January 2012 was a busy month, not the least because of the amazing opportunity I had to travel to Cairo, Egypt for the CBC’s online coverage of the Arab Spring anniversary on the 25th – which coincidentally was the first overseas assignment for our fledgling CBC Photo desk, a huge honour, IMHO. During my ten days in Egypt I had the pleasure of working with veteran foreign correspondent Margaret Evans. Our assignment was to produce a series of ‘audio/visual portraits’ – a look at life in Egypt a year after the January 25, 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. The largely youth-led revolution ended nearly three decades of Mubarak-rule over Egypt and ended after peaceful protests turned deadly violent. The revolution is referred to collectively in the Twitter-verse as #Jan25.

Margaret – who’d self identify as a radio reporter – and I combined our strengths (mine being making the pictures and getting coffee) and produced four multimedia pieces that launched the CBC’s online coverage in the days leading up to the revolution’s anniversary on Jan. 25, 2012.

I thought what I’d do is breakdown the pieces – my story behind the story, as it were – here on the blog. This first post then focuses on a portrait-driven interactive our code-guru’s back at the plant crafted. All I did was shoot the pics and write the cutlines.

For the portraits to come together, Margaret, who’d had our fixer (his picture is included in the gallery below) line up a few interviews with prominent figures in the revolt ahead of our arrival, would gather her audio and run the interview, then I’d quickly scope our location for a suitable place to shoot. Over the course of the 10 days we had together on the ground, I worked an often run-and-gun style portrait into the schedule so, by the time we were ready to pull out, there would be a collection of images from which to build the interactive. Included here are a few of my favourites. To see them all, head to the interactive: CBC’s Faces of the Egyptian Revolution. From here, I’ll let the photos and their cutlines do the talking.

For detailed cutlines and some more pictures from the trip, check out my Flickr Set embedded at the bottom of the post.
 

Talaat Mussalam The general The Tahrir Preacher Dr. el-Saadawi Dr. Nawel el-Saadawi Mohamed Eid Yousef Mohamed Eid Yousef Alaa el Bahalwn Alaa el Bahalwn El Said Etewey El Said Etewey Faisal Lakoucha Faisal Lakoucha Samira Ibrahim portrait Samira Ibrahim Good morning Cairo Margaret Evans at work

I had the pleasure of interviewing Getty Reportage/NY Times photographer Ed Ou after his World Press Photo winning coverage of refugees in Somalia went on display in Toronto. However, it was his more recent work photographing the Arab Spring revolt in Egypt that brought us together.

Nearly a year after those initial mass demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square forced the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians are back in Tahrir as their country moves towards the first post Mubarak parliamentary elections in 30 years.
As of November 26, 2011, nearly 40 people have been confirmed killed as police and protesters clash. Ed is back in the mix in Tahrir and we’ll be following his coverage closely.

To see Ed’s story on CBC, follow the link below:
cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/10/06/ed-ou-photo.html

For more on the continuing story of the Egyptian uprising, head here:
cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/01/29/f-egypt-uprising.html

This is a multimedia story I helped produce for CBCnews.ca. Its my first piece since starting a new job as a multimedia producer with the Mother Ship in Toronto. The story features a Toronto-based photojournalist by the name of Louie Palu.

Louie’s spent the better part of the last 10 years documenting the war in Afghanistan, 18 months of which on the frontlines, both embedded with Canadian ISAF troops and ‘outside the wire’ photographing Afghans caught up in the conflict.

His pictures are instantly captivating and I was struck when seeing them on his website (louiepalu.com) for the first time while doing research for the interview. These are heavy hitting images. A mix of perfectly composed portraits of Marines worn beyond their years next to gritty, caught-in-the-moment combat photos. Beautifully composed, many of the images spare us, the viewer the reality of scenes Louie can describe in graphic detail. A burden of imagery he carries but has artfully placed outside the frame of his pictures. The mans been deep into a conflict most of us know shockingly little about and come away with a body of work that could have taken a lifetime to amass.

