The Hinterlands - Day 5..

I have been having a wonderful time this week with 17, and occasionally 18 others down here on the edge of the Blackdown Hills in Devon at the second ever Hinterlands workshop. We are humbled to have participants that have travelled thousands of miles to get here to this little corner of rural Devon to make up our small community for a week and learn together in this really special way.

It's been a week of sunshine and in between training with duckrabbit our new found friends here at the Hinterlands have eaten wonderfully prepared fresh food out in the open to relive the everyday stresses of life. Tuesday saw teams head out across the county to visit all it has to offer and collect peoples valuable stories to treasure and turn into wonderful photofilms. From trams, to calves and horse drawn canal barges there was something for everyone and perhaps an eye opener into what this beautiful patch of green has to offer.

In the past few days we have has the pleasure of hosting a talk with Guardian multimedia editor Pascal Wyse who wowed us with his beautiful soundscapes from nature before getting almost three hours sleep in his cosy bell tent to get up and capture the dawn chorus. On top of that we were happy to welcome back past Hinterlands student Alice Carfrae - alicecarfrae.com - to talk about her current work Tin Girls and her experimentation with multimedia. John MacPherson - john-macpherson-photography.com - finished wrapped our evening last night with tales of people, places and generally enthused us to become more excited about just taking pictures and enjoying it for what it is.

It's the last full day today and after cooking a whole host of fry-ups this morning I am looking forward to our finale this evening. We invite the local community, those that have helped and participated in our photofilms to come along and view the work made here at The Hinterlands. It's a really special part of what we do here and it's my favourite. It makes you really consider what you put into your work and to make it as honest and as true as possible, and there really is nothing like seeing that look of genuine happiness on the face of someone whose story you have told when they watch a film about themselves.

24 hours left here at the yurts and I'm sure it will be great!

New updated Hinterlands for 2012!

I've spent the morning outside of my flat, outside of the office and outside of the screen on my computer. With the beautiful spring weather we've been having it's been really hard to have been sat inside tapping away working on the new Hinterlands website although now it's done I think it was well worth the effort.

Take a look at www.thehinterlands.co.uk and let us know what you think...

Last years Hinterlands workshop celebrated the great outdoors, photography, photofilms, tasty food, a sense of community, yurts, having a drink around the fire and storytelling in equal measures and was a big success. Fifteen happy people walked away from their time in Devon with the skills to make a photofilm after a week of learning in the big barn with duckrabbit.

This year we are adding another workshop to the roster so we thought it was time for an upgrade to our presence on the web. duckrabbit are back for 2012 and will be playing host to 15 trainees at The Hinterlands. Be prepared to be immersed in a world of photofilms and storytelling and ready to increase your potential to use multimedia as part of your work.

'Dana`s sister, Jessica, on her 22d birthday. A friend gave her pellet guns.' - Part of the series Upstate Girls - © Brenda Ann Kenneally.

On top of this we have, all the way from New York city the wonderful Brenda Ann Kenneally. Brenda is a skilled storyteller and has many comprehensive bodies of work under her belt. Ten lucky participants will be taken under her wing for a week to thoroughly look at their working practice and to build upon their skills using a multi-layered approach to documentary storytelling. Brenda also

We are so pleased to be working with such talented people like Brenda and duckrabbit and will also be getting in some great speakers to keep the trainees evenings jam packed with interesting talks and screenings. On top of all of that we are chuffed to be welcoming back the wonderful Olivia in the kitchen who will again be cooking up a storm of wonderful food to feed those creative appetites.

The best thing about The Hinterlands this year is the fact that it is still a small workshop that holds true to it's values. We source local food and drink and all of the trainees will work on stories in the local environment, stories that we hope the subjects will come and view later for themselves over a beer. The participants share yurts with solar lights, compost loos and warming wood burning stoves and get to know each other enhancing their learning experience. Our workshops aren't up on a pedestal and all of the people involved are normal people who enjoy sharing their knowledge and skills. If you come down to The Hinterlands this year you will eat, drink and relax with the trainers, our cook, Rebecca and myself (that would be us the organisers..) and generally be part of the whole experience. This is really important to us, it's how a workshop should be and it's how The Hinterlands is and we are so happy to be running it.

