-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!

- 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.

Tourists on Coal Hill in central Beijing. Wednesday January 18th 2012

The first challenge was making sure that I was able to get a representative picture of Beijing in the space of around 6 hours. This was an unplanned assignment, as FP editors had been closely watching the BeijingAir feed on Twitter, waiting for it to hit “hazardous” levels. This meant that logistically, I had to plan the day in the space of a few minutes before grabbing my cameras and heading out the door. Making sure that I was able to get to as many of Beijing’s distinctive landmarks as possible, I decided that given the time that I had I would aim for Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the CBD area of Guomao and the Olympic stadium.

The sun burns though the smog in central Beijing. Wednesday January 18th 2012

The next challenge comes from actually getting images that convey the sense of pollution and haze. If you are shooting with a wide-angle lens at ground level, it’s actually difficult to effectively show the effect of the haze. I quickly decided that to get shots with some impact, I would have to find some way to change this. I decided I needed some elevation.

The CBD area of Beijing is similar to most other business districts, lots of hi rise office buildings. I knew that if I wanted to get a sense of being in the smog, I needed to get up into these office buildings to shoot. I was a little hesitant at first, as I expected any request I made to photograph from the buildings to be denied. Surprisingly though, the couple of offices that I tried happily let me in to shoot for a couple of minutes.

A view of air pollution over the Guomao (CBD) area in Beijing, China. Wednesday January 18th 2012

From the CBD, I headed to ‘Coal Hill’ which is located north of the Forbidden City. It’s arguably the best place in Beijing to get a view of the Forbidden City and on a good day, you can see half way across the city. I knew that I wanted to try and capture some of old Beijing, to contrast my shots from the CBD and Bird’s Nest. Getting the elevation from being on top of the hill was again, key to getting the shots.

Air pollution obscures the view of the Olympic stadium, the 'Bird's Nest', central Beijing, China. Wednesday January 18th 2012

All in all, I was pleased with the results from this shoot, considering the time restrictions and number of locations. I hope these images help convey the severity of air pollution in Beijing. It’s a very serious issue and one which affecting the health of every person in Beijing and in many other cities throughout China.

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!

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!

How do you find a scientist?

“It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.”

Dealing with science and scientists has been an important part of my work whilst covering environmental issues over the past few years in China. Virtually every story I have investigated and covered began with reading the research of scientists working on the subject matter and/or in the location I intended to visit. Many scientists have been key to my research and without their input, much of my work wouldn’t of been possible.

I studied science at University, Zoology to be exact, so became quite familiar with many aspects of research and the scientific method. Not all of us studied science however and sometimes dealing with science and/or scientists can seem somewhat daunting. Researching the latest studies and/or news coming from scientific circles however is really one of the first things you should do, to get a thorough grounding of the current level of understanding of the topic you have decided to cover. This applies if you are covering environmental issues, medical or social.

So, to try to help you bridge that gap, here are my top 5 tips for dealing with science and scientists when researching a potential story….

1. Where to Start? So, you have a great story idea, you’ve identified some potential subjects but before you go anywhere you want to learn what the latest scientific research on the matter is. Where to start? Your first stop should be popular scientific magazines such as Nature, Science and Scientific American. These magazines are written for the educated layman and lay out all the latest happenings in the world of science. Do a quick search on their websites and see if anything comes up related to your subject matter.

2. Dig A Little Deeper – So you’ve found an article in one of the science magazines related to the subject matter you are interested in. Great! What next? Let’s dig a little deeper. Perhaps there is a specific piece of research that is quoted in the article that you’d like to know more about. Invariably that research will have come from a scientific paper. This is a document that has been produced by a scientist or group of scientists, outlining their investigation, experiments and findings. To find a specific scientific paper, go to websites such as PubMed, JournalReview.org and eMedicine. This will allow you to search for and locate the papers written by the scientists themselves.

Create a 'buzz'?!...*tumbleweed*

3. How to Read a Scientific Paper – Opening up a scientific paper for the first time can be a bit daunting. There is normally a vast amount of information. Where to start? First, it’s important to know that the average scientific paper is broken into the following parts: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion. As a rule, start with the abstract. This is normally a paragraph or two highlighting the main hypotheses, methodology and findings of the paper. It’s not like a novel where you have to wait for the end to see ‘who dunnit’. You can read the abstract and get all the main points of the ‘story’. Want to learn more? Next head to the introduction if you are a little unfamiliar with the subject matter. Want even more? Get an in-depth look into the investigation by reading the Results and Discussions. If you want to find out what sized test tubes the scientists were using, finally check the materials and methods.

4. Don’t be Scared to Get in Touch – So, you have found a paper you are interested in, or have found the name of a scientist whose research you would like to learn more about. Get in touch. Normally, it is as easy as a quick Google search. Virtually all scientists are affiliated to a University or research institute that can easily be found on the web. If you have the scientific research paper, the lead author of the paper normally has their email address listed on the paper itself. The majority of scientists I have approached have always been more than happy to talk about their work. If you should want to meet them in person, or conduct an interview, make sure you….see no. 5.

5. Do your Homework – Before you contact the scientist, make sure you do your homework. You do not have to have read every word of every paper they have ever written, but at least be familiar with the major points they have covered and the general consensus of opinion amongst their peers on the subject matter at hand. Prepare your list of questions ahead-of-time and make them relevant. Scientists won’t expect you to be an expert in the field (otherwise you wouldn’t be contacting them) but will expect you to be up to speed to a basic level.

I hope these basic pointers help. Just writing this post has made me think of many more things I’d like to share with you in order to help you when dealing with science and scientists. Watch this space for more posts on this subject matter. Feedback is of course always welcome!

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