“Style has no formula, but it has a secret key. It is the extension of your personality. The summation of this indefinable net of your feeling, knowledge and experience. Take colour as a totality of relations within a frame…colour is joy. One does not think joy. One is carried by it.”
-Ernst Haas – Colour Photography
Here’s a really interesting interview between Aidan Sullivan of Getty Images and Ernst Haas’s son, Alex Haas. Well worth a listen…
Hong Kong residents and tourists walk past the famous Hong Kong skyline. 2008
This weekend I head south to the amazing city of Hong Kong! It’s my first serious travel of the year and I’m looking forward to getting away from the bitter cold of Beijing, for the warmer climes of the South China Sea.
I last went to Hong Kong in 2008 and was really blown away by the energy of the city and the mix of east and west. As a former British colony, it still has many British influences, which obviously make me feel at home being a Brit myself.
I shall be speaking at the University of Hong Kong during my time in the city, dropping in to give a presentation to some of the students there. I’ll also be shooting around the city, adding some images to the National Geographic Image Collection hopefully. So, I have a few days to wander around the city and try to capture that energy which captivated me last time. Will try to post updates during my week.
If you have visited Hong Kong before and have some reccomendations of places that MUST be photographed, please do let me know. Happy to hear suggestions!
Asia Society - Giant Pandas
Last week saw a couple of interesting publications online that I wanted to share here. They are quite contrasting but are linked by their ties to environmental issues in China, which as readers of this blog will know, is a subject that I specialise in covering here in Asia.
The first is from the Asia Society who did an interview with me about the current state of Giant Panda populations in the wild in China. I really like collaborating with the Asia Society as they are very much dedicated to covering environmental issues and highlighting under-reported stories in the region. You can also view the 7-part Multimedia series on China’s Wetlands here that I produced with them and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting at the end of 2011.
Foreign Policy Magazine - The Smog That Ate Beijing
The second publication online was with Foreign Policy Magazine who published a series of images on the subject matter of Beijing air pollution, titled The Smog that Ate Beijing. At the end of last week I published a post with some extra images from this shoot and also some thoughts into how I made the images. That post was titled ‘Behind the Smog That Ate Beijing’ and you can view that here.
Happy browsing!
“If you say you really want my job, okay, here’s the deal. There are no more hobbies, no more fun. You can have fun doing the work, but you have to be completely obsessed with it. I think 99% of the people think that professional photography is travel and adventure, and they forget that photography is very, very hard work. You’re “on” all the time. When you go out the door to take pictures, nobody cares about any of the excuses about bad weather or logistics, or how the authorities wouldn’t let you do your job. All that matters is what the photos say, how much money the magazine spent on that time, and whether or not it’s a successful coverage. Most people don’t really want that.”
- Michael Nichols / National Geographic
Check out more from Michael Nichols in this fascinating video how he made his famous tree image for National Geographic…
As fireworks begin to erupt around me here in Beijing, I just wanted to write a quick note to wish you all a fantastic year of the dragon!
If you are lucky enough to be in an urban area in China this evening, you will be treated to a unique fireworks display like no other you will ever see.
Here in Beijing, the sky erupts at midnight, exploding in a kaleidoscopic array of colours across the city welcoming the new year.
Wherever you may be, have a great evening and enjoy the show. 龙年快乐!
The Chinese New Year celebrations are upon us here in Beijing and it feels like the quiet before the storm today. I thought I’d take this opportunity to get in some research for some upcoming projects I have in mind for 2012.
The new year, whether the western or Chinese, always feels like a good time to think about new story ideas and reflect on what’s happened the previous year.
I’m currently planning new chapters for my work exploring environmental issues in Asia. Research always begins with reading for me and I always make sure I have time to sit down and take in new information on the topics I’m interested in. Pictured are some ‘light’ reading material that I am using for research and inspiration today.
Today, is for quiet reading. Tomorrow, as the year of the dragon arrives, the explosions begin!
A view of air pollution over the CCTV building in Beijing, China. Wednesday January 18th 2012
I got a call on Wednesday from Foreign Policy magazine asking me to do a quick 1 day assignment. The brief? To travel around Beijing and capture the dense layer of smog that was sitting on top of the city. Beijingers and visitors will be all too familiar with this ‘fog’ which regularly descends upon the city. The story was published yesterday online and has become one of the most popular stories on the FP site (view here). I thought I would include here on the blog, a few shots that didn’t make the final cut and explain some of the challenges in photographing air pollution.
I’ve decided to integrate my mobile uploads here on the blog, to centralize my updates and keep the blog updated more often.
The first of these was taken just 20mins ago in downtown Beijing. I’m on assignment today and as you can see, it’s another quite terrible day in the capital. Pictured is the iconic CCTV building, shrouded in haze. I’m trying not to breath too much while out shooting today!
For regular readers who have stopped by over the past few weeks, I must apologise for the lack of posts recently. The past couple of months were busier than I expected and blogging kept getting pushed back further and further down my list of things ‘to do’. Needless to say, I am back and will endeavor to post as regularly as possible in the new year. This is a new year’s resolution at the top of my list!
First up is an interview that I did for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting recently, talking about my project from last summer on ‘China’s Fragile Forests’, looking at the current threats to China’s Forests. I hope it gives you some insights into my project and how I approached it. Stay tuned for more updates on this project in the new year!
