What the neighbors are up to

Hazardous work.
© Morten Svenningsen

Sometimes I see construction workers walk around on small ledges without safety ropes. I see them throwing tools to each other, sometimes they catch them, sometimes they don’t. If somebody passes by underneath and gets a screwdriver in the head, it’ll break their skull. So just look out when walking around. And just don’t fall down when you’re up there on the ledge. Then everything is fine. Fair enough.

But this thing that the neighbors are doing today takes the prize as the most stupid thing that I’ve seen in a while. These 3 guys they hired to paint their house are walking around on a 45 degree slope with a 20 foot drop below. Sometimes there’s something they can hold on to. Sometimes not. They also carry paint buckets and paint brushes. Down below is a metal fence with 3 inch spikes pointing straight up!

I was just starring (and shooting some photos) for 5 minutes, one guy lost balance but grabbed the other-one’s arm. Regained balance, phew... He would probably have survived the fall. Probably.

That’s the way it works here. I think the ILO would call it exploitation or something. I call it stupid. The Nepalese call it work.

Without a safety net.
© Morten Svenningsen

Nobody really celebrates Christmas around here, but anyway: Merry Christmas everybody!

How we live

Oh yeah, I know that some of you are curious to see how we live. My dad posted some shots of their visit here earlier this year. Check it out if you want:

http://picasaweb.google.dk/Flemmingsv/Nepal

One photo a week

No posts here for a month and a half now. Sorry about that, I’ll try to post more often from now on. Even during the dry periods where nothing much apparently happens. But there’s always things happening inside my head. Well, maybe not this week, since I’ve been down with the flu. But my brain is now back on 90% power. One entry per week here should provide a more continuous feel for the local situation, I think. Often, it’s the little things that gives the best understanding, isn’t it?

Climate change on the horizon. This man in Nepalganj is using a more sustainable form of transport than us photographers, journalists and all the experts attending conferences in Bali and Hawaii.

© Morten Svenningsen

So, last week I was a few days in Nepalganj (a small town in the flatlands of Nepal, if you aren’t familiar with the local geography) doing a reportage for Save the Children. It was about the annual flooding and how it affects the local people there. This year it affected 336.534 people, according to some statistics the client brought. Man, where do they come up with those exact numbers?

Well, it’s a lot of people and it’ll probably just get worse over the years with the continuing population boom, global warming and all that. Of course, we’re now in the middle of the dry season here, so all I could do was to go around and take some photos of people showing how high the water was half a year ago. Damn! But, well, the client was happy...

But I’ve just been thinking about this climate change thing and what UN and all the other NGO’s are doing about it. Of course, we flew in from Kathmandu. Some of us from Europe. Meanwhile in Bali, thousands of delegates have been flying in to that big conference and next month they’ll all fly to Hawaii. That’s a lot of jet fuel burned straight into our atmosphere. Not to mention all the heated offices and 4WD vehicles they utilize here in Nepal. And what are they accomplishing? Here in Nepal, they do provide some relief, tents and rice and such, but more long-term improvements are happening really really slow. And with all their traveling around to meetings, their office generators and so on, I’ve got a feeling that the NGO’s are actually contributing more to the problem here than they’re mitigating it. Let’s at least say that one UN-staffer contributes about as much to the problem as a couple of typical Nepalese villages. That can’t be too far off!

I hope I’m wrong, God I do, but...

It wouldn’t be fair to publish the Nepalganj photos here yet, since the client hasn’t had a chance to run the story yet. So you’re just gonna have to make do with the one at the top of this entry. I don’t think they’ll use it.

Came in from the wilderness

I got back from the mountains about a week ago and there’s been lots of catching up to do. While I was gone, they postponed the CA election here in Kathmandu. Not a big surprise to anybody. Fuel prices have also gone up and the Maoists are still taking the impossible stand. It’s starting to smell like trouble in the streets again, isn’t it? Maybe I should just head back up to the peaceful mountains and find a good hibernation spot !

Oh, I didn't post any photo’s of my self on this blog so far. Maybe some of you are curious to see what I look like. So here’s one that Sabina took of me (finally one where I look relatively cool!):

Yours truly at an undisclosed spot in the Himalayas - Nice use of the harsh daylight, coming in from the side and enhancing the textures. Left-right, foreground-background balanced. Rule of thirds. By the book - it works!

© Sabina Bhetwal

(She's also got some of her photo's up on Flick here)

Himalayan field trip

Friends and colleagues, please note that I'll be out of reach until the end of October. Hopefully I'll come back with lots of material, so do check in here again at that time...

