Sikhism (4)
In a Sikh Temple you can always get food and drinks for free, it doesn’t matter if you’re a poor indian man or a rich tourist. In Amritsar in North India is the Golden Temple, a pilgrims place for Sikhs, they have to go there at least once in their life. Like Mekha for Muslims. In this temple about 100 000 meals are provided each day!!! that’s why hundreds of women are constantly making bread behind the temple. Just amazing…
Final Pakistan Images
Some final images of Pakistan I wanted to show on my blog. Time to move on!
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO COMPETITION …
30 000 photos were submitted for the National Geographic Photo Competition in 3 categories: human, animal and landscape. About 10 000 photos in each category.
I was selected as 1 of the 7 finalists in the category “human” with a portrait I made in Pakistan this summer. So yesterday, finally, I was invited in the “Museum van de Tropen” in Amsterdam where the winners would be announced.
First the bad news: I didn’t win….
But besides that, there was some good news as well:
- my picture is in the National Geographic 2010-calendar (check August 
) the calendar is included in the November issue of Nat Geo Magazine. So available in shops next week.
- there’s a 3-month exhibition in Amsterdam in “Museum van de Tropen” with the 20 finalists.
During the opening of the exhibition, several people walked up to me to tell me they actually liked me picture better than the one that had won, or telling me I should have been the winner. This I really appreciated and made it bearable that I didn’t win 
But for me the best moment of the evening (or in someway the worst…) was when at the end of the evening, the Adjunct-Manager of Nat Geo Magazine came up to me and told there had been 2 pictures on the table of the winner they had been discussing about who should win: my picture, and of course the winning picture! He wanted to tell me because he really liked mine, but he wasn’t the only judge of course. Quite a shame I was SO close of winning the first prize (which included a 9-day all inclusive trip for 2 persons to India) and some other benefits. But this feeling of disappointment quite easily disappeared when he gave me his business card and told me he wanted to see some more work of me
Me a happy loser after all !
