Last week I visited two Chinese cities, Shenyang and Chongqing, for the British Council as part of their Smart Talk series. We had a great turnout in both cities, with over 500 people turning out altogether.

One of the highlights for me as a photographer is to connect with my audience and be able to talk about my motivations and reasoning for carrying out my work. I feel many photographers often close themselves off and retreat from interaction with their audience. I embrace it. I feel it’s part of my responsibility to communicate  these issues further though dialogue. These environmental issues are vitally important for us all to understand.

I recorded the second of the talks, at Chongqing University’s Film school, so that you can listen in. I broke the audio up into different parts, so that you can dive straight into the part that interests you the most, or just pick and choose which you listen to.

I have also uploaded the presentation (above) so that you can scroll through and follow what I was showing on-screen to those in attendance.

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Earlier this year, I was invited by the British Council to take part in a series of talks in China, presenting my work on documenting the country’s environmental issues to over 300 students at Shanghai’s prestigious Tongji University. I was honored to be part of this series promoting the work of British figures, as previous speakers have included people such as entrepreneur Richard Branson and actor Patrick Stewart.

Next week, I go back on the road again to take part in the same series of talks, this time visiting the cities of Shenyang and Chongqing. It will be an exciting opportunity to speak to new audiences in new cities and bring the message of environmental awareness through photography and multimedia.

If you happen to be in those cities next week, I shall be speaking in Shenyang on Wednesday 21st September and in Chongqing on Thursday 22nd September. You can book your place here.

In light of my recent travels for the Pulitzer Center and new multimedia, I’ll have a new presentation to give, however here is a video of my first presentation in Shanghai earlier this year, to give you an idea of the things that I’ll be talking about.

Asia Society - China Green

This week the Asia Society and I launched a new collaborative project which brings together 4(!) brand new multimedia pieces, focusing on my Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on issues surrounding the disspaearance of China’s wetlands.

As regular readers here will know, this is is a project that I began last year and have continued to develop, this time with the assistance of the Asia Society.

I am excited to launch this new portal as it brings together all 7 multimedia pieces from across China, giving viewers a new in-depth look at the country’s wetlands.

You can dip in and view one or two pieces, or go for the full experience and watch all seven. Either way, I very much hope you enjoy the pieces and they help you to understand some of the complex issues which are affecting and threatening the country’s waterways.

If you have any questions at all about the production, please feel free to ask them blow in the comments section.

BBC News

A photo has been released by NASA this week that should, hopefully, put to bed one of the longest-running conspiracy theories out there – the moon-landing hoax.

The image shows a view from above of the Apollo 11 landing site, clearly showing the tracks of the astronauts and pieces of equipment that are still on the surface of the moon. Click here to see the full high-res version.

In case you didn’t know, there is still a small community out there who doubt one of humanity’s greatest achievements, although I think it’s fair to say that the majority of us are pretty confident it did happen. There is so much historical evidence from the actual event itself, that there is no real reason to doubt it actually occured.

One of the things that the conspiracy theorists often point to is the photography that was taken by the astronauts and some of the ‘flaws’ seen in the resulting images, allegedly ‘proving’ that the landings were faked.

Check out this excellent episode of the Mythbusters, who thoroughly deconstruct and investigate some of the theorist’s most popular claims. You can get some great tips, especially if you plan on photographing on the moon sometime soon…

Oh, and if you run into Buzz Aldrin (second man on the moon), you might not want to suggest to him that the moon landings were hoaxed…

Spotted this interesting little video on CNN that I thought readers here would be interested in, titled “What film photography still has to offer”.

I started out shooting film, although most of my practice now as a professional photographer has switched to digital. I miss it sometimes. I miss the feelings of anticipation you get before you get an exposed roll back from the lab. I miss using a loupe and lightbox and the feeling of discovering those one or two images on a roll that work and make it all worthwhile.

When I first started out trying to learn about photography, I decided to build my own darkroom. I searched for an enlarger in the local newspaper classifieds and set up all the equipment I needed, using books borrowed from the library as my guide. Over the following days, weeks and months I lost myself in the red-lit world of the darkroom and fell in love with photography. Now I shoot predominantly colour using digital but I think the best thing I ever did, to really understand the mechanics of photography, was when I built that darkroom. I can’t reccomend this highly enough to anyone starting out in photography.

I’ll finish this brief post with a quote from the above video which I think is also quite pertinent too for those aspiring photographers out there.

