99% of people just walk on by. If you just watch the above video, that’s what you will of seen. Maybe it was more than 99%. Incredible beauty in the everyday was walked passed, ignored, momentarily noticed and then forgotten.

I’ve often felt that about photography, in that, when photographers go out and take images, we are trying to see unique and special moments in the ordinary. But those moment aren’t ordinary. They are quite incredible and often breathtaking. The way the light is falling. The drama of shadows. The excitement of colour. The serendipitous  juxtaposition of people in the street as they pass oneanother. The texture and depth of emotion caught between people in the briefest of moments.

These are moments that are are not noticed by 99% of people, even though they are right there infront of them.

For me though, these are the most important things in life to see and recognise. This is why photography is so special.

The music is everywhere. Stop and listen.

Read more about the violinist Joshua Bell and the fascinating experiment in the video here

During my time speaking at universities and schools across China and in the US, I am often asked how I find stories to work on. I thought it was time I jotted down a few of these ideas here on the blog and incorporate them into my new Learning Zone which will be a hub for more informational posts aimed and helping readers here get a little bit more of an insight into professional photography and journalism.

So, to start with, here are 5 tips for finding great stories from a photography/journalism perspective:

1. Go Local – You don’t need to travel half way across the world to find a great story. Look in your backyard and you will find many great leads and potential subjects. If you are interested in a larger issue, look for one or two people in your local community who represent that issue and tell the story through them. Perhaps the story is health related and you are interested in doing a piece about rising national levels of heart disease. It shouldn’t take you too long to find someone in your community who is affected. Tell the story though individuals on a local level, to represent the bigger picture.

Struggling for Ideas?

2. Read, Read, Read – One of the best things you can do, whether you are working on a story at a local, national, or even international level, is to read. Whether you are consuming your news through the printed press or online, you can immediately gauge what people are talking about by being aware of what if being printed in the news. Keep tabs on story/subject trending and write down/bookmark ideas, or cut out articles to help you remember potential story ideas. Don’t just read the news though. Great stories can be found by breaking out of your comfort zone and consuming new magazine articles, scientific journals and novels.

3. Stay Connected – Your contacts and connections, on a personal and/or professional level, can prove to be an invaluable source of ideas. These connections do not have to be photography/journalism related. Talk to people in the community you are working in and listen to what they have to say. Are there any recent events, activities, incidents etc., that might relate to an interesting story? Are people talking about issues that haven’t appeared in the press recently? You can get many great ideas just from listening to what’s happening on the ground. Be personable. Make friends. Keep connected.

4. Get Inspired – Don’t lock yourself away in the world of photography and journalism. Break out and immerse yourself in the worlds of film, music, art and science. Get out of your comfort zone again and explore and discover new ways of storytelling through watching movies, listening to great music, taking in an art or science exhibit at the local museum or gallery. Search for new ways to be inspired and it will directly filter back into your photography and/or writing.

5. Look in the Mirror – What do I really care about? This is one of the first questions you should ask yourself. Find a subject matter that you are genuinely passionate about, or interested in. Perhaps the subject matter is directly related to your life experiences, or connected to an interest you have outside the world of photography and journalism. Avoid choosing subject matters that you believe others will take you seriously for, should you cover it. The best work comes from working on subject matter that you genuinely care about and you will put in the extra effort for.

What has worked for you? Please feel free to share your story-finding ideas below!

<<Return to the Learning Zone

This week, David Alan Harvey announced the deadline for the Emerging Photographer’s Fund 2011. Having been lucky enough to be the recipient of the first grant in 2008, I wanted to jot down a thought or two about how the grant has impacted me as a photographer.

Burn

The Emerging Photographer’s Fund is an evolution from discussions on David’s old blog ‘Road Trips‘. Road Trips was David’s first foray into blogging and became and intimate community of people keen to learn from David’s experience as a professional photographer for National Geographic and Magnum.

