Here is a teaser trailer for a corporate assignment that I was involved in last year. The project was for the company Bosch and the resulting body of work will be released this week. I just received a link to this trailer, so thought I would share it here.
I won’t reveal anything about the nature of the project, but it was quite unique and certainly an ambitious project. Please watch the video to see what I mean.
I’ll keep you posted, once I can reveal more….
Men standing on the side of a highway running through the North Korean countryside. 2009
“Starving North Korea Send out SOS for Food Aid” is one of the headlines that reads on the Daily Telegraph’s website this week. This week also marks the birthday of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il. I have chosen to mark this day with a video that was released a few months ago on the Telegraph website, secretly recorded by North Koreans dissidents, in attempt to show some of the frightening conditions in the country. It’s disturbing to watch.
As readers of this blog will know, I travelled to North Korea in the autumn of 2009 on assignment for the Globe & Mail. We had a very limited view of the real North Korea. Our 5-day trip was state-controlled and we were whisked across the country from one official tourist destination to the next. When our private mini-bus passed though rural areas, we were expressly told not to take any photos. I, of course, tried to get some. One of which is below. It’s only a fleeting glance, however.
(Left) A CNN Newscast in a hotel room in Seoul, South Korea. (Right) An image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as a child appears on a television in a hotel in Pyongyang.
As anyone who has been watching the news in the past 24 hours will know, tensions on the Korean peninsula have been increasing very very quickly following the shelling of a small South Korean island, by the north Koreans yesterday. Tensions are nothing new, however after yesterday’s events it seems like attention is focused on the conflict more now than in many previous years.
(Left) A handgun from the Korean War in a museum on the South Korean side of the DMZ. (Right) A handgun is depicted during a dispaly at the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang, North Korea.
This seemed like a good time to release a short series that I have been playing with over the past few months, currently titled ‘Korean Reflections’. Readers of this blog and followers of my work will know that I have, relatively recently, had the chance to visit both North and South Korea. I travelled to North Korea in the autumn on 2009, as part of a 5-day undercover assignment for the Globe and Mail and this year I have visited South Korea three times, two times for corporate work and once for the Globe and Mail.
Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China
As many followers of my blog, Facebook and/or Twitter will know, I had a very unique assignment last week, photographing the British Prime Minister David Cameron on his recent visit to Beijing. It was one of the most interesting assignments I have ever had, mainly because of the access that I was able to get to the PM and the people that he was meeting thoughout his trip.
When I was approached to undertake this job, I assumed that that the PM would be meeting some high-ranking Chinese officials and I hoped that he would be meeting with those at the top. When I found out he would indeed be meeting the main leader in China, President Hu Jintao, my levels of anticipation were raised significantly.
Hu Jintao, is rarely seen outside of formal surroundings and images of him are much harder to come by. His security is tighter than for any other person in the country and he was recently voted by Forbes magazine as ‘the most powerful person in the world’, ahead of American President, Barack Obama. Whether you agree with that statement or not, the opportunity to photograph this man was one I did not want to pass up.
BBC Viewfinder
Last week, I had an assignment from the British Embassy in Beijing to photograph the visit of British Prime Minister, David Cameron on his first visit as PM to China. This was a very exciting and interesting assignment and I plan to feature some of my behind-the-scenes photos here on my blog in the coming weeks.
Photographing someone like the PM is a very unique experience and I thought it would be interesting to share some of my experiences with you. Please stay tuned in the coming weeks and I look out for these special posts. In the meantime, scroll down to read my interview with BBC Photo Editor Phil Coomes on my experiences.
________
“Earlier this week photographer Sean Gallagher spent two days in the company of the British Prime Minister David Cameron during his visit to China. Here Sean talks about the project.
[vimeo width="570" height="320"]http://vimeo.com/16018786[/vimeo]
This is the second in my series of Multimedia pieces for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, produced from the body of work I created this summer on China’s current wetlands crisis. These pieces take a lot longer to produce than your average photo essay but I feel they add a whole lot more to the general understanding of the issue. Hope you agree. Please find the synopsis of this piece below:
“Since the end of World War 2, the world has lost approximately 50% of its mangroves, mainly as a result of destruction by humans for coastal developments.
Found mainly in the tropics and subtropics, mangroves are a unique species of trees and shrubs that thrive in saltwater. They are valued for their ability to protect coastlines, harbor wildlife and have a nutrient base on a par with the rainforests.
Photographer and videographer Sean Gallagher, travels to South-East China to report on a project aiming to save the remaining pockets of mangroves in China, on assignment for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
To learn more, visit http://www.threatenedwaters.com “
[vimeo width="570" height="320"]http://vimeo.com/15759317[/vimeo]
Regular visitors here may have noticed that I haven’t posted in a little while. Apologies for that. I have just returned from a 2-week trip to the US, taking part in speaking engagements at high schools and universities across the country. With the help of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, I’ve been speaking about environmental issues in China, trying to get students to connect to my stories and relate them to what issues are affecting their local communities.
