#nichole sobecki

[tearsofrefugees]

I am who I am: A non-binary Ugandan refugee stands outside the safe house that was founded for often persecuted LGBTQ refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. This previously unpublished portrait from 2020 was recently featured in our Photo of the Day archival collection. Photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Nichole Sobecki made this image as part of her work on how COVID-19 was affecting Kenya.

[whereifindsanity]

Nichole Sobecki

[rjzimmerman]

From National Geographic:

You’re looking at a seven-month-old cheetah. He is hissing in the back of an SUV. He has been intercepted before he can sold to a smuggler. Nat Geo Explorer Nichole Sobecki, in this week’s Photo of the Week, captured a happy ending.  But scores, maybe hundreds, of young cheetahs are taken from Somaliland each year to be sold as “pets” in Persian Gulf nations.

More from the National Geographic story:

Fewer than 7,000 adult cheetahs are left in the wild, according to recent estimates, most in southern and eastern Africa. International commercial trade of cheetahs has been banned since 1975. Even so, from 2010 through 2019, more than 3,600 live cheetahs were for sale or sold illegally worldwide, with only about 10 percent intercepted by law enforcement, says Patricia Tricorache, a researcher with Colorado State University who’s been tracking the cheetah trade for 15 years. Taking cheetahs from the wild has been illegal in Somaliland since 1969.

Habitat loss and retaliatory killings by herders when cats prey on their livestock are the biggest threats to the cheetah’s survival, compounded by the illegal trade in cubs. Babies, often still nursing and dependent, are snatched from the wild while their mothers are hunting or when a lactating mother is tracked back to her den. On foot and by camel, car, and boat, traffickers move the cubs through the Horn of Africa and across the narrow Gulf of Aden to Yemen, a journey of 200 miles or more that can take weeks. Cubs that survive are sold as pets in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Kuwait, and other Gulf countries.

[projectourworld]

A collection of wildlife photography explores the work of more than 100 photographers in Why We Photograph Animals, supporting the images with thematic essays.

Photography on display at the Cheltenham science festival 4-9 June 2024

Main image: A seven-month-old cheetah in the back of an SUV hisses at a rescuer’s outstretched hand, western Somaliland, 2020

Photograph: Nichole Sobecki/Thames & Hudson

[theo-in-the-toaster]

National Geographic magazine July 2022

Diving Under the Pyramids by Nichole Sobecki

[xtruss]

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) stands out in this aerial view of São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷. The powerhouse art museum is completing an ambitious expansion project due to open in 2024. Photograph By Mavinho Acoroni

Stars glitter above Naveta des Tudons, Spain 🇪🇸, Menorca’s most famous burial monument. It’s just one of over a thousand sites on the island built by the Talayotic culture in the Iron Age. Photograph By Sebastián Iturralde

Sandstone formations, dunes, and ancient rock art fill Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Algerian Sahara, Algeria 🇩🇿. Photograph By Matjaz Krivic

A juvenile whale shark glides over Ningaloo Reef, in Western Australia 🇦🇺, where these gentle giants congregate annually. Photograph By Kiliii Yüyan, National Geographic

The majestic Magdalena River is at its narrowest near San Agustín, Colombia 🇨🇴. But new small-ship cruises take in the landscapes, birdlife, and villages along the vital waterway’s wider stretches. Photograph By Florence Goupil, National Geographic

Brown bears graze in Hallo Bay, in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, United States 🇺🇸. The bay‘s grassy meadows are a popular spot for bear-watching tours from June through September. Photograph By AcaciaJohnson, National Geographic

Guide Hamprey Mweterwa (center on white horse) leads a group on a safari in Kenya’s 🇰🇪 Borana Conservancy. Visitors to Borana might encounter zebras, leopards, impalas, elephants, and the area’s population of 200 rhinos—a relative of the horse. Photograph By Nichole Sobecki, National Geographic

[reduxpictures]

ReduxStock: Photo by Nichole Sobecki/VII/Redux of a woman and camel in Somaliland, on the cover of Switzerland’s Eine Welt magazine, December 2023 issue (via our German partner Laif)

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Cheetahs

Photographer: Nichole Sobecki

[ooookaythennnn]

[bauzeitgeist]

“Fishing boats gather at dawn in the old port in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in front of destroyed Aruba Hotel. Somali fishermen-turned-pirates have made the waters off the Horn of Africa one of the most treacherous places in the world for international shipping vessels.” Photo: Nichole Sobecki, from this article on Somalia and climate change.

