Reindeer, Rain and Rivers
Abbie Trayler-Smith in Norway
We join the Sami people of Arctic Norway at an intense time of year: for the next 2-3 weeks the Sami will be herding their reindeer, who have been roaming free for the summer, down from the snow dusted mountains and preparing them for crossing open waters in search of winter pastures. It is no easy task and the whole community rallies together to corral the animals, marking them by cutting their ears to work out which animal belongs to which family, giving them anti-parasitic drugs, and preparing them for the journey ahead. It is a total mystery to me how they tell which reindeer even have which markings, but this is a talent learned over centuries. Although they may use quad bikes where their ancestors walked on foot, the knowledge and the love of the reindeer is in their blood. I’m taken aback by the energy rushing from the scene unravelling in front of me, and by the harshness of the environment in which they work. It is pelting with rain, which at times arrives horizontally, occasionally turning to hail before calming until the next gust whips up the mud from the floor.
I am wearing approximately 8 layers of clothing, desperately clutching my cameras underneath my raincoat to try and protect them from the elements, and the mud being spattered from the thunder of the hooves spinning around me in the corral. But the Sami seem oblivious to the environment, only caring to make sure the deer are all in order, and calm before crossing the water. Over the course of the week a few hundred deer are moved each day. Asking the Sami how many reindeer they have is akin to asking someone in Britain how much money they have in the bank. The animals are their currency, as well as their livelihood, culture and history.
Ella, our main character, tells me of her family holiday to Turkey this year, which she found too hot too bear, and made her realise beyond a shadow of a doubt that her place rests among the Sami and their deer in the Northern Troms. Often one of the most under-rated pleasures we get from travelling is realising that what we have right under our noses is to be treasured.
Ella’s mother, May-Torill, watches the deer begin their journey towards winter pastures
Urban Safari
Kenya
Sacred ibis take flight
Coming to Kenya with the BBC’s natural history unit you’d be forgiven for assuming that I was here to spend a few weeks on safari. For sure, the BBC’s cameramen and women have had a long and fruitful relationship with Kenya’s amazing wildlife over the years, resulting in some of the most sensational wildlife sequences ever seen on TV, a particular favourite of mine being the awesome spectacle of thousands of wildebeest crossing the Mara river during their yearly migration filmed for Planet Earth.
Not withstanding this age old tradition, we have indeed come here in part to film Kenya’s wildlife, we just aren’t staying in a stilted safari lodge nor whizzing around the plains in an open top four wheel drive. We’re in Mombasa, and for the last 3 days I’ve been wading through mountains of rubbish in this city’s sprawling waste dump.
On our first morning at the dump we arrived at dawn and I spent the first few minutes clambering over the twilight debris looking for a suitable high vantage point from which to shoot a panorama with the first light from the rising sun. Atop the largest pile I could see I came across this quiet scene. I shot a few frames and then climbed down.
I don’t know anything about this boy… what his name is, or how old he is. I don’t know if he has a family. The clicking of my camera didn’t wake him. Sitting here now writing this at a desk in my hotel room I wish I could tell you something about this young soul other than the fact that he is one of quite a number of youngsters who live and work at the dump, days spent sifting through Mombasa’s refuse looking for food and things to sell to middle men for recycling.
Since that first morning here, a steady stream of people have stopped their work to come and talk with us about life on their dump. Many of them just come to chat, seemingly oblivious to the notion that there is anything that the outside world can do to help them other than continuing with its culture of rampant consumerism. It’s a cruel irony, but the reality here is that this is their life and work and it provides them with an income that keeps them alive. There’s no doubt that the majority of people living here would rather be somewhere else; the sad fact however is that their farewell would inevitably herald the arrival of a replacement in no time at all. Walking around this waste land, I am reminded once more that mother nature is not prejudiced. Scavenging at a dump is an environmental niche that she invites all species to inhabit, our own included.
