This is Not an April Fool’s Post

“10: In our information, publicity and advertising activities, we shall recognise disaster victims as dignified humans, not hopeless objects.

Respect for the disaster victim as an equal partner in action should never be lost. In our public information we shall portray an objective image of the disaster situation where the capacities and aspirations of disaster victims are highlighted, and not just their vulnerabilities and fears. While we will cooperate with the media in order to enhance public response, we will not allow external or internal demands for publicity to take precedence over the principle of maximising overall relief assistance. We will avoid competing with other disaster response agencies for media coverage in situations where such coverage may be to the detriment of the service provided to the beneficiaries or to the security of our staff or the beneficiaries.”

-The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Disaster Relief (taken from the Sphere Handbook, 2011 Edition, p.370; Emphasis mine)

It takes a lot to floor me. I’ve seen a lot of dumb stuff in the humanitarian industry. I’m moderately immune to dumbassery these days, and tend to keep my righteous indignation in pretty good check too.

However, a document came to me via a colleague in a partner NGO recently. Said colleague works in a specific emergency context involving refugees and refugee camps, and a fundraising office of said NGO had approached them with a request to bring in a TV crew and do some filming of the refugees and their crisis situation.

Not an unusual request, and under the circumstances of trying to raise both awareness and funds, generally a good idea.

As long as your fundraising office has at least half a clue about international standards of humanitarian fundraising guidelines, as outlined in the Red Cross Code of Conduct excerpt quoted above.

I won’t say much more. Instead, I’m going to lift excerpts directly from the media brief that the fundraising office provided, which instructed the country program exactly what stories they wanted to source for the commercial TV crew they were going to send.

Call me mean-spirited, but I have left the grammatical errors in the original request in place, because I think it adds to the flavour.

Detailed Story Request:

Children under 12 are suggested for the story case main character. If the child is too old, we lose the effectiveness.

Case Examples:

1. Disease/Injury

- AIDS infected, parasite, virus infection and so on. Because of these infections, the child is severely suffering. Please look for disease case that can be seen visually [in the original document, this word is in bold and in red text- MA] such as Elephantiasis, sand flea, one’s arm or leg amputated to protect from further virus infection, severe skin disease and so on. Disease that is so heart-breaking just by looking. Diarrhea and fever are dangerous for children under five but in filming, it is difficult to catch the seriousness of the symptoms because we cannot see from outside. [in the original, underlined and also in red- MA]

With me so far? They talk a little more about emergency medical cases and ‘serious injuries or burns’, and then:

2. Early Marriage

- Because of early marriage… she is not at school getting education but in household to live as young wife.

- She is originally from very poor family and that is why she has to accept early marriage. However she is suffering from disease and her babies are malnutrition and have other diseases.

Are you sure that you want to bother sending a TV crew all the way over here, or shall we just send you some shots of a sad looking kid and you can put your own voice-over onto it, because it seems like you already have the story figured out…

Onwards, and under the section on “Child Headed Family”

- A very young child who is in an age to receive full love and care from parents, but unfortunately the child has no parents (or parents who are very sick) and has to live as the head of the family…

- This child really wants to go to school as her friends in the village but could not go even near to the school. She really desire to get education and better life for the future.

- The child is very young but very loving and attractive child.

Obviously poor kids need to be visually appealing. Cuz, fundraising.

The list goes on. Then towards the end, the fundraising office explains that they want to ensure that “our potential donors can feel the same pain and sadness as if they witness the situation.”

I can think of some ways that could be arranged.

However, to avoid any potential misunderstanding (because it may not have been clear in the run-up), they conclude with a summary of exactly what they’re looking for:

-Children or households in serious poverty

-Children and family suffered by disease, water contamination, inflammation, aids, malaria, malnutrition, etc.

- Situation which was born by extreme poverty

- Sad, abysmal, inhumane scenes and stories that happened by local issues such as conflict, disaster, early marriage, etc.

Final emphasis mine.

So that you don’t damage anything, I am told that the TV crew visit did not go ahead. And I sincerely hope that somebody’s head of fundraising got a firm shoeing.

As the language in the brief suggests, there is a cultural element in play here. Different nations and cultures do have different expectations and standards around what is and is not acceptable in the public domain. Anybody who’s seen an Al Jazeera (Arabic) news report following an Israeli incursion into the West Bank knows that the Middle East has different thresholds for violence on the evening news than you’d expect to find on the BBC.

