Posts Tagged ‘Philippines’

Typhoon Haiyan, Philippines

In early November, Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines causing major loss of life and damage to property. Hundreds of thousands of people were left without adequate food, shelter, sanitation and medical assistance.

I was in the Philippines in June, as anyone who has been following the blog will know and anyone who saw my recent exhibition will have seen images from that country such as the one below. To think that the people I met who already had so little could have had even that destroyed is very sad. There are many channels for readers to help by giving whatever they can spare – the Red Cross in your country is a good place to start and other similar NGO’s are on the ground.

The New Zealand government sent aircraft with supplies and military personnel to assist, and the US Navy is on station to provide what assistance they can as well. Many other governments are sending assistance.

If you can spare a few dollars, then please do so and donate it to one of the funds helping to bring relief to the Philippines and the warm and friendly people who live there. Any amount will make a difference.

If you are a photographer, consider taking a trip there as soon as it is safe to do so. My friends at Jim Cline Phototours have trips there which are fantastic, and by going there and spending your dollars in restaurants, jeepneys and hotels, you will be contributing to the recovery and getting some great images.

Home From The Road!

Hi All.

Apologies for the delay in posting but I have had so much to do since getting back in the last 10 days or so that it hardly feels like I have been away!

I worked out that I travelled over 25,000 km in 12 flights in my trip which took in 4 countries. Phew!

Since returning, I have been recovering from the trip, sorting out and backing up my work from the trip (a side note: backing up is VERY IMPORTANT! I recommend multiple backups in your home/office in case of disc failure etc AND at least one off site backup. I use a service called Backblaze, which backs up Macs in the background to a very secure location in the USA. It costs about $50/year per computer and is worth every cent of that.)

I will be doing a post soon on the gear that I took with me and how it coped with 10 weeks on the road so keep checking back for that. A real life test of cameras, bags, computer gear and so on!

I have also been working on some of the images as well including a B&W series from my visit to the boxing gym in the Philippines (see here) and you can see some of them below. They were all shot in colour but have been processed to B&W using Nik Silver Efex.

I have had some meetings about the exhibition and that is progressing well. Again, a big thank you to David and Conor Kershaw of Pain & Kershaw in Martinborough and to Grant Muir of Big Image Print in Wellington who are the principle sponsors of the exhibition – their support is greatly appreciated and crucial to the success of the project.

Next week I am taking some time out as I have to go into hospital for some routine surgery that was postponed before I left for the trip. Hopefully I will be home in a couple of days and the resting up recovering and allowing stitches to heal etc for a few weeks, so I will have plenty of enforced downtime in which I can edit and refine the work for the exhibition.

I have come back to spring in NZ – we have blossom out and new leaves coming, as well as Snowdrops and Daffodils so it is nice to have missed the worst of the winter weather as well.

Praying For Success

When I grow up…

Power In The Ring

Practice Makes Perfect

Cebu

So I have finally managed to find five minutes and a (barely) working email connection to post this update on what I have been doing for the past days in the Philippines.

I’ve been travelling in Cebu with ace photojournalist Karl Grobl and visiting some amazing sites and picking up some great learning along the way. Karl often works here and has ferreted out some amazing places to explore and capture breathtaking images. I will tell you about two of them here.

Santa Mesa Underpass Community
Under a rail bridge in a suburb of Manila a group of unrelated peope have been brought together by their common need for shelter and security in numbers. Living in a mishmash of ‘homes’ made from assorted oddments, alongside two rail tracks and framed by highways with Jeepneys and so on driving through regularly to compliment the trains that run past every 20 minutes to boot.
We visited these people who were pleased to see us and did not seem to mind at all being documented. Here are a couple of images to give you an idea of how these people live.

Packing & Sorting Charcoal By Hand For Sale In The Market

This infant was born under the bridge, not in a hospital. He is sleeping on an old door in a motorcycle sidecar.

Flores Boxing Gym
Later in the week I visited a very small boxing gym called Flores Boxing Gym in Mandaue City. Four times a week, young men come to the gym to train and spar with one another under the guidance of Brix Florez, himself a talented boxer. Once again we were welcomed into the private world of people who barely knew us from Adam and made to feel welcome as well as being given priveleged access to photograph their workouts.

Fighters sparring at the gym

A fighter works the heavy bag in the gym

I leave for Vietnam again in a few days and have to say that I find myself surpised by how reluctant I am to leave the Philippines. I am sure I will return.

I will be meeting up with Karl again in Cambodia for a few days to do some very focussed one-on-one mentoring and shooting and of course you will be able to read about that here on the blog too!

