[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.

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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.

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Sand ships on Dongting lake in Hunan Province.

SEAN GALLAGHER FOR THE PULITZER CENTER, HUNAN PROVINCE, CHINA

I was starting to feel a little anxious as I approached the shores of Dongting Lake in China’s central Hunan province. From a distance, I easily spied the country’s second largest freshwater lake. As I approached, waves lapped up on the shore, breaking near the barriers separating the lake from the nearby walkway.  As I peered over the barriers and gazed further, I saw clumps of green protruding from the water. They were tree tops. This wasn’t exactly the scene I was expecting.

Dongting Lake has been reported as a lake in crisis. Dropping water levels have sent alarm-bells ringing in scientific and environmental circles, as the area of the lake has reportedly dropped by nearly 50 percent in the past 70 years. What I was witnessing however appeared to be the opposite. One fact was certain, this was a lake in an incredible state of flux.

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Chinese Alligators in enclosure at ARCAR

SEAN GALLAGHER, FOR THE PULITZER CENTER, ANHUI PROVINCE, CHINA

When I discovered in my research that China had its own crocodilian, I was excited to try to find an opportunity to photograph it. What I was not prepared for was to learn that the species is perilously near extinction.

“In the past few centuries, the number of Yangtze alligator[s] has dropped dramatically”, explained Xie Yan, a quiet and unassuming  woman who is the current director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s China office. Having studied Zoology in university in Sichuan, she became concerned with the plight of many of China’s animals species, leading her to write numerous books about China’s wildlife. “According to a survey in 1998, only 120 wild Yangtze crocodiles [are] left. In the past, the number should be between 10,000 and one million,” continued Xie Yun, during an interview at the Anhui Research Center of Alligator Reproduction (ARCAR).

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CHINA. A Chinese Alligator. 2010

SEAN GALLAGHER, FOR THE PULITZER CENTER, ANHUI PROVINCE, CHINA

This week I travel to the province of Anhui, situated in the Yangtze River basin west of Shanghai. I travel to this region to begin the chapter of my work on the effects of wetland disappearance on animal species in China.

As way of introduction to this chapter, I recently interviewed Joe Abene, a long-time alligator researcher who worked for the Bronx Zoo in New York for many years and is an expert on the Chinese Alligator (Alligator sinensis), a species which is on the brink of extinction in the wild.

This first post serves as an introduction to the plight of the Chinese alligator. Later this week, I travel to the Anhui Research Center of Chinese Alligator Reproduction to report on the work being done there to save the species.

How and when did you originally become involved in the plight of the Chinese Alligator?

My love of Chinese/Yangtze alligators started at the Bronx zoo, where I worked in the reptile house for 15 years. The curator, John Behler, and the previous supervisor, Peter Brazaitis, had already been trail blazers in crocodilian conservation and Chinese alligators were a species they showed special interest in. By the time I started working at the zoo, the staff there had already been instrumental in the first captive breeding of the species in the USA. During my time at the zoo, I participated in the care of a large group of captive Yangtze alligators. Mr. Behler was the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan coordinator for the species, and when he passed away, I took over the position.

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CHINA. Xixi Wetlands in Hangzhou. 2010

“Green Hills Soothe My Eyes, Running Water Tranquilizes My Mind,” announced the sign to my left as I entered the Xixi Wetland park in Hangzhou. “Only One Future for Our Children – Development Without Destruction,” proclaimed a second sign just a few meters ahead on my right. “Your Planet Needs You – Unite to Combat Climate Change,” a third sign almost screamed to me as I turned the next bend. If nothing else, these signs were saying all the right things to me and the thousands of visitors streaming through the gates of the Xixi wetland, located in the city of Hangzhou, just a short distance from the megalopolis of Shanghai, on the shores of the East China Sea.

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Men watching the World Cup match between North Korea and Brazil in a bar in Seoul. 2010

It was about 2:00 a.m. as my taxi careered down the highway that leads from Incheon airport to downtown Seoul. Having just landed in the middle of a lightning storm, the rain was battering the taxi windshield and the GPS on the driver’s dashboard blinked indicating a breaking of the local speed limit. I was starting to wonder if it was really that essential that I make it to my 3:30 a.m. appointment on time.

That appointment was to watch and photograph the World Cup game between Brazil and North Korea. An odd appointment to be trying to keep you may think, especially for an Englishman based in Beijing. This however was the first part of a shoot I was assigned to for the Canadian newspaper the Globe & Mail which involved spending last week in South Korea.

Globe & Mail Website Screenshot

As many readers of this blog will know, last year I travelled undercover with the Globe & Mail’s Mark MacKinnon into North Korea to report on this isolated nation. During a fascinating 5 day trip I witnessed a country of such uniqueness, that I am quite confident I will never see anything quite like it again. This time however, I was heading south of the DMZ to try to gauge the reactions of locals in Seoul to the arrival of the neighbour on the World Cup scene.

In the build up to the game, nobody really knew anything about this team. Some people mocked them, expecting Brazil to embarrass the lowest-ranked team in the competition. Most people drew a blank when asked about them, in a similar way as if you asked them about the country in general.

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Cadres | Beijing | China | 2007

This week’s ‘Photo of the Week’ was a shot taken as part of the ‘One Night in Beijing’ shoot for the Immersion Guides to Beijing in 2007. Exactly one year before the beginning of the Olympic Games in Beijing, photographers all across the capital were commissioned to head out onto the streets to capture images that represented the city at night.

It was an interesting shoot and the result was a very nice book which showed off many of the eclectic pictures captured from that night. The above picture from a club in the city didn’t actually make the final edit but I always liked it due to the intense colours and the contrast between the Long March Cadres on the wall and the revellers dancing.

The Guardian Newspaper | UK

<<Return to the Learning Zone With today’s post, I wanted to give readers an insight into the day-today shooting of a pro-photographer. I’ll be talking about something that is a key skill for working photographers, especially those who work on-assignment usually to tight or restrictive deadlines. When you are working as a photographer, it is of paramount importance that when you are assigned to a job, you ‘get the shot’ that your client wants.

Most editors/clients have little patience for excuses such as ‘the light wasn’t good’, ‘i didn’t have the right lense’, ‘the atmosphere wasn’t right for a picture’ etc. These are poor excuses and a client hires you because they expect you to overcome these obstacles and get the picture, because it’s your job to deliver.

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