National Geographic Creative

As some readers here will know, I have been a contributing photographer to the National Geographic Image Collection for some time now. Recently, the image collection has changed and is now known as National Geographic Creative, a new agency that represents photographers working in both photography and video, tailoring work to meet the needs of a new kind of client who demands unique, tailored imagery for their campaigns and assignments.

I’m proud to be part of this group and encourage you to visit the new website which has had a great re-design.

Here’s more from the National Geographic Press Room:

“WASHINGTON (June 4, 2013)—For the first time, National Geographic has gathered its expansive archive of still and moving images and its roster of award-winning photographic and filmmaking talent and made them accessible to the creative community in one place, through National Geographic Creative.

National Geographic Creative is an in-house agency that brings together National Geographic’s photography and video stock collection and talent representation agency. The agency licenses National Geographic photography and video to commercial and editorial clients and makes National Geographic talent available for custom marketing campaigns, in branded and non-branded formats. The agency has just launched a fully searchable, intuitive database at NatGeoCreative.com.”….Continue reading on the National Geographic Website.

A visitor walking around the remains of The Wonderland Theme Park, a construction project on the north-east outskirts of Beijing that was abandoned.

It was always an odd sight. For most, Beijing’s Wonderland was glimpsed from a car, or bus, en route to the Great Wall of China. A double-take was all that most remembered, wondering if they had actually just seen what appeared to be a half-finished Disneyland next to farmland on the outskirts of the city.

For those with time to spare after a day to the Great Wall, or just a sense of curiosity, the dilapidated foundations provided a pit-stop and chance to wander through a strange but intriguing failed building project.

It appears however that this unique place is no more. According to Shanghaiist, it seems that demolition began in late April. The park is making way for a supermarket apparently.

I stopped of at Beijing’s Wonderland last year, as part of an assignment. Here are a few images from a couple of hours wandering the ruins…

A man cycles past The Wonderland Theme Park.

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The Great Wall of China at Laolongtou (plus ship)

I have visited the Great Wall of China nearly 20 times over my 6+ years in China. From hiking up its steep steps in the mountains north of Beijing to photographing the crumbling ruins in the country’s western desert regions, I have seen some beautiful sights.

This weekend however I saw perhaps the oddest scene I have witnessed in all my trips to the wall. A ship, run aground, having missed smashing into the wall by a matter of metres.

This scene is from the easternmost part of the Great Wall, at Laolongtou (Old Dragon’s Head) in Shanhaiguan, Hebei Provice, where the wall runs into the Bohai Sea. It’s obviously a very famous and well-visited part of the wall but it appears that someone took a wrong turn recently when trying to navigate this portion of coast in north-east China.

A unique Great Wall photo opportunity.

I wouldn’t of liked to have been the captain who realised that there was an imminent chance he was about to run into, and potentially destroy part of, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the whole nation.

According to local storeowners at the Lalongtou site, the ship ran aground in early November. As of yesterday, it hasn’t moved very far. Get there quick for a very unique Great Wall of China photo opportunity!

PetaPixel

North Korea news seems to have quietened down lately in the mainstream media but a couple of photo-related outlets recently picked up on my blog post ‘Inside North Korea: Photographing in the World’s Most Secretive Nation‘ which I re-posted here on the blog a couple of weeks ago. Click the link if you missed it when it was first posted.

Many thanks to PetaPixel and Feature Shoot for sharing the images and story with their followers. Please do check out their sites for an eclectic array of news and features from the photo-world.

FeatureShoot

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I just wanted to extend a big thank you to all of those who were able to make the opening of MELTDOWN at the weekend in Beijing. The opening was a great success and it was really encouraging to see so many people interested in this project.

A big thanks also to Southern Barbarian who were our hosts and put on a wonderful selection of drinks and delectible Yunnan-style food for us on the afternoon. The prints will be hanging for the next couple of months, so there is still plenty of time to see the show.

If you want to learn more about the project, please visit the Pulitzer Center site for slideshows and articles. There are a few more interesting developments with regards to this project coming soon, so please stay tuned for more news in the coming weeks!

