Posted by Ben | 0 comments
Ni hao from China
So I’ve been in China for just over a week playing tourist/photographer all around Changshu and the surrounding towns. Changshu is about two hours drive from Shanghai and has a small (by Chinese standards) population of about 1 million. It’s quite a prosperous city because it’s close enough to such an economic hub as Shanghai but far enough that it’s not part of the city, so it’s cleaner and less populated.
Coming back to China has been an experience, as you’d expect. Chinese culture is very different from Western – the country is vast, old and is a huge player in the world economy. Coming from New Zealand, a very young nation, it’s humbling to see how old some of the buildings here are. It makes me wish I’d paid more attention to history when I lived in the UK too.
The biggest challenge has been language again. I’m very glad that the phrases I learned last time are still there, so I didn’t have to relearn them, I just need to build up new ones. So far the most useful has been “I don’t want that, thank you” and “How much is that?” I need to learn the numbers, but pulling out my phone and typing the numbers in (or them pulling out a calculator) works well too. I’ve downloaded Pleco and a paid add-on that has how to pronounce each word, which is helping a bit too.
I haven’t had a big culture shock this time (yet). My time on the photogenX DTS in 2010 covered lots of things including how diverse cultures are and how our world view is shaped by our own culture. I got to put this knowledge to work in Philippines and again in the USA before I came back to the safety of New Zealand. With all this in mind it’s been easier to accept that things around me will seem weird to me (like the food, the protocol, the huge level of hospitality we’ve had here, the fact people want to carry my breakfast plate for me, etc.), but not to others and to be willing to give it a try. This may have got me in a bit of trouble at one point, but we learn from our mistakes.
Our group has been getting along well. We’ve had the usual adjustments any random group of people has traveling, but I must say it’s much nicer to travel with a larger group than a smaller one. There are about 16 kiwis here who came for Neil & Rose’s Chinese wedding yesterday (us + his family) – eventually we’ll be down to 6 traveling around. About 600 people came to the wedding, which is the first overseas wedding I’ve been to. I wasn’t totally sure what to expect, but in the end the ceremony was quite short, but full of entertainment. We went around each table and the couple and their families toasted each table (10 people per table = 60 tables). The ceremony was short (5pm welcoming, 5:45pm start, 8pm finish), but well received. Eddie and Neil made speeches in Chinese and we all cleaned up rather nicely in suits and dresses. Of course, after all that I can’t not show you a couple of photos can I? I haven’t even started editing these ones yet – wait there a second…
That’s all I have time for now, thanks for reading. If you’re keen for more – I update Facebook when I can and I’m uploading more photos to my photo page on flickr after they’re edited. I’ll be making up a photo show when I get back to NZ with more fun shots and stories too. Until then 
Saturday morning encouragements
This week was a bit of a rough one for me. One evening I grabbed out my laptop and started looking online for encouraging images. Here are some of my favourites.
(that includes yourself at times)
If you’re struggling I want you to know that you are not alone. If you have a secret, you’re not the only one. I know I may not have met you and I may not know what you’re struggling through, but if I could I’d give you a big hug!
Photography storytelling
Last year I had the privilege of being able to visit a tribal group in the Philippines, the Eatis tribe. We took food and drink with us and gave it away, we also shared the gospel message and took lots of photos. The tribe has very little and the people from the local town don’t interact much with them. They live a simple lifestyle and have basic housing and clothes. The term tribe doesn’t mean they wear traditional dress or do traditional dances – we saw neither when we were there.
I have 53 photos on my computer from the day, but I’ve only shared a handful of them. This isn’t unique, photographers all around the world take photos, edit and release them. We make decisions about what we release, what we delete (or throw away) and what we edit and our choices can have a big impact.
Photographers have power
Photographs were a media revolution when they were first available. The ability to capture images and add them to newspapers changed how we learn about world events. “Pictures don’t lie” became a known phrase – reporters could fabricate text but not photographs. In truth this was always a dream. When we look at photographs, our perception of an event, place or people is shaped by what a photographer sees and captures. Images stick in our minds and come to define an event for us.
