Thousands of professional and amateur "snappers" have been zooming in on the first China Qinghai Sanjiangyuan International Photography Festival which concluded in Xining, capital city of Qinghai Province, on Wednesday.

Photographers from home and abroad participated in the event which provides a showcase for the landscapes and people of the Sanjiangyuan area. The region holds the roots of the Yellow, Lancang and Yangtze rivers.

The festival which got underway on July 29 was jointly organized by the State Council Information Office, the China Photographers Association and the Qinghai provincial government. It also provides a new platform to introduce the attractions of Sanjiangyuan and the Qinghai people to China and the rest of the world.?

Of the professionals invited to the festival, some 400 are from China including wildlife photographer Xi Zhinong and 35 foreign masters of photography including Dlana Bloomfield from the US, the UK's Nilu Lzadi and Frenchman William Bestsch.

The organizers received a total of 150 features and individual galleries with more than 20,000 pictures from photographers seeking to participate in the festival's exhibition. All together 5,000 pictures in 84 features, 64 being Chinese and 20 from abroad, were displayed during the five-day event.

Apart from features by the big names, the festival also comprised DV movies, a high-level forum on camera techniques and ecological cultural construction as well as a trade fair for photographic equipment.

According to Xu Hao, deputy director of Qinghai Tourism Bureau, the province has made great efforts to establish "trademark routes" in association with the photographs.

"In June this year we sent over 20 travel agencies to Beijing, Taiyuan, Yinchuan and other cities to promote our area and the festival," Xu said. "So far over 6,000 tourists and amateur photographers have been drawn to Qinghai and tourism has always been closely connected with photography."

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Li Xiao, August 3, 2006)