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By Yong Yen Nie
In today’s advent of technology, photographers are increasingly relying on social media tools to publicize their portfolios of market their works to publications. But how does the rise of such new technology and social media affect photographers?
We had a fruitful panel discussion ‘Asia Perspective: Startups, Social Media & Photography’ yesterday afternoon by four esteemed practitioners in the photography industry: Julia Durkin of Auckland Festival of Photography, photographers Ian Teh and Zalmai, and Blink.la co-founder Julien Jourdes.
Blink.la is a platform connecting storytellers with entities looking for original content, and is a media partner of the 10th edition of the Angkor Photo Festival & Workshop.
Ian said the Internet has successfully lowered the entry point for photographers to show their works to the public. “While it may lower the entry bar, you still have to find an audience, but the idea of quality and authorship does not change,” he said.
Zalmai concurred, and acknowledged that he is not active on social media, but chose to communicate with his editors via email. “I have fewer assignments from news and magazines, but I get to do more personal work on the issues I care about,” he said.
Julien said photographers should look beyond photo-reportage assignments by classic publications and pay attention to the various media startups such as Vice Magazine that are looking for new works to be published.
After that, we headed to the opening reception of Zeng Nian’s ‘The Quiet River: Construction of the Three Gorges Dam’ at Angkor Sayana Riverside. The exhibition runs from 29 November 2014 to 5 January 2015.
Next, it was time for the projection evening which ended with a special presentation by Max Pam who spoke about his handmade journal on Ramadan, or the Muslim fasting season, in Yemen.
We ended the night with the final projection of Blowup at The Sun in Pub Street. Blowup was also hanging pop-up exhibitions in downtown Siem Reap during the day.
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Jonathan Gonzalez, Soumyadip Ghosh & Harald Arnold[/twocol_one_last]