I shot promotional photos for an excellent Nairobi group, Koko Beat, a couple of weeks back. The shoot was very much fun and I must say I’m really liking East-Africa sunsets, when being armed with a couple of flashes to balance things out.

For those in Nairobi, Koko Beat are playing a gig in Allience Française this month. Also, visit their Myspace profile for excellent not-unlike-Amadou-and-Mariam fusion goodness.

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 small town of Maua in Kenya produces much of East Africa’s and even the world’s khat – or miraa as it is know here. We visited Maua to prepare an article about the miraa circus that stroke us as quite interesting. The plant has to be consumed preferably within 24 hours after it has been cut down from the trees. This gives the whole industry an urgency that transforms what could be a dormant small town into a bustling entrepreneurial hub.

This photo essay is about Maua and its people that get their living from growing and trading miraa. The essay has been published also in our magazine, The Measure.

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

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.

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.