Manila Intramuros

So here I am, writing this from Manila in the Philippines. This is the first time that I have ever been to the Philippines so it is sure to be an interesting voyage of discovery both photographically and culturally.
I am staying in what is known as Intramuros – literally “within the walls” in Latin. The walls in question were built by the Spanish when Manila was part of the Spanish Empire in order to provide protection against pirates and foreign invaders. Sadly a sizeable part of the original walled city has been destroyed in the last 100 years or so in various conflicts such as WW2 but much of the wall itself remains as it has for several hundred years now and some of the buildings can still be seen amongst newer replacements.
Religion plays an important part in life here – I even saw a less than reassuring message hand-painted on the back of a taxi which read “In God We Trust”. I do hope that did not mean the driver felt he had no part in the venture!
Tomorrow I shift hotels and meet up with humanitarian photojournalist Karl Grobl for 5 days or so of combined workshop and tour of some other areas of these islands. I may also be meeting up with Karl in Cambodia too some time in July. He takes great photos (as his long list of venerable clients shows!) and as the old adage goes, always learn from the best and you’re never too old to learn! The link to Karl’s site is under ‘Links’ on this page if you want to go and have a look.
Today’s photo was taken on a section of the Intramuros wall that is in excellent condition; so good, in fact, that it is easy to imagine the ghosts of the Spanish forces here so long ago standing beside you. A wholly different type of wheel can be seen here!

Spanish Cannon, Itramuros, Manila.

The Journey Within The Journey

Location map of the Philippines Equirectangular projection, N/S stretching 103 %. Geographic limits of the map: N: 21.2° N S: 4.3° N W: 114.1° E E: 127.3° E (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, OK – one of them. I feel that there will be several, both literal and figurative.

The one in question is 6 days in the Philippines that I am spending with US humanitarian photojournalist Karl Grobl. Karl has a style that I really like as well as a huge amount of experience in the NGO and humanitarian workspace. I was originally planning to attend a 2 week workshop with Karl and as I wrote here that was cancelled as not enough folks signed up for it. If you take a look at his website, I am sure you will be impressed with the excellent work there.

I’m now meeting up with Karl for the optional 5 day extension of his Philippines trip. The extension is geared more towards actual photojournalism practice rather than just a photo travel tour. I have also been fortunate enough to arrange to spend an extra day on my own with Karl, which will be a really useful opportunity. When I planned that part of the trip, I was not even aware of the Magnum Photos workshop in Sydney which I am now very fortunate to be attending in just over 2 weeks time.

I have no doubt that both learning experiences will be quite different but equally beneficial and am very much looking forward to stretching myself and my creative abilities. Clients and those who come and see the exhibition in October will be the beneficiaries of these formal journeys of learning which themselves form part of the wheel of life in terms of my learning and growth as a professional photographer.

I will be posting about both these workshops here at Revolution. However, if you have any questions or comments I’d be happy to help if I can.

The Journey Before The Journey: Magnum Workshop, Sydney, Australia, May 20-24th (revolutionblog.net)

Visa Day And Travel Vaccinations

Vaccinations are not this challenging these days!

Tomorrow, Friday, is ‘Visa Day’.

By this I do not mean that my credit card is coming out to the shops but rather that my passport will be collected from the Vietnam Embassy in Wellington with a new Multiple Entry visa in it! Cambodia I can do easily on arrival and neither the Philippines nor Malaysia require one for a NZ passport holder for a visit of this duration.

This is the last of the travel admin required, as currencies and so on are all in the safe ready to go.

Vaccinations are in hand; tomorrow I will be having the first Japanese Encephalitis shot (of 2) and a Rabies booster along with Dukoral, an oral Cholera vaccine that protects against ‘traveller’s diarrhoea‘ as a happy by-product. The TD protection is only 3 months or so, whereas the Cholera protection is 2 years I think.

I will also need Malaria tablets in Cambodia but not in Vietnam.

Soon it will be time to begin packing bags too. I like to take about 2 weeks over that for a trip of this length, refining the load to get the best balance of weight vs utility. I think that will be the subject of a post by itself though so look out for that one soon.

Planning the trip

As this blog goes live, we have been working on the trip for over six months now.

Beginning with maps, guidebooks, hours of web research and hundreds of emails we have reached a point now where the trip is perhaps 85% arranged. All the ‘skeleton’ exists – the main travel arrangements to and from New Zealand and internally once on location. Most of the flesh is now grown on those bones – we have the majority of accommodation booked and so on for at least the Vietnam and Philippines parts of the trip.

Cambodia presently remains in need of attention due to a change in plans caused by external factors. Two weeks of my time there was set aside to attend an photojournalism workshop with the excellent Karl Grobl. Unfortunately, the workshop was cancelled recently due to a lack of confirmed registrations. The positive outcome of that has been that I am now diverting to the Philippines for 10 days to join Karl there for the optional extension of a trip that he is running there. I’m excited to be going to somewhere I have never been, so that part is great. I am of course disappointed not to be attending the full workshop and may consider that for next year, circumstances permitting.

The ‘negative’ part is that I now have additional time in Cambodia which I need to fill with useful work since my flights are not flexible. Of course, it is not really that negative finding yourself in Cambodia with your cameras and a free schedule but it will entail some more planning.

We are working through all these things just now and I will be sure to post updates here, so keep coming back!