In conjunction with Visit Miri Year 2018, the Miri City Council, Photographic Society of Malaysia and Miri Photography Society jointly ran an inaugural Miri International Photography Competition from Oct 15 to 19.
It attracted 28 photographers from Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia. They took 700 photos of the landscapes across Miri during the period.
During the prize-giving and closing ceremony, Assistant Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Datuk Lee Kim Shin announced that his ministry will take over the responsibility of organising the competition next year and make it bigger by also bringing in photographers from Japan, Korea and China.
As next year will be Visit Sarawak Year 2019, the event could be raised to a higher level and extended from Miri to cover the entire state.
‘ Sarawak would be hugely popular for edu-tourism, as millions of school and college students around the world could enjoy the best of both worlds here.’
No doubt, photographs are great for posters, but many people today prefer to watch video clips. They would only do so if the video continues to arrest their attention and would switch off the moment it turns dull or become lengthy, as many have little time or short attention span.
Videos taken at street level can be interesting, particularly by professionals using the right angles and zooming in and out of a scene. But using a drone to take videos would raise them to a higher level that even locals would like to watch what their neighbourhood looks like from above.
Understandably, the usage of drones in populated areas need to be controlled for safety and security reasons, but not an issue in rural and jungle areas.
Many visitors to Sarawak head to one or more national parks in the state. Apart from being in the middle of a jungle, inside a cave or up a mountain, there are many more places close by they could see but not reach, as it would be too dangerous or difficult if they try.
Using drones equipped with video cameras, they can have a close-up view of a cave at the side of a cliff, the blind side of a hill, or the flora and fauna on top of a high plateau or in a deep ravine.
This will bring eco-tourism to a whole new level and complement Sarawak’s foray into artificial intelligence, semantic technology and virtual reality, which would also attract millions of tourists who have embraced technology and are eager to use the latest gadgets.
They may be optional for now but a must-have in the near future. For example, drones would provide safety and security for tour groups, particularly in remote areas.
The videos could be streamed live to the nearest police station, operations room of the local and foreign tour operators, and even to family members back home keen to monitor the movement and whereabouts of their loved ones.
Sarawak would be hugely popular for edu-tourism, as millions of school and college students around the world could enjoy the best of both worlds here, in a safe tropical forest millions of years old and guided by the latest in technology.
And where else can you find the most hospitable people on earth, accommodative enough to accept a succession of white men as rajah for over a century? Elsewhere, it may be the stuff of legends, but in Sarawak, it was real.
The book ‘Queen of the Headhunters’ was written in 1970 by Sylvia Brooke, the last Ranee of Sarawak. She recounted how she felled in love with the beauty, wildlife, people and cultures of Sarawak, and could draw many visitors to the state.
After watching ‘The Sleeping Dictionary’, a 2003 movie starring Englishman Hugh Dancy and American Jessica Alba, who played a convincing role as a half-English and half-Iban girl, I fantasised to be in Sarawak in the 1930s.
I liked the concept of sleeping dictionary, of using a native girl to teach a new government official the local language and customs and be with him all the time. For many men, this is close to paradise.
There is nothing more powerful and effective as a great movie or video clip. On the other hand, most of the brochures printed are either not distributed or left to gather dust. Those that are picked up can only be read by one person and discarded shortly after.
Video clips, when uploaded in destination apps, could be accessed by anyone in the world 24/7, and easily forwarded. These modern word-of-mouths are more credible than those uttered by individuals.
