Leprosy in Nepal

A few photos from today. I am doing a reportage from a local leprosy hospital/home. Nepal is one of the few countries in the world where people still get leprosy. It’s a double curse here, where fear and superstition results in victims being social outcasts, sometimes even stoned to death.

Sudarsan (12) and his brother Narayan (6) are confined to their bed, while their mother watches over them, feeds them, cleans them etc.

A couple of leprosy hit boys racing up and down the hallway in a wheelchair.

"Sabina". Photo by Morten Svenningsen, all rights reserved.

A new ‘tag’ here, thought I’d post some links to various sites I frequent. Mostly photo related, of course.

First one is a new fashion / glamour photo blog I was invited to have a look at. It looks promising. It’s not really at the heart of what I do, being more about studio portraits than documentary work. In my own portraits I always try to show the deeper character of the person, not just their physical characteristics. The shot above of Sabina is one of the few ‘glamour shots’ I ever did.

I’m a big fan of the guys and girls over at VII. Their tearsheets are always a big source of inspiration.

And one gotta follow the news, right. The Ironic Times is priceless, my favourite that I’ve been following for years!

Happy Tihar!

What a night it was. Whole city turned into Las Vegas for three nights here.

For those of you not familiar with Hindu culture, this is the time to celebrate the victory of good over evil and various other things, the festival of lights also known as Diwali and Dipawali down south. In latin or something, guess it’ll be called a “photo festival”…

Funny culture, first day is the day of Crows, where “there’s no crows to be seen anywhere”. They’ve all magically disappeared… Nevertheless, I saw plenty of those black screeqing birds. Well, next day Dogs are celebrated by smearing their head and feet in red vermillion and third day (which was yesterday) is the first of the three proper holidays and the god Laxmi is worshiped. She’s the god of money and business, so hope she’ll smile at us this year! Sabina did her best (photo above). It was also the day of Cows, and today is the day of Oxens. And tomorrow, it’s “Bhai Tikka”, where sisters take pleasure in giving their brothers “tikka”, the red vermillion coloured rice, in their foreheads. Little brothers travel from all across the country in order to get this tikka. All very significant and an auspicious occasion…

Anyway, yesterday I had one of those rare days where I didn’t have 17 things I had to do. I’ve finished a little update of my web site, put some slideshows on there and there’s also the result of my little experimental photo collaboration project, Celebration of Eid around the World (link removed, my new site is here). Have a look…


And oh, here's Subic "dancing" in a firecracker...

Global Financial Crisis

Spare a few change, Sir? While 2 and 3 digit billion dollar amounts are being thrown around at banks in Europe and America these days, many people in “third world” countries, like Nepal here, are still struggling to get a few rupees for a daily meal.

(Second part of my naïve investigation of “global issues”)

What the heck’s going on here? It seems that all markets in all parts of the world are plummeting now. The global financial crisis wasn’t entirely global before, now it is. Iceland’s economy is heading towards bankruptcy. Governments are desperately trying to turn the tides, pumping money into bad markets and slashing interest rates. It seemed to work for a while this week, but the negative tendency has picked up again.

Let me just try and get a fix on some of the facts here:

US came up with a 700 billion dollar rescue package, following 200b$ in March and an 85b$ “loan” to AIG in September. UK an 88b$ package and an additional 692b$ on stand-by. ECB first tried with 95 billion (9/8 last year), BeNeLux countries poured in 11b$ (28/9’08) and Germany has presented a 50b$ bank rescue package. Australia cut interest rates with 1 percent point, (from 7 to 6, actually 14%!) US and European national banks slashed 0.5% points. All this after previous interest rates cuts since the credit crunch started. The Iceland currency is down 23% in a few days. All Asian stocks seem to be loosing 5-10% of their value each day this week. Think it’s a similar picture in Europe and on Wall Street. And that’s not even all of it, just the main headlines. Hope I got it somewhat right.

Clearly, something isn’t right here!

I think (the Danish economist of sorts) Ross Jackson is on to something when he says that there are some inherent problems in the way the global financial market work. Some of the problems he mentions are the free flow of capital across borders and the domination of short term speculations. He also warns of an even worse economic crisis coming when we start running out of oil. Or more exactly: When we can no-longer produce enough of the stuff to keep up with demand. Historical evidence is that a 5% drop in supply gives a 400% increase in prices (there’s an interesting article on it here). Think everybody agrees on this point, the question is more of a “When?” than an “If?”. It could be as soon as in 5 years time! Are you ready?