None the less, the issue of human dignity should be a universal one. The Red Cross Code of Conduct- and other guidelines more specific to humanitarian media and fundraising- are signed by international organizations- I stress that word international- recognizing that we are a global community, and it is simply not appropriate to exploit human suffering simply because our cultural norms say it is okay to do so. Not if we want to remain a part of that same international community, and be treated with any respect whatsoever.

I really wish this was an April Fools Day post. Unfortunately, this level of ignorance still thrives, even within the international aid community.

More Portraits from 2012

These are a few more of the portraits I’ve taken over the last months. I’m pretty pleased with how they’ve turned out, for the most part. This first one is of a friend of mine, taken at a birthday party. It was part accident, in that he was moving his face across the lens at the time, but the focus worked almost perfectly (could have been tighter on the eyes) and I loved the unusual, spontaneous crop and intense depth of field that resulted- so much detail on the face and such a strong connection with the lens. Nice one, Isaac.

I like this shot. This is T., and he’s a happy baby right here. And look at all that cute baby-fat. Getting these photos took a little effort. We were indoors, in an overhung porch area, so the light was low and therefore getting the little tykes to sit still long enough to be photographed without going blurry was tricky. Additionally, getting the right focus, with shallow depth of field and a wriggly child, was a definite challenge. It paid off for me on this one though. Such a cute face, and I like the texture of the little red chair he’s hanging off as well.

This is my buddy whose daughters I posted photos of in my last set of portraits. On his home in suburban Phoenix, they keep a clutch of hens, a dog, a cat, several goats, and three gorgeous kids. They also have a horse. Timing is everything, and I love the timing of this shot- a little moment of affection, which the horse seems to be relishing. Technically, the picture is sharp and well lit, with the background thrown out a little by depth of field. If my buddy was looking at the camera, his eyes would be in shadow due to the harsh overhead sun, but in this case, it doesn’t matter as much, because (unusually for a portrait) in this moment, the eyes are closed. I personally like this shot because it tells a story, and one that shows a side to him that even I haven’t really seen before; when we were growing up, he was never particularly into horses, but because his wife loves them, they’ve since become a part of his life.

This is my lovely wife. She won’t like me for posting this photo, because as she points out, you don’t usually capture someone’s best side when you photograph them from below. But I like this one, because I guess it’s a little unusual, and also because I love the halo of clouds behind her and the dramatic light. I guess it’s got nice connotations for me too, as we were on holiday at Wilson’s Prom at the time. But really, I just like how the shot turned out. And I like my wife

These two, P and C, are brother and sister, and cousins to T, above. C is freshly-baked, just four months old here, and P thinks she’s great. It was a very cute moment. My only regret for this little photoshoot was that the angle and the space I was shooting in didn’t let me get all three of them in their little chairs side-by-side. That, and the chance of getting all three little ones looking at the camera at one time and looking vaguely happy? Seriously, I don’t know how professional portrait photographers do it.

Oh, well they use those little squeaky ducky things, don’t they.

This is Steph. Steph is awesome. If you know Steph, you know she’s a free spirit, full of character and energy, and a genuinely fun and lovely person to be around. I think this photo captures a little of that spirit. Sure, you can’t see her eyes, and that’s a downer from a portraiture perspective. But she’s got such a big smile on her face that communicates that sense of fun that I think it matters less.

This might be my favourite portrait of 2012. Visiting a dear friend and his family in Savannah, Ga., a couple of months back, I managed to gatecrash a family reunion. Being the resident photographer on hand, and seeing as that meant they could all be in the pictures together, I took some group photos for them- not my forte as a photographer, but I guess it’s all about learning, right? After the shoot, K. stepped away with her daughter and I managed to get this image of them together. It’s a lovely, tender moment, utterly natural and unposed, and I love the affection on K’s face, as well as the crisp focus on the subjects and the almost featureless, blurred out background. You can click on this picture to view it larger.