Jonathan Worth from the online photography class #phonar, a speaker at the 2011 Hinterlands workshop.

Obviously I am slightly biased as I am part of the workshop but I really do believe it's a great experience and that we offer something truly individual. So biased or not - get on the website and have a read about what we do, look at some of the testimonials or watch our photofilm featuring last years trainees. I think you'll like it and I hope you will want to come down and become part of it this summer.

Oh and I had an idea. I need to clear it with Olivia but I was thinking of making fresh sourdough loaves every morning. There really is nothing better than a hunk of fresh sourdough, a bit of butter and a spoon of marmalade coupled with a fresh cup of coffee to start a creative day in the countryside....sounds good to me!

Right well I think I'm going to have another cup of tea and then wonder what to do with all of the veg that I foraged this morning. I have wild garlic which will definetly end up as a wild garlic pesto, nettles which I am slightly less well versed in and primroses which are great in salads all to look forward to....yum!

Knocking your head against a brick wall

A room with a view...Shrimp ponds in Bangladesh. © Mike Lusmore

I’ve been in Bangladesh for just over a week now with Benjamin from duckrabbit and in that time seen some wonderful things, met some lovely people and experienced some things I probably never would have anywhere else in the world. To add to that I have on occasions laughed pretty hard. This evening was no exception to that as after three days of shooting my way through all the cf cards in my bag it was supposed to be a special evening. Our videographer supremo and unofficial Bangladesh fixer Rajib had been trying to track us down a beer since he arrived a few days ago in Khulna. Ever since we arrived in the dry country (that would be Bangladesh if your not up to speed) Benjamin had assured me that Rajib was our man and would secure us some proper liquid refreshment just when we needed it. After a few failed missions including the promise of beer at a hotel in town only to arrive to the possibility of warm take away cans of Fosters for twice the price of our dinner (each!) at the Hotel Royal (Benjamin’s new fav hotel) we thought we had it nailed. One of the guys at our Hotel had arrange via a whole host of mobile phone calls passed back and forth with Rajib to deliver 8 cans of Heineken to the hotel in the day and put them in the fridge for our arrival at dinner. The day was long and I was looking forward to that beer a whole lot when Milton the manager of the hotel approached us in the lobby to say there had been a problem. It transcribed that our beer hadn’t been delivered but Milton had arranged for it to come now..only it wasn’t Heiniken anymore and it wasn’t fosters and it wasn’t anything I had actually ever heard of. ‘Was Royal Dutch beer ok?’ Having never heard of it we asked about the percentage to which Milton beamed a big smile and replied ’6%’. The six turned to eight and by the time the beer arrived it had changed it’s name to Barons Extra Strong and become a whopping 11.8% can of of warm lager. Naturally we declined the offer of what would be affectionatly known to me back in the UK as tramp juice and returned to the dinner table. I searched the beer online and found a review that described as ‘like knocking your head against a wall’. As a photographer I spend most of my days doing that already so a beer is supposed to have the opposite affect for me!

So having a beer wasn’t to be, and we settled for a couple of cold cokes, well a microwaved warm coke for Rajib and tucked into our rice, dahl, shrimp and oily potatoes. It’s a pretty basic menu here at the hotel but it’s been good food considering some of the stories I have read including the one I found when I typed in ‘Khulna’ and ‘food’ into google. The story of two women who went out to get food and died within hours of food poisioning two months back. Hmmm….yeh that kept everyone quiet for a bit, that was until our encounter with Ali Baba’s.

