Category: Film & TV

National Geographic is once again holding their annual Photo Contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30th. For the past eight weeks, they have been gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to rate them as well. National Geographic was again kind enough to let me choose some of their entries from 2010 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are 47 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature. Captions were written by the individual photographers. (47 photos total)

A new documentary, “Camera, Camera,” begins with a shot of the Laotian countryside as seen on the viewing screen of a small camera. As it proceeds, the film alternates between vistas of rural Laos in its natural beauty and the viewing-screen versions of those vistas. This duplicates the experience of many travelers today, who compose their experience through camera lenses as they go and then take the pixelated images home with them in place of memories.

As the film unfolds, we meet more upstanding Boone County residents: attorneys, churchgoing folks with jobs. Through both what they do and do not say, we learn how the Whites have terrorized the town they dominate for decades.

Asked to comment on the reputation of the White family early in the film, Boone County evangelist Patricia Smith pauses, then says—”I’d really rather not comment on that.” Who can blame her? These are deadly rednecks.

photos of the recent turmoil in central Bangkok

Every time we expect the best of Lens readers, they do better.

With more than a bit of promotional hyperbole, we invited everyone with a camera to take a picture on Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 hours U.T.C. and submit it to The New York Times. For our part, we promised to cobble these together into a mosaic portrait of one “Moment in Time” around the world.