How To Put On A Travel Photography Exhibition

by Sean McLachlan on


You got back from an amazing adventure travel vacation a few weeks ago. Your friends and family have heard all your stories and seen all your photos. Now what? Instead of tucking your photos away in an album or hard drive, why not show off your travel photography to a wider audience?

I’ve run two photography exhibitions and been in several more. My first exhibition was on the painted caves of Laas Geel in Somaliland. Right now my wife and I have an exhibition up about Ethiopia. We are by no means experts but we have learned a few things from the experience. The main thing is that putting on a successful photography exhibition isn’t as hard as you might think, although it does take a fair amount of organization. Here are some things to keep in mind.

You don’t need to be a pro
Here’s the secret to getting good photos: take lots of pictures of interesting subjects and some will turn out well. Look through your collection with a critical eye and have someone who hasn’t been to these places look with you. They’ll be looking at the shots with fresh eyes like your audience will. Take your photos at the highest resolution possible, 300dpi minimum, so they will be publication quality. A good photo shop will be able to turn your hi-resolution photos into lovely prints. This won’t cost much and you can get decent frames cheaply too.

Decide on a theme and purpose
It helps to have a coherent theme: wildlife, a certain historic site, etc. We’ve focused on Ethiopia’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites and children, Ethiopia’s past and future. Our show benefits A Glimmer of Hope, an NGO working on rural education. Having a coherent theme helps people grasp your subject better and a charity benefit tends to attract more attention.

Pick an appropriate venue
Not being superstar photographers, we picked a local bar here in Santander, Spain, that’s a popular hangout for artists, musicians and generally liberal-minded people who would be interested in photography about Africa. Our themes fit in with the general vibe. Bar Rubicón is a Santander institution and word gets around when they host an event. Putting your prize photos up in a bar may not seem very glamorous, but over a month-long exhibition they’ll get seen by lots of people.Think out size and spacing
How many photos do you want to exhibit? What’s the lighting like in your venue? Which are the most visible walls? Think all these things through ahead of time. It helps to bring a print in the size you want to display and take a look at it within the space. In my first exhibition, I made the mistake of printing the photos too small and they looked a bit lonely hanging on a big wall.

Make a snappy poster
I’m lucky that my brother-in-law, Andrès Alonso-Herrero, is an artist. He whipped up this poster in no time. Even if you don’t have access to someone with talent, it’s not too hard to make a poster with Photoshop or PowerPoint that highlights one of your photos and gives all the necessary information.

Send out a press release
Having worked for two small newspapers, I can tell you that editors are starved for interesting local content. The regional paper El Diario Montañés gave us a nice write-up and we made it onto several “What’s On” style websites as well. Be sure to write a clear press release with all the information and attach a couple of high-resolution photos they can publish. Try to write the press release like a newspaper article. Journalists are overworked, underpaid, and many of them are quite lazy. You’ll find that much of their coverage will be simply cut and pasted from your press release. Sad to say, much of the news you read is written this way. If governments and corporations benefit from it, why shouldn’t you?

Tell everyone
Email your friends, hang up posters, do a social media blitz. Get your friends to spread the word too. Don’t be shy; you want people to see your work!

While you have their attention …
You might as well mention any other projects you have going. In the press release I mentioned I had just come out with a novel and that made it into the newspaper coverage.

Host an opening party
On opening night, be there to meet and greet. It helps to have some sort of presentation. Since people will be coming and going it’s best not to have a formal speech at a set time. I’ve found that a slideshow running on a TV hooked to your photo archive works well. It goes on a continuous loop and shows everyone the photos that didn’t make it into the exhibition.
On our opening night, many people gathered around the slideshow and I gave them a running commentary of the places shown in the pictures. It also helps to have some music. There’s no local Ethiopian band that I know of (although there’s a West African band in Santander) so the bartender compensated by putting Ethiopian music on the sound system.

Don’t expect to make much money
Unless you’re a pro showing your photos at a major gallery, you’re not going to make much. If you break even you’re doing well. The point of showing off your photos isn’t the cash but the exposure. You’ll meet plenty of cool people and have the satisfaction of knowing your photos are hanging in people’s homes. Being relative newcomers in northern Spain, our opening night made us lots of new, interesting acquaintances. We’ll take any photos left over at the end of the month and give them away as gifts or hang them in our own apartment.

Most important of all … have fun!!!

Madrid’s Summer Art Season

by Sean McLachlan on


Madrid is one of the best destinations for art lovers, and this summer’s exhibition season is as great as usual.