Rajib (right) looking for a beer. © Mike Lusmore

Ali Baba’s was it’s name – and strange looking food was it’s game. Now I don’t do restaurant reviews but I haven’t laughed so much over dinner as I did at this place, so for entertainment value I’m going to give it a four out of five. In the car on the way to the place we were told by the guy that recommended it that we weren’t getting the shrimp that we had pre-ordered (everything needs to be pre-ordered here in Khulna) as the last two people he had brought to this place had gotten food poisoning. I think these are the sort of things we should discuss before heading over to a place but by this time we were pulling up at Ali Baba’s. It said ‘Chinese Food’ in big letters on the doors which was a bit ominous as I figured we would be eating Bangladeshi cuisine but we pressed on and as I entered the place I realised half of the restaurant did Chinese and the other half did the rest. I say the rest as you seemed to be able to order fried chicken, burgers, dahl…infact it looked a bit like most kebab houses in most cities in the UK with an extended seating area and way to many balloons tied to the ceiling. Come to think of it I have never seen a kebab house with any balloons on the ceiling but this place was obviously celebrating something. We waited whilst our food was cooked/prepared/killed/warmed and Benjamin entertained us all by trying to read the back of a kebab box which he thought wa a menu – very funny. As we were no longer allowed the shrimp our mutton curry arrived looking like it was in a sauce made up of the chesty cough I have had all week (not good) and served with a dose of everyones favourite here, a lot of oil. To be honest I wasn’t hungry by now and picked away at my rice like a five year old as Benjamin tried to work out what had happened to the real Bangladesh cuisine we had come for. ‘I told you this restaurant couldn’t cook’ was the only words forthcoming from our host which I think just about summed up Ali Baba’s. I don’t think I’ll be heading back there anytime soon.

Dinner

It’s a shame Ali Baba’s was so damn random as when you step outside Khulna into the countryside of Bangladesh the food seems so plentiful and obvious it’s amazing. Rice paddies being planted and harvested all year round, vegetable plots, shrimp and prawn ponds, freshwater fish, saltwater fish, coconut trees, wonderfully sweet Bananas and fresh date juice being tapped from every other tree are just the things I managed to see on my small trip. I’m not saying every one of the estimated 170 million people here in Bangladesh are eating well but the farming methods are really something to marvel at. The mixed use small holdings are just how small time farming should be and provide within the villages and further afield it’s hard to imagine that anyone reading this wouldn’t have eaten some shrimp or rice that came from somewhere here in Bangladesh. I only mention it because it seems to always be mentioned how poor it is here in Bangladesh and I think that is a very relative thing. Don’t get me wrong it IS very poor here in a lot of ways. There aren’t many cars or modern machines, the roads are very poor and the mobile phone is about the only bit of technology I see on a regular basis but they are rich here in other ways. I have never seen people work so hard in my life, it’s almost like a race to get all of the fish fished or build as many things as possible before dinner coupled with the wonderful contrast in the villages that are so peaceful and unspoilt. I think we would all be jealous of the beauty and simplicity of some of the lives here.

Farming with a view east of Khulna. © Mike Lusmore

View from the car

The rest of the light..and the first bit of beautiful light I have seen in Bangladesh.

Just sitting back not sipping on a beer (there isn't any) and taking five after a long day with our group working on photography and audio skills before heading straight into the field to record some material. We thought the weather was bad yesterday but thunder beckoned this morning over breakfast so when by lunch the rain had ceased we took the opportunity to visit a village working with World Fish. It's a bit of a trek to anywhere round here so it we packed up our vehicles and headed out in search of a story and to catch the rest of the light.

I'm currently hiding from the call to prayer underneath my lovely headphones. I'm sure I'll get used to it but it's driving me a bit insane at the moment. I think the speaker is on the other side of my wall..no seriously!

Everyone gets straight to work as we travel back to Khulna (I think Benjamin on the right is just playing games).

5089.1 miles

The view from my room at Lake Hotel Castle, Dhaka

It's taken a few days to get here, including one very long sit down in Dubai's infamously boring shopping mall airport type thing, one cold, about 20 paracetamol, way to much hand luggage and my old favourite, a plane with a faulty engine. I always think it's time to worry when the air hostess is getting involved in the mechanics of the plane. Thankfully they asked us to leave whilst they completed this task. Honestly my confidence was low.

The captain and mechanic have a go at fixing our broken plane. Not cool.

Bristol to London. London to Dubai. Dubai to Dhaka, Dhaka to Jessor and Jessor to Khulna. It's 5089.1 miles as the crow fly's and seeing as it's more for us it's been a really tiring trip. Especially seeing as I managed to somehow get a cold just as I left somewhere cold! I'll thank the British weather for that.. Well if I thought I was entering the opposite side of the temperature scale I was wrong too. There have already been calls to head to the shops to pick up a jumper and that wasn't even me. Even so this looks like an amazing place. Over a million people live here in Khulna and it's the third largest city in Bangladesh. It's about the same as Bristol in the UK and I am hoping that as I get on with work I can explore it a bit.