I’ve featured my step-daughter on my blog a bunch of times- because although I don’t put too much personal stuff on here, she’s a photogenic little thing and a lot of fun to photograph. In fact, there were pictures of her up on this blog long before she was my stepdaughter. I’ve referred to her variously as M., or more recently, as my wife has taken to referring to her over on her blog, as Magic. However, I’ve recently decided that from now on, she will be called Tangled. For the uninitiated, Tangled is Disney’s latest Princess movie, featuring Rapunzel, she of long blonde hair fame. It’s actually a very cute movie- probably my favourite of the Princess cartoons (yes, I’ve seen a bunch of them now…), and because one of my step-daughter’s most prominent features, together with her bubbly personality, is her epic mass of tangled blonde hair (tamed like it rarely is in this photo), I think it works. The movie Tangled is one of her favourites too, and people who’ve seen it often tell her she reminds them of Rapunzel, so all up, that’s the way we’re going with this for now. These two shots were taken in Thailand. In the one above, she’s getting stuck in to a serve of whipped cream on top of her banana smoothie, definitely a preferred past-time. In this last one, she’s giving us her puppy-dog expression, which is generally synonymous with her being very excited about something (such as finishing off the whipped cream from a banana smoothie).

Yeah, she’s a real cutie.

Dear Santa…

It’s Christmas tomorrow. Cue M. bursting into our bedroom at 7am (not unusual for a Saturday) to announce excitedly that Santa Claus would be visiting tonight. Santa & Mrs. Claus were less enthusiastic about the early morning announcement, but we get it. We were six once too. In the meantime, there’s fairy lights on the Christmas tree and draped all up the staircase, a small but growing pile of wrapped gifts on the living room floor, and the girls are planning on making a gingerbread house this afternoon.

Except for the tinsel and a reduced staff load, however, you wouldn’t know it’s Christmas at work. Humanitarian life goes on. If anything, this week’s been a doozy. I got back Monday night from a brief visit to Dili, Timor Leste, to do some planning ahead of next year’s elections, and my week hasn’t really stopped since.

In the West African countries of Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, there’s a growing food crisis. Really it’s just an extension of the chronic food insecurity and malnutrition that exists across much of the region. Fragile economies, unreliable rainfall, deteriorating soils, climate change, population pressure, feeding practices, access to clean water and health care- in brief, a whole host of reasons- all make rural populations highly vulnerable to any shocks in their livelihood production systems. While the indicators for the coming season across the region as a whole are not all bad, and while there isn’t the threat of widespread emergency or famine as in the Horn of Africa this year, but regardless millions of people (around 6 millions of them) in pockets in all five of those countries are going to struggle to feed themselves. The hunger season- traditionally beginning any time between February (in a bad year) and May and running until the harvest in September, has already begun in places, with some households out of food already, and some child deaths reported. Niger is still recovering from a difficult year in 2010, and 2012 is likely to see elevated rates of malnutrition and, realistically, the likelihood of significant numbers of child deaths if relief efforts are not stepped up.

The food security outlook for Sudan has been released this week by the USAID-sponsored Famine Early Warning System- the gospel when it comes to classifying global food shortages. It rates areas on a five-point scale (IPC- the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification)- No Food Insecurity, Stressed, Crisis, Emergency and Catastrophe. Large areas of western Sudan (Darfur) are forecast to be in Crisis (IPC level 3), while several areas- significantly those in ongoing conflict, particularly South Kordofan and Blue Nile- are anticipated to be at Emergency levels- levels similar to those seen across most of northern Kenya, Puntland and southern Somalia earlier this year.

And while on the subject of Sudan and conflict, tensions between Sudan and South Sudan (which earlier this year separated from Khartoum-led Sudan following a popular referendum) continue to escalate. Aerial bombardments of populations in disputed areas continue. Troop build-ups are reported. Pro-north militias in the south are allegedly forcibly recruiting southern Sudanese refugees in Khartoum and making them fight against the south. MSF reports large-scale displacements. While the food security outlook for South Sudan is less alarming than for Sudan, the combination of unpredictable population movement and the increasing indicators that large-scale conflict is likely are major concerns over the coming months.

If there’s good news to be found in sub-Saharan Africa right now, it is in the Horn of Africa, where rains have started to bring about an improvement in the drought and famine over the past couple of months. Grazing pasture is reported to be returning, which will support pastoralists, while wells are replenishing and food will soon be able to be grown in some areas. The UN has declassified some areas of Somalia from Famine (Catastrophe) to Emergency, and humanitarian support has been credited with having had a significant impact in this area. That said, huge portions of the Horn of Africa remain in very serious food crisis, and some populations still remain at Catastrophe (IPC Level 5) levels, particularly areas around Mogadishu and with high IDP populations. In addition, while the rains have improved some conditions, they have worsened others, making runways unusable by relief flights, bogging down overland trips which now take three days in place of one, and, most serious of all, spreading Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD) which has been credited with hundreds of deaths in recent weeks among Somali IDPs. We won’t talk about the security situation, which continues to simmer at the very most unstable end of the spectrum, with troops from Kenya and Ethiopia engaged in de facto unilateral action against al Shabab militants, who in turn appear to be strengthening ties with global terror networks like al Qaeda, and continue to destabilize the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Africa Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). 3 Somali aid workers were killed in Somalia yesterday, motive as yet unreported.

