Freedom of speech, movement ??

Think I've mentioned it before here, but it's kind'a important. Tibetans are protesting against Chinese human rights violations in Nepal. Still. Since 10. March. And of course also now, during the Olympics. And despite Nepal's ban on all anti-Chinese activities. I'll not repeat the gruesome details again now, but Chinese torture etc. is well documented. And if you've ever spoken with some of the underground activists, you'll understand their continued protests. But Nepal is ignoring their protests, despite all the talk about a new nepal and such. Friday, at the opening day of the Olympics, Nepal Police had even put up check points around Tibetan settlements in Kathmandu and stopped them from going to the centre of the capital - purely based on them being Tibetan. I'm not sure how many international human rights they broke that day... So thought I'd share this little photo essay with you. I was embedded with about a hundred Tibetans, mostly monks, trying to sneak out of their virtual captivity. Unsuccessfully. They were intercepted and detained...

(again, I forgot my sound recording gear, so no multimedia this time.)



Trying to exercise free speech...



...but met by Nepal's Police...



...and rounded up with some force...



...then loaded up on some overcrowded trucks...



...and driven away to shadow-land.

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.

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...

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!

Monarchy Abolished

Nepal declared a federal democratic republic. King given 15 days to leave the Palace.

Late last night at 23.30, the first meeting of the newly elected constituent assembly abolished Nepal’s 240 year old monarchy by overwhelming majority. Of 564 members present, only 4 voted against the motion, which is less than 1%.

King Gyanendra is expected to accept the declaration and is now set to live the rest of his life as a normal citizen of Nepal.

It is especially a victory of the Maoists who started a war against the establishment 12 years ago. But the turning point in public opinion against monarchy was the palace massacre that happened 7 years ago. It is now common belief that King Gyanendra orchestrated the massacre of his own brother, the then King Birendra, and his family, in order to assume the throne himself. 3 years ago the king tightened control further by closing the parlament and taking direct control of the country. The coup’d’etat failed in 2006 and since then the King’s powers have been stripped.

Royalist supporting Hindu fundamentalists have detonated small bombs in Kathmandu the last 3 days, but without anybody seriously hurt. Their supporters are few and vanish in the crowds of republic supporters. Embassies still advice caution in public gatherings.

2 days public holiday has been declared Thursday and Friday to celebrate the declaration.

Chasing holy cows

A holy cow in Nepal. Except it’s a bull...
© Morten Svenningsen

We had a little banda here in Kathmandu yesterday, a strike. One Maoist commander had kidnapped one of their own supporters and beat him up together with a couple of regular PLA’s. The poor guy later died of “multiple organ failure and excessive bleeding”. So his family, together with the support of rival party, NC, closed down the capital in protest. Meanwhile, top political leaders of the unelected lame duck government continue their exclusive closed door haggling to decide on vital issues before the newly elected representatives have their first meeting on the 28th. Have they really not understood the concept of democracy yet? To let the elected representatives make the decisions in stead of a handful of party bosses. Apparently not!

On a personal note, the battle continues. I’m still in a writing spree and cranking out articles by the dusin. Pitching some of them, like for instance a story about holy cows. Hence the photo above. (The article is available for publishing if you’re a publisher reading this.) Mostly though, I’m writing small tutorials on being a freelance photographer. Tricks of the trade. I’ve had this book idea for a couple of years now, been taking notes all along. So now I’m writing and editing it down to an article series, and I’ll compile the whole thing into a little eBook. Not sure when it’ll be finished. Every time I write one article, I get an idea for one or two other articles...

Had another couple of sales on Alamy last week, making things look a little more promising on that front. Otherwise just waiting for the 28th...

Nepal update

There’s still ”load-shedding” around here (scheduled power-cuts) but it’s now down from some 40 hours a week to ”only” about 20 hours. The show must go on, so this is what I look like when I’m writing in the evenings.