MELTDOWN EXHIBITION OPENING

In case you missed the announcement last week, I’d like to extend another invitation to readers here on my blog to join me  in Beijing for the exhibition opening of ‘MELTDOWN: Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau’. I’m excited to have partnered with Southern Barbarian who will kindly be our hosts for the afternoon between 3-6 p.m., providing free drinks and Yunnan-style snacks for attendees.

This will be the first public exhibition of this work that was produced late last year with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. I hope this work will be of interest to those with a curiosity about life on the Tibetan Plateau and the effects of climate change on the people and ecosystems on the ‘roof of the world’.

For directions, maps and previews please visit any of the number of sites that have been promoting the event in the past couple of weeks – TIME OUT Beijing, SmartBeijing, City Weekend, eChinaCities,  and LumDimSum blog.

融逝无言: 青藏高原气候变化

Visitors stand next to ornate gates at the mausoleum for former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. 2009

Tensions are running high again on the Korean peninsula. As international observers watch closely for what move the North will play next, I thought it might be a good time to revisit some of my work from photographing in North Korea, undercover on-assignment, for the Globe & Mail in 2009.

Below is an extract from an article I contributed to the Digital Journalist the same year, recounting some of my experiences whilst photographing in this reclusive state. It was an experience I shall never forget…

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Last month, I got a call from the Globe & Mail‘s Asia correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, asking me if I was free in early September for a shoot. “Sure,” I said. I had been working with Mark a lot recently and was keen to work with him again. “I’m thinking of going to North Korea,” he said. “North Korea? Okay, I’m in,” I nonchalantly replied.

As our bus trundled across the bridge over the Yalu River that separates China and North Korea, my initial nonchalance had well and truly disappeared as we slowly approached the most closed nation on earth.

A North Korean family huddle together in Kaesong City near the DMZ. 2009

I was nervous because both Mark and I were posing as tourists, entering a country that was not exactly friendly to the foreign press. Immediately after the well-publicized rescue by former U.S. President Bill Clinton of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who had been caught illegally entering the country, this was maybe not the best time to be trying to sneak into North Korea. With Mark’s passport indicating his journalist credentials hidden (replaced by one with no such indications) and my camera broken up into as many parts as possible and spread around my person, we actually didn’t raise too many eyebrows as we quietly slipped onto a bus packed with Chinese tourists.

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MELTDOWN – Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau

Dear Friends, Followers and Readers,

I would like to invite you to the opening party for ‘MELTDOWN: Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau’, which will be taking place at Southern Barbarian in Beijing on Saturday 20th April from 3:00 until 6:00 p.m.

The exhibition will feature a selection of images from my travels last year documenting how climate change is affecting communities on the roof of the world.

MELTDOWN – Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau

On the afternoon, there will be free drinks and Yunnan-style snacks to sustain you as we enjoy a spring afternoon in the hutongs of central Beijing.

For more information and a map to the venue, please click here for City Weekend’s listing.

I look forward to seeing you there!

I just arrived in the Indonesian capital for an assignment and will be here for the next week and a half, exploring the city and photographing issues related to the city’s development and environmental issue.

Follow my mobile updates on Instagram (sean_gallagher_photo) in my ‘Jakartan Diary’ as I explore what I am sure will turn out to be a fascinating city.

It’s that time of year again when David Alan Harvey (Magnum and National Geographic) and the Burn team search for their next recipient of the ‘Burn Emerging Photographer Fund‘.

Burn

The deadline is May 5, 2013 this year and with a total fund of US$ 15,000 for the chosen photographers. Its a serious amount of money that could make some new projects become a reality.

As readers of this blog may know, I was lucky enough to receive the for EPF in 2008. It made a significant impact on my early career and continues to do so today. It freed me up to pursue the projects that I really wanted to and gave me the confidence to follow my passion of covering environmental issues.

If you’d like to learn more about my application and the grant’s impact on me and my career, I wrote this blog post about it in 2011.

Good luck to all those who enter!