Leaving the African continent, more than forty thousand people have been impacted by heavy rains in northern Sri Lanka this week. The districts of Kilinochchi, Mulaitivu and Jaffna have all been hit by moderate flooding, with the government calling on local NGOs to respond. The past eighteen months have seen northern Sri Lanka slowly being rebuilt in the wake of a thirty-year civil war that saw twenty thousand reportedly die in the early months of 2009 alone, and as such is an immensely fragile area. More heavy rain is forecast.

Heavy rain this week in the Philippines also triggered tragedy in Mindinao, in the southern Philippines, when flash floods tore through several areas during the night. A thousand dead have been recovered, and the government reports another thousand remain unaccounted for. The Philippines sees death and destruction on an annual basis at the hands of powerful storm systems, like Typhoon Ketsana in 2009 that caused extensive damage in Manila. This however remains one of the deadliest events in recent years.

Even closer to home, a storm system is building off the north coast of Australia and is due to make landfall on Boxing Day some hundred kilometres east of Darwin as a Category Two tropical cyclone, with the potential for damage. And yesterday, two large, shallow aftershocks struck Christchurch- where nearly 200 people lost their lives earlier this year and large portions of the city were destroyed- triggering fear and distressing memories for many folks living there.

Papua New Guinea’s government remains in a state of considerable uncertainty as two senior politicians- Sir Michael Somare and Peter O’Neill- face off over disputed leadership, with the threat of unrest and violence a major concern. President Laurent Kabila’s victory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s polls has been confirmed by the courts, but criticized by international observers and denounced by political rivals. Police action in that country has lead to the deaths of over two dozen people in recent days, and the country remains under scrutiny to see whether further political violence will spiral out. Iraq has experienced a massive series of coordinated terror attacks in the wake of the US pullout of troops, with its government split along sectarian lines as Vice President al-Hashemi is accused of ties with terrorism and a looming threat of spiralling civil violence. Syria’s internal conflict has stepped up a notch, with a powerful and sophisticated car bomb targeting security forces and civilians in Damascus killing 44 people and injuring scores more. Drug-related violence continues in Mexico at a rate rivalling that of many civil wars, while concerns over insecurity in Afghanistan in the face of a US troop drawdown there in 2012 are increasing, given ongoing levels of insurgency across the country and a fragile, divided state government. A recent leak claims that Pakistan’s government fears a coup by the military is on the cards.

You could say things are busy right now.

I don’t write this to be a downer, or guilt you out, or anything else. Christmas is a time for celebration, for remembering those people and values in your life that are important, for those of us with faith to celebrate what we believe to be a pivotal gift to human kind, and to be close to the ones you love. For me, however, the values of being a humanitarian- remembering those people who are in need in a wide range of ways- is central to reflecting on this season which can be so materialistic, shallow and self-focused. It’s an opportunity for me to take a look around, take a breath, get some perspective, and reflect on what I can do to make the world around me a better place- starting with my family and working outwards from there.

Friend, fellow humanitarian & social media-ite @richendag, who works for INGO World Vision, posted this letter that the Grade 2 daughter of one of their supporters wrote in class for Santa Claus a couple of weeks ago.

If that’s a little unclear, it reads:

Dear Santa,

This year I have tried hard in school, helped mum clean the house tidy, and made new friends. All I really would like is the Kenya people to have a home and something to eat and drink please. Right now they are probably eating dirt. Thank you. Love from Lauren.

Nuff said really. She gets it. You go, Lauren.

Tonight, M. asked if Santa Claus was going to be visiting all the kids in the world, even the ones in places I go and visit when I travel for work. We had to tell her that no, Santa doesn’t visit all the kids in the world, that there are some kids who miss out at Christmas. At bed time, she reflected sadly that it wasn’t right that Santa didn’t visit some of the sick kids. With luck, she’s on her way to getting it too.

Merry Christmas all of you, and rich blessings to friends, family and loved ones for 2012.

 

Being Six

M. is six.

I don’t post a whole lot of personal stuff on this blog. Partly cos that’s not what most of you who visit here are into. Partly because you have to be a little bit careful about how much you share of yourself online, for a range of reasons.

