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.

Followers of my blog will know that since last summer, I have been working on a project photographing and creating multimedia reports about the state of China’s wetlands, sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

The above video is the third in a series of seven that I am producing. Four and five are already complete, with six and seven coming very soon, however, I am working with a well known organisation to launch these as one package in the coming months. Much more on this soon…

I hope you enjoy the above video which highlights the plight of Dongting Lake, one of China’s most vital water systems. To view the first two installments of these videos, please head to my Vimeo channel here.

[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!

Earth Hour | Beijing | China

Last week I posted the first competition for my blog, based on the recent video that I shot to coincide with Earth Hour here in Beijing. If you missed the video, you can watch it here on Vimeo or YouTube.

The challenge was to find me within the video, walking in front of the camera. Sounds easy huh? Yes, except for the fact the that the video is time-lapse and condenses the whole earth hour into one minute, hence making my two appearances very very brief.

Continue Reading »

[vimeo width="580" height="300"]http://vimeo.com/10718110[/vimeo]

Earlier this week I released a video titled ‘Earth Hour: In One Minute’, a time-lapse video that captured last month’s Earth Hour at the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing. I thought it would be fun to use this video as the basis for the first competition that I have run through the blog. Up for grabs is a half-day (3hours) one-on-one workshop with me here in Beijing. Maybe you’d like to brush up on your editing, your night photography, your photoshop skills, your street photography? No problem. We’ll have 3 hours to target anything you want, FREE.

Okay, so how to win? In my time-lapse video I actually appear twice within the video by walking into the foreground. (I was waiting alone in the cold for an hour doing the video, so I had to entertain myself somehow!) The challenge is to tell me the correct second count at which I appear, both times. To clarify, it’s the second count on the YouTube/Vimeo counter NOT the clock in the bottom-right of the screen you see counting down the Earth Hour. You can watch the clip on either YouTube or Vimeo. They are exactly the same. Continue Reading »