I know what it’s like – from living in Kathmandu where fuel and electricity are in constant short supply. Drives me nuts at times…

So, what’s going to happen now? Long-term effects?

I actually doubt Americans will learn the lesson here. Instead of fixing inherently flawed market mechanisms, they’ll probably invade some more countries. China, perhaps! Just over the Himalayan hills from here in Kathmandu, the Chinese banks don’t seem to be bleeding so much. They could do with some better quality control though. And they also seem to be needing more and more energy.

Well, maybe it’ll be China who takes over America. One way or the other. Of course, no-matter what happens in the US election next month, I think it’ll be a political improvement. But how much is the American president actually capable of deciding? I mean, a lot is decided by lobbyists and those financial interests in the USA, isn’t it? Clearly, the current president (and the VP) is closely tied in with oil interests.

If they wanted to stem those short term speculations, they could have implemented the Tobin Tax, as suggested in the 1970’s. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s worth taking a look at. It’s simply a small tax, a 0.1% surcharge or so, on financial transactions. Currency trade, primarily, but why not stock trade as well. The effect? Theoretically at least, it should have little impact on normal peoples money transactions and put a huge damper on speculations aimed at making short term profits. Markets would be more stable, an extremely desirable trait, and a good amount of money would still be generated by the surcharge. They could go into a fund and be used for economic “bail-outs”, easing economic difficulties, perhaps even primarily for poor countries. Making funds available to be used for providing opportunities for the world’s poorest to make a decent living for themselves. I’ve always liked this idea, instead of nationalizing, making new trade barriers, closing down borders and such. If you’re more interested, have a look at the “Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions to Aid Citizens”, in short: ATTAC! - an organization trying to get it implemented.

Eid Mubarak!

The end of the Islam Ramadan month, Eid al-Fitr, was celebrated in Kathmandu (and many other places) yesterday. Nepal's got some 8-900.000 Muslims, and 14.000 of them were in Kathmandu's 2 Muslim mosques yesterday.

I took some 150 photos in little more than one hour, edited them down to 79 on my hard drive and 32 on my web site. There's 7 here in the slideshow. I'd like to do a tighter edit of my web galleri, but as usual it's difficult to decide which ones to remove. If you feel like helping me out, I'd appreciate any comment on which photos should and shouldn't be a part of the gallery. Have a look here, at Muslim Eid al-Fitr, Nepal (link removed, my new site is at http://www.mortensvenningsen.com/) and tell me what you think! (Just use the comment section here on the blog post, thanks!)

Technical Problems

Yours truly, the computer doctor! Copyright Morten Svenningsen 2008.

They never come alone, do they? Problems. First one of my lenses failed. Got an “Error 99” on the camera, which turned out to be the lens aperture control that wasn’t working. That’s now fixed, thanks to the guys at Primax. Yes, we do actually have an authorized Canon service center here in Kathmandu.

Next was my laptop. Think it was a virus infection and a conflict between two anti virus programs. Suddenly, no internet connection. No two ways around it, so I’ve spent all the time since last night re-formatting and re-installing. But nothing lost, except time. After a failed 2 hour attempt to do a repair install, the re-format part was done in an hour. Another hour to re-install drivers and essential software. The real time-killer here is downloading all the security updates and scanning the whole thing again.

But it’s good to start with a fresh installation sometimes. Can’t believe the amount of cookies, registry entries and what not that gets clogged up in the system over time. Oh, well, it’s all good again. Need to get myself involved in some serious documentary photo projects now. Rain’s still pissing down here, but I’m getting ready for a little road trip soon. And I got an idea for a new sort of project. So stay tuned for updates…

Year of Global Crisis

Some Nepalese rupees and 20 US Dollars. Which one's worth most next year? Photo copyright by Morten Svenningsen.

We’ve had the global oil crisis, the global food crisis and now the global financial crisis. Next to that we have the global warming issue and a global war on terrorism. Well, at least a fairly international war on terrorism.

One crisis after another, I’d like to investigate this further so I’ve hereby created this new ‘tag’ on my blog: ‘Global issues’. So let’s begin with a little look at the current crisis, the financial one. (Please give me this chance to demonstrate my ignorance!)

It’s been an expensive week for our friend, George Bush. From what I’ve heard, he’s had to dig out well over 300 billion dollars the last couple of weeks. The thing I’m wondering, they’ve got this huge deficit on the state funds. Obviously they must be loaning all this money. And for what? To loan money to the banks! Anyone else here see the irony? Are they loaning money to each other? Is that sustainable? What if it isn’t? Is the American economy going to crash? And what effect will it have on ordinary people who don’t own a bank, like myself?