Sometimes, though, it’s nice to be a little self-indulgent. And, well, this blog is about photos, as well as travel and aid work.

I shot this little set of photos (with one exception) during a little trip to the beach not far from where we live. I’m pretty new to this parenting thing, and it’s not without its challenges. And at times, quite frankly, it’s terrifying. But one thing I feel very strongly (not that I’d ever try and distill parenting into a catchphrase) is that one of my most important roles as a parent is to ensure that M. gets the chance just to be a kid. Not worry about all the things her mum and I worry about. Not work her tail off like we sometimes have to. Just play, and run, and laugh, and feel light, and free.

Just be six.

Because being six is about riding scooters on summer afternoons.

Being six is about having little buddies who are soft and cuddly…

…and taking them with you everywhere you go.

Being six is about kisses from mum…

…and not caring when hair gets a little crazy.

Being six is about bike-rides in the park…

…and icy-poles…

…and sticking out your tongue.

But best of all, being six means having someone there to make sure you can just, well, be six.

5 Tips for Taking a Really Great Travel Portrait

Portraiture is something I’ve increasingly aspired to as a photographer. I love a good landscape- in fact, my landscape shots are often what people seem to enjoy in my shots. Portraiture is a different skill-set though. While light changes over a landscape in such a way that you may only have a few minutes to get the shot you want, the challenge of portraiture is even greater- you may have just fractions of a second to capture the image that you have in your mind’s eye. On top of that, a really good portrait often communicates far more power and emotion to the viewer than any landscape; it’s the human element that makes it special.

The basic rules all apply, of course. You want to think about composition (the rule of thirds is a pretty reliable starting point), colour (one of the joys of travel photography are the different colour palettes you can find in both the natural and urban environments) and lighting (shooting in the tropics presents visceral challenges with regards to fierce overhead lighting, washed-out skies and high-contrast backdrops, but dust and moisture can enrich late afternoon sunlight to make it magical).

I’m sharing some specific pointers I’d like to suggest for taking a decent travel photograph. They’re not exhaustive, nor are they unique to travel portraiture, but I reckon if you can nail these, you’re well on your way to capturing the sort of image you’ll want to bring home and share with friends and family when your adventures come to a temporary halt. (I’ll leave it to you guys to decide whether these shots fit the title or not…)

Note: All these photos were taken on a 3-day field visit in rural Niger in September this year.

1. Create a Connection

This is true with any portrait. I find the most powerful portraits are those where the subject is looking straight down the camera lens. It can feel (as a viewer) as though the person is looking straight out of the photograph at you. To achieve this, you generally need some sort of relationship with the person whose picture you’re taking. It might only be a momentary one- a glance in the street- or you may have asked the person to pose for you.

In travel photography you’re often communicating across language barriers, but respect is universal, so always put it into action. Just pulling out a camera and shooting willy-nilly is a sure way to upset people. I rarely take a photo where I haven’t signalled my camera (usually pointed upwards) and waited for an inviting smile or nod, or made eye-contact with the person and waited for them to acknowledge me in some way. If I sense hesitation or hostility, I smile and move on.  Even asking in a foreign language, people usually get the idea of what you’re wanting and can communicate a reply.

While in photojournalism there’s a power and pathos that comes with shots of human suffering or deep emotion, I find the photos that people go back to tend to be ones where the subject is joyful. People are naturally drawn to beauty. With that in mind, have fun. Laugh with the person you’re shooting, give them a big smile, turn it into a game. That won’t work in all cultures: for many, having a photo taken is a serious business and they want to look their formal best. Kids, on the other hand, usually love it, and in many African countries they’re overjoyed when someone points a lens at them.

Earlier I’d asked this girl if I could take her picture, to which she’d agreed, and I got a really sweet little shot of her smiling shyly while clinging to the trunk of a tree. A few minutes later she came back to me with a cheeky smirk asking me if I’d take another photo, and when I raised my camera she giggled. I speak no Hausa and she spoke no French, but as you can see, the communication worked just fine.

2. Consider your Background

When you’re taking a portrait, the person is your main point of focus, but they exist in a context. In fact this is the major difference between travel (and candid) portraiture versus studio portraiture. With the latter, you control the background ahead of time. With the former, you need to manage it on the fly- itself a challenge that can be both satisfying and heart-breaking.

