A woman holds tea leaves collected from a plantation nestled in the remote mountainous valleys of northern Sichuan. Tea plantations are some of the projects being targeted by the EU-China Biodiversity Programme to promote sustainable harvesting in the region.

Blog Post #2 for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting - China’s Fragile Forests

Haze enveloped the mountains as our car pushed further up the steep valleys into northern Sichuan. The green hills that fluttered past our window were a patchwork of forests, cleared areas and fields of maize. The road wound through the vertiginous ravines as we climbed steadily higher, pushing further towards the small town of Pingwu, nestled deep in the mountains.

I was travelling with a delegation from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the EU-China Biodiversity Program (ECBP) whose aim was to visit a number of sites in northern Sichuan where they have been sponsoring projects. The goals of these projects are to promote sustainable harvesting as an alternative to the exploitation and unsustainable collection of the forest’s resources that has been occurring in the region for many decades.

“China is one of the world’s 12 mega-biodiversity countries, but during the past decades we have had amazing economic development, so we are facing serious problems of biodiversity loss,” explained the UNDP’s Lu Chunming as our car snaked up a hillside to the first of our intended sites.

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Dongting – A Lake in Flux from Sean Gallagher on Vimeo.

I am really delighted to share the news here on my blog that my multimedia piece, ‘Dongting: A Lake In Flux” recently won 1st Prize in the prestigious British Press Photographer’s Year 2011. These awards highlight some of the best wotk from British photographers working around the world, so am honoured to be included in their list of awardees this year. I am also especially grateful to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting who sponsored the production of this work last year, as part of my Threatened Waters Project.

An exhibition of all the awarded work is now on at the National Theatre in London and runs from the 18th July to the 4th September. If you’re passing by, drop in and see some of the incredible work on show.

The mountains of northern Sichuan Province, China.

This month is an exciting one as I begin my third Pulitzer Center-sponsored project on environmental issues in China titled, “China’s Fragile Forests“.

This new project is a follow-up to my 2009 project “China’s Growing Sands” and in 2010, “China’s Wetlands Crisis“.

I begin this month with the first installment from my travels throughout the south-west of China, the region hardest hit by deforestation in the late 20th Century and currently facing the most challenges as the Chinese people struggle to find a balance with their forest resources.

Please find below the first of my installments from the field. There are many more to come in the coming weeks. As ever, I look forward to your thoughts!

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Felled trees in northern Sichuan Province. 2011

Forest ecosystems throughout the world are key to the livelihoods of over 1.6 billion people. They cover 31 percent of the world’s land area, are home to over 300 million people, and contain 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity.

Thirty percent of forests worldwide also produce both wood and non-wood products that account for a trade of over $300 billion worldwide, per year. It is this trade that is threatening the planet’s remaining forests, as developing nations battle to find a sustainable relationship with their natural resources.

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Zhalong Wetlands - Heilongjiang - China

It has been a little while since my last update here on the blog, for which I apologise. It has been a very busy few weeks with lots of shoots and lots of travels. As a way to say thanks for your patience (if you have dropped in on here recently and found no updates!) is to offer you a sneak peak at some the images I took recently that will be making their way into a new multimedia piece that I am working on this week, as a coninuation of my work on China’s wetlands crisis.

Zhalong Wetlands - Heilongjiang - China

Last week I travelled to the province of Heilongjiang, which lies in the north-east of China. I travelled to this region as it was one of the last regions of the country that I had not had the opportunity to get to during my coverage of environmental issues in China over the past couple of years. This area is crucial to China as it is the ‘bread basket’ of the nation, producing vast amounts of food which are fuelling the people of China to make some of the amazing economic changes we have seen over the past few decades.

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Canon T-shirt (black)

With summer almost upon us, I know many photographers are wondering what on earth their wardrobe contains that will ensure they stand out from the crowds of other photographers this season. Forget scarves. In case something goes wrong with your camera, why not have a t-shirt which doubles as a mini schematic of how your camera works?! The above t-shirt can be purchased in UniQlo in Beijing for the bargain price of 100rmb (US$15).

If schematics are not your thing, then you might want to head for the slightly more understated white t-shirt with simplified Canon EOS motif. Two, surely ‘must have’ items for this year’s summer wardrobe

Canon T-Shirt (white)

Followers of my blog will know that since last summer, I have been working on a project photographing and creating multimedia reports about the state of China’s wetlands, sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

The above video is the third in a series of seven that I am producing. Four and five are already complete, with six and seven coming very soon, however, I am working with a well known organisation to launch these as one package in the coming months. Much more on this soon…

I hope you enjoy the above video which highlights the plight of Dongting Lake, one of China’s most vital water systems. To view the first two installments of these videos, please head to my Vimeo channel here.