Scavenging for food at the dump
Nine Eleven
The story behind the image
Ricoh GR1, Fujifilm press 800 colour negative film, 28mm lens, unknown aperture & shutter speed
“Everyone remembers what they were doing the moment they heard John F Kennedy had been assassinated”
This is something I remember my mum mentioning on a number of occasions when I was a child. In my lifetime I think I can recall only a couple of events that have influenced me in the same way. One such incident was the death of Princess Diana in 1997. I remember very well spending the day lazing around in bed with my girlfriend listening to prerecorded loops of melancholy chillout music being broadcast by BBC Radio 1 as a change from their normal Sunday schedule. The ethereal music was laced intermittently with the sombre tones of a succession of mournful news readers heralding the latest updates on the story. “Diana, Princess of Wales has died in a car crash in Paris…” started each report as I recall. In fact, I think I’ve still got a tape recording of the broadcast somewhere. It was a great selection of tunes that I remember thinking must have been hurriedly put together that morning by Pete Tong from a selection of Ibiza chillout compilation CDs in his collection.
That day was certainly a big day for people in the UK. Somehow though, I feel that it pales a little into insignificance compared to the events of September 11th 2001, not least because on that day the event was captured graphically on film.
Many photojournalists will remember quite readily where they were on September 11th because, like myself, a fair few of them had just spent the week at Visa Pour L’Image in Perpignan in the south of France, a gathering that offers those of us photographers who travel a lot for work the one opportunity in the year to meet up and swap stories over a few glasses of rosé and a perusal of the years best photojournalistic offerings. The festival ends on a Sunday night and the majority of people return to their prospective homes on the Monday and Tuesday flights. 911 happened on Tuesday morning, at which point getting home by plane became quite a task for a fair few of the remaining photographers. Indeed, for the likes of James Nachtwey, who made the Monday flight back to his hometown of New York, Tuesday morning must have seemed like a million miles away from the frivolities of the previous week’s parties and press conferences.
Strangely enough, that year I was very late in trying to book my flights to France and consequently was unable to secure a seat on a plane travelling directly to Perpignan. In the end, myself, my agent Erin and Sophie, picture editor of The Independent on Sunday, managed to procure flights together to Barcelona with a hire car to drive us over the border into France and on to the festival. On that fateful Tuesday we were on the road back to Barcelona airport to connect with our flight back to the UK. The photo was taken with my Ricoh GR1 compact camera at the boarding gate for our plane (visible in the background), the lounge deserted since everyone bar myself was already on board.
This photo didn’t see the light of day until many months after the event. Obviously, for a news story of the magnitude of 911, publications were after news pictures of the event, the majority of non-New York photos commonly showing the horrified faces of people huddled around TVs in high street shop windows around the world. This is a quiet picture that had no real place in any news story at the time.
For me, the thing I appreciate most about the image is the fact that it spells out in very plain terms the reality that, for most people, 911 was a TV event, something that I feel is a hugely important aspect of the events of that day and its consequences. I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in the orthodox explanations for 911. In fact, you’d probably require an extremely open mind to join me in certain aspects of my own personal interpretation, so I won’t bore you with the intricacies, just to say that they have a fair bit to do with coercion techniques and the psychology of trauma, factors which the continual looping of the crash footage on TV on the day aided and influenced in a monumental way.
If you like this picture then let it serve as a reminder to you to think about carrying a camera with you at all times. If you are wondering what a good every-day-carry camera is then may I suggest the Ricoh GR3, which is one of the digital successors to the film camera I shot this picture with. It’s an extremely compact, fully manual camera that produces great image quality. Many of my professional contemporaries back in the UK use a Ricoh on a regular basis. They are especially usefully if you like keeping a candid photo journal of your life, something Abbie Trayler Smith has been doing for a number of years now using a Ricoh. Hopefully one day you’ll all have the opportunity to see a public edit of her amazing set of intimate scrap books which document her life on the road as a photojournalist, currently residing in the ‘to do’ pile at her house in Wales.
…..