I'm going trekking in Himalaya for a while. The thing to do around here! If you're curious about trekking and the whole Himalaya thing, check the link there. Good maps and reviews of the 3 "top" places in Nepal: Everest, Annapurna and Langtang. Also loads of useful tips on gear. What'll you need to bring in the Himalayas? Sleeping bag, trekking tent, high altitude camping stove. How do you deal with trekking in rain, trekking in snow? Solid advice.

Nepal Breakdown (devotional, political & personal)

Woman passed out at Pashupatinath. At the annual Teej festival in Nepal, women fast all day long in honor of the Gods who, in return, will bestow them with a happy marriage. On this day, thousands of women are waiting in long queues outside the temple to offer their prayers. But in the baking sun, and on an empty stomach, it was too much for this young lady, leaving the premises feet first.

© Morten Svenningsen

I mentioned before that things were starting to thaw up on the political front here. But with the recent developments, things are actually starting to get quite hot. Yesterday, the Maoists decided to quit the government, thereby throwing the future of Nepal into great uncertainty. They’ve announced new “people's movement” and “people's action”, no new “people's war” though. And they haven’t left the SPA-M alliance, the parliament or the cantonments either. Their list of demands, 22 points, most prominently calls for the immediate declaration of a republic and a change in the electoral system (proportional in stead of first-past-the-post). So where did that come from all of a sudden?

Well, it’s actually some of the old demands that they conceded last year in the peace negotiations. They’ve pulled them out of the hat again now, for what can only reasonably be interpreted as fear of the constituent assembly election scheduled in two months.

So either they’ve just recently come to the conclusion that kidnapping, torture and warfare haven’t won them that many voters (surprise, surprise) or they’ve just been playing tactical games all along, never intending to settle for a 'bourgeoisie democracy'.

Or is it just hard bargaining, bluffing with a four-flush?

Either way, it is a blow in the face of all Nepali optimists who believed the major hurdle was passed with the signing of the different treaties last year. Paper’s not gonna do it alone. The actual implementation of the various agreements is still proving much more difficult.

On a personal note, I’ve been rather stretched out lately, but I now seem to have straightened things out. And it’s not the same thing! My main computer went belly-up on me, but it’s now back in full swing with a fresh re-format and re-install. And with the monsoon easing its grip, it looks like the ever-accumulating maintenance work and oppressive weather is over. I’ve also decided to try and do my work a bit more scheduled, a plain 8 hours a day in stead of the manic-depressive cycles of enthusiastic working around the clock, followed by periods of what feels like waking through a dessert, banging my head against a wall (oh yeah, there are lots of walls in the dessert!). That’ll work for a while, but in the long run it just drives me towards a burnout and a breakdown. I, of all people, should know that.

Oh, yeah. My 300 first Alamy photo’s finally made it through to the online-status this Monday!

The wider scope of things

From the back seat of a micro-bus, driving through the wet streets of Kathmandu. The monsoon is still on here, but it's loosing it's grip fast now.

Life used to be so simple when I first got here. There were the good guys fighting the bad guys. The freedom fighters and the oppressors. With daily battles playing out in the streets. No question about it, that was the only story in town. But eventually the good guys won and the people that claimed to be their leaders came to power. Politics set in and everything became a blur. Now there isn't one story begging to be told anymore. Rather, there's a thousand half-cooked maybe's. Well, fine. I'll work on those. I like to do that. More low-key stuff, everyday life situations, root causes and all that.

But I'm no longer merely an outside observer. I'm knee-deep into it, it seems. Like everyone else here, I'm just another guy trying to run a business, a home, a little family, a personal existence and such. And the amount of maintenance it all requires, well, it's got me dumbfounded at times. These times in particular. Life just keeps throwing it at me. So as I was up there on our roof, trying to disinfect our 1000 litres water-tank and avoid the usual round of jaundice, hepatitis, typhoid, diorrhea, general gastric disorders and other water-borne diseases so common in the monsoon - or was it when I was standing barefoot on the muddy, steep, slippery hillside outside our house, rain pouring down, digging a water drainage channel and trying to prevent further landslide encroaching towards our house - I had these epiphanies. First, I just took pleasure in making myself better than the other foreigners living here, you know, those development consultants in their white shirts behind a desk or constantly driving in and out of the five-star hotels in their air-conditioned 4WD'ers which, of course, they aren't even driving themselves:

"Ha! I bet they never had to dig a side-channel in their bare feet, standing..."

(And this one of Aurobindo origin : "We don't need more committees. We need more committed people!")

