Chinese New Year Special Workshop: White Cloud Temple Fair

February welcomes a very unique time of the Chinese calendar; Chinese New Year! To mark the most important holiday of the year, we are running a special workshop to coincide with the celebrations here in the nation’s capital. We continue in the vein of trying to introduce our workshop participants to less-visited and authentic locations, therefore will be holding this workshop at the White Cloud Temple, in XiCheng District on Tuesday 16th February from 11:00 a.m. to 16:00 p.m. This spectacular Taoist temple is over 1000 years old and is one of the city’s hidden cultural gems. It will be the perfect place for photographing the true, authentic and traditional new year celebrations. To find out more details about how to join us on this special workshop, please head to our workshop page here.

For those of you leaving Beijing for the holidays and won’t have a chance to attend the Chinese New Year workshop, do not worry! The increasingly popular Hutong Photography Workshop is back again on Sunday 28th February from 10:00 a.m. to 18:00 p.m. and will again offer participating students the chance to explore the maze-like hutongs whilst improving their photography. We were delighted to learn that this month a former student from this workshop was featured in Beijing City Weekend Magazine talking about her experiences taking this class. Read a snippet of her interview here and then find out how to book your place here through our workshop page.

We look forward to seeing you!

IKEA Beijing

This week I posted a new gallery on my main portfolio site titled “A Modern Life”, which I’d like to invite you to view in the China gallery.

It’s a small set of photos which I did for a magazine earlier last year, which I have only just got around to featuring now. The feature is on the subject of IKEA, the Swedish furniture superstore, in Beijing. This is possibly an odd topic of choice for a feature you may think however IKEA has become a symbol for modern living in Beijing with hundreds of Chinese people streaming through its doors every day since it opened 10 years ago.

IKEA Beijing

Many visitors aren’t there just for the furniture. IKEA Beijing has become a day-trip destination for some people as they use the beds and couches to lounge around, sit and talk to friends and generally relax and take it easy. For a photographer, it’s a perfect location as people treat showrooms almost as their homes therefore giving you a strange perspective into the daily lives of people.

To view the gallery, please head to my portfolio site here and follow Index>China>A Modern Life

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I am happy to announce the addition of the Sean Gallagher Photography Store to this site! In the store you will find a selection of prints for sale, both framed and unframed. Whether buying for yourself, or as a gift for a friend or family member, the wide range of images offers a broad selection to suit everybody’s taste in images.

MTP

To kick the store off, I have teamed up with the Jane Goodall ‘Roots and Shoots’ and Million Tree Project to provide a special offer on anyone buying prints where the subject is desertification. When you purchase a print depicting desertification from the store, 10% of the proceeds will be donated directly to the Million Tree Project who will use your money to plant trees in areas of Inner Mongolia that are being severely affected by desertification.

1 tree costs only 25 Chinese Renminbi (= approx. US$3.7 / GBP2.3 /  Euro 2.6), therefore purchasing a print at US$200 will result in the planting of 5 trees (5.4 to be exact)! To learn more about the project, please click on the Million Tree Project logo above.

*Buy prints, offset your carbon emissions and directly help combat desertification*

1/11 - 29.3in x 21.7in (74.5cm x 55cm) - Shapotou Couple- US$250 (excl. P&P)

Inside a Photographer's Notebook | Images (c) Steve McCurry / Magnum Photos

<<Return to the Learning Zone I haven’t done one of these posts for a while, so thought it was about time I shared another page from my notebook. If you haven’t seen the previous posts on this, you can head here and here to see them. The concept is simple. When I was beginning in photography I compiled a notebook of pictures, phrases, poems, sayings etc. that inspired me. I did so that when I was out shooting and I maybe had a down moment, or was lacking inspiration, I could turn to it to help me get going again.

The above page are pictures by the legendary Magnum and National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. I chose them because for me they represented the exoticism of the places he photographs and I wanted to be reminded of the dynamics of a photo that you could create using objects within a frame (see pic on left) and the power of a simple, well-lit portrait (see pic on right).

At the time, I believe I was reading a book by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. I was completely captured by how he wrote about life and losing love in Japan. One small haiku that stuck with me was the following:

“furin ya, koenaki kaze wa, uta wa seru”

The translation, although not literal I believe, was interpreted as:

“alone, the wind has no voice, but when it moves through the wind chimes, it sings”

For me at that time, the photographer became the wind and the camera the wind chimes. I liked that idea very much and wanted to remember it.

