photo in darkness and revealing a part of it with a fuzzy, circular mask.

Now, experienced Photoshop users have an instinctive feel for how to go about an job like this so as to maintain the highest image quality. They'd start by selecting the area for the spotlight, then they'd invert that selection to cover the area outside the spotlight, and finally they'd use Image > Adjustments > Levels… to darken the selected area.

A more naive user might first darken the entire image, then select the area of the spotlight and attempt to brighten it to reveal the original image brightness. If the image uses 8-bit colour, the results from these steps will likely be disappointing. But 16-bit colour is another matter!

The best way to see the difference is by watching the image histogram (Window > Histogram).

The horizontal axis of the graph represents the range of colours in the image (specifically, their brightness), while the vertical axis represents the number of pixels in the image for each of those colours. A well-exposed digital photo will usually contain pixels spread across the entire range of brightness values.

When we darken the image, we compress that full range of colours into a more restricted range.

In an 8-bit colour image, pixels that were nearly the same colour in the original image will be forced to have the exact same colour in the darkened image. This translates to a loss of detail!

Brighten the image back up to its original levels, and the histogram looks different than it did to begin with. The outline of the graph is the same, but instead of a solid distribution, we see isolated vertical bars with gaps between them.

The detail that was lost in darkening the image (forcing a full spectrum of colour values into a smaller range) does not return when we brighten the image. Pixels that were forced to become the same colour remain the same colour in the brightened image, so we still have a reduced number colours. In extreme cases, this effect is easily visible as patches of solid colour where smooth tones previously existed.

But here's the punch line: If we simply covert the image to 16-bit colour (Image > Mode > 16 Bits/Channel) before making these changes, the final histogram looks much healthier. Indeed, the histogram (and the image itself) is almost indistinguishable from the original!

When we convert our image to 16-bit colour, we “make room” in the histogram for many more colours than the image actually has. In fact, for every one of the 16.7 million colours that can appear in an 8-bit color image, there are 16.7 million other colours that cannot appear in an 8-bit image. Think of this as adding 16.7 million empty spaces between each of the vertical lines that make up our original image's histogram.

When we compress the spectrum of colours in the image down to darken it, all those extra colours (i.e. all that extra space in the histogram) means that pixels that were almost the same colour in the original don't have to become the same colour to fit into the darkened image. All that detail is preserved, so when we brighten up the image again, we get the same detail and range of colour that we started with!

Of course, 16-bit colour has its downsides. The most significant is that, by definition, a 16-bit colour image will always be twice the size in memory as an 8-bit colour image of the same dimensions. Another is that many of Photoshop's filters have yet to support 16-bit colour.

But if you don't have the experience it takes to minimize lost detail as you work in Photoshop, or if you prefer to work without the pressure of doing things “in the correct order”, 16-bit colour can be a powerful tool.

Comments welcome.

Thanks (again) Arindam!

Via Shahidul Alam

“During my regular visits to the River Buriganga this particular bridge to Kamrangeer char often fascinates me. When the monsoon water comes, filling the river to the brim, children – all boys – are attracted to the suspended beams of this metal structure. The joy of a life infinite and with all the freedom in the world… It brings back memories of my childhood in a village with abundant water around it.

In city life children are stranded within the concrete blocks they call home. Adults forget that they, too, once had a happy life. They tell the little ones not to be too adventurous, always to be safe. I want adults to let children be what they are. I feel poor children at times are happier than the protected, privileged ones in the comfort zone. These boys made me feel like going back to the days of my childhood. For a photographer there are times when you don't think much: you simply rush to capture the moment.

Later I had a talk with the boys. They were all working children – they had money for themselves and to contribute to their family income. After they'd spent the morning collecting scraps from the streets and had sold their bounty they'd come for a jumping session. Who could jump from the highest point?

I work with my friends at the Map Photo Agency. We have been together as a team for 11 years now and work on social issues, advocating awareness through images. Going back to the community I work for, returning with the images I have taken and seeing the smile on their faces, is always rewarding.”

The observations above, in Southern Exposure, are from Shafiqul Alam Kiron who is a photojournalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Southern Exposure is Shahidul Alam's way of introducing photographers from what he calls the “Majority World.”

New Internationalist, which publishes Southern Exposure has an archive containing some very interesting photography. Odd as it may sound, at times, I am sometimes drawn more by the writing than the photography in there.

Interested in sending your work to be considered? Here is the call for entries:

Southern Exposure Photo Entries

We encourage all photographers – particularly women – living and working in Africa, Asia or Latin America, whose work addresses the broad aims of the NI magazine, to submit potential images for this page. The requirements are as follows:

Format: preferably portrait
Colour: black and white or full colour
Caption: a maximum of 150 words describing both the content of the image and how the photographer came to take it.
Enquiries and submissions: preferably by email or by post to:

New Internationalist
(Southern Exposure)
55 Rectory Road,
Oxford OX4 1BW, UK
Please note that we cannot guarantee to return entries – originals should never be sent

Back on January 21, 2004 I exulted in the fact that I had received 50 subscribers to this blog – Tiffinbox. Well today, thanks to you all, I have reached another milestone when the 100th subscriber joined this list!

Your site “TIFFINBOX” received 1 new subscribers today.
It has 100 total subscribers and is ranked #196 on Bloglet.

What would make this experience even richer is if you all could take the time to comment or email me your suggestions. During a recent panel on blogging, I lamented that most of those comments I do receive (and have to delete) are from spammers. Well, let's change that around shall we? It would be great if you could keep your eyes peeled for content that would make for an interesting read for everyone.

Some of you have already told me that the site needs a redesign and badly. I am working on that, I assure you. My friend Arindam Mukherjee has designed a new logo. I'll be releasing both the logo and the site in the next few weeks. If there are features you would like to see on this site that you have seen elsewhere, do let me know. I'll be happy to see if it will make or break the site.

While 100 is a great round number, this site isn't just about increasing traffic. It's about involving each of you in this experiment in such a way that we can raise our collective awareness of the similarities and differences within South Asian culture and its ultimate relationship with rest of the world. It's a tall order, no doubt, but it can be done through thoughtful dialogue and an exchange of ideas which could take shape as photography, writing, art & design.

So, if you know of people involved in any of these endeavors, send them my way – email me at: tiffinbox {at} pipalproductions {dot} com. I'll be happy to post a blog about them and link to their website, if they have one.

I welcome all of you to participate and to let others know about Tiffinbox.