VJ Day
Iwo Jima
Each one of these photographs tells a story but leaves a part out. War photos like these don’t show the number of men who died and the photograph of the Afghan girl (Sharbat Gula) doesn’t tell us much at all. I couldn’t have told you what her name was before I looked it up for this post. I can only assume that at the time people were aware of the conflict she was running from.
Photographers are limited
There have been times when I haven’t taken photos out of respect or common sense. I don’t try to take photos of airport security guards at work or of government buildings in some countries unless I want to answer lots of questions. That’s a bit of a no brainer in certain parts of the world.
I also don’t take portraits of people who do not give me permission. Getting formal, written permission in a country where you don’t speak the language is very tricky, but if you mime taking a photo with your hands and ask in English you can usually convey your intention and that you’re asking with your tone. We also had translators most of the time. I don’t have photos of some people I’ve met because they shook their heads or (in the case of children) hid, but many were happy for me to take their picture and liked seeing it on the screen.
I’m also limited by my own conscience and humanity. It’s difficult to strike a balance between capturing the suffering and respecting the dignity of a person. Also, as a male, there is more risk that I’ll be accused of taking inappropriate photos, so that makes me more cautious when taking photos of women. As such I don’t have photos of people passed out or of women breast feeding their children.
Photographers change where they are
People change their behaviour when they see there’s a camera pointing at them. This means that if you get permission to take a picture they’ve seen you, seen the camera and won’t be acting like they would have been if you weren’t there.
Of course unless you want to hide your camera and take photos sneakily this is unavoidable.
Photographers are story tellers
Photographers are not necessarily Photojournalists. A journalist should have integrity and report factually. A photographer tells stories through their images. Some stories are blatant lies, backed up by Photoshop to make you buy the latest magazine or product. Every once in a while someone doesn’t do a clean edit and you get an arm floating in the air or a hand missing a finger.
Sometimes the image you have doesn’t properly represent what you saw. Ever see a photo where it looks like you’re pulling a stupid face but really you were just talking and at that moment your lips happened to curl or you were part way through blinking? That’s an accurate capture, but it’s not what everyone saw so it gets deleted.
The decisions that we make on which images we keep and which we share paint a picture that others see.
Two images, two stories
I want to share two photos with you. They are both of the same girl and were taken within two minutes of each other. The first one I haven’t shared until today. These photos tell two very different stories.
The first image tells us about poverty in the tribes and shows us a nervous child looking at newcomers nervously.
The second tells us about a beautiful girl who is happy. We don’t see that her clothes don’t fit and we don’t see her nervousness, it’s gone. When put together with the first and kept in chronological order it tells us a story about how she same to trust us enough to let us take photos.
So why have I held this first photograph back until now? For better or worse I didn’t want to add more photographs to the Internet of malnourished children. Google can provide you with all you need in that regard. We’ve heard stories and we agree the situation overseas is bad, we’re already aware there are problems. Instead, I wanted to capture the beauty of the tribe, but more than that, I wanted to show the beauty of the Filipino people.
Nowhere in the world have I seen people who are so happy with so little. The lasting impression I left Philippines with was one of a people who appreciate what they have, even though everything they own is worth less than the iPod we have or the TV we watch. This is the Philippines I wanted to show you.
In retrospect
In the process of writing this post and thinking about how I release my photographs I have decided that I would have been better to release both images together in a single, composite image so that they painted a more rounded picture. This video of Chimamanda Adichie talking about the danger of the single story nails it by saying that the single story isn’t inaccurate, but it is incomplete.
My goal was to balance out a single story of poverty with a different story, however, in isolation that story can become a single story too. I also lost sight of the fact that I’d been in the country for two months and I’d become attuned used to things that my friends overseas just wouldn’t realise were part of the picture.