March 15-27 saw the holding of the Washington DC Environmental Film Festival in America’s capital. It was a showcase of short films made about environmental issues around the world and I was lucky enough to have been invited to show some of my recent work from China, as part of the presentation given by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Even though I wasn’t there myself, this was a wonderful opportunity to spread the message about my work on wetlands issues in China and bring this issue to a new audience. The above video is from the beginning of the Pulitzer Center’s presentation, given by Jon Sawyer, the Pulitzer Center’s Director. I’m proud and flattered that they led their presentation with my recent piece on the plight of Dongting Lake, in central China. You can watch the piece by watching the video above.

For more information about the film festival, here is their Missions Statement and outline from their website:

Mission Statement

The Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital seeks to further the public’s understanding of environmental issues – and solutions – through the power of film and thought-provoking discussions with environmental experts and filmmakers. The Festival is a platform that fosters environmental awareness and action.

Founded in 1993, the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital has become one of the world’s largest and most influential showcases of environmental film and a major collaborative cultural event in Washington, D.C.  Each March the Festival presents a diverse selection of high quality environmental films, including many Washington, D.C., U.S. and world premieres. Documentaries, features, animations and shorts are shown, as well as archival, experimental and children’s films at venues throughout the city.  Films are screened at partnering museums, embassies, libraries, universities and local theaters and are attended by large audiences. Selected to provide fresh perspectives on global environmental issues, most Festival films are accompanied by discussions with filmmakers, environmental experts and special guests, including national decision makers and thought leaders, and are free to the public. The Festival’s Web site serves as a global resource for environmental film throughout the year.

As the models of journalism have changes in the past year or two, more and more independent journalists are going online to crowd-fund their stories. A number of sites have sprung up giving you, the reader/viewer, the chance to help contribute and actively fund investigative reporting. It’s proving a successful model for some with many projects getting fully-funded and contributing to an excting new way that you can become part of the reporting process.

I was browsing one of these sites, Kickstarter, when I came across a story by a China-based journalist called Jocelyn Ford. She has a really interesting new project that she is seeking funding for which I thought I would try to help spread the word about here on the blog.

Tibet holds an almost mythic place in the minds of everyone, but what are the real stories taking place there? What are the stories beyond our stereotypes? Jocelyn is trying to show you one. Take a look.

Viewing the Terracotta Warriors

Last week, I had the opportunity for the first time to visit the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an, in central China. I was excited to have this opportunity althougha little wary that I would be visiting a location that has been photographed from nearly every angle over the years, since their discovery in 1974. This is often the case when visiting popular sites and it is sometimes a real challenge to find something unique and different when you feel like you know a place well, even before you have visited.

As I wandered around the vast pits containing the warriors I, like everyone else, was stunned by the sight in front of me. The only problem was that there was quite a large distance between the visiting areas and the warriors themselves. This sense of wonderment in the visitors was therefore difficult to capture.

Upon further exploration of the site, I happened upon a room which containing a number of individual soldiers, encased in glass displays. This was the closest that visitors could get to a warrior. As a result, the hoardes of tourists squeezed around the case, all trying to get a good look.

My attention became focused on the visitors and I began to photograph them and their reactions to the warrior in front of them. It was their reactions which fascinated me the most and offered me the best opportunity at capturing the reaction of the people to seeing the warriors. I hope that the image above reflects (excuse the pun) their feelings and hints at the importance of this site to the Chinese people.

Camera Info: Canon 7D | 16-35mm f2.8 lens | ISO 1600 | f2.8 | 1/30th

New Travel Magazine | Page 1&2

I hope you will excuse the seemingly self-promotion nature of this post today. I’ve been lucky enough to have two nice spreads in magazines this month, which I thought could serve as a nice reminder that online publication is not always to be all and end all. Seeing images in print in magazines and books have such a different impact and feeling for me, that it’s important to remember the importance of combining distributiuon methods to reach as many people as possible with our stories and images.

Desertification in China | Ventiquattro Magazine | Page 1&2

It is also interesting to see what different editors decide to do with my images. On a production level, I normally hand over my images to editors and then they take it from there. This is their job, of course. Speaking from only my personal experience, I rarely am consulted in terms of layout. I am fine with this as I am lucky enough to work with some really very good editors, who try to get the best out of the images. I am rarely disappointed.

So, if you happen to be in Italy at the moment, pick up a copy of Ventiquattro Magazine, which is running a very nice 8-page spread of my work on desertification in China. If you are in China, you may like to pick up a copy of New Travel Magazine 新旅行 which is running a 6-page spread of my work on the plight of the Chinese Alligator. Samples of both, are shown in this post. Scroll down for more…

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