But eventually I just came to realize that the scope of this whole operation that I'm trying to pull off is much wider that just "doing the stories". I've settled in here for a long haul and there's bound to be a lot of fringe work from time to time. Still, it eats away on my...mmmh...chutzpa, character strength, whatever it's called. Frustrations are flaming up. I wanna get things done, but the results aren't showing up as fast as I like. And then my computer breaks down. Reality is interfering, in fact, it's sticking it's big and ugly snout deep into my perfect freelance-adventurer-laid-back-
top-of-the-world-submerged-in-mysterious-oriental-affairs-
relaxed-summer-holiday-kind-of-life. Maybe I could draw a lesson from Hindu mythology, the wisdom of Krishna delivered to Arjun before commencing to the epic battlefield in the Gita, the essence being something along the lines of:

"Don't worry about the results. Just do what's right. The results will come accordingly."

So what's the right thing to do. Well, if you don't know, then figuring it out is the right thing. Luckily I know what's the right thing to do. I have my whole set-up in order and I have a plan that I believe in, and I just have to keep going. Keep pushing the damn circus-wagon ahead, as Sebastian sang. And accepting the wider scope of things...mmmh, used to be so simple.



And on a less personal-troubles note, the political situation here is starting to thaw up a bit. Nothing have really happened here since..., well, I can't really remember when anything important happened here last. Maybe when the Maoist terrorists/freedom fighters entered the government on the international day of practical jokes, April 1st! But like I said, it's thawing up now, helped along the way by three car-bombs in Kathmandu and the up-coming election that now seems unavoidable without considerable bloodshed. Two-and-a-half months away, the leaders are starting to realize that their lucrative positions aren't a given anymore. So one of the top guys, the home minister in fact, had the bright idea that all the existing parties in the parlament contended the election as one big group! A one-party election, what a democratic reform. Jeezez... But thankfully there's no way in hell that they could all agree on something that sophisticated. They're too busy with their own faction wars (NSP), hard bargaining (CPN-M) and personal disputes (NC/NC-D). It is ugly and it is sad to see history repeat itself. The spirit of 'letting the people decide' is pretty difficult to see. And this was exactly why it didn't work in the 12 years following the 1990 revolution that brought 'democracy' to Nepal for the first time. Well, at least the word. Hope they'll manage to bring something a bit more substantial around this time.

There's a lot more going on here, but I can't get into all the tiresome details at this time. My computer, now half-working again, should be back in full operation in a week or two. It's been a curse and a blessing to be without it for a while. I feel a bit disconnected from it all and it really slows the work down, to the point where I've just skipped a lot of it and taken more time to read, socialize etc.

Alright, over-and-out for now.

Taking a few steps

Children in the slum loving the attention of the camera. This particular settlement is home to a couple of thousand people, the so-called sukumbasi's. UN says that around one billion people in the world are living in slums like this one!

Despite the countless number of little distracting situations that constantly require 'taking care of' and 'tending to', so common to my life here in Nepal these days, I've actually managed to get several things done in the last month or two! The Alamy work is, for the moment, finished. I've got about 300 photo's in the pipeline and they should be available online within a few weeks now. That's a fair start, but more is needed. I'll probably need something like a thousand photo's to get things rolling a bit on that front. I tend to shoot some 2-300 shots (keepers) a month. Only few of them are probably suitable for stock, so with that pace it's gonna take a couple of years... hmm, I'll have to find some time for that as well the next couple of months...

And then I've got a new web-site pretty much in place now. It's got some cool, new features, a bright and light layout and easier navigation. At the same time, I've tried to keep it really simple. All in all, quite an improvement, I think. So now, I'm producing some of the new stories and materials that I want to post on it, and when that's done, in a month or two, I'll be ready for the big launch. Hopefully, it'll bring in some new clients. I'm really hoping for (and focusing on) the editorial market, but I don't wanna miss any good opportunities working with ngo's and commercial organizations either. In the end, these may prove bigger clients than the editorial stuff. All depends on weather the situation here in Nepal will develop into peace and prosperity or revert back to war and terror, I suppose. Right now, it's still undecided. YCL and JTMM are competing with the government SPA-M alliance about who can make the biggest mess of the 'peace'!

In the mean time, normal life continues unabated for all the commoners, myself included. I'm currently finishing up a major story that I've been wanting to do for a while now - about a year, in fact. I just never took the time before now. It's about some of the poorest people in Kathmandu, who stay in shanty towns constructed on government land without permission. I've done fairly extensive research on this one, and the story is pretty much finished, but the photography is proving more difficult than I expected. I've got loads of ideas of shots I wanna get, and I have a really good location. Very 'scenic' and friendly people who are generally quite happy to let me shoot away both inside and outside their houses. But a big white guy walking around with his big camera is bound to draw a lot of attention, especially from the numerous kids running and crawling around. I try to use it to my advantage, but most of the time there's too many posers. If they would just keep an authentic look on their face! But no, they freeze up and stare directly into the aperture in a extremely rigid, corpse-like way. Or smile too much, damn it!. So it'll take a few more visits before I have those shots I want.