I also confess that I was proud of the second photograph – I still think it’s the best portrait photo I’ve taken – and that pride meant I wanted to have it stand as a portrait on it’s own. In this I wasn’t telling a story, but showing the progress I’d made in taking photographs. I needed to remember why I went overseas and why I took the photos I did.
The best thing I did with this photograph was include it in the Powerpoint presentation I have of my time in the Philippines. I’ve seen people react to the different photos I have in the slides and I’m right there to tell the stories, gauge reactions, pick up on when I think I’ve miscommunicated and answer questions.
Telling the story
In all this, I really do consider myself a storyteller, not a photojournalist. Despite this The photograph of the Afghan Girl caught the attention of the world – I hoped to catch the attention of the people I show my photographs too.
An image by itself may not tell an entire story, but it does capture a moment. Those moments can impact people and get their attention. Images can’t explain the politics of a situation, the smell of a place or the feeling the photographer had when they took the shot but they can show a situation, good or bad.
Can we ever tell the whole story? No. There will always be something we miss, someone overlooked, some factor not explored because of time or because we don’t know it’s even a factor. What we can do is tell the most accurate story we can. This will require words – spoken or written – to go with the images of importance that we share.
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine
I don’t think stories can be told just with text. How often do you pull out your phone and take a photo because you want to take a picture, not just write about it? Anyone who has seen my camera gear knows it’s bulky and it’s not that much fun to carry it around every day, but I want to be able to take photos, so I pack it when I travel.
As with everything I post, I’m learning as I go and I’m keen to hear your feedback. I haven’t covered everything I wanted to, but this post is already huge so I’m going to cover the rest in a later post.
Posted by Ben | 0 comments
Smile…it looks good on you
I came across this today for the first time and it made me smile.
I’m trying to get another blog post written and up but I’m afraid I’ve been hit with another cold (which means I’m prepaid for the next few years right?). I’ve spent some of this afternoon/evening helping with the Hurricane Irene Response website. It’s the same software used for the Christchurch Recovery Map – namely Ushahidi.
It’s worth appreciating for a moment that despite being in New Zealand we can still help people thousands of kilometers away. We can put actions behind our prayers and wishes and make a difference, even if it’s just a small one.
A smile can brighten the darkest day. ~Author Unknown
Posted by Ben | 2 comments
Me, myself and 2011
Rather than delve into a topic on this post I thought it would be nice to give a bit of an update on what I’ve been up to. I don’t find it easy to blog about myself, but there are people I haven’t seen for months who have asked me for updates. I can be very bad at keeping up to date with people, but I didn’t forget those who asked, so here it is, my 2011 since leaving Hawaii.
In January I started back at my job, working for Catalyst IT. I got thrown right in the deep end and was asked to teach a group of 4 from the Open Source Academy how to use Drupal to make their websites. The academy partly came about because schools just aren’t teaching skills that are useful in IT classes, so we aimed to fill the gap.
There was of course catching up with friends, coffee (real coffee!) and organising a booster for my Hepatitis A vaccine thrown in for good measure. I also got my first taste of what it’s like to be part of a global family when Chris and Shalom, two of my friends from the USA that I met in Kona, came to Wellington. It’s rather a small world after all.
To end January I went to Hamilton for the Parachute Music Festival. I saw artists like Chris Tomlin, Skillet, Manafest and a whole bunch of others. Louie Giglio was there too and he did Indescribable – such a fantastic weekend.
I’m going back through my calendar to jog my memory, but all the movie nights and other impromptu stuff isn’t on there. I put together two presentations about my time overseas – one about Hawaii and one about Philippines. If you’d like to see them I’m happy to come round and show you. I won’t be uploading them since the stories behind the photos are the most important bit and I don’t know how to story tell online because I can’t see who I’m telling the story to.
