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@ROB wrote:
My gear is getting a bit out of hand.
2 dslr bodies and 3 lenses. Plus all the filters and rechargers etc starts to weigh a lot. A lot more than is officially allowed in carry-on luggage.
But I don’t want to check my camera gear.
What do you do?
It depends on where and what. No good carrying tonnes of back-breaking gear which will slow you down and which you won’t realistically use.
If you are doing crowds, then it needs to be light and easy to hide, especially if the crowds are likely to turn hostile, which they most likely will. Alcohol or no alcohol, lots of people generally mean high spirits and the possibility of aggression. Then you have to decide how close you want to get and how much courage you have in the nut sack. If you are going to get close, then keep it light and low profile, with short, wide angle lenses and none of that weekend warrior battery pack and big grip shit. They only add weight and make it hard to hide the gear. Flashes depend on the available light, but remember that flashes freak people out, so try to think about the time of day.
Don’t dick around and don’t make it up as you go along. Decide on your shot before you go in, where you will take it, how to get there and what to do if it all turns ugly. This is not DP shit. It can just as easily happen at a wedding or birthday party, something I can personally attest to. If you want to get close, then think about your gear. An iPhone may be as good as the next camera, unless you are shooting a royal portrait. You won’t stand out in the melee if you have something similar to the rest of the fans, but what will make a crucial difference is your skill level, so practice, practice, practice with your camera phone at home – 99% of the other idiots won’t have a clue what they are doing and your skill will get you paid. Whipping out a big bazooka camera will only lead to penis envy which will lead to hostility. Save the big expensive lenses for the long range big money shots of Kate Middleton getting her tits out.
If you do decide to use your Leica, Canon, Nikon etc, up close then be prepared to lose it, or at the very least bash someone over the head with it, who may dent the lovely finish. A built in flash may be good enough up close if the light is crap, but be prepared to have the external flash ripped off in the melee, so buy cheap ones for crowd jobs and keep the broken ones. I have found that they make for excellent ‘stun’ guns in crowd situations. Keep one loaded and ready and close to hand in case things get ugly and be prepared to give it to some fucker full in the eyes if he or his mates get uppity. They are also good for dogs, horses and other obnoxious snappers. Have the flash turned up to the max and give him the full epileptic strobe to the brain. Make sure the batteries are fully charged because you may have to repeat the action almost immediately.
Keep a good filter on the lens to stop the flying piss and spittle and bits of stone damaging the glass. Carry a couple of them in shoulder pockets as extra protection for when some fucker thinks it is a good idea to punch you there and instead gets glass in his knuckles. Keeping them in the shoulder pockets makes it easier to access them in an emergency.
There is no harm in carrying a spare body, but you’d better have a damn good plan. Keep them both loaded and ready to rock, and no fucking extra lenses. You won’t have the time to change them in the rush. Work out the odds of getting close in a fast moving situation and only go for the longer lens if the situation gets beyond your control/the subject moves out of range/doesn’t come as close as they said they would. Again, think about the light and how many flash guns you need to carry. If the subject gets close enough for the smaller lens and the light is adequate, then you may not require a cumbersome external flash, so use the internal one instead, or not at all, depending on the light.
An extra body with a longer lens may mean carrying an external flash, which means more weight and clutter, depending on the light. Don’t bet on the fact that blue skies and sunshine means you won’t need a flash. The fucking subject may look for shade, meaning that he needs a blast of artificial sun from a flash gun which has enough candles to light him up. You’ll feel like a right prick if the flash doesn’t have the required range.
Keep plenty (lots and lots – they are not made of lead) of memory cards and change them frequently. Don’t fuck about. If you think you have the money shot, then immediately change the memory card and stick it up your vagina and replace it with a spare. Pop off a few shots onto the spare, assuming it is a blank. Some goons may insist that you wipe it, or hand it over, so keep a card with some relevant pix which you can afford to wipe/lose/hand over. Be quick and be sneaky and practice like your life depends on it, which it may well do. Your kids won’t eat tonight if you fuck up, or see their mommy/daddy ever again if you really fuck up.
The baseplate for a tripod which is screwed onto the bottom of a camera often has sharp edges, which is useful for dissuading nasties from trying too hard to paw your gear, especially when they get it in the face/head. A light mono/tripod with sharp feet and/or a good, hard head is a useful addition. It can help steady the camera during a swaying crowd and is also useful for jabbing people like a cattle prod in the buttocks/balls/belly/beak when we all get emotional. It can also give you midgets a bit of height in a crowd situation, assuming you also thought about packing a cable release or remote release.
