There’s No Place Like Home
Mongolia
… a place that I’ve heard of, once in a lullaby
For some people who were brought up living sedentary lives, the urge to travel is irresistible. I think that I am one of those people. I have long maintained that this desire stems from an undeniable fire within the souls of each and every one of us that compels us to search out new experiences in order to better ourselves as human beings. Mind you, it has been mentioned on occasion that maybe I simply have commitment issues that make me incapable of settling down anywhere for any sustained length of time. It’s a close call… probably a murky mix of the two if I’m honest.
Second only to my love of travelling is probably my love of camping and the outdoors, so our return to the roaming lifestyle of Mongolia this week has renewed my zest for life no end. Last time we were here, these vast plains were glazed with an icy white patina and the nights were long and painfully cold. Today, we are camped by a stream amidst a luxuriant green panorama, wearing shorts and factor 30 sun cream on our pink noses. We’re here to spend some time with a family of nomadic horse herders as they tend to their herd, breaking in the new foals and reaping the rewards of this lush summer landscape.
A few days ago, our family of rosy cheeked travellers arrived. A pickup drove up and out popped a party of beaming faces. Huge smiles and eleven warm handshakes later, the family set to work at unpacking their worldly possessions.
Here’s what happened…
Here in the Blue River valley, it is quite common for our Mongolian friends to spontaneously burst into song. On this particular occasion, for this clip I recorded a rendition of a folk ditty called Scenery of My Country sung as we sat together sharing food in the family ger. Here’s a translation…
***
Our gers look so beautiful
Seen from a distance
Is this the scenery of the country I was born in?
There are many gers as white as milk
Decorating the animals’ pasture
Is this my mother who always wished good luck for me?
***
You will find a tutorial explaining how you can make your own time lapse movies HERE.
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Interested in more stories from Mongolia? Try HERE
TASEARCHMONGOLIA
Life Between the Rushes
Mongolia
Far from the madding crowd
After spending a little time in rural Mongolia you will soon realise that the pace of life in this enchanting place is beautifully slow and serene. Offering up this aspect of the human condition to the viewing public is a very hard thing to do in both photography and film because our media has evolved in such a way that we expect to see drama, action and purpose in our films and printed media. Normal, so-called mundane life is often ignored at the expense of the superlative. One film I recall that brilliantly encapsulates the essence of what I’m talking about is the Korean masterpiece Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter And Spring by Ki-Duk Kim which follows the sublime life of an old monk and his young apprentice as they live through the seasons on a temple floating in the middle of an isolated lake.
Intimate films about quiet lives rarely reach out to large audiences and it is an ever-present dilemma for the documentary maker to compromise this element of story telling for the sake of the wider following. Both ways have equal merit in my opinion, but the unremarkable (to some), more personal approach is often represented considerably less within the world’s media.
With this in mind, today I decided to train my camera on a very simple and unexceptional situation at the home of our adoptive Mongolian family and film a candid conversation for 5 minutes to see if it would offer up a different insight into the life that is lived here ‘in between the rushes’ so to speak.
I have called this clip ‘The Thick Brown Thread’ because the conversation revolves around things pertaining to sewing in a very ordinary but extremely funny way.
To give you a little background on the situation, we were staying with this lovely nomadic family of camel and cashmere goat herders at their remote winter farm (pictured above) in order to document the birth of a new camel. As you will see, the pregnant camel we were waiting on was long overdue and nobody knew why. The ensuing discussion prompts an intriguing story of an unfortunate incident with a goat and a comb…
Here’s the clip.
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Interested in more stories from Mongolia? Try HERE
TASEARCHMONGOLIA
The Perils of Filming in the Desert
Mongolia
Lets take a look over there!
Filming in the Gobi Desert is an unpredictable science as our cameraman Terry discovered to his misfortune today. What for him began as a serene day of filming the scavenger wildlife attracted by a nearby camel carcass, ended up as race against the clock to reach poor Terry as both he and his camouflage hide were battered for over 2 hours by gale force winds and swirling sand. Thankfully Terry was carrying his BBC satellite phone with him and he managed to get a message to our team a few hours drive away to come and rescue him. This in itself turned into a small expedition thanks to the sandstorm, which had created a lovely new dune directly across the path of the only thoroughfare we knew of through the mountains of sand. The resultant rescue mission has a certain comedic element to it.
Here is the last picture taken of our Tel before we left him in the morning with a packed lunch happily filming from his protective tent.
Photo Copyright: Karina Moreton
Watch here to see the scene we returned to in the late afternoon after we responded to his emergency call…
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Interested in more stories from Mongolia? Try HERE
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Practical Alchemy in the Arctic
Greenland
Strange things happen when it's -35°C
We’ve all heard our fair share of urban myths. Whether we ever get to test the authenticity of them is another thing, but I’m a firm believer that if you are presented with an opportunity to do so, you can enrich your life no end. Obviously I share this belief with the producers of ‘Myth Busters’ who have made quite a good business out of it. Anyway, it is said that some people live in places that are so cold that if you throw a cup of boiling water into the air, it will freeze before it hits the ground. Living, as I do in a temperate country, the busting of this particular myth had eluded me until now.
Whilst waiting for a connecting flight in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, Assistant Producer Willow, Director Nick and myself decided to pop outside into the -35°C cold and try a little experiment. Here’s what we discovered…
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(Please excuse my manic laughing, the cold had quite obviously got to my head)
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Interested in more stories from Greenland? Try HERE
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A Short Film Shot With My New Camera
Niger
Last year I was lucky enough to receive one of the first new Canon 5D mark II cameras when they came out. Niger was to be the trial run for this new SLR which also shoots high definition film, something I am very excited about. With the help of BBC cameraman Toby Strong and a random gathering of women that we met in the desert, we experimented with its filming and photography capabilities. Here is the result…
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A big thank you to Jasper Montana from our BBC team in Bristol who edited the movie at very short notice from our extremely minimal and experimental rushes!
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Interested in more stories from Niger? Try HERE