Background can become a part of your visual narrative, or it can distract from it, so think about the effect you want. Environmental portraits frame people in a shot with items that contribute to telling that person’s story. A merchant in a fruit stall, for example, may be best photographed standing with all her colourful pineapples sharply in focus. For this you probably want to use a wider-angle lens (not too wide, as wide angles distort images and can stretch facial features unnaturally) and a reasonably small aperture (f/8 and higher, light-depending). Again, the joy of travel portraiture is that backgrounds are often exotic and full of interest.

On the other hand, a child on a busy street may get lost in the clutter if you don’t defocus your background. Use a mid-range telephoto lens and open the aperture wide to get a really shallow depth of field, which naturally throws the background out of focus. Just make sure your point of focus is spot-on, or you may end up with a fuzzy subject too.

If the background is unremarkable you probably want to use this technique too.  In the photo at the top of this page, the background was burning white sand- totally uninteresting and threatening to wash out the photo- so blurring it into white made the most sense.  This has advantages (declutter and an element of the abstract) but also disadvantages (the photo is placeless and has no context).

In this first photo, I chose to use a really shallow depth of field as the background was fairly dull, and I wanted the farmer to stand out. Using a small f-stop number (f/1.8) also means that the part of the shot that is in focus is REALLY sharp. The blurred green trees give just enough information to let you know you’re in the countryside, but don’t pull the eye away from the man’s wrinkled face.

In this next shot, the girl is standing against the wall, so both she and the wall are in focus. The wall is painted with a map of Africa. Although the girl herself doesn’t stand out quite so much from the background, the colours and textures are pleasing to the eye, and the map itself tells a story and gives the girl a context which (in my opinion) adds something unique to the photograph that might have been lost had she been against an empty or blurred background.

In this third shot, the boy is in focus while everything forward of and beyond him starts to blur out. There’s just enough detail, however, to give him a context- the cows, the harness and the water containers, as well as the rural backdrop. Because he alone is in focus he still holds the viewer’s eye, but there are other elements in the image that contribute to telling the viewer something about who he is and what he does.  Note: You could argue that this photo would have benefitted from a broader depth-of-field (something around f/4) to keep the cows sharp but still blur the background, and I’d accept that criticism, although I also like how isolated the boy is from everything around him; you can see just how precise the depth is by looking at how much of the yoke, front-to-back, is actually in focus before it blurs out.

3. Be Ready for the Right Moment

Facial expressions are fleeting, as are connections. If you’re in a place where you think you might see something interesting, have your camera out and switched on, with the right lens fitted, the correct mode selected, and your eyes scanning. You might be looking for a gesture, an emotion, or a fleeting glimpse of eye-contact. People may be moving. Think about your shutter-speed- will you be able to freeze motion given the light available to you? And think too about point number one and the importance of communication and respect; even in a crowded place, have you made eye-contact with the people you’re wanting to photograph, or made sure they’re comfortable with the camera? Stand-off lenses are all very well, but as a photographer you need to be asking yourself these ethical questions.

In both of these photos, these kids made eye-contact with me for just a few seconds where they were caught in a crowd of others. The children there had been watching me for some while and I’d been looking back at them and smiling, and noting those that smiled back at me and at the camera. I already had the aperture opened up so that when my opportunity came I knew I’d be able to isolate whichever children gave me a moment to photograph, and these two did.

4. Go for the Eyes

If there’s a cardinal rule in portrait photography, it’s this one. Eyes are all about moment and connection. They communicate emotion to the viewer, and a simple glance of a couple of degrees off-lens can make the difference between a missed opportunity and a wow moment. This is particularly true of close-ups.

For eyes, think about placement; rule of thirds is usually the way forwards here, so try and get one eye onto that sweet-spot at the intersection of the thirds-lines. An eye-line straight down the barrel is usually what I go for, and almost all of the portraits I’ve loved have involved that sort of eye contact. If using shallow depth of field, ensure that the eye itself is the point of focus. It’s all too easy to accidentally focus on the forehead or the tip of the nose, and even with a really strong facial expression, you’ll lose some of the punch of the image.

These two shots were both taken at a school in Niger (one inside the classroom and one outside), and they are both among some of my favourite portraits of all time.

5. Tell a Story

This is optional, but the difference between a techncially good photo, and a photo which makes people sit up and take notice, is that with the latter, they’re experiencing something new. The beauty of travel photography is that there’s always a story to be told, something new to see, something that’s exotic to the viewer back home, so try and think of what that story might be. A facet of daily life, a curious setting, some exotic produce, or just an unusual face that communicates a sense of place or time- it can be any number of things. Put this together with capturing the right moment and working on your background, and you’ll have a photograph that will really help you remember a place.

