The rain is pouring down on his van on a grey day at White Park Bay in Northern Ireland, but that doesn't prevent this good humoured Irishman from painting a colourful sunset on his canvas (Photo Mick Palarczyk).
Telling Images: Rasta Hair
How long did it take to grow all that hair?" Antillian Roland Joe, better known as Ras Bushman, smiles. "Already as a youth I wanted to be a Rastafarian. Since then no hairdresser was allowed to touch my scalp, of course." You can enjoy his hairdo in Philipsburg, on the island of St. Martin, where he runs the vegetarian restaurant Freedom Fighters Ital Shack. All the food is home grown and tastes really good. Ras is a musician as well, but he has retired from the band Freedom Fighters he founded. His son has taken over. Often you hear their reggae sound coming out of the shack. (Photos Mick Palarczyk).
These pictures are part of the feature Netherlands Antilles: Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Martin.
Printed! Irlanda - bellezza terribile in QUI TOURING (Italy)
Qui Touring, Italy's largest travel magazine, published by Touring Club Italiano, selected the pictures that photographer Mick Palarczyk liked most himself. The cathedral of old beach trees on the cover, pictured during a drizzle, shows that you don't always need beautiful weather to take a beautiful photograph. And it fits the title: Autumn Feelings in Ireland. With the non-intrusive lay-out and maize-yellow as supporting colour - which doesn't show in the photo - Qui Touring sets quite an example in cover design. The lane of trees returns in the opening spread. It's a different shot, where the hiker is even smaller amidst the giants that are as alive as they are old. Apparently it was this that led the editor to the title of the article: Ireland - Fearsome Beauty.
Telling Images: Through the Eyes of a Saint
A child enjoys the view from the back of a giant (photo below). The Colosso di San Carlone from 1698, a huge copper statue of a canonized member of the powerful Borromeo family, overlooks the slopes along the Lago Maggiore near Arona in Italy, and blesses the landscape. As an ordinary mortal you can view the world through his holy eyes if you climb the narrow stairs leading up into his head (photo above). Photos by Paul Smit.
These photos are part of the feature Lago Maggiore.
Printed! In The Land Of The Pioneers in VOYAGE (Italy)
The Italian travel glossy Voyage doesn't exist anymore. That's a pity, since our co-operation was rather special. The editors wished to receive our digital images in exactly the needed sizes and output-sharpened. We could deliver that, because we received the exact lay-out they had made with our previews. This working method had advantages for both sides. The magazine saved on costs, while we as photographers remained responsible for the final quality of the pictures, like the exact croppings and the way the colours of the pictures related to each other. It led to the best possible lay-out, making the designer happy. And we were happy as well, since we had a say in the final results.
With the lay-out of In The Land Of The Pioneers, originally titled In Search of The Wave, Voyage emphasized the geological strangeness of the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness.
You can see the entire publication, which has been written by Paul Smit, with photos of Mick Palarczyk as well, here.
Telling Images: The Facade That Makes Music
In the last two decades Dresden has become a fashionable and arty city. The Kunsthof Passage in the hip Neustadt quarter is an example: an explosion of architectural creativity, like here in the Hof der Elemente (Courtyard of the Elements). This facade makes music when it rains. (Photo Paul Smit).
Telling Images: Pumpkin Soup With Sour Cream?
The Wave, situated in the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area, is one of the most bizarre landscapes in the USA. It looks like a wave of sour cream stirred into pumpkin soup. But it is made of sandstone. Once this sand was deposited in an old desert, kitted together, and was covered and buried. But when the Colorado Plateau was uplifted it surfaced. Rare desert storms did the sculpting (foto Paul Smit).
This photo is part of the feature In Search of the Wave..
Printed! Sonate en Lac Majeur in PLEINE VIE (France)
The titel, a pun with Sonata in A Major, only makes sense in French, since la(c) means A and Lac Majeur means Lago Maggiore. Seniors magazine Pleine Vie asked Paul Smit to write this new article to his already existing stock photos of the famous Swiss-Italian lake. For a foreigner (Paul is Dutch but moved to France) it is not easy to penetrate the French market. So when France's largest monthly, with a circulation of a million, asks you for a job like this, it means: welcome to France!
Please have a look at the other pages of this publication.