Insomnia and business adjustments

View from my kitchen balcony. It's about 5 o'clock in the morning and I just took this photo. The peak behind the valley ridge is called Manaslu, at 8156 meters it's the 8th highest mountain in the world.

© Morten Svenningsen.

Slightly insomniac here and mosquitoes inside the mosquito-net aren't improving the situation. Hence this write up. Ain't much going on here these days. Outside in the big world, BBC correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnston, was released by his kidnappers after about 4 months of uncertainty about his destiny, and in the US, everybody's favourite president semi-pardon'ed Scooter Libby so he doesn't have to do any hard time. Looks like everyone's escaping captivity! Here in Kathmandu, the weather changes from exhaustingly warm over oppressingly humid to shockingly wet. It's called the monsoon. And it's a good time to get things done indoors. Although I must say that I do enjoy the odd crazy downpour from time to time!

So what am I doing indoors? Adjusting my business model a bit! Sounds fancy, eeh?

Well, up until now, the business side of things have frankly been a bit disappointing. As a professional photographer and journalist I've now come to realize that I've probably been spending too much time photographing and assimilating news stories! How can that be a bad thing, you ask? Because it leads to the fact that I've spend too little time tending to the professional side of things. Marketing, promotion, visibility, customer care, sales, that sort of things.

So I've done some thinking. About being a photojournalist in Nepal. Basically, I figure there's 3 categories of work:

1. News
2. Features
3. Stock photography.

The news bit is a difficult category to work as a freelancer. First of all, foreign media don't care much about the little everyday affairs here. So I'm waiting for the big events. The coming of the earthquake. The third revolution. The stoning of the King. Maybe even that constituent assembly election they're all taking about. (We've been waiting about 14 months so far, and now they say wait until November. Oooh-keeey, if you say so!)

Anyway, when shit really hits the fan (pardon my French, ladies) and things get a bit interesting around here, I'll be up against the local Reuters, AP and WPN guys. Even if I get the best shots, it'll be their stuff that makes the front pages the next day, simply because they have the global business infrastructure and all the accounts plugged in already. Hard to compete with, so I'm not really working that field right now. Just keeping myself posted. But I do have a few things up my sleeve I'm gonna try out when the time comes.

The second category, the feature stuff, is more interesting for me. The possibilities here range from stark social realism to human interest 'softies'. There's a lot of interesting stories here and I'm planning to do more of that stuff in the near future. I'm even contemplating a redesign of my website in order to give more emphasis on this field. I've been looking a bit into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies lately and I'm sure there's a few things that I can improve. So I'm pretty sure it'll happen. First, however, I need to figure out a way to do it that doesn't require a month or two of programming...

Of course, I could join some agency, but in my experience it isn't really worthwhile doing. The "middle-class agencies" don't really seem to be doing much good and the top agencies are pretty hard to get into. I've had brief contact with one of them, but otherwise I haven't pursued the idea much. Maybe some day, but for now I actually enjoy taking care of everything myself. I decide what to do, how to do it and when to do it. It's just up to me and the client.

Thirdly, there's the stock photography thing. In this field, I'm actually in the process of joining an agency! I looked around and decided to go with Alamy in London. So I'll send them all my generic travel/landscape/sunset work and see what comes of it. That's what I'm working mostly on right now, editing, adjusting, keywording, even though it's a bit on the brink of my field of interest. But if it helps to pay some of the bills...

Actually, I'm quite curious to see how the whole thing's gonna work out. Alamy's already got thousands of contributors and millions of photo's (9 and counting) but 'only' about 16.000 shots from Nepal. The funny thing about Alamy is that they practically don't do any editing at all. Their contributors range from amateurs fooling around to serious professional photographers living exclusively on their stock sales. Of course that means that there's heaps of mediocre stuff to kick around in on their (dump?-)site. But they're trying to implement an automatic ranking system so that the most relevant stuff gets places at the top of the heaps. If it works out for them, I think the "long tail" isn't gonna be a drawback, in fact it might even work out as an overall asset for them. And hence, for their contributors as well.

So that's about it for me this time. Plenty of work in the pipeline ahead. Take it easy till next time...

PS : It's now closer to 6 o'clock and the Manaslu view from before is now again obscured by the monsoon clouds.