In this photo, I managed to combine moment, background, eye-contact and connection, and the setting was such that I’ve been able to capture a little slice of existence in this rural African village. Girls in Niger, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, are the ones mostly tasked with collecting water- even quite young girls like this one. Here, I love the colour, the bright light, her expression, and the pouring of the water all framed crisply against a blurred backdrop of other women and girls waiting at the well behind her (and again, contrast this with the image at the top of the page which has no background).

Travel photography- and portraiture- is a personal thing, and it’s up to you as the photographer to decide what you want to remember, and how. Really, if you take a photo, and it reminds you of something special, and you’re proud of it, that’s all that matters. I wish you all the best of luck out there, and most of all, I encourage you to have fun. If you’re not enjoying yourself with you camera, seriously, what’s the point?

A[nother] Day at the Beach

The other week I went down with friends to Sorrento Ocean Beach.  It was mid-June, and in true Victoria fashion, the weather was changeable and shifty, so that when the sun was out it was warm enough to strip down to t-shirt, and when the clouds rolled across its face and the wind blew, you were hugging your jacket.  I took the camera for a walk to see if I could get some landscapes, and I got a handful, but the light was a long way from ideal, so I quickly called it a day.

However the same flat light which makes landscapes a bit dull is ideal for portraiture.  Strong sunlight gives faces angles and contrast, while softer light, especially diffused through a thin cloud layer, is just what you’re looking for; there’s a reason flashguns often have a diffuser on the front.  It gives enough light on the foreground to make subjects stand out, but little enough that features look smooth and natural.

I was with friends J. and A., and A.’s four-year-old daughter, M., who spent most of her time climbing up rocks and waiting to get helped down, exploring caves and holes in the rocky foreshore.  She also succeeded in misjudging one leap and landing two feet into a rockpool (I take considerable blame for this), and managed a pretty impressive tumble down a series of rock platforms (she and I are clearly kindred spirits on some level).  While the tumble did trigger tears for several minutes, the beauty of children and their frustratingly short attention-span is that before too long, the tears and their cause were forgotten, and life went on.  I think we big important grown-ups could learn a lot from our youthful little counterparts…

I had fun shooting with A. and M.  M. is completely comfortable with the camera and didn’t pay too much attention, and they were both really good sports about my photography addiction.  I like natural, spontaneous shots first and foremost, but on a couple of occasions mum and daughter lined themselves up nicely and I had to ask them to hold their positions for a few seconds while I reeled off a couple of shots.  I was shooting with my beloved 85mm f/1.8 , a standoff lens ideal for candid and natural-looking portraits, and when it’s wide open, the bokeh is delicious- crisp, sharp detail on the subject and a beautifully-blurred background.

It still takes me a bit of courage to delve into the world of portrait photography.  It helps having friends like these who let me practice on them, and I hope that over time it’ll become more natural and comfortable for me.  For any other aspiring photographers out there who want to get into portraiture, I can’t stress how important having the right equipment is.  Most compact cameras focus far too slowly and inaccurately to be able to fire off spontaneous spur-of-the-moment portraits at that beautiful moment when everything works right, while shooting with wide-angle lenses that distort features or low-quality zoom lenses that blur the moment the light drops off a smidgen will tend to frustrate and discourage.  I have found both with my 60mm f/2.8 and 85mm 1.8 that having a fast, responsive lens with narrow depth-of-field has made portraits a joy, and almost every portrait I feel proud of has come from these lenses.

Now stop reading, get out there, and start shooting!

Photos:

1. Mum and daughter pose atop a rocky rise beneath a windswept moody sky.

2. M. works on her ‘Supergirl’ pose.

3. A. & M. pause on the rocks in front of the southern ocean.  One of those shots which turns out almost exactly how you wanted it to.

4. M. gets a spin from J. on the foreshore.

5. Scrambling on the rocks.

Thanks J., A. and M. for being such good sports! 

One for the Kids

I’ve put up a few posts on portraiture, partly because this is an area I’m trying to improve in my photography, and partly because in the absence of exciting overseas travel, I’ve been trying to take more shots of people and keep my skills up.  It’s been fun, frequently challenging, and often rewarding.