At work things had changed a bit too. I had a new Project Manager, Emma, who is truly lovely and I got to work with my friends again on some challenging bits of work. Sadly, Stuart jetted off to the UK, so I ended up inheriting his main project, the NZ Post website, not a small ask for someone a bit rusty in Drupal who hadn’t been with the project from the start. I had a month to get up to speed as best I could before Stuart left and thankfully I had others to ask questions when I wasn’t sure how to approach a problem, giving me all the support I needed to get the work done.
Now that I was working and able to save a bit I took the plunge and upgraded my camera to a Canon 60D. On outreach I’d hit the limits of my 1000D, which has been a wonderful camera that I still have. The 60D in a grade higher in all areas – it has a bigger sensor, bigger screen and better low light performance. It also has video, but I rarely use it.
To be honest I haven’t been doing a lot of photography shooting. At events I’m focussing more on socialising than taking photos, I still carry my Point + Shoot with me, but again, there’s not much to photograph usually and when I do find some free time, it usually goes into something geeky.
Speaking of geeky, when the second Christchurch Earthquake hit it was amazing to see the geek response in Wellington. I was a one of many geeks that joined the #eqnz team. I feel like I played a very small part, but as a combined effort the Christchurch Recovery Map arose.
The map allowed the people of Christchurch to tell anyone with Internet where to find food, water, fuel and where to avoid like closed streets. Tim McNamara got this all kicked off and Catalyst IT (where I work) got onboard too – letting people work on filtering the reports from people during work hours and helping set up a txt shortcode so people coud sms information to us without needing a computer or an Internet-capable phone. It was also the first time I’d seen Nigel McNie in a while too – coding away and configuring not only our server but fixing the Red Cross website too.
I also turned 25 this year and that’s changed my viewpoint a bit. Historically I’ve been a past/present thinking person, not very future oriented. Now I’m starting to think about where I want to be when I’m 30 and what I want to be doing.
You might note that I don’t have much church related to update on, that’s because I haven’t been volunteering at my church. In the past I’ve volunteered to the point of burnout and I’ve done things because they needed doing, not because I felt called to do them. When I got back I decided to say no to everything at first so I could pick what I wanted to focus on, I still give my time in photography, but not a lot of it as there isn’t much demand.
Present day
So fast forward to today, what am I up to? I’m currently quite interested in the idea of using little computers (think smaller than a book size) for…well, that’s the tricky part. I’m using my little laptops at home – one to show you this website and one to backup all my files. They didn’t cost me very much and they mostly look after themselves. I can see something similar being useful in YWAM bases, but I haven’t thought it through all the way yet. I have a USD$40 computer on it’s way from China to see what it can do.
I’m also thinking about making a Dashboard for all the websites I’ve created over time. I want to be able to see on a single page all my sites and if they need updating. The same goes for my servers. This is still in the brainchild stage too, but I’m looking at options.
Three of my friends and I are doing some theology study every third Saturday too. It’s both challenging and interesting and it’s great that we can get together, disagree and still be friends at the end of it.
Future
Well, there are a few things I’m looking forward to doing this year. Kiwicon V is happening in November – it’s a hacker conference organised by people in the security industry here in Wellington with speakers from all over. It’s well organised and packed full of awesome talks – I’m just not taking my laptop or iPod touch, just because.
In December two of my very good friends, Neil and Rose, are getting married. They are having a New Zealand wedding and a Chinese wedding and I’ll be at both, which means a second trip to China! Followed by a bit of a holiday afterwards – right now it looks like I’ll be seeing in the new year in Shanghai and I’m hoping for fireworks.
I imagine that work will continue rather the same as it has. In the past 6 months I’ve been learning new technologies as well as working in/leading a team. I’m spending more time learning about accessibility and user experience when it comes to making websites, I want to continue down this road so I can make better websites for everyone who uses them.
Longer term, I want to get back into missions with photogenX and YWAM – it’s where my passion lies. I really enjoyed my time in Kona and God willing I’ll be back there before too long. I’m not sure what I’d be doing, but there seems to be no shortage of good ideas needing people to make them work and websites allow messages and causes to spread globally.
Until then…