On Monday I’m off to Mombassa, Kenya to shoot the latest Human Planet story for the urban program. On the same day, Abbie will be flying to the extreme north of Norway to spend 2 weeks with Sami reindeer herders for the arctic program. We’ll both be posting blogs, so keep your eye out for our weekly updates.
Tomb Raiders
Cambodia
Angkor... you wait ages for a monk, and then 6 come along all at once
As part of the Jungles program on Human Planet we have come to Cambodia to investigate a place where nature has reclaimed the site of a former human civilization. That place is the 200 square kilometre area of Angkor in Central Cambodia, former home to, amongst others, the great Khmer empire of King Suryavarman the second. Satellite surveys suggest that Angkor once comprised an urban sprawl of some 3,000 square kilometres, making it by far the largest preindustrial city the world has ever known. The notion that a place of this magnitude could ever become abandoned is a fascinating prospect, the concensus agreeing that it was a combination of the declining Khmer empire and one final conquest by the Thais in the 15th century that caused a shift of power over to Phnom Penh in the east, thus sealing Angkor’s fate as a forgotten city, destined to be reabsorbed into the surrounding jungle until its modern day resurgence as the seat for Cambodia’s most recent all-conquering empire, early 21st century tourism.
Control of this phenomenal stone-built metropolis has passed between nations over the years, most notably between the Cambodian Khmers and the Siamese (Thais), the modern day tenure currently residing within the hands of the rubber and petroleum giant Sokimex, who own the right to profit from Angkor’s highly lucrative tourist industry. Ask any local and they’ll insist that Sok Kong, the owner of Sokimex is Vietnamese and therefore this deal represents yet another conquest of Angkor by a foreign invader. Having never met Mr. Kong myself I can’t confirm this, but whatever the truth, it is certainly a bone of contention in this neck of the woods which will no doubt add more fire to Angkor’s intriguing history.
Angelina does backpacking in South East Asia
Yesterday we spent all day filming within the ruins of Ta Phrom, possibly Angkor’s most visually stunning ruin. Many visitors before us have also acknowledged this fact, most famously Paramount Pictures, who used it as a backdrop for a number of scenes in the video game inspired blockbuster Tomb Raider, a production which appears to have employed almost every local resident of Angkor if they are to be believed. I had a quick look at said scenes today and I must admit that I really love what they did with the lake in front of Angkor Wat - the largest temple in the complex, bringing it to life with a mass of boats and floating water lilies. Large Hollywood productions invading ancient temple sites is definitely not to everyone’s taste I know, but you have to admit, it really does look absolutely amazing.
If you are planning on making a photographic pilgrimage to Angkor, be prepared to share your space with a number of like minded enthusiasts. Don’t let this put you off however. There are still loads of temples that get overlooked by the package tour groups who tend to stick to a well trodden route. Similarly, if you turn up at sunrise or sunset you’ll not only be blessed with the best light, but also complete solitude in my experience, and Cambodia is a nation of early risers so you’ll have no trouble getting a tuk tuk to drive you out to the temple complex before first light.
Whether you like it or not, the urge to photograph a monk amidst the overgrown ruins will no doubt overcome your sensibilities at some point, and when it does, make the most of the experience by spending as long as you can engaging in some friendly banter and cultural exchange. The monks I have met here are very cool cats. They quietly put up with a hell of a lot of probing lenses and they aren’t all touting for dollars as many foreigners will have you believe.
The mysterious lost temple of Ta Phrom... well, kind of anyway
I am leaving you with this picture of 75 year old Kong Di, from Ta Phrom monastery (famously, background monk no. 7 in the scene where Lara Croft arrives at Angkor Wat by boat from across the lake) standing in another ‘famous’ Tomb Raider set location. For those of you who are more photographically inclined, you might be wondering why I used a fisheye lens to shoot this picture. Simple. Last year, a raised wooden viewing platform was built just 3 feet away from the doorway, complete with security guard and a rope barrier to keep tourists from clambering onto the tree roots. Using a 15mm lens was the only way I could get wide enough to edit it out of the photograph. Beware the subjective eye of the photographer!