“One essential quality of photographers, is curiosity. If you’re not a curious person, you’re certainly not going to be a good photographer.” – Elliott Erwitt

New Archive - Click to Visit

I’m excited to announce here on my blog the launch of my new Archive, which will be home to many of my images, created over the past 5 years whilst working in China.

I hope that site can act as a resource for those looking for unique and illustrative imagery focusing on Asia, China and environmental issues.

All the images within the archive are thoroughly captioned and keyworded to assist you in locating exactly the images you need.

I will be constantly updating this archive in the coming months with new work and existing stories. Please take a moment to have a look around and recommend the archive to anyone whom you know who may be interested in imagery from Asia.

Happy browsing!

A young boy sporting a cowboy hat, looks out onto one of the many lakes that make up the Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve in northern Sichuan.

China’s Fragile Forests – Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting – Post 3

“Is it always like this?” I ask one of the park wardens, as I weave my way through the hundreds of tourists, all shuffling to get into the regimented lines funneling them into the park’s gates. “Well, this is peak season. There could be up to 10,000 people going into the park today,” he replies. This is the definition of mass tourism and it is taking place before me on a warm July morning in the mountains of northern Sichuan, at the gates of one of the country’s most famous tourist destinations, the Jiuzhaigou National Park.

Nestled high in the remote mountains of northern Sichuan, the Jiuzhaigou National Park is a spectacular area composed a series of valleys, containing a myriad of breathtaking turquoise lakes, rivers and waterfalls. They are surrounded by temperate broad-leaf forests that are home to the giant panda, red panda and golden monkey, among many other species. Its topography has been shaped over millennia by tectonic activity and glacial erosion which has created an entrancing visual setting.

It is this unique setting that has caused the rise in popularity of this park since the early 1990s, when it was awarded Unesco World Heritage status. Since then, visitor numbers have increased year by year. In 2007, it was estimated that 2.5 million people visited the Jiuzhaigou Park.

As tourists enter, they are bused between popular locations within the boundaries of the protected area. They regularly stop to jump off the buses, take pictures and then immediately return to their transportation to continue to the next spot. Their movements are tightly restricted to boardwalks which result in surprisingly little direct impact to the local ecosystems. The relatively small 720 sq. km. of valleys that make up the park, are arguably the best protected in the whole of China.

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Giant Panda

A quick post for the weekend of one of my favourite images from the last week of shooting in Chengdu, Sichuan. As you can probably guess, this image is of a Giant Panda, taken at the Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan Province. I was at the base this past week photographing the Pandas and interviewing scientists and staff as part of the next chapter in my ‘China’s Fragile Forests’ Series for the Pulitzer Center. The post will be coming soon, so please stay tuned. If you’ve missed my other posts and images from this new project, why not check them out over on the excellent Pulitzer site here.

Have a great weekend!

A woman holds tea leaves collected from a plantation nestled in the remote mountainous valleys of northern Sichuan. Tea plantations are some of the projects being targeted by the EU-China Biodiversity Programme to promote sustainable harvesting in the region.

Blog Post #2 for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting - China’s Fragile Forests

Haze enveloped the mountains as our car pushed further up the steep valleys into northern Sichuan. The green hills that fluttered past our window were a patchwork of forests, cleared areas and fields of maize. The road wound through the vertiginous ravines as we climbed steadily higher, pushing further towards the small town of Pingwu, nestled deep in the mountains.

I was travelling with a delegation from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the EU-China Biodiversity Program (ECBP) whose aim was to visit a number of sites in northern Sichuan where they have been sponsoring projects. The goals of these projects are to promote sustainable harvesting as an alternative to the exploitation and unsustainable collection of the forest’s resources that has been occurring in the region for many decades.

“China is one of the world’s 12 mega-biodiversity countries, but during the past decades we have had amazing economic development, so we are facing serious problems of biodiversity loss,” explained the UNDP’s Lu Chunming as our car snaked up a hillside to the first of our intended sites.

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Dongting – A Lake in Flux from Sean Gallagher on Vimeo.

I am really delighted to share the news here on my blog that my multimedia piece, ‘Dongting: A Lake In Flux” recently won 1st Prize in the prestigious British Press Photographer’s Year 2011. These awards highlight some of the best wotk from British photographers working around the world, so am honoured to be included in their list of awardees this year. I am also especially grateful to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting who sponsored the production of this work last year, as part of my Threatened Waters Project.

An exhibition of all the awarded work is now on at the National Theatre in London and runs from the 18th July to the 4th September. If you’re passing by, drop in and see some of the incredible work on show.