Lake Magadi Through the Windshield
Lake Magadi is a soda lake a 100 kilometers south of Nairobi. In just two hours drive, the buzz of the capital changes into peaceful and stunning landscapes of the soda lake and the surrounding arid hills. However, there’s more to Lake Magadi than views. The lake is a home to Kenya’s first private firm and a considerable contributor to the country’s GDP, the Magadi Soda Company. The town, complete with recreation clubs and pools for the factory workers, is entirely created by the Soda Company. The encounter between the incredible natural habitat and the industrial town in the middle of the wilderness adds up to a truly bizarre atmosphere.
This slide shows depicts our trip to this curious lake as seen through the windshield of our car. Having spent a good amount of time lately in cars and busses travelling around in Kenya, windshield photography has had time to grow on me. This is my take on the encounter of the otherworldly views from Magadi and the constant visual theme set by the car.
Press play or click the arrow on the right-hand side of the photo to view the slide show.
This post is published simultaneously at themeasuremag.com.
The Measure Magazine Launches Today!
I am really happy to announce that a project I’ve been working on quite intensely lately is launching today.
The Measure is a magazine focusing on East Africa and particularly on themes defined broadly by development. We’ll be running articles and photojournalism that aims to provide insights into our subject matter behind the everyday news reality – that is deeper, with more time and from the human point of view.
In the magazine we have also a section for photo essays. I’ll be opening the game tomorrow with a photo essay about a Kenyan town Maua that prospers on Mira trade (or Khat as it is more commonly know).
So, visit and enjoy http://themeasuremag.com
Early morning Nairobians
I shot these photos with the kind help of Alberto and Tomas. Setting out to photograph in the beautiful early morning light our goal was to do both spontaneous street photography and quick street portraits. However, as I wrote in my earlier post, the culture of anonymous street photography doesn’t seem to really exist in Kenya and attempts in photographing people without their prior permission tend to end up in unwilling models running after you seeking for explanation.
These quick portraits below are shot with the models’ permission. Alberto and Tomas helped out by holding the external flash and chatting busy commuters up for permissions to take their photo.
Lamu, its doors and their carvers
I shot this photo for an article about Lamu, its doors and their carvers that is going to run in an internet magazine we’ll be launching in September (more info about the magazine as the launch approaches).
I was almost surprised seeing this photo after we had left the carvers’ workshop. The man in the photo, Omar, was the quieter of Alberto’s – who was writing the article – and my two interviewees. Where in their words the two men seemed rather pragmatic towards their craft, the photo seems to tell a different story, one of dedication and love towards the work.
The plank Omar is working on in the photo will be a part of an elaborate exterior door that are very typical to this Swahili coast. The finalised doors are quite precious pieces of workmanship costing around €1,000 apiece and taking up to two months to carve.
Lamu Kids & Overcoming some photographic challenges
This if my first post from Kenya and this trip to East Africa. I’ll be posting photos and thoughts fairly regularly so stay tuned!
In terms of photography here, getting used to two things took me a while. Firstly, the equatorial sun presents quite a challenge for good photography. Shining from directly above, the sun makes the light very harsh and quite dull for the most of the day. Exposing accurately, using fill flash and maybe most importantly, shooting in early mornings and just before the sunset have been my answers to the challenge.
The second thing requiring some time to get used to has been the general suspiciousness towards photography that especially many adults seem to have here. Doing good portrait photography requires always lots of social skills but that seems to be even more the case here. Photography here requires quite a lot of social effort; getting into situations where people aren’t that weary about cameras. That’s naturally also a good thing, providing an extra reason to find oneself in interesting social interactions. However, realising this took me a while and hence the visual topic of the first post: kids – they are always a lot more relaxed about having their photo taken…
These photos are shot on the lovely island of Lamu on the Northern coast of Kenya. I’ll be writing more about our time in Lamu in my future posts.
Note that by clicking the photos you can open them in a light box view, allowing to effortlessly view the photos in a larger size.
Guantanamo ja tunnustukset
Kiinnostavaa miten USA:n uskottavuus ihmisoikeuksiin sitoutuneena toimijana on ‘terrorismin vastaisen’ sodan aikana vajonnut tasolle, jolla pata-arvokonservatiiviset HS.fi:n kommentoijatkaan eivät enää usko Guantanamossa vangeista kidutettuja tunnustuksia.
Se että näin kokonaisvaltaisesti uskottavuutensa menettänyt valtio kykenee normaaliin kansainväliseen toimintaan taas kertoo ikävää kieltä siitä kuinka heikosti ihmisoikeudet ovat kansainväliseen järjestelmään juurtuneet. Ihmisoikeuksiin vedotaan kun se sopii syvempään agendaan, kuten ulkoministeri Clinton ilmaisi: “But our pressing on those issues [human rights] can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises.” Valtion legitimiteetin liittäminen ihmisoikeuksien kunnioittamiseen on tällä hetkellä poliittinen instrumentti, ei universaali periaate.