Assignment Brief: I’ve been commissioned by the Papua New Guinea Tourism Authority to join a 12 day, up-market tour of the Southern Highlands and the Sepik River. Its part of a three year project I’ve been contracted to deliver, aimed at building the tourism authority’s library of promotional images. The objective is to capture photographs of travelers engaging with the culture and having a good time as its been a challenge to find tourists in several of the places I’ve photographed recently. I’ve been to the locations before (in fact, I did the tour as a travel writer in another life many years ago) so I’m familiar with the conditions. This tour is likely to offer more intimate photo opportunities than, say, the Goroka Show or Mt Hagen Show assignments I’ve done as I’ll be traveling with the same people for 12 days so I’m particularly excited. We have a small Sing Sing (cultural performance) to attend and we’ll be traveling comfortably – wilderness lodges at night; four wheel drives, planes and air conditioned vessels by day. I’ll try to Blog remotely as I travel to add a sense of immediacy to my entries and give you an insight into the working life (ok, so this ain’t work some might say) of a professional travel photographer. For the photographers that are reading this, I’m taking two 35mm Nikon cameras (film and digital) three lenses (ranging from 17mm-210-mm), a medium format Pentax film camera for serious landscapes and a small, indestructible, Panasonic Lumix on which I’m planning to record some film clips to upload to this blog.
Here’s the itinerary: http://www.pngtours.com/tours/tumbuna2010.html
It should be fun. Leaving tomorrow; I’ll keep you posted.
Postscript: Ok, I tried. I’m back from Papua New Guinea and there was no internet access in the Sepik so I’ll upload a few entries over the next few days. I guess we’ll just have to forgo the immediacy.
