ROWING IS A BIG LEG-PULL IN BURMA

Rowing a boat with your leg is quite a difficult feat, but the leg-rowers of Inle Lake are well balanced men.

Inle Lake lies in in the Shan state of north-east Burma at a height of 880 metres above sea level. The shallow blue lake, covering an area of 116 sq kms, is known for its unique leg-rowing fishermen who are never known to fall overboard.

Known as Inthas, local people numbering about 70,000, live in four towns bordering the lake, in stilt-perched villages around the edge, and on floating islands on the lake itself.

Micro-gardens flourish in the mud beneath their houses where chickens and other livestock forage for food. There are also large floating vegetable gardens made from lashed reeds and anchored by bamboo poles which rise and fall with changes in the water level, and so are resistant to flooding.

The Intha’s basic diet is rice and fish. Fruits and vegetables along with necessities are sold in the ywa-ma, a miniature floating market which circles the lake, visiting all the villages, every few days.

When not cooking and gardening, Intha women weave colourful tote bags which are sold to visitors in the corridor leading to the Phaungdaw-U pagoda overlooking the lake. They also produce hand-woven silk textiles and the cotton longyi, a sarong-type garment worn by men.

Intha men have a constant battle to keep the pagodas above water level as the floating islands on which many are built slip beneath them. Graceful leg-rowers glide by carrying mounds of mud to prop them up. Water hyacinth, a major problem, must also be cleared.

In October a spectacular water carnival takes place when a golden Buddha accompanied by flower-laden hlays is taken in a procession around the lake. Leg-rowing races with 10-12 men, all rowing on one leg to a boat, are a highlight.

With tourism on the rise, the best advice is to visit this special part of Burma before it changes. A luxury hotel with bar, spa and bicycles for hire has already been built on the lake-shore. Access is from HeHo Airport, 35 kms via a domestic flight from Rangoon or Mandalay.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

LAUGHING FIT TO CRY

In 1997, in the Melancholy of Photography, the late Susan Sonntag said that `photography has become the art of quintessential, affluent, wasteful, restless societies`.

Today photography is the name of the game. But the picture industry is in a state of melancholia, more particularly the stock libraries which have played an historic role in the publishing world.

Like writers being challenged by bloggers, photo agencies are greatly affected by the rise, and rise, and rise of `citizen camera` who is content to simply see his work in print. Frequently without payment.

Helped by the genius of digital and Adobe Photoshop, amateurs are giving the professional a run for his money by flooding the market with many good images, but which are available for as little as a dollar.

The sorry state of many image libraries today relates to this, and to the credit crunch which has impinged on demand. But it is equally due to huge corporations dropping prices to levels at which smaller collections cannot compete.

Mega players such as Getty had the nous, and funds, to buy up competitors eating into the international footage market, valued at more than £200 million annually.

Corbis, owned by Bill Gates, has also swallowed competition so that these, and a few other names such as Alamy, now call the tune. Such collections often counting 10-15 million images, return a good income, but at the expense of their photographers who experience diminishing sales.

The conflict between amateur and professional is that photographers who have studied their trade are not trying to be a surgeon, and perform an appendix operation on the side, as it were.

In fact countless amateur photographers are doing themselves an injustice by handing over image rights with no knowledge of how to license them. And in entering their photos in vaguely worded competitions, even those run by some of the major newspapers and websites.

I, too, was an amateur once and in an ideal world, there would be room for both parties. But the situation is far from ideal and it`s very unfortunate when all around are people, some of whom have spent years building up splendid specialist collections, being overtaken by circumstances beyond their control.

Founded in 1966, the French photo agency Gamma, which rose to fame documenting the May 1968 uprising in Paris and the Vietnam War, is the latest victim of the crisis.

Image: Nomad woman at the Pushkar Camel Fair by Ann Cook.
Source: www.copix.co.uk

BUYING FLOWERS

I have bought flowers from the same stall in a south London street market for more than ten years.

A typical exchange took place today with the expressionless blonde who stands beside her plants like the moron waiting outside Superdrug.

In all this time I've been buying flowers from her, she has never raised a smile.

'Good morning? Nice day?' Forget it!

Today she has an attractive bunch of violet and orange flowers, but I don't know what they are.

'I'd like a bunch of those flowers please. What are they called?' I said, pointing to the bunches in her black plastic bucket.

'No idea.'

'I'll have a bunch of no idea then.' I said.

But I'd got to her this time, I decided, as a blush beginning low down her neck spread up beyond her ears.

c.Christine Osborne

Image: Bird of Paradise flower

Source: www.copix.co.uk