My photography is featured in the July edition of Alive Magazine, as part of an article about Stephen Lewis and the AIDS crisis in Africa. It was an honour to share the page: Stephen is one of my heros for his articulate speech and tireless effort to bring attention and real progress in Africa.
Click here for a PDF of the first two pages of the article… or you can pick up a copy wherever health & wellness magazines are sold.
The BBC reports on a breakthrough in curing malaria.
Malaria is preventable and curable … The disease kills more than a million people each year. Many of the victims are young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
It’s 1:30am Ontario time… just got back from a great night of networking and awards hosted by a national non-profit foundation. Made several connections for screening Rwanda: Hope Rises here in the fall.
Now for a quick ‘nap’ and up in three hours to catch a plane…
Sara Groves… she’s not someone I’d heard of, but this video about Rwanda is quite beautiful. It describes well how I feel about Rwanda, and the emotion inside visiting a place like that for the first time, full of contradictions.
Higher quality version here.
The pre-edit checklist:
… and I’m ready to start editing! Here’s where I’ll be spending the next six weeks:
Not the greatest picture, I guess… ah well. I’ve finally been able to set up a standing editing workstation, something I had back at my old job. I had the maintenance guys find an old countertop and install it at standing height. It helps keep me alert for the long stretches… this isn’t quite as fancy (two cardboard boxes and a leftover shelf) but it’ll do the trick.
Editing is my favourite and least at the same time. I enjoy seeing the story form from the raw, but the long hours without fresh air get to me… and my attention span has decreased with my approach to old age :)
I’ve found a nearby river for some peace, and I’m within walking distance of an old heritage home with a coffee shop inside. I feel well prepared and I’m looking forward to tackling the story challenges ahead of me.
Five years on the Darfur conflict continues to languish. Why, interests me. One thought is the conflict lacks a compelling contrast and antagonist to draw attention to the story. With words like “genocide” it sticks in the back of the brain, but against other conflicts it seems not to arouse the emotions of injustice as readily… and so it languishes in the minds eye.
The BBC reports on why the West has been loathe to intervene in Darfur…
While I’m getting my edit suite set up, and data moved around & backed up ready for a six-week edit session, Jesse‘s been playing a bit with some of the footage from Rwanda. This one’s just too cool not to post. Click the image to see a 1K cloud timelapse (down-res’ed from 2K, processed in RedCine and After Effects).
There’s also a few RED frame grabs from our shoot in Rwanda posted here if you’re interested.
Bulembu went from a sleepy hollow of Swazi homesteads to a major mining operation – producing one-third of Swaziland’s GDP – to a near-ghost town in the space of several decades. Now it’s in the midst of another transformation. To tell the story, I’ve put together a photo essay from my recent assignment: “The Bulembu Story” (There are a few dozen photos, so it may take a minute or two to load).
My recent assignment in Swaziland was a 2009 calendar on Bulembu. The concept was to photograph people involved in transformation, telling their story in a single frame. I approached this primarily through wide-angle portraits of the characters in context, attempting to include hints of past, present, and future as much as possible. I made extensive use of my new lighting rig to control tone and contrast.
Click the image to view a few selects from my portraits in Bulembu.
N.B. I’ll be posting a photo essay about the town after I get back from some R&R on the mountain this weekend.
I took this photo a few nights ago, waiting for dinner out on the lodge porch. The clouds were billowing over a nearby hillside. When the crescent moon began to peek over the horizon, I grabbed my camera, tripod and telephoto and snapped this long exposure. I’ve created it as a wallpaper for you to enjoy (right-click to save): Bulembu Moonrise Wallpaper