As I zig-zagged across America, travelling mostly by plane, my mind started to wander onto the impact our air travel has on our planet. As a working photographer and videographer, my assignments normally require me to travel quickly from place to place, mostly by plane. My work focuses mainly on issues affecting the environment, so I try to live my life with those environmental issues in mind and the impact that I, as an individual, am having. Flying however is one the issues I most struggle with, made worse by the fact I find it a very enjoyable way to travel.
When you start to delve into the latest statistics about air travel and CO2 emissions, you quickly discover some frightening numbers. Some predictions point out that by 2025, airlines worldwide could be spewing out 1.5 billion tons of CO2 per year, that’s half of the EU’s current total CO2 output. In 2009, total CO2 output from EU carriers did reportedly decline however it seems this only correlated with a decrease in the number of passengers flying. Some airlines do seem to be making active, positive steps towards change however, by testing biofuels. Airlines such as United Airlines for example, who flew the first flight by US commercial airline using natural gas synthetic jet fuel this year.
Sometimes though, you have to just sit back and just admire the marvel of flight. As I sat on my United Airlines flight from Washington DC to Beijing last week, my mind was wandering again on the above issues when I was distracted by what unfolded infront of me. Cruising half way between the US and China, we passed directly over the North Pole, just as dawn was breaking. It was one of the most spectacular and beautiful sunrises I have ever seen and I decided to try to record enough of it to show in a short video. It’s not everyday you see the sunrise over the North Pole. I hope you can enjoy reliving it with me, as I saw it.
[vimeo width="570" height="320"]http://vimeo.com/15090041[/vimeo]
I’m happy to announce that my new multimedia piece for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is now online. ‘The Chinese Alligator: Species on the Brink” is a look at the plight of China’s only crocodilian species and the effects of decades of wetlands reclamation on population numbers. By combining stills, video, interviews and time-lapse photography I hope this piece provides a visually interesting account of the current situation, as well as an informative one.
This is the first in a series of multimedia pieces that I will be producing for the Pulitzer Center over the coming weeks and months, so please do stay tuned for more.
The piece above is hosted on Vimeo where you can watch it in full HD at 1280×720. As it is HD, it may take a little time to load but I hope it’s worth the wait to get the best out of the video and stills. For all you techies out there, the whole piece was shot with a Canon 7D with 16-35mm F2.8 and 70-200 F4.0 lenses and audio was recorded on an M-Audio Microtrack II.
Once you start the piece, you will notice that there are interchanging Chinese and English subtitles. It has been one of my main aims to start reaching out to my Chinese audience more and I hope by producing these pieces in both languages that the message of the piece will reach more people. As Vimeo is blocked in China, I will be releasing this piece on Youku and Tudou soon. Please stay tuned for that.
If you have any thoughts or feelings about the piece, I am always happy to hear them!
A man walks through one of the drainage channels that make up the Dujiangyan Irrigation System.
SEAN GALLAGHER, FOR THE PULITZER CENTER, SICHUAN PROVINCE, CHINA
Water did not seem in short supply as I arrived in China’s southwest province of Sichuan. Rain was pounding on the windshield of my taxi and pools of water were starting to flow down the streets of the province’s capital, Chengdu. People scurried around the streets, desperate to get out of the storm that had quickly descended on the city.
This unsavory welcome was compounded by the delivery of bad news from my assistant upon my arrival at my hotel. Our primary location for the week, the largest highland marsh and peat lands in Asia, Ruoer’gai in the north of Sichuan, had just been sealed off from the outside world. The heavy rains had caused landslides which had wiped out all roads leading to the 3500 meter plateau which it sat upon. These marshes comprise half a million hectares and have been dubbed the ‘kidneys’ of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. Made up of 90 percent water, they act like a sponge sequestering carbon and providing a home for a vast range of highland species. A vital ecosystem and source of water, they are the origin of the Yellow River, one of China’s mightiest waterways.
A teenager with his yak on the shores of Qinghai Lake. 2010
SEAN GALLAGHER, FOR THE PULITZER CENTER, QINGHAI PROVINCE, CHINA
Tenzin’s green eyes bored into me as I looked at his sunburnt face. “Qinghai Lake is a very holy place for us. We regard it as the ‘soul’ of Qinghai.”
He was sitting by the side of a road running parallel to the lake shore. The sound of cars rushing past filled the air as Tenzin’s kneepads, torn and grazed, fluttered in the wind generated just a meter or two away. Tenzin was taking a momentary break from prostrating his way around the 360km circumference of the lake, in a stark and vivid act demonstrating the importance of this lake to Tibetans, who make up 80 percent of people in the region.
Located at 3200 meters above sea-level on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau in the northwest of China, Qinghai Lake is the country’s largest inland body of saltwater at 4318 square kilometers in area. Over the past century, however, the lake has found itself in a worrying downward trend as 700 square kilometers of its area have been lost and its surface level has dropped by 13 meters.