For now I've been doing a bit of work with the group I am here training from World Fish and having a bit of dinner. They are a really interesting bunch and it's been great to here in a bit more detail some of the programmes they work with here in Bangladesh to improve food security in this region.

I'll leave you with the view from my room. To be honest the picture looks better as the visibility is super low but hey that's what a photograph can do sometimes.

The view across Khulna to the north from my hotel.

Fish & Fish

For eighteen years of my life the only fish I would happily devour was that from the local fish & chip shop. I mean I have always loved fish & chips and it's still my favourite takeaway to this day, possibly one of my favourite meals.. So unless we were drenching dinner with salt and vinegar and wrapping it up in that day's misprinted papers, I wasn't interested. According to my parents I happily spent my youth referring to the dish as 'fish & fish', so I must have liked it deep down inside just not when it came to dinnertime.

So it comes as no surprise that I can remember quite vividly the first fish dish that stopped me in my tracks, and made me sit up and take note. I was at my Uncles in California (that would be you John - thanks again) enjoying the delights of the surf, the beach, my first surfboard and getting driven around in a lowered F150 truck (such a child!).. John suggested some fresh fish from this killer place on County Line that serves up the freshest fish, caught daily from the pacific opposite the restaurant. What with me being very British I felt it was a bit rude to say that I didn't really like fish so I shut my trap. What followed was a culinary delight though, Sea Bass sprinkled with flaked almonds, a generous pinch of salt and pepper and a hunk of butter. All wrapped up in foil and cooked to perfection on the barbecue of course. And perfection it was. Now I like fish, I said to myself.

I'm not the only person who now likes to eat fish. Statistics say that in 2009 the world ate over 120 million tonnes of fish. It's a staggering statistic and that rate increases by 6% year on year. So maybe we should be worried about running out of oil but we should also be aware of the rate at which the world eats fish. Some of the practices that directly affect fish heading for the UK markets were highlighted last year by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on a Channel 4 series called Hugh's Fish Fight. It was heart wrenching, educational and made me want to act. It also seems to have made another 770,617...and counting people want to act, which is great.

I'm glad to be heading out to Bangladesh at the end of this week with duckrabbit to work on series of photofilms for a Fishing & Aquaculture research institute there. It's made me think about how important fish are to this world, for sustenance, to provide livelihoods and in the environment as a species.

It's also made me think about just how hard it is to get a nice piece of fresh fish nowadays. Thankfully my brother is a chef so I had the nicest piece of trout I have ever eaten on Christmas morning this year.

And if you don't know my brother then perhaps it's easier to just go fishing. Like James Brown here..

Photofilms and Yurts..

As winter approaches at a steady rate of knots and that inner cold sets in, I think it's good to have something to look forward to. Christmas holidays I suppose would do...maybe your new years celebrations....yeh did that last year..how about next years Hinterlands workshop..

If you have no idea what i'm waffling about then I'll get straight to the point. We (that's me, Rebecca Harley and the duckrabbit team) are running our second Hinterlands photofilm workshop on what I think is the best possible course in the UK. A five day residential workshop staying in mongolian yurts with log burners and eating wonderful food, you will break bread with other keen participants whilst learning all there is to know about photofilms. It's a very peaceful relaxing place to learn in but we still pack in lots of stuff to keep you busy. Last year we had cyclist, adventurer and photofilm creator Nick Hand talk about his work and where photofilms have taken his career, and Coventry University pioneer and creator of #phonar, Jonathan Worth talking about how to get ahead by giving your work away.

Last years participants were an awesome bunch and we really really had a great time working with them. This year we have another 15 places...actually 14 because I just took a booking..and I hope we can fill it with a similarly inspiring group.

If your still wondering what the hell I'm waffling about watch this photofilm with last years participants talking about their experiences.

For more info or to book a place head to www.thehinterlands.co.uk

#phonar

I've just got back from giving a lecture and working with the #phonar class at Coventry University this week where I talked photofilms, transformative storytelling and transmedia. Interesting stuff and thanks to Jonathan Worth's approach to sharing and creative commons (it's his class), you can take part and hear the class too as #phonar is free to join and take part in online. Visit www.phonar.org for more details.

