Tag:on assignment
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 […]
Recently, I was approached by Greenpeace China do write a short article for their website about my work on desertification in China for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This has been a great chance to reach out to Greenpeace’s audience and inform them about the work that I have been doing on this subject. You can see the article here, or scroll down to read the text as it was published. Beijing, China — China’s poverty-stricken northwest is swathed […]
I was asked recently by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to answer some questions with regards to my reporting on the subject of desertification in China. This is part of their initiative titled ‘Meet the Journalist”, offering viewers a chance to get ‘behind the scenes’ and find out some of the motivations and working practices that go into the reporting by the grantees. I was happy to answer a few questions on my reporting, all of which can be […]
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 […]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyj0NiOSnko[/youtube] The above video is one that I produced for the Globe and Mail newspaper, along with the Asia Bureau Chief Mark Mackinnon and his assistant Yu Mei, a couple of weeks ago. The video centers on the preparations for the country’s 60th anniversary that passed on October 1st, focusing on the city of Hangzhou which lies to the west of Shanghai. One of the highlights of the video process was meeting and filming the author Yu Hua. Originating from Hangzhou, Yu Hua is […]
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 […]
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Here in Beijing, Tiananmen Square has become awash with parades, both military and civilian, as the populace celebrates Mao Zedong’s founding declaration, exactly 60 years ago here in China’s capital. The build up to this event has been quite something. Beijing has come to a standstill at regular intervals over the past couple of weeks as dry-runs of today’s celebrations have taken place. Tanks have once […]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxSifGgJsbs[/youtube] This is the third and final installment of mine and Mark MacKinnon’s short videos from our trip in North Korea. This third video focuses on the Chinese city of Dandong, which lies on the North Korea/China border and offers a startling contrast between the two sides of the Yalu river. Whilst the city of Dandong thrives, fuelled by the economic boom in many of China’s cities, the North Korean side is devoid of life, except for the odd fishing boat and abandoned building. I hope you […]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO1-X3-gNP0[/youtube] 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 […]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BHVnG3m7BU[/youtube] As some of you may already know, last week I was on assignment in North Korea. Forgive me for not giving a hint of this exciting assignment beforehand, however myself and Mark MacKinnon from Canada’s Globe & Mail, for whom I was working, wanted to try and keep this as quiet as possible until (a) we made it out safely and (b) the work was first published on the G&M website. Well, we are now back in Beijing and […]