Weekend Workshops

I am delighted to announce two new workshops in January, to welcome in the New Year.

The first, is the next in line of our increasingly popular “Hutong Photography Workshops” which will be held on Sunday 17th January at the Far East Youth Hostel in Beijing. As ever, this will be a great opportunity to explore the maze-like hutongs in central Beijing.

The second workshop, will be in Harbin and will coincide with the famous Ice Festival. Our workshop will run all day on both Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st January. Sign up for either one or two days (get a discount for two days) and come and explore this amazing winter wonderland with us and your camera.

Also, as it is the New Year, we would like to extend a *Happy New Year Special Offer* to all former students, giving a 10% discount  on any workshops (both group and one-on-one) taken in January.

For details on all of the above workshops, please go HERE to our workshop page.

We look forward to seeing you on one of our workshops soon!

Under the streets of Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. 2008

This time last year, I was in a sewer underneath the streets on the Mongolian capital of Ulaan Baatar taking this picture. I was there to do a story on the homeless communities of the Mongolian capital who live underneath the streets. At that point last year, the economic crisis was in full swing and was having knock-on effects on this community, already living perilously close to the line which divides survival and death.

I don’t know if this image (and the story) have had any affect at all. I self-assigned this story to myself and certainly have made no money from it. The problem is, photographing homeless people is a bit of a photojournalistic cliche and many people switch off when you say you have photographed the homeless. The tragic lives of the homeless in Mongolia is definately a story which needs to be heard. What can I do? What can we do? Well, visit websites such as this one and this one and help spread the word. You never know who may hear.

One of the outlets that published the work was the Digital Journalist. Scroll down to read my article that I wrote for them about my trip and view a few more images.

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Read this quote here today and I just had to post it here…

“What kind of typewriter did Hemingway use?” Jim Estrin, photographer at the New York Times for the last 20 years, asked his news photography class by way of an introduction this morning.

Nobody knew.

“That’s because it doesn’t matter,” said Estrin.

Have a look at the original article for some more useful tips and thoughts on photography. The writer of the original article is Kristen Joy Watts, a production intern at Lens, the photojournalism blog of the New York Times.  You should check out her work.

Weekend Workshops Beijing

This weekend saw our WEEKEND WORKSHOPS continue with the second of our “Hutong Photography” classes. Braving the bitter cold in Beijing were Anne, Charlotte, Frank, Chelin, Jenny and Josh. The weather was against us, but a great day was had by all in the end, as we were determined to explore the hutongs against the dropping temperature! Below is a selection of images from the day.

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As in our first “Hutong Photography” workshop in October, our schedule began with a class introducing the basics of photography, making sure everyone was comfortable with how their cameras worked and providing everyone with advice about how to approach people to take pictures in the hutongs. We then had a ‘Photography Chinese’ class taught by Jessica Zheng before heading out into the cold to begin our first shooting session.

We had two shooting sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Both were followed by group editing sessions where we sat down and looked at everybody’s photos, sharing ideas and thoughts about how we could improve. In between the morning and afternoon sessions, the usual hearty spread of food was layed on by the Far East International Youth Hostel, to keep us fuelled for the day’s work.

Even though it was a bitterly cold day in Beijing, it was great to see everyone’s passion for photography keeping us going (although the heater in the hostel did help…see gallery photo of everyone franticly trying to warm hands!). A big thanks from me and Jessica to Anne, Charlotte, Frank, Chelin, Jenny and Josh for making this another enjoyable and successful “Hutong Photography” Workshop!

NOVEMBER WORKSHOP – “Hutong Photography”

Dates: Sunday 15th November 2009 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Course Leaders: Photographer Sean Gallagher & Guide/Interpreter Jessica Zheng

Location: The Far East International Youth Hostel, Beijing

Participants: Minimum 5 people, Maximum 10 people (Registration is on a first-come first-serve basis)

Student Level: Beginner/Intermediate – All ages welcome!

Cost: 499 Chinese Renminbi per person*

As a result of the success of the first “Hutong Photography” workshop in October, another workshop has been scheduled in November for those who missed out on the first one. Just like the first workshop, our class will focus on one of the special areas that makes the Chinese capital so unique…the hutongs!

A chance to photograph the people of the hutongs

During this workshop, we shall focus on photographing the unique way of life that still remains in the hutongs of the central Qianmen district. Photographer Sean Gallagher will guide you through these maze-like communities to show you the best ways to approach and photograph the people and architecture. Along with tuition ‘on the street’ we will also cover the basics of photography before we head out, to make sure you are getting the most out of your camera. Professional guide and interpreter Jessica Zheng will be on hand at all times to offer you insights into the background and history of the hutongs and will also give a brief lesson in ‘Photography Chinese’, key words and phrases you need when photographing people.

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Sean giving advice to Prachit and William in the first editing session.

Tuesday saw the first of our new “Hutong Photography” Photo Workshops, held in the hutongs of Qianmen near Tiananmen Square. The workshop was a great success and we had five participants who spent the day exploring the hutongs and learning about the fundamentals of photography. Below is a selection of photos taken by Jessica Zheng, who also acted as our guide and translator throughout the day.