Heat of the Moment

Over at the Pulitzer Gateway, I am now taking questions from students in the US about the effects of desertification in China and how I reported on the subject last year. As part of the Pulitzer Center’s efforts to break down the barriers between reporters and their readers, they have provided a great venue for people to log-on, view the reporting and then ask the written journalists/videographers/photographers how and why they reported these issues.

As well as my work on desertification in China, there are many other fascinating stories on diverse subjects such as ‘flooding and drought in Mozambique’, ‘climate refugees in the south Pacific’, ‘water issues in Ethiopia’ and reports from COP15 by Pulitzer journalists. Spend some time there and find out about some of the ways we are all being affected by climate change.

Student Questions

Hutong Photography Workshop | Beijing | China

The temperature plummeted in Beijing this month but that didn’t stop us from heading out into the chilly hutongs for another “Hutong Photography” Workshop this weekend. Luckily for myself, guide Jessica Zheng and our students Bonnie, Scott, Tina and Kirsten the thermometer crept up over the weekend, hovering around 1-2C making it a perfect winter day to explore the hutongs.

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Along with our class in the morning introducing everybody to the key, fundamental technical aspects of photography we had two shooting sessions in the morning and afternoon. The hutongs are a constant inspiration and you never know what may be round the next corner. For this month’s workshops students encounters included photographing a 98-year old hutong resident, bicycles buried in snow, conversations with pipe-smoking locals, coal deliverers and many more unique characters.

Thanks again to our students Kirsten, Bonnie, Scott and Tina who braved the threatening cold to make it another memorable workshop!

I was asked recently by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to answer some questions with regards to my reporting on the subject of desertification in China. This is part of their initiative titled ‘Meet the Journalist”, offering viewers a chance to get ‘behind the scenes’ and find out some of the motivations and working practices that go into the reporting by the grantees. I was happy to answer a few questions on my reporting, all of which can be found now on the Pultizer Center’s YouTube channel, which is well worth checking out.

The first of the videos can be found below.

Question 1 “Why did you decide to report on this issue?”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRlOYgJjVkE[/youtube]

Please head here to view answers to the following questions: What was your biggest hurdle reporting on this issue? How is this story related to issues in the US? How has climate change news coverage evolved since you started reporting on these issues, and what could be done better?

BBC World Service

Last month I was interviewed by the BBC World Service’s Outlook programme for an article on my work on desertification for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The interview ran over the new year and has proved to be a wonderful new way to spread the message about this issue (the BBC World Service gets around 37 million listeners worldwide apparently).

If you missed it, then you can click on this link here to listen to the entire interview.

Here is the text that ran on the BBC World Service Website:

“Some of the most striking images on display at December’s Copenhagen climate change conference were pictures of China taken by a young British photographer.

Sean Gallagher travelled across the world’s most populated country on what is known as the ‘desertification train.’

And he documented his journey in photos to show how life is a constant struggle for those living on the edges of China’s deserts.

BBC World Service

China is fighting a war against creeping sand – year on year its deserts are expanding and joining to create a massive dustbowl.

It is estimated that 20 per cent of China’s land area – some 1.74 million square kilometers – is now classified as desert.

One of the main stops on Sean’s trip was Hongsibao – an environmental refugee town built from scratch by the Chinese Government to house those forced from their homes by the sandstorms and water shortages.

Lucy Ash spoke to Sean and asked him how these environmental refugees feel about their new home.”

First, Happy New Year everyone! I hope this blog entry finds you well after what I hope was an enjoyable and festive-filled Christmas and New Year. I apologise for my lack of posts over the past couple of weeks. Christmas for me (as it is for most) is a big family occasion and I decided to step away from the computer/internet/twitter/facebook etc. almost entirely over the break, in order to spend some real quality time with family and friends in the UK.

Stepping away from it all is something which I haven’t done enough of over the last few years. I can’t even remember the last time I had a holiday where I wasn’t working or shooting! There’s nothing wrong with working hard but taking breaks is of equal importance. They give us a chance to take a step back, reflect and gauge where we are going and in what direction we are heading. I now feel fully recharged and ready to find out what the new year has in store!

On that note…I need to put up a new blog post…lots has been happening while I’ve been away!