Probably my favourite subjects to take photographs of are children.  Partly for the process, and partly for the end result.  Admittedly I don’t have to work with them in a studio or anything like that, and I realise that if your job is taking family portraits it’s probably a different game altogether.  The times I’ve been doing it has been on my own time, and usually under fun circumstances.

Kids respond differently to the lens.  Some get shy or suspicious.  Some are indifferent.  Some get really excited- especially in third world countries.  And some play to it.  There’s fun to be had with all types- although if a camera is upsetting a child I put it away.  As with all of my portrait shots, what I really love is capturing an expression or a spontaneous moment, rather than a carefully posed image.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to take photos of various friends’ children while out and about socially.  I enjoy how the different characters come through the lens.  The first one was at a good friend’s 25th.  This little one, who I’d never spoken to before that day, saw the camera and immediately started playing to the lens.  I was snapping with my 16-35mm, which isn’t a great portrait lens unless zoomed all the way to 35, as the wide-angle distorts the face, making it bulbous and unflatteringly misshapen.  However she was completely unfazed by the glass and generally tried to get her face as close to it as she could, without the slightest shred of self-conciousness.  Precocious might be the best word to describe.

I really like this second shot for her thoroughly natural and comfortable smile.  A natural born performer…

Overseas, and I spent some time with a good friend and his family.  They have three children, L., G. and C..  L. and G. didn’t pay a lot of attention to the camera and allowed me to get some nice candid shots.  Here was I shooting on my 400D with a 60mm f/2.8 Macro.  Although f/2.8 isn’t super sharp, the detail and clarity I’ve always gotten off this lens astound me (you can see more detail by clicking the pictures below), and it remains my favourite of the EF-S range.  Many of my favourite overseas portraits have been taken with it.  In this shot, L. is sitting on the side of a speedboat, about to do his first water-skiing lesson, contemplating the breeze on his face.

While L. was learning to ski, G. stayed in the boat and watched her brother with considerable attention.  G. is six but wishes she was actually nine, and generally tries to keep up or outdo her brother on any given chance. I got to spend a bit of time while I was overseas playing with both kids, and I had a lot of fun with them.  They were [exhaustingly] energetic, sweet and good-natured.  G. is looking particularly contemplative in this shot.

Here’s another shot of G., taken a couple of weeks later having her own go at learning how to water-ski while Dad fixes up the life-vest.  The discoloration on her forehead is a bruise she got a day or two earlier after running her face into something, in true six-year-old style.  Love that big unselfconcious front-tooth grin.

Meanwhile, C. is still learning about the world, and not at all sure she is always that happy with what she finds when it doesn’t suit her.  For a good little while she was pretty scared by my beard, and despite numerous attempts by myself and her parents, we couldn’t coax her into actually touching it.  It became the defining feature of our relationship, and I was known to her as “Baba Chin”.  She started her life in West Africa and was now in yet another country foreign to that of her parents, so she was still learning how to string sentences together, with an odd little mix of English, French, and a lot of happy babbling which took some work to decipher.  When she gets the hang of words she’s going to be unstoppable.  However she was none too sure she liked the camera pointed at her:

Another of my favourite little friends at the moment is M., the daughter of a friend of mine here in Australia.  The other week a few of us ended up on a beach on midwinter’s day, and while the light was a little patchy, it was actually pretty good for portraiture, with soft filtered sunlight that didn’t threaten to burn out features.  M. is entirely non-self-concious in front of the camera, and most other places too once she’s warmed up.  Full of energy and positive attitude, she’s a fun little thing to have around.  Like a lot of children her age, she basically has two buttons: Stop, and Go Really Fast, and spent most of the time on the beach clambering up rocks, then getting stuck and calling out for mum to come and get her down again.  I took this picture of her while atop one such rock during a brief pause, and liked the way it framed her against the sky (again, for best viewing click to see the shot a little larger).

(This photo of M. was taken with my 5D using the 85mm portrait lens.  On the full-frame sensor it is almost identical in reach to the 60mm on the 1.6x cropped sensor of the 400D, but the glasswork is exquisite, and that f/1.8 aperture makes for wonderful sharpness.)

Of course, kids being kids, I couldn’t finish off without at least one obligatory face-pull.  Which of course comes courtesy of Mum’s Little Princess.  I’m sure mum is really thrilled.  But I personally reckon that as gurneys go, this is a grand one.

Thanks guys.  Love you all.

A Bounce in Her Step

Spur of the moment fun with my Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM.  Click the image to see more crisp DOF-y detail.

Child’s Play