CAIRO – The World Food Programme has distributed more than 6,000 metric tons of food assistance to more than 543,000 people across Libya since the start of its North Africa Emergency Operation, four months ago. Working with partners, including the Libyan Red Crescent, more than 282,000 people in eastern Libya, and 261,000 in western Libya have received food assistance.
The first UN joint mission to access the Western Mountain region in Libya has found that food security is vital for many in the devastated region, with markets not functioning due to limited fuel and cash, and basic services such as electricity and water also lacking in some areas.
• The World Food Programme (WFP) was part of the UN mission that visited the towns of Wazin, Nalut, Jadu and Zintan.
• According to the inter-agency mission – that also included OCHA, UNHCR and UNICEF – people remaining in the four towns now depend entirely on food assistance provided by WFP and others, including Libyan organizations, international NGOs and private contributions
• Working through NGO partners, WFP is providing food assistance to the most vulnerable people in the devastated Western Mountain area, reaching more than 125,000 people so far.
• WFP has dispatched almost 800 metric tons of food to the Western Mountain region via supply routes across the Tunisian border as well as from inside Libya. As part of the regional emergency response WFP has pre-positioned more than 21,700 metric tons of food assistance for Libya alone inside the country and on the border in Tunisia ready for immediate dispatch.
• In Misrata, WFP has so far provided food assistance to around 125,000. The first Inter-Agency report on the humanitarian siutation in Misrata recently highlighted that while there is no immediate food crisis there, the city continues to rely on external support for all its food needs
• On 1 July, WFP launched the first regular vessel from Benghazi to Misrata port to transport humanitarian cargo and workers. The vessel will make one to two trips each week between the two cities during July.
• In Tunisia, WFP is distributing food assistance to Libyan refugees in five regions in the south (Tataouine, Medenine, Gabes, Kebili and Sfax ) through WFP’s national partner, the Tunisian Red Crescent. Several weeks ago it began providing bread, while other basic food commodities have been added last week. So far more than 13,300 refugees in Tataouine and Medenine have received the full food ration.
• A three-month Special Operation for the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) has already carried more than 1000 passengers from 115 different organisations on 31 flights between Malta, Cairo, Benghazi and Djerba, at a total cost of US$4 million.For Further Information:
Christiane Berthiaume, WFP/Cairo, Tel. + 20225281730 +Mob.+201518766722Sometimes (more often than not, IMHO), you have to commercialise something to be able to drum up some sort of interest from the general public. It’s sad but true.
I’d rather have some dumb starlet down in darkest Darfur using starving African children to promote her newest movie than the same child being ignored. It might be degrading and depressing (cheap, tacky and exploitative as well) to see, but if it saves just one life, then isn’t it worth it?
Never mind the huge fees all the other Hollywood fuckers will make from it (I never said life was fair), if it makes enough of an impression on some sort of donor or highlights something that would otherwise be ignored, then good enough.
I have witnessed plenty of relative nobody wannabee stars in DPs and while I thought it was tasteless, at least it increased the exposure the tragedy was given. This is the sort of case when ignorance most definitely is not bliss.
Bleasdale, who someone once memorably described as ‘the Hugh Grant of the Congo’ is not a bad snapper and to be fair, he has done plenty of tough menial labour jobs, unlike a lot of the trustafarian journos who are out there. He isn’t afraid of hard work.
He might wail that no one is interested in his photos of dying Africans and instead pay the price of a few beers to read about Jade Goody or Paris Hilton, but he as an investment banker should know that capitalism rules and that the media is not a charity. Go where the money is. In a free market/ free media, people will buy what they want.
If you want to save the world, get some clever marketing people on board and make it a cause celebre, not some permanently broke, bleeding heart journos who have no business sense and couldn’t sell their souls to the devil if he came walking by.
If Bleasdale had sense, he would use his network of investment banker friends and shift some of their money (if there is any left) down to the Congo and help change people’s lives, assuming he hasn’t done so already. That would a real difference, instead of hoping someone will be moved by the photos.
Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) — Singapore reported more than 100 new cases of chikungunya fever this month, 10 times last year’s total, as outbreaks elsewhere in Asia spread to the city-state through travelers and migrant workers.
The disease, which can trigger debilitating joint pain lasting months, probably caused sporadic infections at 18 separate sites this year, the Ministry of Health said in an Aug. 25 statement. The cases highlight the equatorial island’s struggle to control virus-carrying mosquitoes and the threat of exotic diseases posed by international travel.
