Featured photojournalist: Navesh Chitrakar

Are photo-journalists becoming the best photographers? I look at the work of landscape, fashion, art or portrait photographers and rarely do I find the same engagement with the subject, the same commitment to the medium and the same impressive vision as I do when I see the work of the best photo-journalists in the world.

Just when technology in the form of digital imaging makes photo-journalism truly viable, images captured now can be on line or in a paper in half an hour we find that so many of the outlets for these photographers are turning to the use of any image.  Camera phone, crap compact, anything that can make an image held by people who have no understanding of photography and conveying a story will be used if the person was there. So our newspapers and other media outlets via tv and the web are full of images that have immediacy but little quality. To paraphrase Bob Geldorf; after 150 years of news photography, ‘is that it?’

Fortunately there are still some photographers, probably now self funded rather than employed by news organisations, who are still driven to bring us images that illuminate and amaze us. Navesh Chitrakar was born in Kathmandu in 1986, into a family of artists, photographers and journalists. After college, Navesh worked for the Himalayan Times, and two years ago joined Reuters. Here he captures the spirit of the Chhath and Tihar festivals in Nepal, which took place this week

These rather beautiful images by Navesh Chitrakar can be found in the Guardian, here is the link for all the images. You can enjoy three here

A vendor scoops vermilion powder used for worship during the Tihar festival Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

A Hindu devotee offers a banana to a cow during Tihar, when animals are worshipped Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

On the final day of the Chhath festival in Kathmandu, a worshipper waits for sunrise in order to offer prayers Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters