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.

Regular readers here and followers of my work will know that the main focus of my photography is on environmental issues. In recent years, notably on access and availability of water in Asia, specifically China. I came across this short video on the National Geographic website that I wanted to share here with you. It tackles the question, “Why Care about Water?”

“If you took all the water in the world and put it into a gallon jug, less than one teaspoon of it would be available to us.” – Alexandra Cousteau – National Geographic Emerging Explorer

We have precious little usable freshwater to play with in the world. With our global population skyrocketing and demand for water increasing everyday, access and availability to water is going to be one of the most crucial factors determining how our future develops.

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.

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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Collecting Firewood in Inner Mongolia

This week, I returned again to the deserts of Inner Mongolia, whilst on assignment. I have been to this region a number of times over the past few years and really enjoy my time there. For those who don’t know, Inner Mongolia is one of China’s most northerly provinces, stretching across most of northern China. The landscape is dominated by grasslands however much of it is under serious threat from desertification.

In this photo, locals were collecting firewood, moving it from their truck to the side of the road. Deforestation is one of the main drivers are desertification in these regions. As trees are uprooted and roots removed, the soil loses its stability, drying quickly  as the desert moves in.

For those living in very rural areas, firewood is essential for their daily lives, however unregulated collecting can have disastrous consequences, especially when combined with other activities that fuel desertification. It is difficult though to implement a workable balance between local people’s needs and their impact on the environment.

Camera Info: Canon 7D | 16-35mm f2.8 lens | ISO 100 | f8 | 1/500th

World Water Day | Newseum | Pulitzer Center

If you happen to be in Washingotn DC this week, you may want to drop by the Newseum to check out a slideshow that will be on show in the main lobby. The show is being hosted by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and National Geographic Society to mark World Water Day, showing images from around the world depicting the global water crisis.

World Water Day | Newseum | Pulitzer Center

I’m very happy to have a couple of my images from China included in the show. The show runs from March 17 to April 1, so should hopefully reach out to many people passing through the main atrium in the Newseum. If you’re in town, stop by and let me know how it looks!

World Water Day | Newseum | Pulitzer Center

Sandstorm over the Taklamakan Desert | NASA | NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response. http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

What you are seeing above is a sandstorm hanging over the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in western China, taken by one of NASA’s satellites. To get a really good look at it, click here for the HighRes. The Taklamakan is China’s biggest desert and is an immense sea of shifting sand dunes, which dominates the west of the country.

I was lucky enough to spent a couple of weeks travelling around the Taklamakan desert, as part of my Pulitzer Center sponsored work on desertification in China. The fringes of the desert are most susceptible to desertification, as overgrazing on farmland bordering the desert tends to strip the lands of their grass and hence allows the desert to take hold and expand. It’s a worrying trend which is having serious consequences for the people of this region.

A sandstorm in Ningxia Province, China. 2009

During the spring, winds tend to increase in intensity in the west of China. As the spring winds blow, they pick up the sand and dust lying on top of the degraded land and carry it into the air, creating these massive dust and sand storms.

During my travels in western China, I found myself in a number of these storms. Photographically, they are a challenge as you try to keep your camera equipment safe from the sand. The resulting pictures however are quite spectacular and offer a very surreal viewpoint sometimes, such as the image above.

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.

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.

Schoolchildren in Inner Mongolia. 2010

This week’s ‘Photo of the Week’ comes from Inner Mongolia, a province located in the north of China. I travelled to this province in spring of 2010 as part of a group from the Shanghai based NGO, Roots and Shoots. Every year, they travel to Inner Mongolia to take part in their annual tree planting sessions, normally accompanied by corporate sponsors. As well as planting trees to help combat desertification in the region, they also visit local schools in an effort to try to educate young children about the importance of protecting the environment.

On our penultimate day in Inner Mongolia we woke to see the normally dry and arid landscape covered in snow. A heavy downfall had blanketed the school we intended to visit however we of course went anyway. This shot was captured from the bus as the children bid us goodbye after our visit. I like the angle I was able to get for this shot and using the overhanging branches of the tree makes for an interesting composition. The girl in the center in pink is also interesting as a focal point for the shot.

Camera Info: Canon 7D | 16-35mm f2.8 lens | ISO 400 | f9 | 1/320th