we produce beautifully crafted multimedia » Asia

1 bad meal, 30 hours of travel, far too many toilet stops and a 5m long snake

Mike Lusmore — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:49:27 +0000

Milton, Bangladesh's very our Basil Fawlty bids us farewell...

I’m sat in Crystal Coffee in the car park of Medan’s International airport where it’s surprising to learn that I can’t get a straight black cup of coffee. Surprising as I have just left Aceh in the north where I tasted the most beautiful locally grown cup of coffee prepared in the most elaborate way including the final act of dropping the drink from a great height into my cup (which is apparently essential). Good job Benjamin and I cleared out the shop of their stock and have packed every crevice our luggage with the stuff to keep us energised for the long winter ahead back home.

Meanwhile back here in Medan I have settled for a ‘tehbotel‘ which is possibly the most disgusting brand of ice tea quite blatantly flavoured with cheap perfume. I have been stuck in bed for most of our time here in Indonesia due to some questionable food I must have eaten on my last day in Khulna and so the tehbotel has been my drink of choice after the doctor told me to stick to bottled water only.

I saw this in the paper just as we were leaving Khulna...driving in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The trip from Khulna to Bireuen was hellish and included a two hour bumpy bus ride along Bangladesh’s crazy roads to our flight in the same broken plane we arrived in. Upon arrival in Dhaka airport we were treated to a serious bout of mosquitos coupled with some of the most toxic paint I have ever smelt to choke down on for a few hours. Bundling ourselves onto the flight to Kuala Lumpur I was just hoping I could sleep as I felt like my insides were exploding but instead it was a fairly short flight followed by what felt like the longest layover known to man.

Prior to this we had talked fondly of our time in KL airport, a place where we could kick back and wash some tasty food down with an ice cold beer. The reality was that I felt terrible and spent the entire nine or so hours trying to sleep in-between toilet breaks. Our flight to Medan in Indonesia was quick and painless and I was trying to be as positive as I could while we stood in the stinking hot queue for our visa but it was the nine hour car journey we had next that I was really dreading. We did get there in the end but it really did feel like the longest car journey I have ever taken and as the time we arrived all I wanted to do was crash out..

Does anyone have an idea what these drugs are for...?

In reality it wasn’t that simple. We had been invited to stay at The Major’s house for the evening (think the local mayor but more important) and had to meet and great followed by joining him for dinner. He was an interesting guy and as Benjamin and The Major ate he told of his time negotiating peace in Aceh and his obsession with Starbucks before casually dropping into the conversation that he had been sent to jail for twelve years for speaking out against the Indonesian government. I was never aware of the situation that existed here in Aceh, their struggle for independence and the role that the tsunami played in the peace keeping efforts in the region.

On my first full day in Aceh the only thing I got to see was the garish bedspread adorning my new bed, the doctors surgery and the inside of my eyelids. Benjamin gave me the day off to die quietly and thankfully one of our hosts took me to the doctors to get me fixed. Twenty four hours later and it had been three days since I had eaten anything but I was finally on my feet again. The bad news was that I now had only two days to shoot all of pictures and video that we would need from here in Indonesia.

This is the last fishing hut before the beach and would have been totally destroyed when the tsunami hit. Beautiful place to work though..

The village we spent most of our time working in was almost entirely destroyed in the tsunami. Only five houses remained in this town of well over two hundred after the wave came in and yet the place is once again thriving. They have a great farming community here with shrimp and fish which you’ll be able to find on the shelves of your local supermarket back in the UK. Finding my way through the maze of ponds to the beach and it was truly amazing to stand and look at the vast ocean ahead of me bearing down on the endless miles of flat land that is so many peoples homes and livelihoods. It’s humbling to think that all the people working away in the searing heat around me would have experienced such a catastrophic event and that they literally picked up the pieces, rebuilt their lives and homes and got back to their lives.

It took me a while to realise that everyone had left me behind on the beach as the sun started to set over the mountains in the distance. This wouldn’t normally cause much concern apart from the warning I had been given by a local farmers wife earlier to ‘Watch out for the 5m python on the way to the beach’. She even refused to walk that way…which was a little disconcerting. I hadn’t exactly let this slip under the carpet and had protested insisting we took the car and went around the long way but everyone seemed to ignore the pasty white guy and continued onwards and so I had to make peace with the snake warning. I never did see the huge python, thank goodness but did use it to have a laugh the next day as I saw Benjamin crouching down near a pond to pack away some audio gear… I really wish I could post a video of his response as I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone jump so high in my life! It was hilarious.

More fish, this time in Indonesia. Yum!

It seems strange to be leaving Indonesia now as I really feel like we just got here. I’ve only tried one coffee house and a few different local dishes which were all amazing and I feel like I’ve only just started to explore this wonderful place. I guess that’s the trade off of a great job like this. You get to travel to an amazing place that you may never see again but you need to get a job done and that is the absolute priority. It’s travelling in a whole different way though and you get to meet the most amazing people, definitely an experience worth treasuring.

