Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Changing Media World


Strolling around the stupa. Modern dressed teenagers and a Buddhist monk. Nice mix of old and new. © Morten Svenningsen, 27 July 2008.

The media world is changing and I am sitting here thinking about where it’s going. In-depth journalism is getting rare, everything is happening so fast and no-one have time to dwell on issues from around the world. Professional photojournalism is getting squeezed by market trends, staff photographers are getting laid off and in the US there’s now only 4 (yes, four) newspapers with a foreign editor’s desk! Their presidential candidate, the “experienced” one, McCain, apparently thinks that Iraq and Pakistan are neighbours. And the other one, Obama, is believed to be a Muslim by a large portion of Americans! There clearly is a need for spreading awareness. And what can I do. I’ve become tired of pitching stories to magazines and newspapers. I have reason to believe that most of them never even look at my emails. I know, I should call them in stead. But they are always in a meeting to discuss the appalling sales figures or something.

Meanwhile the web, Google, flickr, blogs like this and all that, they flourish. And it’s all very democratic. But material is unedited, facts and opinions are mixed up and sometimes dubious. I and many other serious photojournalists are left to wonder how we can make a decent living this way. I am thinking of slashing my prices, I don’t like it but lately I’ve mostly been turned down because of one thing: Your price is too high, we don’t usually pay that sort of amount etc. Editor’s expectations are that they can get the material almost for free. Hey, I have expenses too. And try sending your staff photographer to Nepal and get the same photo as me, the same level of background information, then compare the prices.

Stuff is going on in my mind. Perhaps it’s all for the best, the world was never perfect. I just need to figure out a way to get through. Despite the downward spiral, I’m actually ok. Still trying to work in-depth and do some quality reporting. Customers come and go. I have a small but steady revenue stream and enough saved up to get the mythical 5D Mk II camera when (if?) it comes out. September perhaps.

Fingers crossed, gotta run. It’s a high-pace world we’re living in.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

New Prez in Nepal


President Ram Baran Yadav outside the BICC / Nepal’s interim parliament. © Morten Svenningsen


We got a new president, a first, here in Nepal yesterday. Dr. Ram Baran Yadav, a 61 year old physician. Much to the dissatisfaction of the Maoists, their candidate didn’t win the secret parlamentary election and they are currently in a meeting to decide on their further participation in government. Fears are that they will pull out completely and return to warfare in light of the new anti-Maoist coalition that has emerged. Chairman Prachanda has called it an “un-holy alliance”, peculiar choice of words for a Maoist. But media are perhaps exaggerating the conflict overtones - wouldn’t be the first time. At the voting venue yesterday there actually was a quite jovial atmosphere among the MP’s. But let’s see.

The last weeks I’ve started to realized what a creative stand-still I’ve been in the last year. Or two. I’m mostly talking about the fields of contemporary photojournalism and world-class environmental portraits. I think I’ve been doing a decent job with the camera for a while but perhaps in a slightly boring way. Very controlled, technically superb but could have stronger appeal. From now on I think I’ve worked out how to improve and get some spontanuity in my documentary photos. It mostly rely on a feeling but in involves taking more of the whole frame into consideration in the shots. Not just the subject and the timing. There’s something for me to work on over the next months. The photo above, I think, is an example of an ok beginning! So stay tuned if you want to follow my progress into the stratosphere of photojournalism!


(By the way, what happened to nice fonts on Blogger and why have all my inbound links to my homepage suddenly disappeared in Google's webmaster control panel? Is Google loosing it??)


...Oh yeah, for photos please contact the photographer here...

Thursday, July 3, 2008

June went by so quickly...


Old husband and wife selling vegetables, Kathmandu. Photographed 1. June 2008 / Morten Svenningsen.

It’s been a while since my last post, doesn’t mean that nothing has happened here. What have I been doing?

• Just created the Denmark Nepal Network (DNN) on facebook yesterday. A meeting place for people of the two countries, excited to see what becomes of it... Welcome to join if you feel you qualify!

• I’ve edited text and photos on a big project called Football’s Hidden Story. Covering 16 different countries, it tells the story of how football (soccer) affects the lives of normal people, far away from the glamorous pro games, leagues and tournaments. Parts have now been published by FIFA and Sportingpulse.

• I’ve been optimizing my web-site so it now looks even cooler! And also doing some SEO work with good results. If you google photographer / journalist / photojournalist / stock photos etc. in Nepal, you will find me listed on the first page of the results. Number 2 seems the best so far.

• That'’s also resulted in a lot more visitors on the site, currently with an Alexa rank of 370.000 and still going up. So I’m starting to see a steady sales of stock photos now, although the income doesn’t amount to much. And I’ve even started selling posters as well!

• Also been doing a little work on something called the International Photojournalist Network. It’s a cooperative of photographers from around the world, we’ve been working on a few stories together so far.

• And I’ve written a book! Well, it’s not quite finished yet. But for long time I’ve been taking notes whenever I felt I had an epiphany about photography. So I’ve started putting the notes together in an article series: A Photographer’s Thoughts. Freely available on my site... update, site moved to www.mortensvenningsen.com...

• And I’ve started teaching Danish a couple of times a week. Lots of Nepalis still choose to seek fortune and glory abroad. Last I heard, 5-600 a day!

• Haven’t had much time to actually take any photos, the above one is among the few I did manage.

• And finally there’s been some “family developments” - - - - - - -


Outside the sphere of my own life, nothing big is going on here in Nepal. The ex-king left his palace and went into the jungle, 2 years after the Maoists came out of it.

It’s almost 3 months since the election now, and they still haven’t formed a new government. Looks like perhaps the Maoists and UML might take it into their own hands. The 7+1 party coalition is hanging by a thread.

And the monsoon has made it’s re-entry here. Only a couple of really big showers (torrential grade) so far though. That’s all set to change this month!