Hi there, just felt it was time for a little rant about big and small things. Here goes.

This just in: Today the Chinese managed to scale Everest with the Olympic torch. (The summit of Everest is in Nepal, FYI.)

Great. How many torches do they have anyway. A week ago it was on the way up, then it was in Hong Kong and now it’s on top again. And it’s flying around, back and forth across the world. Defeats the whole idea, IMO. The only proper way to carry the torch is by hand, running from Athens to Beijing. And the whole Everest thing. Again, same feeling of couldn’t care less. It’s a freaking government / military operation or whatever. And they’re stopping everybody else from going there in the process. Then what’s the point. Their sorry little media stunt may impress some of their own people, but not me. Scaling Everest’s got to be done with the right spirit, and this is not it. Throwing everybody of the mountain and such, good old Charlie Haviland (my colleague from BBC) and that American guy who’s now expelled from Nepal.

How can the Nepalese government, even the Maoists, support China’s suppression of Tibetan demonstrations? Hell, even do the same thing themselves here in the streets of Kathmandu every day? It’s only 2 years ago that the Nepalese government and Maoists got to power on the basis of exact similar mass uprising by the people! And now you get expelled for peacefully supporting a similar cause. Well, it’s no secret that China is a strategically important partner for Nepal so they’ll apparently go along way to be the good little neighbor.


But enough of that. What’s it like here anyway?

During the last month it’s gotten a lot warmer around here, humidity is on the rise and we’ve started to get thunder and afternoon showers. Is it related to the Burma cyclone? Maybe a little spin-off of the same weather system. I’m not a religious man, but my prayers goes out to the people in Burma these days. Some of the nicest and most innocent people I’ve ever met. Firs the violent suppression of the monks protests and now this. And the whole military regime to begin with.

Election results are out now, Maoist didn’t get majority but they are comfortably the biggest party now. What a turn of events. So now we’re waiting for the first meeting in the new (care-taker) parliament, no date yet but can’t be long. And the de-throning, which they’ve said they’ll try and do peacefully.

And me, I’ve started writing again. Well, I never really stopped but I’m now starting to crank out more stories now. (Newest one here: Hinduism & Buddhism combined.) Putting the ‘J’ back in ‘PJ’ - Photo-Journalist.

And then I’ve also started teaching Danish language to a bunch of Nepali guys who’s going there later in the year. For now it’s just a 2 month gig but if it’s a success, I might continue longer. The institute that hired me already asked me to continue and the word got out -as it always does in Nepal- so another institute contacted me. So sure, there’s still enough work around here, at the same time insisting on having time for the little family and the usual round of domestic chores.

I think that’s about it. Thunder clouds are starting to roll in and the unreliable power is getting more and more unreliable, so I’ll switch of now. ‘Till next time...

Link building for a photo web site

It’s really not as bad as people say, it takes some time but I actually like to do “link building” for my web site. Surfing around trying to navigate the depths of the internet and finding new places. And making a benefit out of it, hopefully.

What benefit?
Well, I’ve now spent several years taking pictures and I think I have about 500 images on my web site. Now I’d like to get some more visitors, not just people looking to hire a photographer in Nepal, but also the “general public”, the silent internet masses surfing around looking for whatever it is they’re seeking. Some of them might occasionally order a poster or something, but that’s not the main point here. If I can get a lot of traffic to my site, it’ll sort of bring some more life to the whole project. Comments, suggestions, more links, referrals etc. I might even start to sell add-space! Getting a diverse audience is part of my own little strategy, since it’ll hopefully make me less reliant on the random fluctuations of any one single market. I’ve never gone to any business school, but I do know that it’s dangerous to rely on just a few customers. Several staff photographers are being laid off these days, they’ve had comfortable jobs for decades now and just forgotten how reliant they’ve become on that one particular job and how difficult it has become to get your foot in another place. That’s not gonna happen to me!