Right then. Just another ridiculous number of hours travelling to get back to the lovely warm British weather…actually couldn’t send this from the Crystal Coffee house and am struggling with the bitterly slow KL airport wifi………………..it’s like dial up all over again…

Yes that is Benjamin and I cracking into a well deserved BEER at Kuala Lumpur airport. Nothing else to do here but wait for the slow arse internet!

I see and yet I cannot find (Asim Rafiqui)

Ciara Leeming — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:28:59 +0000

I feel off-balance, and unable to keep up with the pace of the life unfolding in front of me. There are a million obvious images, but none that feel right to a frame. I see and yet I cannot find. I struggle to look, but yet I sense that I am not looking in the right places. Or I just miss….

Is it proper for a professional to admit that he is constantly burdened by a sense that even after nine years as a professional he continues to have moments that don’t even lift him beyond an amateur or hobbyist, or the dilettante?

…an interviewer once asked me why I loved photography and I responded that it wasn’t photography that I loved, but the act of searching for and making an image. After that I was largely indifferent to the rest of it. And so I remind myself that like all great loves, like all obsessions, the struggle is what makes it so compelling and not the goal itself.

National Geographic photographer Asim Rafiqui was given the 2009 Aftermath Grant for his project The Idea of India. He’s also a fantastic writer. I highly recommend you check out his blog, which is one of my favourites and is about much more than photography.

Dan Chung, we don’t believe in flame throwers

duckrabbit — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:45:49 +0000

Yesterday duckrabbit pointed out the success of a rather brilliant advertisement for the military might of the Chinese Communist party by Dan Chung.

Chung has been in touch to let duckrabbit know that as a typical Westerner I’m totally out of touch.

His response (in bold) is worth considering. He’s annoyed by my claim that the video has no context. duckrabbit readers can decide for themselves. This is the text that accompanies the video:

The parade in Tiananmen Square to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China – as seen in timelapse and slow-motion.Slow motion shot on a 7D at 720p/60 Time lapses on Canon Eos5DmkII and Nikon D700. Edited on Final Cut Pro
For more details on how this was shot head over to dslrnewsshooter.com For more on China from the Guardian go to guardian.co.uk/china

Maybe the context is on Chung’s blog, right? At the very least a nod to the students who died in the same square in which Chung’s camerawork beautifies the machinery of war that murdered them? Nope,

That said on his site Chung has many other videos that tell a different story. It is a fair argument that those who seek them out (and we encourage you to do so because its great work) will find balance. The main platform for his work is the Guardian website and again you will find balance there.

would you have cared one jot if it only had ten views?

All journalists should care about work that could be used as propaganda passed off as journalism.

Journalism is sometimes about righting wrongs and at other times just about showing an live event as it happens and letting people make their own minds up.

I agree with the statement but Chung has employed the visual language of advertising and film, not journalism. Can anyone name me a serious strand of journalism that involves removing all natural sounds, all commentary, the use of visually distorting lenses and a emotive music track layered over the top?

On top of that if a report on a live event or story from China needs full context in the video itself, when any similar event in the West does not, then frankly you are imposing a huge double standard. I don’t see the need to explain former British war atrocities in a news report covering the Trooping the colour or the cenotaph wreath laying.

The comparison would be offensive if it wasn’t so daft. We lay a wreath to remember all those who died fighting in the second world war. It’s an act of remembrance, not a celebration. The distinction between the two should be obvious.

The parade in China celebrated the history of the Communist Party rule, featuring over 140 weapons of war, in all their sparkling glory.

In fact did you really criticise the BBC’s coverage of the opening of the Olympics games in Beijing for not mentioning the cultural revolution or political prisioners?

The games were not a celebration of sixty years of a party responsible for murdering over 50 million people.

To suggest that the 2 million mostly Chinese viewers who watched this video had no idea of the context or the past history of the Communist party or indeed the current political climate in which they live, then I think you are deluded.

duckrabbit would be if he’d suggested that, but he didn’t.

Then again its not as if the Chinese dictatorship have been censoring the media, or blocking websites in the past like the BBC Chinese language website?

Chinese are very aware of the past and most still have great pride in their country and events like this and the Olympics. It seems you have a very strange and perhaps outdated view of China, not uncommon in the West, but inaccurate none the less.

Perhaps the red mist got in the way of Chung’s ability to read the original post but duckrabbit gave no views on the people of China, or the country.

Off the back of that, and in the interest of balance its worth noting that Chung is NOT an apologist for the Communist party of China, he’s a talented multimedia producer/photographer and many duckrabbit readers will enjoy his blog. He has covered stories on human rights abuses in China and elsewhere:

5DmkII video – Re-enacting the making of Mao’s China from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Typhoon Ketsana, on Boston Big Picture Blog

duckrabbit — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:42:32 +0000

An incredible set of pictures.

