Category — Travel

I loved this quote from a post on photography in third world countries:

The goal is to not draw attention to yourself. Think like a photojournalist. Unwanted attention prevents good photo opportunities(and can be annoying). On short trips, it can be tough to become an instant local. Beyond the obvious like your choice of clothing , subconscious behavioural clues beyond your control will give you away. It’s a matter of convincing yourself that you belong. If you can visualize yourself as belonging there, you’ll spend less time worrying about how you don’t fit in. You’ll notice more around you, and others will notice you less. This leads to great photo opportunities. Do all you can to minimize the attention you draw. Walk like a local. Try to talk like a local. Dress like a local. Be a local. It is at least partially a state of mind.

I couldn’t agree more, not just as a photographer but also as a traveller – one of the big downsides of traveling too quickly is that you never get the feel for a country – try to take the time to let the place sink in.

One of my favorite photos I took in India.

I’m currently reading the excellent Killing Rage by Eamon Collins based on a recommendation from Chris Blattman’s blog. Having became interested in Politics and the wider world around the time of the Good Friday Agreement, being a big fan of Irish literature and culture, and having stayed close to the Irish border during marching season I have always been very interested in the conflict, its origins, and possible solutions. Collins is a former IRA Intelligence agent turned informer and was murdered after the book was published. While Blattman was particularly struck by the insight of why young people turn to violence I am more struck by reading of the banality and acceptance of violence in places I have since visited and fallen in love with. One frequent locale is Rostrevor, a small village by Carlingford Lough (the border runs through the lake) where I stayed for a week taking a language course, one of the most peaceful places I have ever seen which was previously the scene of much smuggling in violence. The bank where my host father worked had been bombed several times and he had been held up during a bank robbery and everyone talked about these events with an acceptance and calm that was difficult to fathom. The contrast between the serene hill paths and parks and music and laughter and the darker sides of all of it is difficult to accept.

I read a very interesting post on the information firehose today and about how all of us are being bombarded with more and more information and have a hard time processing and making sense of it all.

The video points out that more information will be generated in 2009, than was created in the past 5,000 years. That a weeks worth of the New York Times holds more information than most Americans living during the 18th century were likely to encounter in a lifetime. [...]Today, smart people who want to be “in the know” need to figure out how to filter the information fire hose. The challenge is not finding information, but finding trusted “filters” and then absorbing information through them while ignoring the rest.

I totally agree with the author but think there’s more to absorbing the right information than just filtering it down to the best parts. When we started working on Apture we wanted to give people a tool that helped them put new information into context by letting you view the most relevant rich media and guides without needing to leave the page to search for the material. We wanted to make the ideas expressed by the author, come to life. We believe that people will care more about events and ideas if they can relate to them, and that they will understand them better and relate them more deeply if they can put them in context. Good writing and story telling is a big part of that but we want to help everyone use the power of the web to communicate even more effectively.

Yes, more media can be even more overwhelming but by presenting it in the right way and allowing your users to discover more bit by bit, in chunks , instead of forcing them to drink from the fire hose we believe we can help make the things they do choose to read about more memorable and significant.

So if you want to show your readers what education in Eritrea looks like, how much you enjoyed the recent Coldplay concert, and how Large Hadron Collider works, Apture is here to help you do that more compellingly.

An excellent short interview with Chris Blattman on travelling on economic development as well as a more general point on development. I really liked the following bit on what it will take to lift more African countries out of poverty:

The difference between a poor country (say, $2000 per head) and a middle income one (say, $12000 per head) is simple: one has a manufacturing sector and one does not. Something like forty percent of Kenya’s GDP comes from the 5 percent of the workforce: those in light and medium industry. That sector is crucial. Most African nations won’t have a self-sustaining education and health system until they build some sort of industrial tax base. What’s needed to get there? Reliable roads and electricity are a start. Reducing the red tape faced by business can help too. But realistically, I believe real wages in Asia will probably have to rise before it becomes profitable to produce in Africa. The faster China and India get rich, the sooner we’ll see a transformation in Africa. In the meantime, preferential trade and tax treatment by the US and Europe for African goods could help foster industry and technology transfer.