Hence the efforts to make my web site more visible to all sorts of people. That spells making it show up in Google searches. On the first page, not listed on page 17 or something. It’s common knowledge that hardly anyone’s gonna click on your site link if you’re not on the first page. Your placement on Google is determined by your PageRank, which again is determined by the number (and quality) of other sites linking to your site.

Right now my Google PageRank is a disgrace: 1. It used to be 3 and I’m not sure what happened. But I’m determined to get it at least back to where it used to be. PR4 would be quite good, PR5 would be fantastic!

Now there’s many ways to get links to your site and improve your Google PageRank, one of the simplest ways is to get listed in various web directories. That’s what I’ve been trying to do the last few days. If you want to do the same for your site, check out this list of free photo-related web directories I’m using. (- It’s also good if you just want to browse around and see a lot of nice photo sites.)

My efforts are not over yet and it’ll take some time before the results start to show. Check back here from time to time if you’re as interested as me to see how it’ll all turn out.

Nepal: Post-election thoughts

Maoist supporter holding up their well-know symbol.
© Morten Svenningsen 2008

While the ballots are still being counted, it is now safe to say that the Maoists were the big winners of last week constituent assembly election here in Nepal. They’ve secured more than half of the seats in the first-past-the-post election constituency that’s been counted so far (114 out of 207) and about a third of the votes in the proportional representation election so far. If this tendency holds, they stand to get about 250 of the 601 seats in the new all-powerful assembly. It’s not impossible that they will actually get a bit more, giving them an absolute majority! A bit of a shocker to everyone, themselves included I’m sure, despite what some of them have been saying.

The election day went by quite peacefully although the days leading up to it was marred by some violence, with 5 or 6 people killed in various clashes that threatened to make it look like Kenya for a while. But were some of the votes given under duress? These allegations are starting to appear from various quarters, most notably Minister Mahat of the still ruling Congress party who stands to loose control over the government. Re-polling still have to take place in almost a 100 polling stations where the election was cancelled due to irregularities. But by and large, whatever happens, it seems that the election results are being accepted as “free and fair”, if not 100% then at least close enough - enough to accept the election result and continue with the next step.

So what is the next step? Well, first there’s been some “bad omens” here, in the highly superstitious country. Just after Maoist leader Prachanda gave his victory speech, a virulent storm descended on the valley, chasing everybody into shelter. A day later, a 100 feet high pole fell down and injured 12 people during a festival. Same thing happened just before the 2001 royal massacre. And in Bhaktapur where I was celebrating Nepalese New Year, the crowd had to abandon the chariot before it had completed it’s ritual journey (it’s a long explanation). They sacrificed a few roosters the next morning so maybe it’s all cool with the Gods now.

No, seriously, it’s now unavoidable: They’re gonna turn this country into a (communist) republic and abolish the monarchy. (Personally, I can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen to the king!) Then they’ll rewrite the constitution and start to run this country in some way. That’s also gonna be really interesting to witness.

I can’t help but think how the Maoists are gonna manage the task, if they’re up to it. So far their activities have been mostly of a destructive nature, being against the establishment and this and that. Now they are the establishment and they have to show themselves constructive in rebuilding the country and delivering on their promises. I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but I am afraid that they will disappoint the optimistic population who have just given them the chance they have been asking for to lead the country (and turn it into an Asian Switzerland in 10 years, remember Prachanda actually said that?-). Again, with risk of being too much a generalist, some of these voters are really politically naive, IMHO. The Maoists don’t have a magic wand to make it all better overnight and, what’s more interesting, do they have control over their rank and file? - And can they now control and manage the nation and it’s administration without resorting to high-handedness?

Well, maybe they can pull it off. They’ve now got the chance no matter why people voted for them. In fact it might be more correct to say that the people voted, not for the Maoists, but against the old NC and UML party bosses. So from next month, I’ll probably be living in a communist republic! Whooo, what’s that gonna be like?