From June 12-September 16, the Prado is showing “Late Raphael,” the first major survey exhibition on Raphael (1483-1520) to combine paintings and drawings in order to focus on the last seven years of the artist’s life, when he was at the peak of his ability. It also examines the work of his assistants and how Raphael influenced generations of artists.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza is having an unusual look at German art with “Faces and Hands: Ancient and Modern Germanic Painting.” It examines how portraiture changed from the Renaissance to Expressionism by looking at the work of such masters as Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. The show runs until September 2.

The Reina Sofia covers modern art with three different exhibitions: the reworked political texts of Sharon Hayes, nature paintings and natural objects arranged by Rosemarie Trocke, and the experimental sculpture and photography of Nacho Criado. Hayes’ and Trocke’s shows are on until September 24. Criado’s show is on until October 1.

All three of these museums have large permanent collections that art lovers won’t want to miss.

Madrid is full of private galleries and large exhibition spaces run by banks. One of the best is CaixaForum Madrid, which is hosting a large collection of the 18th century architectural drawings of Piranesi. Piranesi traveled across Europe to record its Classical ruins and also invented his own fantasy buildings, like the one shown here in this Wikimedia Commons image. The show is on until September 9.

517 Channels And Nothing’s On: The World’s Most Bizarre Hotel TV Package

by Dave Seminara on

Have you ever found yourself in a hotel room, searching for a sporting event on TV only to find Arab phone sex line networks, Yemeni soap operas, Russian shopping channels and a host other unwatchable programming?

Two of my life’s passions are travel and sports. There are only a few places in the world I have no interest in visiting and I can watch just about any sporting event, save auto racing, and a few of the more obscure Olympic sports. My sports addiction is so intense that I actually try to avoid traveling during the four grand slam tennis tournaments each year, the World Series, the Stanley Cup and other major sporting events.

But when you plan a big trip, such as the three-month reporting trip I’m on now, you have to come to terms with the fact that you’re going to miss some of the matches and games you want to watch. You can find websites airing sporting events, but have you ever tried following a tennis ball on a computer screen with a slow Internet connection? Good luck.When I lived overseas, I had a Slingbox, which gave me remote access to a friend’s U.S. DVR, but even that is sketchy if your Internet connection is slow. I was OK with missing most of the first week of French Open tennis while in Greece, but as the matches became more important in the second week, I started hunting for a place to stay that might have a channel showing the event.

I found a beautiful, affordable two-bedroom apartment in Samos at a place called Sirena Village and when they told me they had a satellite TV subscription with more than 500 channels, I almost wept in joy. Surely of those 500 channels, one of them would be showing the French Open, and the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, right?

Shortly after checking in one day last week, I started methodically flipping through the channels in search of the Roger Federer-Juan Martin Del Potro match from Paris. The hotel management hadn’t lied – the room did indeed have more than 500 channels – 517 of them to be precise. But it took me a full 90 minutes to flip through all of them and the French Open was nowhere to be found.

What did I find? Dozens of home shopping channels in a variety of languages, scores of religious programming from the Middle East, an evangelical Korean channel, Persian music channels, more than a dozen networks offering phone sex with “Arab women,” an Italian poker channel and a host of unwatchable programs from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Poland, Romania, Syria, Yemen and a host of other countries. Oddly enough, there were almost no Greek channels.

At first, I was just angry. There were 517 channels, but only four I’d actually consider watching: BBC World, France 24 in English, CCTV and Al Jazeera International. But later, when I decided to indulge my curiosity in this truly bizarre satellite TV package, I was able to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I had more channels from Kurdistan than from the U.S. I had the Somali Network, but not CNN. I had Dubai Sports 3, which seems to show no actual sporting events, rather than ESPN or Eurosport.

One of the only American channels listed in my guide was The Pentagon Channel, of all things, but thankfully it didn’t come in. I had a Persian language-shopping network called MI-TV, based in Dubai, that was peddling what looked like a blatant rip-off of the Ab Lounge. I had a channel called Iran Beauty that featured a woman in a chador making what looked like wedding favors, and I had not one but two Afghan channels, both advertising PO boxes in Fremont, California.

I spent a few minutes watching what looked like the Sudanese version of “Meet the Press,” trying in vain to divine what was going on. I had no clue, but I was fascinated by the moderator, who wore what looked like a small Christmas wreath, rakishly on the side of his turban, like a rapper with a Yankees hat worn terribly askew. In fact, there were dozens of channels broadcasting in Arabic and all of them seemed to be airing talk shows or prayer shows.

Oman TV featured a rotating slideshow; an Iraqi channel called Al-Iraqia featured a cooking program with an obese chef who made omelets but mostly just pontificated; a channel called Al-Mustakillah featured a blurry image of a wailing cleric with the URL for the channel’s Facebook page; Deejay TV showed grainy footage of the Eagles playing “Hotel California”; TV Quran showed pages from the Quran with a narrator reading them; a Persian channel featured an obnoxious puppet show; a channel called Al Fayhaa featured a folk band that reminded me of an Arab version of the Village People; and Yemen TV showed what appeared to be a children’s talent show, where all the little boys wore traditional costumes with big daggers tucked into their belts.