The appearance of blogging has, I feel, been a gift to aspiring photographers as more and more established professionals have gone online to openly and candidly share their thoughts and experiences with their followers. As a young photographer starting out, one of the things I craved was learning from pro-photographers and learning how they approached their careers and their work. Road Trips was a goldmine for any young photographer looking for information and/or advice. It still is a goldmine, although Road Trips is no longer, and has evolved very successfully into Burn. As I have evolved too as a photographer, making the first forays into the beginning stages of my professional career, I still value the Road Trips/Burn community as much as before.

Road Trips

In the summer of 2007, David announced the idea that he was giving out a grant. He challenged the readers of his blog to find a photo-project which they would ultimately submit and he would consider for further funding. I had been sitting on the idea of photographing the issue of desertification (the gradual expansion of deserts and arid land) for some time but hadn’t found the right time to get the project going. The challenge from David was to be my impetus to start.

I packed some clothes and my camera and booked a flight from Beijing to western China to a place I knew was suffering from desertification. At that time, the trip was funded out of my own pocket and I realistically knew that my chances of being awarded a grant were very small, due to the fact I was sure many good photographers would be entering too. It didn’t really matter to me though, as it was a project that I had wanted to cover for sometime and the challenge was enough to make me want to start. My aim was to get the project started and if I was lucky, get it infront of David on a computer sometime and get a few pieces of advice. I didn’t expect anything else. It’s important when you enter competitions or grants that you don’t expect anything. Continue with your work anyway. If you get any kind of recognition, it’s a bonus. You still need the passion for the subject to continue with it, even if it doesn’t pick up and awards along the way. They should never be your goal.

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<<Return to the Learning Zone Last weekend, I was invited by Beijing based eco-group Greening the Beige to give a workshop at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. We had a great turnout, with many students and photography enthusiasts all keen to see images from my environmental work in China over the past few years and learn about some of the thought processes that go into tackling these realtively large issues. We had such a great discussion, so I thought I would post my presentation here on my blog and highlight/elaborate on a couple of the key talking points. I hope this might prove useful for anyone who wasn’t able to make the event.

The aim of the workshop was to help people understand how I approach taking on large scale subjects, aiming this message at many of the students, from both the fields of photography and journalism, who were in attendance. The first question we tackled was: How do you find story ideas?

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Event Poster

For anybody who is in Beijing this coming weekend, I will be giving a workshop at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art on Saturday 20th November from 4:30 to 5:30. I’ll be talking about ways to photograph large-scale environmental issues and trying to give participants help in helping form and shape their own ideas for approaching these issues.

Here’s the general outline:

“UCCA welcomes two-time Pulitzer Center Grant recipient Sean Gallagher, who has spent the past two years traveling across China documenting the country’s fight against desertification and disappearing wetlands.

Having the ability to visually communicate overarching themes, theories and ideas is essential to helping the public understand sometimes complex and seemingly disjointed issues.

Gallagher’s workshop will focus on the art and science of effectively photographing large-scale environmental issues and conveying eco-stories through imagery. He will also provide participants with useful advice about identifying themes and stories, and offer tips about the process of eco-filmmaking, from shooting to distribution.”

If you think this might be of interest please come along. Entry is free and there are many other events on throughout the day, all along ‘green’ lines. Hope to see you there.

Recently, I’ve read with interest a couple of lists that have emerged about the best photography blogs out there. It seems we’re all blogging now and it’s hard to find ones that consistently deliver great content. It’s a tough job. Blogging takes a lot of effort in both time and resources which makes it impressive when material is regularly updated, especially from individuals working alone.

Click Here

So, I decided to spread some photographic love/respect/links and point you in the direction of what I believe are ‘Probably the Best Photography Blogs in the World’ – please insert tongue in cheek here.

In absolutely no discernible order, and without any official criteria, these are my favourite photo-related blogs that I visit on a pretty regular basis. Why do I visit them? Because they consistently deliver useful, fun, stimulating and interesteing information that enriches my life.

Once you have visited the blogs below, please do remember to come back to mine though

1. Burn - Curated by Magnum and National Geographic Photographer, David Alan Harvey, Burn is one of the best of the best. Showcasing new photo essays every few days, it introduces readers to an eclectic mix of photography. Comments regularly run into the 1000′s and are often insightful, entertaining and emotional.