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The day started with a class introducing the basics of photography, covering topics such as ISO, using light, aperture, shutter speed and how to approach people to take pictures. Following on from that, we had a second short class on ‘photography chinese’, learning useful words and phrases that would assist us in speaking and connecting with the people we photographed. We then headed into the hutongs for the first shooting session, focusing on the points we had learnt from our first class.  Returning to the Far East International Youth Hostel for lunch, a 12-dish spread of traditional hutong food awaited us!

While we digested our feast, we entered into our first one-on-one editing session, looking at each student’s images from the first shooting session. Once we had reviewed each student’s images, we headed out for our second photographing session, aiming to improve on what we had learnt in our editing and earlier classes. Having navigated the hutongs for a second time, we returned to edit our images again, this time in a group setting, sharing our ideas and common experiences from the day in the hutongs.

As you can see from the above photos, a great day was had by all, exploring both the hutongs and our photography. Thanks to Jennifer, Bruce, Prachit, William and Myles for helping to make this a memorable first “Hutong Photography” Workshop!

A Japanese child, perched on his mother's bike. 2003

I was trawling through my archive today, looking for images to accompany a presentation that I am giving as part of my workshop tomorrow. As I looked through my ‘older’ files, I stumbled upon many of my images that I took while I lived in Japan between 2003-2004. I had just finished University and I was quite unsure about what direction my life was taking. Having been dabbling in photography for a year or two, I decided to take myself off to Japan in order to experience a completely alien culture to my own and see what it brought out in me photographically.

At the time I did not work as a professional photographer. I was on the JET programme, an initiative run by the Japanese government that brought native English speakers to the country to teach schoolchildren. I was based in the small and little-known town of Himeji, on the coast, south of the larger cities of Kobe and Osaka. My main school was in Himeji itself, however for two days of the week I would get on a boat and head out to a small group of islands off the Japanese coast to teach in a school that served the small archipelago.

My daily commute involved a 20 minute bike ride to the local docks, a 25 minute speedboat ride and then another 20 minute bike ride to the school. Not the worst way to travel to work! On one of my commutes whilst cycling on the small islands, I stopped at a small junction and saw this young Japanese buy perched on his mother’s bike. Using my small Minolta Dynax 5, loaded with my favourite film at the time, Fuji Velvia 50, I snapped this one frame of the boy.

I love this photo, as it is one of the first portraits that I was truly happy with and it takes me straight back to my experience of living and working in Japan. The islands (called Ieshima, by the way) were a unique place, and like Japan, hold a special place in my memories living, working and travelling in Asia.

My Image on the front page of Canada's national newspaper yesterday.

I got a surprise yesterday evening when I got a text from a colleague telling me that one of my photos had run on the front page of Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been contributing the visuals from China quite a lot to the Globe and Mail recently. They are a great team to work with and I was delighted to see that they had decided to run my photo of Mao Zedong’s personal photographer Hou Bo, taken at her home in Beijing, as part of the coverage of China’s 60th birthday.

If you missed my last post about this assignment and meeting this remarkable photographer, please head here to read it.

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The above video is the second short-video by myself and the Globe & Mail’s Mark Mackinnon from our assignment in North Korea. The topic of this video is the Arirang Mass Games which are held in the May Day stadium in Pyongyang.

In case you don’t know, the Mass Games are a gymnastics, dance and song spectacular that showcase North Korean history and culture. Using hundreds of participants, mostly schoolchildren, the games are an imposing and impressive sight which symbolise the power of the masses working as one in North Korea.

Apart from the huge overtones of propaganda, the show is actually quite breathtaking. My personal favourite part of the event are the hundreds of schoolchildren who provide the backdrop to the whole spectacle. Holding up books containing pages with different colours, they all open and close the books in unison to create the unbelievable moving backdrop.

If you missed the first video, you can view it here.

NORTH KOREA. A family huddle together in Kaesong city near Panmunjom, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. 2009

This week’s ‘Photo of the Week’ comes from North Korea. I wanted to post a photo from NK as last week’s POTW but I held off as I was waiting until the Globe & Mail, who commissioned the shoot, published the  images on their website.

Throughout my journey with the G&M’s Mark MacKinnon, we were whizzed across the country from site to site, trapped in our own oversized minivan which could of held about 15 people but was strangely reserved only for us two. We spent a lot of time in this van and it was from this viewpoint that I was able to gain many of my shots from the country, capturing glimpses of normal life between the government approved sites.

This week’s POTW is one of those photos and for me captures a very brief slice of normal North Korean family life, with the subjects completely unaware a picture is being taken. The children huddling in the shade of their mother’s umbrella. The father, crouched nearly out of sight. The other passers-by. This is was one of the hardest pictures to get. A normal picture. An insight. A brief glimpse.

To see more of the pictures from the series, please head to the Globe & Mail’s website here and to view our first of three short videos about North Korea and our trip, please go here.