Well, maybe it’s a coincidence, but this week I’ve had two high-profile assignments canceled from two renowned American magazines - without explanation. In the big picture, of course, my fees don’t amount to much. But as consumers and advertisers are running out of credit sources, circulations are likely to decrease.

Note that I say credit, not cash. Americans love their credit cards, at least they did when I was there around 1999-2001. They bought everything on credit. Buy now, pay later. Don’t worry. And that, I suppose, is a large contributing factor to the current circumstances. Together with their hopeless war in Iraq. It’s interesting to note how the renowned economist and Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, explains the crisis: The war has cost the American society around 3 Trillion dollars, roughly 2.9 trillion more than first estimated. Simply stated, it led to rising interest rates and suddenly people couldn’t pay their loans any longer. (update: From 2004 to 2006, US interest rates increased from 1% to 5.35%! source: BBC.) One after another, family houses were foreclosed and businesses didn’t do so well anymore.

And now, as an effect, financial institutions a in ruins.

So where does that leave us, the world at large? Honestly, I don’t really know. There’s a lot of aspects here. The future of capitalism, market economy and speculations? Is money still a tool for us humans or has it become a force we have to obey? Will it become a battle of rich nations against poor ones?

I think I’ll look a bit more into this from now on. It’s feels quite interesting and important. And I’ll blog a bit about my thoughts and realizations. Follow me here if you like...

Finally, it's here! (Canon 5D Mark II pre-review)

I’m really excited today. My new tool has been announced: The Canon 5D2 camera. Here’s the main features and some thoughts:


21.1 Megapixels - rocks! 2.5 times what I’m currently using. Recently, some clients have expressed a little dis-satisfaction with 8.2 MP, although it’s still sufficient for full page 300 dpi! And I can avoid the upsizing process when submitting for my stock agency... And it’s now truly full frame, 24x36mm. (God, how I’ve missed that!) The 5D actually was “only” 99.5%. Pixel density will be 156/mm, same as 20D and more than the 5D’s 122/mm.

ISO 6400 - wow! not the round 10.000-figure I was dreaming of, but really close. And an extended range going to 25.600! A significant help in tricky indoor and nighttime situations.

Video - this is really new. Mainly thinking of using the sound recording for slideshows. With an external mic. (Perhaps won’t make the camera more expensive as I previously thought. It’ll sell more, enabling Canon to achieve those low mass-production costs...)

-------UPDATE-------
Perhaps all those hours learning Final Cut Pro will now pay off - I don't see any video editing software bundled with the camera.
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Body - no vertical grip, weight 810g, exactly like 5D1 but slightly larger penta-prism, which leads me to the...

Viewfinder : 98% - small, but significant improvement over 96% (5D) and 95% (20D). Completely ok. So far the press release just sais “high-performance, high-magnification”. Hoping it’ll be significantly more than the 5D’s 0.71x magnification - so I can see what the heck I’m doing...

-------UPDATE-------
On second look at the specs, it is still a 0.71x magnification. Guess there'll still have to be something to differentiate it from the 1D series... It does have ISO read-out in the viewfinder now - that's nice.
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Spot meter : 3.5% - like the 5D, ok.

-------UPDATE-------
Talking about exposure, it's worth noting that the ISO menu now has an 'auto' option, and that there is 'highlight tone priority' in the exposure control. All good!
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HDR function - yes! New in-camera function. Saves me lengthy Photoshop processing hopefully. This could be really awesome for landscape/travel stuff sometimes!

Still no mirror lock-up button and digital ND-filters (except a 50 ISO setting), it does have the ½-res setting, just not sure if the 3.9 fps will double to 7.8 fps? Anyway, it’s in-between the 3 fps (5D) and 5 fps (20D). Let’s see, if not now then perhaps in the next firmware?

-------UPDATE-------
On second thought, it might not be possible through firmware alone. The camera reportedly(?) has a shutter lag of 73 ms + 145 ms mirror blackout time. That gives a theoretical top rate of 1/(.073+.145) = 4.5 fps. What a pity. Of course if I was using LiveView I'd avoid the mirror time and we'd be speaking of 1/.073 = 13.7 fps! But then we'd run into the limit of not-fast-enough digital signal processing. But I would be willing to take just half the pixels to get, say, 8 fps with a LiveView 'Action Mode'.
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Also, there’s a “silent mode” (using the LiveView) and a vignetting corrector. I like it! LiveView has some auto-focus options now. And there’s a nice 3” LCD and improved dust shake-off. Very useful around here (Kathmandu)!