Matt Johnston who run's the course with Jonathan will be uploading the talk to the phonar class soon for you to hear but in the meantime he recorded my five top tips for photofilms..

Multimedia at Fotopub

As the weather repeats it's ever changing rain and sun game in the run up to the Glastonbury festival and you continue on regardless, although getting more use out of your waterproof trousers than you thought necessary in June. Maybe you should be thinking about what to do this summer? A trip abroad.. perhaps Europe.. hmmm been to France sooo many times, maybe further east. How about Slovenia, it's next door to italy, on the adriatic, you could swim in the beautiful lake Bled, visit the stunning Julian Alps, take in the capital Ljubljana, visit Maribor for the world downhill mountain bike racing or perhaps visit the small town of Novo Mesto for this years Fotopub festival.

If you hadn't guessed already I am excited about the Fotopub photo festival happening in Slovenia, 25th-30th July 2011. Not just because it's the 11th year this wonderful events been happening, and because I have heard and seen so many great things about it but also because this year I finally get to go. This years Fotopub has a great lineup of mentors and events with talent such as Ed Ou, Brenda Ann Kenneally, Epsen Rasmussen and more attending and I have been looking at the site with some excitement. So I guess being asked to be a mentor and to teach the multimedia workshop has only one downside - I won't have time to go and the see all these other great talents speak. I'm sure we will be able to catch up over a beer..

It's been a long week what with us not having a kitchen (long story), a photofilm commission on the go, another in the pipeline and with Fotopub asking Rebecca and I to come and teach. It all came about through our wonderful Hinterlands workshop in Devon that we (Rebecca and I that is) ran in collaboration with duckrabbit in May of this year. It went great, so great that duckrabbit felt happy to recommend us to the Fotopub team, and I am really happy they did.

So.. If your twiddling your thumbs at home and are wondering what to do in July - head to Fotopub. And if your interested in multimedia, slideshows, photofilms or whatever you call them then come and signup for the multimedia workshop. It's going to be a great place to produce a short multimedia piece and to have a stunning week all at the same time.

Hinterben

I've finally made it home after almost two weeks away being everything Hinterlands. We wanted The Hinterlands to be an amazing way to learn everything there was to know about photofilms in a low impact kinda way with a bunch of like minded people. It ended up being so much more! The talks were so inspiring I would like to thank Nick and Jonathan and everyone else who graced the barns presence.

We (Rebecca and I) partnered up with duckrabbit for this workshop and were so happy to have a group of fifteen students who by the end of five days didn't want to leave. A cook who didn't want to leave and a few that didn't even leave.

What an amazing experience!

I'll just sort through the 1111 jpegs, 2 films, 1 timeplapse and several 3d photographs to see what might interest anyone.

Ben gets his portrait taken by Rebecca

Innovative Interactivity (II)

If you interested in all things multimedia you probably already read Tracy Boyers Innovative Interactivity blog. If you don't then you probably should and you would have probably read her write up on our workshop which is taking place in Devon this May. I may have already mentioned it but The Hinterlands is going to be an amazing event - great home cooked food, staying in beautiful authentic yurts in the peaceful countryside alongside some kickass training to get your photofilm knowledge rolling. We also have the wonderful Nick Hand coming along to tell us about his work and why he thinks photofilms are a great medium - plus he is an all round great guy.

This is a short piece of Nicks - part of his slow coast series..

Want to stay in a yurt?

I'm really happy to be posting a photofilm I have been working on in collaboration with rebecca. We just finished putting the final touches to it for a small firm in Devon which provide Yurt accommodation on their smallholding in Devon.

We are also using these wonderful yurts as the location for The Hinterlands workshop which I am involved in putting on with duckrabbits Ben & David. So if you like our photofilm and you think you might like to stay a yurt maybe you should come on down in May and take part.. We still have places so head to www.thehinterlands.co.uk or click on the banner below..

Made in Wales

I was sending word to howies today about our photofilm workshop (that would surely be ffotofim in Welsh..check it out here..) and I thought about these pics that I did of their wonderful printshop down in west Wales. I'm obsessed with doing things in a real and honest way and their printshop is just that. Every t-shirt is screen printed by hand by Tidy (Mike) and Tom.

Lovely t-shirts and lovely people all the way from Wales.