Photography dead anyone?

Behind the Veil

Adam Westbrook — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:17:55 +0000

This week long mini series by the Globe and Mail is causing quite the stir among multimedia journalists this week. Tracy Boyer’s eagle eye spotted it on the weekend, and it’s had plaudits from the likes of The Travel Photographer and The Bombay Flying Club.

I like it too, for several reasons:

it’s full screen (why hasn’t that been done before?)
it has it’s own embeddable widget (why hasn’t that been done before?)
it’s got a great flash navigation
and it’s beautiful to look at
the extras (like a timeline, photogallery and reporter’s notes)

But of the whole experience (which is still being unveiled throughout this week) the page which intrigues me the most is this one:

Look how many people worked on this project. I’ve counted it for you and it’s 15. That’s as many as work on a small TV documentary. And it’s interesting because it goes against the trend of multimedia and online journalism to this date.

Multimedia Journalism (and online video journalism) has so far been characterised by the lack of people working on it, not the abundance. And I think that’s what has given it charm and a non-corporate appeal. I watch a piece by a single journalist and I can put myself in their position and engage with the story.

Do pieces like Behind the Veil lack this? Or does multimedia’s Hollywood have a place too?And am I being unrealistic to expect 1, 2, or even 3 journalists could create an experience as detailed as the 15 on The Globe and Mail?

ADAM WESTBROOK

shifting sands – desertification in China

Ciara Leeming — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:02:25 +0000

Sean Gallagher won Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey’s first Emerging Photographer Fund in 2008, and used the prize to travel to China to photograph the devastating effects of desertification on the most populous country on earth. Since then he has also received grant money to continue his work from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Recently he even managed to slip into North Korea, disguised as a tourist.

I’ve been following Sean’s progress through his many blogs – his own, one on Resolve and one for the Pulitzer Centre.

Now he’s put some of his work together onto a multimedia piece for Pulitzer, and very impressive it is too. I hadn’t realised the scale of the disaster facing China. At 13 mins the slideshow is long but holds the attention. The photography is mature and the subject matter of international importance. This is where photography excels. Video, radio or print just couldn’t come close to such a visual crisis. This is desperately important work and a great lesson in how to go about doing long-term projects.

CIARA LEEMING

Parched in India

Ciara Leeming — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:14:56 +0000

A photographer whose work I’ve come to admire greatly is Sanjit Das. He and I briefly worked together on a job for the NGO Action Aid in Delhi last summer, and since then I’ve been watching his output with interest – and not a little envy. He is a serious talent.

Anyway, the other day I spotted Sanjit’s images of the devastation being wreaked by drought in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, on the Wall Street Journal website. For me these images say almost everything – they are so vivid that reading the story adds very little to my experience. To have that effect on someone with a writing background is no mean feat.

I can’t help thinking though that they could be even more powerful if I could hear the voices of these poor farmers and villagers. Sure I wouldn’t understand any of it without subtitles or voice-overs – my Hindi is limited – but I suspect I’d hear and feel the desperation in their tone. And hearing their voices, the musicality of their language, would bring an even fuller human dimension to their portrayal and further help me empathise with their plight.

This gets me to thinking how working in other countries, with different languages, could cause real challenges for small-scale multimedia outlets and wannabe producers like myself. So far when I’ve worked abroad I’ve been doing so simply with photography and the written word. For a cash-strapped one-man-band like me, these media work fine….NGO staff or fixers translate as we go along and we dutifully take notes, or record conversations to go back to later.

For me, gathering broadcast quality audio may be more problematic. Time is often short in these situations and translations can’t always be fully relied on. And I wouldn’t want someone talking over my audio as I collected it anyway, because to borrow a phrase from Benjamin, I’d rather let it breathe.

At this point, a shortage of both time and financial resources come into play. With few outlets paying good rates for multimedia, how does a little producer factor in the cost and added time needed for someone fluent in the local language to properly translate? Any ideas would be welcome.

Once you’ve got that side sorted, it’s over to the production itself. There are different ways to overcome a language barrier within the piece. A popular choice at the moment appears to be the voice-over – either using the photographer’s words or someone else’s – but I’ll be honest and say this isn’t something that I’m generally a fan of. I mean, why bother getting someone’s voice and then talking all over them?

So for me, that would leave subtitles, which can be made to work really well. In fact these can make sense even when a subject is speaking English, in some cases. Ed Kashi’s Curse of the Black Gold piece – which Benjamin highlighted a few posts ago – is a great example of this.

If you haven’t already watched the full web movie, then you really should. It’s educational in all senses – both as a fab piece of multimedia, as a strong visual photographic project and most importantly because it’s a really important issue-based piece of journalism.

CIARA LEEMING

Some of the Amercian NGO’s are creating amazing multimedia

Asian Photography Blog – Recommended

duckrabbit — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:35:39 +0000