2. Duckrabbit – I love Duckrabbit’s tagline, “We produce beautifully crafted multimedia”. They do exactly what they say on the tin and also throw in a daily updated blog full of witty and sometimes acerbic viewpoints and comments on the world of photography and multimedia. This UK based team’s fresh approach pulls no punches.

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“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin

<<Return to the Learning Zone

As the climate for photographers, journalists, media creatives etc. has changed (mostly for the worse) in recent years, it has forced the respective industries to look at themselves a lot closer and try to redefine who they are, what they do and how they do it. Photography has been no exception, with many photographers struggling in a market where the venues for distribution have all but run dry. This is not really news for anyone.

Old logo (top) and new logo (bottom)

Recently however, I was trying to come up with ideas about how to start to redefine my ‘brand’ and make sure I was completely clear in who I was and if that’s what everyone else thought I was too. I am not a marketing expert, so everything I know has come from trawling through websites of people who are experts on the subject and trying to pick-up as much as I can.

As I started to write down a list of my recent projects, subject matters etc. I started to see that I had made the natural movement towards multimedia and video. This was not a completely unconscious decision however the image I was projecting was still only that of a photographer and not of someone who was able to also provide multimedia and video too.

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[youtube width="600" height="385"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Recently, I have started to venture more into the video world and this summer, I will have a project which will allow me to start to really produce more video-work. As I start to add the moving image to more of the work that I do, I start to look more to the video world for inspiration. If I am honest, I always did this anyway as I am a huge movie and documentary fan and drew inspiration from these for many many years for my still work. Now, I am starting to watch videos, movies, documentaries in a different way, mainly trying to visualise in my mind how they were conceived, shot, edited and created.

This week I was blown-away by two videos, actually advertisements, that I caught online. You can get inspired by advertisements? Seems a little odd I guess, for a photographer who concentrates mainly on documentary subjects, but the answer is yes. Each of these videos is quite different, but they both have their own sense of ‘wow’ factor about them. Clever ideas and beautifully shot.

[youtube width="600" height="385"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hPm1p0Q3xA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Now I must admit, that with the first video I am slightly biased as I am a big football fan, however I think the video is just beautiful and the editing is really very good (watch out for the hilarious inclusion of Homer Simpson). Now, in the second video I will never use the techniques they employ (this will become obvious after you watch it) but I really like it because it’s nearly impossible not to want to watch it a second time to figure out what you just missed! It made me think a lot about our perception of scenes we view quickly. Don’t want to give too much away though!

What did you think? Which do you prefer?

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CHINA. Beijing. Muslim men worshiping at Niu Jie Mosque during Eid ul-Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan. 2005

<<Return to the Learning Zone During our workshops over the past few months, I have often been asked the question “Where is the best place in Beijing to photograph….?” Now, you can insert pretty much anything you like into the last part of that question, as queries have come in to me about a myriad of different things. So, I thought it would be interesting to start a new series of posts that answers some of these questions about where I think are the best places to photograph in Beijing.

I have chosen Beijing for this focus, purely because I have lived in this city for nearly 4 years and like to think I have a good idea where things are and where are the best places for taking pictures. I would like to expand this concept to other cities in China, but I’ll start with my ‘home’ city first.

So, for the first part of these new posts, I answer the question “Where is the best place in Beijing to photograph…religion?”

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If you have dropped by my blog over the past few weeks, you may have noticed something odd. There hasn’t been many new posts. “Why?” I hear you scream, or maybe just say. Well, we had a few issue with the security of the blog with it somehow being hacked and information was been compromised and changed. Needless to say it seems that things have returned to normal now and we (myself and website hosts) think we may have solved the problems.

So, in light of this, I have decided to give my blog a little bit of a new look. I hope you like the revamped design. I’m still in the stages of tweaking it, so please bear with me while I get this new format up and running. I have a backlog of ideas for new and interesting blog posts, so please do stay tuned and come back soon as there are going to be plenty of new updates.

Please let me know what you think of the new layout and design!

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