Oh, and there were all kinds of sex channels, but none showed actual nudity or sex, just vaguely Middle Eastern looking women advertising phone sex lines. There was Arab Girls TV, Arab-69 TV, Hot Arab Sex, Arab Jins, Arab XXX, Arab Sex Club, and the Arab Babes channel, to name just a few.

The Italian networks were winners too. One advertised a phone sex line by featuring a young lady in shorts and halter top, dancing, with her backside facing the camera, mostly bent over a hand shaped chair and an Italian shopping network featured a montage of Italian housewives recoiling in horror at the site of rats and other bugs and rodents to sell some sort of pest control product. I had 517 channels and was determined to watch all of them.

Friday brought the start of Euro 2012, but alas, none of my channels were showing the matches. Luckily, soccer is significantly more popular than tennis here, so there was no trouble finding the match at a bar. I know that I shouldn’t be trying to watch sporting events while traveling, so I’m ready to be roundly condemned in the comments section. But it’s easy to cut yourself off from the world of sports for a week or two, but three months is another story. My name is Dave and I’m an addict.

Luckily, I found a wonderful Brit named Wendy, who runs the Rendezvous Café in Kampos, Samos, and has been allowing me to watch the French Open on Eurosport. God bless Wendy and my 517 obscure channels from around the world. Thankfully, I have both the God Network and Church TV to help me give praise.

A Monday Morning Party in Samos

by Dave Seminara on

It’s 10 a.m., Monday morning and I’m surrounded by intoxicated Greek senior citizens on a lonely mountain road on the island of Samos. Empty ouzo bottles litter the plastic tables encircling the dance floor, and I’m stuffing my face with loukoumades, little Greek-style donuts drenched in honey that are worth selling one’s soul for.

The band plays a melancholy ballad, loud enough to be heard in Athens, and a group of women spin and whirl like dervishes on the dance floor. When Monday morning arrives in America in a few hours, most of my friends will be stuck in traffic, waiting for the opportunity to sit in front of a computer screen for at least eight hours.I was driving with my wife and two sons up to a mountain village called Manolates with our windows down on a beautiful day when we heard the thumping live music and wondered what kind of party could be taking place on a Monday morning.

We pulled over, grabbed a table right at the edge of the dance floor and watched the dancers and the drinkers. Greece may be mired in a horrible crisis, but people still know how to cut loose. After downing our first bowl of loukoumades, I asked the proprietor what the occasion was.

“It’s a religious festival,” he said, to my surprise. “It’s to honor the Father, the Son, and the Holy, how do you call it?”

“Spirit,” I said, completing his thought.

Before I’m accused of blasphemy, I don’t claim that getting drunk and dancing is a normal part of what is apparently a celebration of the Trinity in Greece. But for some reason, in this village on this morning, there was a host of old people living it up for this occasion.

As we sat and soaked up the scene, I thought about how these kinds of serendipitous experiences make travel worth the expense and hassle. The memory of how I spent this morning will stay with me, and I’ll pull it out one Monday morning when I’m doing something far less pleasant. Reminiscing will be a bittersweet reminder that somewhere in the world, people are partying while I’m at work.

Airlines Push Entertainment Options, Legroom Too, Eventually

by Chris Owen on

It sounds like a dream come true for many airline passengers. A new generation of technology promises to deliver in-seat headphones, video screens and the ability for airline passengers to use their own devices – all the time. But at what cost? Existing technology runs through miles of leg room-consuming wire threaded through seats, but the future promises great entertainment and more space too.

Right now, the trend differs. “It’s of more value for an airline to add two rows worth of seats and have a good inflight entertainment system rather than do the opposite and give passengers more legroom,” aviation writer Mary Kirby told Technology Spectator.

Looking to the future, TriaGnoSys has teamed with Siemens to launch what the two firms say is the smallest, most complete in-flight entertainment and connectivity solution available.

The new system will replace expensive, leg room-consuming technology and can provide:

“The fact it incorporates both IFE content and connectivity makes it possible to provide live updates, for example for news, sport and destination information,” said Siemens CMT vice-president of technology Gerald Schreiber in Electronics Weekly.

All the necessary airborne hardware used with the new system is small and light enough to be mounted within the ceiling panel and connects to the aircraft’s existing communications system.

The idea is that once seats are free of wires and cables, airlines can use less bulky seats.

It would be a win for airlines, enabling them to maintain the number of seats they need to make their profit recipe work out.

It could be a win for air passengers as less bulky seats give back legroom, unless airlines get greedy and add more, less bulky seats.


Flickr photo by hugojcardoso