In meeting Louie for the first time, just ahead of shooting this CBC interview, you could feel the energy coming off him. It had been five months since returning from his last trip to Afghanistan but it felt like he had just stepped out of the desert. Still wearing his combat pack (containing a MacBook instead of military provisions), Louie was a positively-charged force, full of stories and emotion tied to his time spent away. Our time together felt like a flash and I feel like we only just scraped the surface. Plus, he was an awesome guy. A dude who loves his craft and has taken his camera to places most never see. Personally, his story was a perfect way to start my journey into this new job.

Check out the piece, The Fighting Season – named after the gallery show Louie’s putting on at the Kinsman Robinson Gallery in Toronto.

Hit the link to watch the video on CBCnews.ca

The Fighting Season: Louie Palu’s front-line photography of the Afghan war – World – CBC News.

At long last! The First Nations: Mapping the Future feature I worked on for CBC is finally up and live on the site.  My contribution (detailed in the blog post below) focused on the Tsawwassen First Nation’s – aka the TFN’s – post-treaty development as the first urban first nation to break free of the Indian Act and emerge as self-governing entity. Big thanks to TFN Chief Kim Baird for her time on this piece.

Here are the YouTube embeds featured in the piece. See the whole interactive feature on CBCnews.ca by following the link above.

The Long Road to Self Government:

Training For a Better Future:

Transforming the Land:

—————–updated———————

I’m in the midst of an assignment for the CBC photographing and interviewing members of the Tsawwassen First Nation – the first urban First Nation in B.C. to settle treaty negotiations and emerge with its own government. The Tsawwassen segment, once I’m done in the field, is intended to be part of a series of stories on Canadian First Nations that have gone through the treaty process. The feature is meant to mark a point in time – a historic milestone really – from which point the future is unknown. For the 420 or so members of the Tsawwassen First Nation (TFN) and their chief,

Kim Baird, their people’s centuries old struggle with the Indian Act came to an end on April 3, 2009 – the date their treaty came into affect after 20 years of negotiations led by Chief Baird. Soon after the TFN’s newly formed Legislature sat for the first time and now, just over a year later, ground has been broken on a $9-Million infrastructure program that will see, if all goes as planned, the construction of a massive container yard intended to service the nearby super tanker port, commercial development, houses and condos. In short, the financial foundation for the TFN’s future. Its an exciting time and a great assignment.

Soon the fields and muddy roads in these photographs will be paved and built up but for now, or on the evening I took these photos anyway, the TFN’s land was quiet. There were few people on the streets – save for construction crews and there was a real stillness about the place, like even the ground knew things would never be the same again. It will be interesting to see how the physical and cultural landscape of the TFN changes over the next little while and I hope to be back there often enough to document that change.

Here’s what it looks like now…

basketball-hoop-2 bus-stop busted-barn Chief-Baird-laws Chief-Bairds-office-sharp Chief Baird church-boat Congrats-Luongo The TFN's new Constitute Deltaport-crossing distant-longhouse distant-shipping-yard empty-skate-park First-20-laws-Constitution First-laws-case longhouse-parking-lot-2 longhouse Luongo-detail marshland-tanker-port new-intersection new-overpass-blur shipping-yard Terry-Baird-closeup Terry-Baird-intersection TFN-brown-house TFN-development-map-close TFN-new-house-2 TFN-new-house-3 TFN-overgrown-house TFN-white-house training-trailer

Update: Here it is on the CBC.ca Small Business page!

I recently shot this series of portraits of Canadian business magnate-turned Dragon, Jim Treliving. Ok, well Mr. Treliving isn’t a dragon of the scaled, fire-breathing variety, but he does play a pretty convincing role as himself on the CBC’s hit show, Dragon’s Den.

Treliving, along with his co-dragons on the show are real-life tycoons. Titans of the Canadian business world. On the show, the Dragon’s hear pitches made by would-be start-ups looking to take their businesses to the next level. Stuff like, Wow Ball, (think back-yard Zorb… just don’t wear high heels), Naked – seamless underwear, dog umbrellas and my favourite Pee Wipes – a reusable alternative to toilet paper are just a handful of the ideas pitched at the Dragons. Pitchers who impress the Dragon’s could walk away with a major investment deal, those who don’t, get ripped to bits. Jim Treliving has chewed up and spit out his fair share of would-be entrepreneurs in his 4 season’s as a Dragon. Needless to say, when I got the assignment I was a little, lets say nervous about meeting, let alone photographing the man. To make matters worse, the feature needed eight portraits… in a busy Boston Pizza and Mr. T’s press secretary had informed us we’d have a half hour. Time pressure aside, the last time I shot a gig for this particular producer at CBC was during the Olympics. The CBC doesn’t do a tonne of photojournalism these days (something I’m trying to change) so getting this particular call was really cool. An actual assignment… and one I didn’t even have to pitch myself/beg for/harass a producer for. Time to impress.