[everydayesterday]

This is the story of the mother who didn't flee civil war but fled the drought. Of the fisherman pushed into piracy by empty nets in a depleted, lawless sea. Of the young farmer who felt the pull of the extremist group Al Shabab when his crops failed for multiple seasons. Somalia has long been beset by extremes, but climate and environmental changes are compounding these problems and leading to the end of a way of life. "With this weather pattern, Somalia or Somalis will not survive," said environmentalist Fatima Jibrell. "Maybe the land, a piece of desert called Somalia, will exist on the map of the world, but Somalis cannot survive." As one of the places hardest hit by climate change, Somalia is a harbinger for the rest of the world.

From "The Watson Files", Foreign Policy Magazine, May 2017

[pamwmsn]

Kenya Sunrise 

📷: Nichole Sobecki

[npr]

Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in a novel approach to helping the world's poor: Instead of giving them goods like food or services like job training, just hand out cash — with no strings attached. Now a major new study suggests that people who get the aid aren't the only ones who benefit.

Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the study, says that until now, research on cash aid has almost exclusively focused on the impact on those receiving the aid. And a wealth of research suggests that when families are given the power to decide how to spend it, they manage the money in ways that improve their overall well-being: Kids get more schooling; the family's nutrition and health improves.

But Miguel says that "as nonprofits and governments are ramping up cash aid, it becomes more and more important to understand the broader economy-wide consequences."

In particular, there has been rising concern about the potential impact on the wider community — the people who are not getting the aid. A lot of them may be barely out of poverty themselves.

Researchers Find A Remarkable Ripple Effect When You Give Cash To Poor Families

Photo: Nichole Sobecki for NPR Caption: Denis Otieno and his daughter plant a cypress sapling purchased with money received from the charity GiveDirectly back in 2017. More recently, the charity teamed up with researchers to study the impact of cash grants on the wider community.

[ortodelmondo]

Beit Beirut recently opened as an exhibition space and memorial to the civil war. During renovations, Mona El-Hallak, an architect and heritage preservation activist, discovered 11,000 photographic negatives—most of them portraits dating from the 1950s to the 1970s—in a photography studio on the ground floor. Visitors are invited to take away a photo print and try to trace the person in the portrait. © Nichole Sobecki

[jamesnort]

Pre-Virus Research, Whitney Johnson, ‘How photographers capture a world besieged by infectious diseases’

*Click link below to open article

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2020/01/how-photographers-capture-world-besieged-infectious-diseases/#close 

*Focusing on the second image by Nichole Sobecki

The great thing about photography is it can be done within the safety of a home outward, at a distance, or with protective equipment.  The camera can’t catch a virus and stop working, it is an extension that can be used to communicate ideas that are difficult to express and dangerous for everyone to risk being around.  I’m not saying I want to or you should go out and document up close the effects of the COVID-19, but can and is being done.

This might be a time to learn how to use art elements and up close shots to express and idea or feeling or possibly learn about photography through glass windows or even capture how a small epidemic can cause massive change.

[wisegardenbluebird]

LA MUJER EN LOS GRANDES TEMAS DEL FOTOPERIODISMO

LA MUJER EN LOS GRANDES TEMAS DEL FOTOPERIODISMO

Una exposición de National Geographic recoge algunas de las fotografías icónicas de la situación de la mujer en el mundo

           La sede de National Geographic en Washington atesora, desde su fundación en 1888,  una colección de más de 60 millones de imágenes, entre diapositivas, negativos y placas fotográficas. Muchas han sido publicadas y otras permanecen inéditas. De ellas, unas cincuenta…