“In this day of rapid cross-border travel, Singapore, just like other countries, is at risk from the importation of viruses,” said Ng Lee Ching, head of the nation’s Environmental Health Institute. “With the recent surge in importations, our risk of local transmission has increased significantly.”
Chikungunya is a reminder of globalization’s role in the international spread of SARS, the deadly respiratory virus that probably infected more than 8,000 people worldwide in 2002 and 2003, including 238 in Singapore. The disease, first reported in southern China, cost Asian businesses an estimated $60 billion.
Until this year, Singapore found cases of chikungunya only in travelers who had caught the bug overseas. Since January, 70 “imported” and 80 locally acquired infections have been officially reported, almost two-thirds of which were in non- Singaporeans, according to ministry data.
Chikungunya, which means to become contorted in the Makonde language of southeastern Tanzania, was first recorded in Africa in 1953, and has infected people in 35 countries. There’s no vaccine or specific treatment for the fever, rash and joint- swelling, which are usually nonfatal.
Ng says genetic analysis shows the viruses in Singapore are similar to strains from India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
A Passage From India
Fifteen Indian states and territories had a total of 1.39 million confirmed or suspected chikungunya cases in 2006, according to health authorities in New Delhi. Kerala and Karnataka have had cases as recently as this month.
Malaysia, linked to Singapore by a causeway, has had more than 1,500 infections since late July, according to the country’s health ministry. Of Singapore’s imported cases, 56 patients had been in the adjacent Malaysian state of Johor Bahru before their illness, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan told Parliament on Aug. 27.
An outbreak in Italy last year, the first in Europe, provided an example of how chikungunya can take hold when an infected person enters an area and is bitten by a mosquito capable of transmitting the virus, and the insect then feeds on the blood of people who aren’t immune to the pathogen.
The World Health Organization says 2.5 billion people globally live in areas where epidemics of chikungunya, and the potentially lethal diseases dengue and yellow fever, can occur.
Tiger Mosquito
A chikungunya epidemic hasn’t erupted in Singapore, even though most of its 4.6 million inhabitants are susceptible to it.
That may be because one of the main transmitters of the disease here — the Asian tiger mosquito, or Aedes albopictus — is less inclined to hover inside homes, and also feeds on other mammals that don’t catch the virus, said Duane Gubler, director of the emerging infectious diseases program at the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School.
“The fact that you have got such widespread transmission but it’s still sporadic is a good indication that it’s not going to blow up into a big epidemic,” Gubler said in an interview.
Public Health Cost
Chikungunya’s persistence in Singapore may reveal a hidden public-health cost of lower-paid, unskilled laborers — many of whom come from Malaysia and Indonesia, where the disease is endemic — to work in the city’s booming construction and shipping industries.
Singapore had about 757,000 unskilled and semiskilled foreign workers as of Dec. 31, according to the Ministry of Manpower. Laborers working in construction or manufacturing were paid a median gross monthly wage of S$800 ($564) last year, according to ministry data.
Many laborers are put up in “unhygienic, very cramped” dormitories by their employers at a monthly cost of S$150-S$200 per bed, said Jolovan Wham, executive director of the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics, a charity that supports foreign workers.
By comparison, the average daily room rate at a Singapore hotel was S$238 in July.
“You can imagine what kinds of conditions they would be living in if it’s going to be so cheap,” Wham said. “Many companies are willing to cut corners.”
More Beds
Land for 11 dormitory sites was released during the past 18 months to provide about 65,000 more “housing spaces,” Acting Minister for Manpower Gan Kim Yong said this month. Efforts to improve housing must be supported by dormitory operators and employers by “maintaining and enhancing standards of current housing facilities,” Gan said.
At a three-story, corrugated-iron dormitory in northwestern Singapore, laundry, buckets and cooking paraphernalia clutter 54 bunk-bed-lined rooms, each ventilated by a single window lacking insect screens.
“Anytime you’re importing a large number of laborers from a highly endemic area, and these laborers are housed in a communal area that is unscreened, you’re at a high risk of creating a focal outbreak that can spread,” said Scott A. Ritchie, a medical entomologist with the Tropical Public Health Unit Network in Cairns, Australia.
The National Environment Agency says foreign workers are an important target for its education and outreach programs. In response to the chikungunya cases, the agency produced more pamphlets in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil detailing ways foreign workers can protect themselves and prevent mosquito breeding, and is preparing versions in Bengali, Burmese, Tagalog and Thai. It also holds mandatory safety courses and seminars.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net.