The piece hasn’t been published yet so I’m not sure which photos will run. I shot just shy of 100 RAW’s, including set-up’ and light tests. Whittled that down to 18, which I submitted. The piece called for 8 portraits. Not bad for a half-hour’s shoot! IMHO, or course. These were all pretty run and gun. I had about a half hour on location while Mr. T was in another interview to scout and set up. I’d never been in this particular Boston Pizza before but, having spent my fair share of late nights in university scarfing pizza pies in my local BP, I figured they all looked pretty well the same. Dark.

I used two SB’s, a 800 and a 900. The 9 I put through a Ray Flash. The 800 was bounced off a 30″ umbrella (my brand new Photoflex with the cool crush-proof stem – thanks to the Strobist David Hobby for cluing me in to these babies. Ok, its not a Wescott brolly like the one in his Strobist post, but my local shop didn’t carry Wescott and I was in a hurry)! Both lights were triggered with Pocket Wizards. No messing around. To make matters worse, the ceiling in the restaurant was black so no bouncing off the ceiling.

These aren’t as polished as I would have liked (you can see the reflection of my light stand and brolly in the glass in this first shot), but given the tight timeline (and the fact I don’t usually get assignments like this), I think these ones aren’t bad. My editor was happy and Jim, it turned out, was great to work with. I even went home with that pizza you see him sitting in front of in a few of these shots!

I’ll post a link to the piece when its published. More after the jump!

During the Olympics I was fortunate enough to be called in to the CBC to report on what would become Canada’s winningest Games and the biggest party Vancouver has ever seen. Not a bad gig.

When the call came, I was a little shocked to hear the news director pitch the assignment. My background, at least as far as reporting goes was mostly in television. I had worked for CBC Vancouver at Six for a brief time before talking my way into the fledgling web department, where I mostly vetted users comments on the text-based stories the writers pumped out.

This time around, I would be doing the writing and best of all, shooting photos for CBCnews.ca, the ‘mother corp’s’ national online news juggernaut. Not bad. I had always wanted to shoot stills for the ‘ceeb’ – who like most/all the other broadcasters in the country tend to pull wire service pictures whenever an illustration is needed for a web story or, gasp, use a screen grab from a piece of video.

Anyway, the assignment was to cover ‘the colour’, which is news-ese for the most interesting/nutty/flamboyant/face-painted people at the Games and to sniff out stories outside the fences. How are the Olympics affecting ‘the people?’ That sort of thing.

Pretty well the perfect assignment (although it would have been cool to cover the events… a certain other national broadcaster had the rights, alas it wasn’t in the cards this time around).  This assignment, however came at just the right time. The Opening Ceremonies (and my last day of work teaching journalism at BCIT before the ‘Olympic break’) was February 12 and it was my plan to get out of town for a little ski vacation.

Its Monday February 8th, about 8PM. The phone rings. Its the *news director. I say “of course. I’d be happy to” or something like that. “Can you work weekends?” “Ah, sure,” I say. We arrange a conference call with my editors in Toronto for Wednesday. I hang up. Plans changed. The rest is history. Boy am I glad I took that call.

*(News directors do not sleep and rarely leave the office).

While that ski vacation would have been great, I realize now I would have regretted not being in Vancouver for the Olympics. The energy and sheer volume of people moving through the streets. Spontaneous choruses of “Oh Canada” on public transit. 14 days of ‘party-in-the-streets’ good times and the cheer (1:20mins into the video) that erupted from the city when Sidney Crosby scored ‘the golden goal’ will forever be etched on Canadian’s collective psyche. It was good to be a part of that. 17 days of OT in a row wasn’t bad either.

Some of my favourite photos, as well as a complete list of the stories I posted can be found after the break. (Just click ‘more’).

Thanks for stopping by! Go Canada!