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from Photographers Blog:
On safari with my mentor
Hato La Aurora nature reserve, Colombia
By Jose Miguel Gomez
I've been a photographer for over 20 years, but this was to be my first bird-watching safari so I took along a 70-300mm lens, thinking it would be enough. We also expected to do lots of hiking in heat, and it’s the lightest of my long lenses.
I traveled with my son and 18 other explorers of whom some were amateur photographers. We had four guides plus a well-known ecologist, but the real treat for me was master photographer-adventurer Andres Hurtado, who organized the trip. Andres was leading us to the Hato La Aurora nature reserve, in Casanare province.
It was one day decades earlier, in high school, when I first met Andres. He arrived to give a class titled “general culture” right after tumbling down the Naranjo de Bulnes mountain peak in Spain and losing all feeling on his left side. It was a miracle he had survived, and there he was giving classes to us.
A group of us began physical training with him, jogging daily around a mountain near Bogota, until one day he invited me to climb Tolima Mountain. That day he showed me my first camera, and my life was changed.
from Global Investing:
Emerging Policy-Doves reign
Rate cuts are still coming thick and fast in emerging markets -- in some cases because of falling inflation and in others to deter the gush of speculative international capital.
Arguably the biggest event in emerging markets is tomorrow's Reserve Bank of India (RBI) meeting which is expected to yield an interest rate cut for the first time in nine months.
from Breakingviews:
Review: Latin America needs more Uribes
By Raul Gallegos
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Latin America needs more leaders like Alvaro Uribe. “No Lost Causes,” the former Colombian president’s account of his administration, may at times be self-serving. But it shows how he helped turn a war-torn Colombia from a near-failed state to a top investment destination. Uribe’s security gains remain frail, but his successes dwarf those of his leftist peers in Latin America.
from Global Investing:
Emerging Policy-More interest rate cuts
A big week for central bank meetings looms and the doves are likely to be in full flight.
Take the Reserve Bank of India, the arch-hawk of emerging markets. It meets on Tuesday and some, such as Goldman Sachs, are predicting a rate cut as a nod to the government's reform efforts. That call is a rare one, yet it may have gained some traction after data last week showed inflation at a 10-month low, while growth languishes at the lowest in a decade. Goldman's Tushar Poddar tells clients:
from Photographers Blog:
A fallen cadet
Bogota, Colombia
By Jose Miguel Gomez
When a television journalist called to her cameraman to come running, I thought it was just to get a better angle of some VIP arriving to celebrate the 121st anniversary of the National Police, and the new graduating class of the academy. I’m farsighted and didn’t have my glasses on, but I did have a 400mm lens on the camera.
A few more moments went by and I still didn’t catch what the fuss was about, and the only colleague near me was busy shooting. That was when I spotted the cadet on the ground, apparently fainted in the middle of the ceremony, and I instinctively began photographing. Help was so slow in arriving that I was able to shoot from different angles this curious scene of a policewoman lying unconscious, face down on the ground in her best uniform. It was at least five minutes before a couple of police officers finally carried her away.
from Global Investing:
Emerging policy-Down in Hungary; steady in Latin America
A mixed bag this week on emerging policy and one that shows the growing divergence between dovish central Europe and an increasingly hawkish (with some exceptions) Latin America.
Hungary cut rates this week by 25 basis points, a move that Morgan Stanley described as striking "while the iron is hot", or cutting interest rates while investor appetite is still strong for emerging markets. The current backdrop is keeping the cash flowing even into riskier emerging markets of which Hungary is undeniably one. (On that theme, Budapest also on Wednesday announced plans for a Eurobond to take advantage of the strong appetite for high-risk assets, but that's another story).
from Global Investing:
Emerging Policy-The inflation problem has not gone away
This week's interest rate meetings in the developing world are highlighting that despite slower economic growth, inflation remains a problem for many countries. In some cases it could constrain policymakers from cutting interest rates, or least from cutting as much as they would like.
Take Turkey. Its central bank surprised some on Tuesday by only cutting the upper end of its overnight interest rate corridor: many had interpreted recent comments by Governor Erdem Basci as a sign the lower end, the overnight borrowing rate, would also be cut. That's because the central bank is increasingly concerned about the lira, which has appreciated more than 7 percent this year in real terms. But the bank contented itself by warning markets that more cuts could be made to different policy rates if needed (read: if the lira rises much more).
from Photographers Blog:
Dancing away the violence
Meta, Colombia
By John Vizcaino
The last time I was in Colombia’s Meta Province was to photograph 35 body bags containing the remains of rebels killed in clashes with the Army. That was last March, and for years before that nearly all the news we covered in Meta had to do with violence.
This time was different. What brought me to Meta was the Joropera dance festival in the village of Acacias. I wanted to show the cultural richness in this village affected by the conflict for so many years.
from Photographers Blog:
The pier of my memory
By Jose Miguel Gomez
The old and decayed pier in Puerto Colombia was a place that I first visited with my father when I was just six. We walked the whole of its nearly two kilometers into the Caribbean Sea, feeling the wonderful sea breeze and a bit of fear as the waves rolled under us at the end. The strong waves vibrated the foundations of this pier that in its heyday, at the turn of the 20th Century, attracted tourists in boats which docked alongside cargo ships. It was a colonial experience when there were still street lamps casting a romantic light on the dock frequented by lovers strolling under a full moon.
The qualifying matches for the World Cup Brazil 2014 recently brought me to Barranquilla, just east of Puerto Colombia. Today, Barranquilla has its own great port for modern ships that has made the world all but forget about the monumental pier just 16 kms away. On a day when neither Colombia nor Paraguay allowed photographers into their soccer training sessions, I decided to return to Puerto Colombia to visit my childhood pier.
from Photographers Blog:
Orlando’s elves
By Jose Miguel Gomez
We plunged nearly 80 meters down a wood-lined tunnel while listening to Orlando Arias, the guide who brought us to Nemocon, an Andean village nestled between mountains and natural salt deposits just north of Bogota. His stories allowed us to focus our minds in the dark mine, and we could feel the dampness of that cold place.
Orlando caught my attention when he claimed to have seen elves there. I asked what they were like, and he answered, “They’re small with elongated ears, very mocking, the size of children, and very ugly.” He showed us a photo of them, and in a ghost-like image I could see seven small green creatures with big ears.