-------UPDATE-------
...and the LCD now has auto-brightness adjustment depending on ambient light + the new anti-reflective surface. Both quite nice improvements. The menu looks a bit more fancy - but Canon's never been good at making GUI's. They've gone back to tab-menus again, which I personally find more confusing than the simple list. In a sharp situation and all. But there's now also a "My Menu" page where I can put those 5-6-7 menu points that I actually use, and leave the 100+ others buried under all the tabs. Cool!
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Apparently it has a new battery. No details yet.

-------UPDATE-------
The new battery (LP-E6) has 1800 mAh, old one (511A) has 1390 mAh. Nice 30% increase, sure we'll need it.
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And finally another good thing. The price is in the low end of my expectations: $2700. With the current 5D selling for $2250 it makes it a no-brainer to choose. 5D will probably drop to $1800 though, making it a bit more of a choice - if it’ll be continued...

5D2 should be available in November/December, giving me some time to choose a lens. I have the primes (20mm, 50mm, 90mm) and the long tele (100-400mm) but I’ll probably go for a new zoom. The 24-105mm will be bundled for $800 extra. Currently looks like my choice. It’s bundled with the 5D for an extra $675, why not same with 5d2? Oh well... Was hoping for a stabilizer on the 24-70mm (f/2.8), but you can't have everything, I suppose.

-------UPDATE-------
After some consideration, I’ve pretty much decided to go for the 24-70 f/2.8 glass. Without the stabilizer. It’s a close call though, both lenses have excellent image quality and mechanical construction. For me, that’s the 2 most important points. But in the end, the larger aperture made the difference. The stabilizer on the 24-105 is really nice, but not vital in the low end of the focal range. The smaller focal length (up to 70mm in stead of 105mm) is not vital – and with 21 megapixels I should be able to afford to crop the images a bit, if need be. The 24-105 is also lighter in weight and about $300 cheaper – actually $500 when bundled in the kit. But I think I’ll be happier with the greater focus accuracy, slightly brighter viewfinder and more shallow depth of field that the 2.8 aperture provides. I also think the IQ is slightly better on the 24-70. Shooting at f/4, it will be stopped down, while the 24-105 will be working wide open. All in all, can’t wait to get my hands on the new gear!
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UPDATE 2:
According to this report there is another significant difference between the two lenses: Barrel distortion. Apparently, the 24-70 f/2.8 outperforms the 24-105 f/4 at the wide end.
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All in all, a new dawn for digital photography is on the rise!


Ok, back to work...

Destined Evolution Dreams

Canon’s new camera. From web site teaser, it looks like a 5d2 (/4d/3d/2d). Could it be a new 1d? Buttons and body looks more like 5d, but the eos logo is placed differently. So maybe a 4d/3d/2d name is more likely. Or maybe maybe, I’m just over-thinking it a bit.

The Canon 5D and 1D3

But if it’s anything like Nikon’s new D700 and Sony’s new A900, I’ll have to get it. Considering Canon has been way ahead of both in the digital era, esp. on noise issues, it has to be a beauty this one - unless they’ve slipped up and lost their edge, but I don’t think so. Don’t hope so. Nikon’s now got the noise level, Sony’s now got the megapixels. Sincerely hope that this Canon’ll have’em both!

Wonder about the bottom part though, it’s still blurred out from view. Could it be a new slim vertical grip? There’s a lot of hype and www fuzz going around. People seem to “know” it’ll be 21 or 24 megapixels. That would be awesome! A workable 10.000 ISO - how extreme would that be! The prism house looks well big. Really hoping for a 99-100% viewfinder this time. And big and bright, without the vignetting. I want it to be like a living room in there!

And the now standard trimmings, 3” LCD, 14 bit depth, sensor dust shake-off...

And perhaps some new features, HDR function, digital ND filter, double-fps/half-res setting (news mode), auto-ISO, a 2% spot meter. All this is “just software”, so come on! And a mirror lock-up button + ISO read-out in the view-finder, please. That’ll make it gold.

Not sure about video capabilities, as someone seems to “know” will be there. Sometimes, yes, could be useful. But adds extra weight, price, things that can brake. The LiveView is a must these days, but it’s not really anything I’m craving. Just give me a good viewfinder.

And last, put a stabilizer on the 24-70/2.8L glass, make it a kit and let’s have it for less than $4000!

Guess we’ll have to wait till next weeks full moon to see what’s in store for us. Or perhaps until Sept. 23...