NGC 2841 Galaxy - NASA - http://www.spacetelescope.org/

I thought I’d start the week with something spectacular. I wish I could claim that this is my picture, but alas, it belongs to NASA shot with the famous Hubble telescope. What you are seeing is NGC 2841, a spiral galaxy that is located some 45 million light years away. I’m captivated by astrophotography sometimes and like to peruse astronomy blogs and dip into the Hubble-archives to peruse some of the amazing images out there. This one caught my eye and I thought it would be a great image to start the week with.

As an added extra, I thought I’d throw in a little Carl Sagan for futher inspiration too. Have a great week.

Continuing along the aerial viewpoint theme from yesterday, I thought this video was a fitting follow-up to the somewhat depressing image of pollution hanging over Beijing, taken from one of NASA’s satellites. It also connects nicely in the NASA theme, as this video is of Thursday’s Discovery Shuttle Launch. This is not just any video of a launch but one taken from the window of a passing commercial airliner!

Now the video isn’t the most amazing quality in the world but the quick-thinking passenger who shot it, pulled out their video camera just in time to get a very unique viewpoint indeed.

I am fascinated by astronomy, so am thrilled to see this new vantage point. Shame it will be Dicovery’s last launch. It also seems to mark the beginning of the end for the US space shuttle program. What will the future hold for manned missions from the US? I have a feeling China will have something to say on this matter soon. Stay tuned…

NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response - http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

This is quite a depressing picture. The main reason (for me) why it is so depressing, is because I live underneath that grey cloud. This is an image captured by NASA on February 20th 2011, showing very clearly the blanket of pollution that sat over Beijing throughout the beginning of this week. Click here for the HighRes.

According to NASA

The featureless gray-brown haze is so thick that the ground is not visible in parts of this photo-like image taken at 11:35 a.m. by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite. At that time, a weather station at Beijing’s airport reported visibility of 1.9 miles (3.1 kilometers). Visibility dropped as low as 1.1 miles (1.8 km) later in the afternoon.

To be fair, it has appeared that there has been a significant rise in the number of ‘blue sky days’ since the new year. However, the smog still occasionally descends and smothers the city in a soot/black carbon haze. This week, it was present for a solid three days with Air Quality Indices off the charts most of that time.

This is not a new phenomenon for Beijing and a couple of years ago I was asked by the Asia Society and Mediastorm to contribute to a feature titled ‘Clearing the Air‘. It’s a really nice piece introducing the fundamental reasons behind air quality in China. It’s well worth a look.

Liu Bolin | Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery

I’ve been a fan Chinese artist Liu Bolin for some time now. Every once in a while, I come across one of his images and they always bring a smile to my face. Take a look at the image above and you will see why. Liu paints himself, to blend in with the background he is standing in front of. The image above, is one of the best I have seen from him. You can find quite a few more here. It’s a really interesting concept.

This morning I received a newsletter from the Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery announcing a solo-exhibtion of Liu’s work which will run from today until the 12th March. If you are in town, you should definitely check out the exhibition.

Discovered this great little documentary from the BBC this week, that I thought was well worth sharing here on the blog. The subject of the documentary is about China’s increasing influence and role within the economies of many African nations and the subsequent impacts on the people of those countries.

The Chinese Are Coming | BBC

I think the documentary gives a good overview of some of the issues at play and outlines the key challenges Africa is facing with its new friendship with China. If you weren’t aware of China’s inroads into Africa, this is a a great documentary to start with to get you up to speed with the basics.

Thanks to Danwei for originally posting this on their blog.

This is a really interesting video and one which deserves a few minutes of your time to watch. The footage in the video has been shot by BBC for a new series called ‘Human Planet’ and coincides with Survival International’s new campaign to protect some of the last untouched tribes in the world. The video is shot on the border between Brazil and Peru and briefly records an isolated tribe of Indians.

A whimsical soundtrack and celebrity voiceover help to heighten the emotional pull of the video and I think it works perfectly for the aim, which is to raise awareness of this important issue.

According to the website…

“The Indians’ survival is in jeopardy as an influx of illegal loggers invades the Peru side of the border. Brazilian authorities believe the influx of loggers is pushing isolated Indians from Peru into Brazil, and the two groups are likely to come into conflict.

Survival Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘The very dangerous future for uncontacted tribal peoples should be of worldwide concern.”

To learn more, head to the Uncontacted Tribes website. There are more fascinating videos on the challenges facing various tribes.

Here is a teaser trailer for a corporate assignment that I was involved in last year. The project was for the company Bosch and the resulting body of work will be released this week. I just received a link to this trailer, so thought I would share it here.

I won’t reveal anything about the nature of the project, but it was quite unique and certainly an ambitious project. Please watch the video to see what I mean.

I’ll keep you posted, once I can reveal more….

Men standing on the side of a highway running through the North Korean countryside. 2009

“Starving North Korea Send out SOS for Food Aid” is one of the headlines that reads on the Daily Telegraph’s website this week. This week also marks the birthday of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il. I have chosen to mark this day with a video that was released a few months ago on the Telegraph website, secretly recorded by North Koreans dissidents, in attempt to show some of the frightening conditions in the country. It’s disturbing to watch.

As readers of this blog will know, I travelled to North Korea in the autumn of 2009 on assignment for the Globe & Mail. We had a very limited view of the real North Korea. Our 5-day trip was state-controlled and we were whisked across the country from one official tourist destination to the next. When our private mini-bus passed though rural areas, we were expressly told not to take any photos. I, of course, tried to get some. One of which is below. It’s only a fleeting glance, however.

Continue Reading »

Beijing, China. 2005

This week’s image comes from my first ever trip to China, back in the autumn of 2005. I had just finished an internship at Magnum in their London offices and I decided to go to Beijing, to start to photograph some stories I had been forming in my mind during my internship. One of the stories I worked on during my first six weeks in Beijing was on the destruction of the old ‘hutongs’ in the centre of the city. Hutongs are old courtyard communities, based around mazes of alleyways and form an integral part of the character of old Beijing. In recent years, many of these hutongs have been destroyed in an attempt to modernise the centre of the city.

I was out wandering the hutongs one day, as I had been doing a lot during the trip, when I cam across a family moving out of their hutong home. The surrounding area was being demolished and their small community was one of the last that was left. As I watched them start to remove tables, chairs and other items I decided to position myself down one of the small alleyways outside their home. I was hoping that I may be able to catch an interesting moment when someone walked past with an item from their home. I couldn’t hoped for better when for a brief second, someone walked past with a large classical Chinese painting depicting a group of cranes underneath a tree. I managed to capture two frames before the person was gone. Compared to the regular chairs and tables I had seen pass me, this image was the obvious choice from the situation I found.

Camera Info: Canon 20D | 20mm lens | ISO 100 | f4.5 | 1/60th

POYi

Sometimes, you’ll hear a photographer say, “I wish I had taken that”. It’s not meant as a negative comment but as a genuine sign of respect to another photographer for the quality of picture they have taken. I had one of those moments today whilst perusing the winners (so far) of the POYi 2011 contest. The image above was taken during anti-government protests in Bangkok in 2010.

It’s a really beautiful shot. The colours are wonderful. Immaculate timing. And the reflection reminds me of a certain iconic photograph. I’m not sure who took it, as POYi do not release the names of winners until all are announced, but I haven’t seen it previously. Perhaps a Thai photographer? Wherever they are from, hats off. This is my favourite image…so far.