Travel & Humanitarian Photos
Two things guaranteed to make me happy: 1. The company of friends 2. Great light Yesterday’s visit to the Worldwide Orphans Academy in Addis Ababa yielded both – in spades. I met up again with the spirited kids at the WWO, they make friends faster than you can say “My name is…”. At around 5:30pm [...]
My second day in Addis Ababa and I already feel like I’ve been here for a week. I’ve seen so much already. Here’s a small selection of images of some new friends. Firstly, the delightful Bethy, who has captured our hearts and inspired us in ways that I cannot even begin to describe. My friends [...]
(A Journal extract) There’s a bruise on the inside of my right leg which is slowly turning purple. Each day it grows more colourful and increasingly tender. Let nobody say that I don’t suffer for my art. The bruise is the result of numerous unsuccessful attempts to kick-start this beautiful but tortuously heavy 30 year-old [...]
Wayan is over sixty-five years of age and lives on the Indonesian island of Bali. Nobody is entirely sure of his exact age, even Wayan himself is vague about it. Counting birthdays obviously hasn’t been a priority for him. He’s worked all his life in a rural community and has raised a family. In recent [...]
I’ve been on holiday. Oh, yes, I’ve been having a break filled with the sort of traditional, English things that define “holiday” to a person of my background and vintage. I’ve spent a couple of weeks in deepest, darkest Dorset – which is neither “deep” nor “dark” to be honest, but I enjoy the alliteration. [...]
Sitting in the quiet village square in China, I’m enjoying and appreciating a fresh pot of pu’er tea, something of a tradition in this part of the world. The thing with pu’er tea is that is improves the more you drink it. The first cup out of the pot is discarded, being too bitter. The [...]
This town is going to be a highlight of the trip. I know that as soon as I step out of the car and cast my eyes up and down the quiet street, stretching after the three-hour drive. Immediately, I get a sense of a serene ambience, not the eery quiet of a neglected town [...]
And, just to prove that I wasn’t exaggerating earlier in the week, here are a few quick photographs taken yesterday in a charming Chinese village, which will remain nameless The instant prints that these wonderfully hospitable people are holding were taken with a Fujifilm Instant Mini 505 camera. The Calligrapher’s Friend The friendly monk, 80 [...]
The kids from this school in Siem Reap, Cambodia and I had great fun turning the LCD screen of a Canon EOS camera into a mini movie screen. They really couldn’t get enough of seeing and hearing themselves and, once they’d got the hang of it, went about filling up a 16Gb memory card with [...]
When I speak to people who live in China they often talk about the balancing act that the country is facing – trying to protect the traditional whilst allowing room for the modern. That juxtaposition is very evident in the ancient – and modern – city of Kunming, in Yunnan. Downtown Kunming has room for [...]
I’ve recently returned from an assignment in Cambodia, working for A Child’s Right. You may remember that I worked for the NGO in Nepal recently and seeing the work that they have done in Siem Reap really reinforced what a wide-spread and worrying problem the availability – or lack – of clean, fresh water is. [...]
How much would someone have to pay you to drink the water on the left? This is the question posed by the NGO “a child’s right” in their Clean Water Challenge. When you consider that the glass on the left is highly likely to contain water bearing some of the contaminants that kill over 3 [...]
It’s a Processing, Uploading and Admin weekend here at Gough Towers and whilst those big ol’ files are making their way to the Photoshelter servers and the upload clock ticks slowly around, I’m taking a quick look at some of the images that remain unprocessed from trips earlier in the year. This one comes from [...]
Not much time to write this morning, unfortunately, but here are a couple of shots from yesterday’s visit to the enchanting Sungma Tea Estate in Darjeeling. The hospitality of the plantation Superintendent and Manager was humbling and the spirit and charm of the women working in the plantations was uplifting. Darjeeling and the surrounding plantations [...]
Holi is a time of indulgence, a time to abandon the usual gender rules and restrictions, a time when the familiar constraints of social etiquette give way to exuberant, energetic and exhilarating celebrations. It’s a full-on, non-stop, free-for-all where the standard rules of engagement are abandoned. Holi is not for the faint-hearted. Research before leaving [...]
It’s late. I’m cleaning, testing and packing gear ready for a few weeks shooting in India and I’m uploading images to Photoshelter for a client at the same time. The image below is one that’s been licensed but it’s an image that I haven’t revisited for a while so I thought I’d share it. This [...]
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of a day photographing some of the staff from Diethelm Travel in Bangkok. We were shooting for their promotional material and, despite appearances, worked pretty hard all day. These aren’t professional models, that’s the Director of Sales and Marketing! It’s always a pleasure to spend the day with [...]
Camel traders at the Pushkar Camel Fair Sometimes the details can reveal even more about a subject Gypsy girls with more than their fair share of attitude dress up and roam the fairground looking for tourists to accost with their plea of “One photo?”. Early morning at the festival ground It’s sometimes possible to recruit [...]
I’m in Jaipur today, packing in readiness for the evening train to Delhi. There’s just time to send you this quick postcard from Pushkar, where the following things happened: 1. It rained. For the first time during the Camel Fair for 25 years. 2. It rained a lot! 3. I hadn’t planned on meeting Nevada [...]
Regular readers of my blog will know that when things go quiet it’s because I’ve been busy with… well, you know… work. Yes, one of the drawbacks of being a working photographer is that occasionally one has to actually work. Hence the paucity of blog posts in recent weeks, for which I offer my humble [...]
Bangkok is slowly returning to normal and news of photo workshops in Hanoi, Vietnam.
A selection of black and white images from Paris from a couple of hours stroll and news of new courses for the summer at the Bangkok Photo School
So, last week I was in Vietnam photographing as part of a media delegation. As guests of the Vietnamese National Tourism Authority we were treated especially well and although I’m generally happy as long as I have a warm bed and some means of boiling water for tea, the opportunity to stay in five-star luxury [...]
