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Sulawesi update – plans, plans, plans…

I have now been in a hot and sunny Makassar since Thursday evening, meeting up with friends and contacts and chasing down a few details of the different projects, which are now starting to come together.

First stop in Makassar was to meet up with two good friends here – Sarah Oakes and Pete Howson, both of whom volunteer with VSO Indonesia.  I originally met them both last year after Sarah asked me to come over to Makassar to shoot the different community projects she is supporting.  Have a look at the results of this trip here – Makassar – VSO Indonesia.

I was hoping to shoot at the Jongaya settlement during my previous visit but because of 'political' issues, it wasn't really possible and we decided to concentrate on other projects.  Now that these issues have been resolved, Sarah was keen to get me back there and so on Friday we both went over to meet representatives of PerMaTa, a community group that helps the residents of Jongaya – in particular, those suffering from leprosy.

The meeting was very fruitful and we now have a plan of action.  PerMaTa has requested that I shoot images that can be used for advocacy purposes – basically to reduce the stigma of leprosy in Makassar and further afield – and so the plan is to build up a series of portraits of residents at the settlement going about their daily lives.  And rather than shoot typical images of people that have suffered from leprosy, we will be producing positive images that steer clear of any common stereotypes.  So I am planning on shooting business owners, families, mixed groups (people with leprosy working alongside those without the disease), men and women, young and old – a broad spectrum of people in Jongaya.  I travel with 2 strobes, a softbox and a reflector and so am going to shoot some beautiful 'environmental portraits' – in their place of work or at home, for instance.  Combined with suitable captions, we are hoping that these images will make people think twice about people that suffer from leprosy.

We also met up with a photographer who joined my workshop here last year.  Over the next week, he will be shadowing me as I work and I'll be sharing tips and tricks and building up his knowledge of photography.  Hopefully he will be joined by other members of PerMaTa so that I can do some informal teaching and leave the group with some useful skills for the future.

The 'Trash Mountain' project is also moving ahead and next week I will be meeting up with teachers at the 'Slum school' and again, making some plans.  I want to work with 2-3 families that live and work at the site, spending plenty of time with each family so I can build up a complete picture of their day-to-day lives.  Like the Jongaya project, I want to avoid the typical, 'doom and gloom' images.  Whilst conditions are certainly terrible at the site, I want to highlight the work the Sacred Childhoods Foundation are doing there with the school and the micro-finance scheme.

It being Sunday, I spent yesterday afternoon taking a break.  Well, that was the plan.  I ended up at a Bugis wedding reception for lunch and then hectic Chap Goh Meh celebrations in Makassar's Chinatown.  I will be going back to shoot more celebrations tonight after finishing at Jongaya so will post a selection of images when I can.  Until then, a couple of images straight out of the phone from yesterday…

Sarah and another friend, Roy, working on a translation for me – with doughnuts of course…

The bride and groom.

It was a very smart wedding and the majority of the guests were dressed in matching orange baju.

Feb 06, 2012 | Categories: Travel | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

Thank you to my contributors and supporters…

If you have been reading my blog recently, you will know I have been looking for contributors to help support a series of projects here in Indonesia.  Well, I am now very close to my target and so on Thursday will be heading to Makassar to start shooting.  I still need to sort out a few details but essentially the entire project will be going ahead.

The success of this crowd-funding project is entirely due to the people that have very generously donated money or helped share what I am doing on their own social networks.  To the following people, I am very much in your debt!  Thank you for your support, your time and efforts, and your trust in me to tell these stories successfully…

Thanks to the following people for helping to spread the word about what I am trying to do:

  • Karin Sodervall
  • Alan Dean – Raincoast Images
  • Beatriz Barroca
  • Luca Vaime
  • Jane Sharp
  • Sam Fernandez
  • Otto Wong
  • Kate Malcolm
  • Andra Alexander
  • Dee Svezda
  • Hashida Lee
  • Daniel Pye
  • Sangeeta Mangubhai
  • Danica Silahooy
  • Suzanne Chater
  • Magda Rakita
  • Shauna Teevan
  • Anton Skrzypiciel
  • Alfa Dian
  • June Wah
  • Shan Sandhu
  • Mel Chu
  • Jason Isley
  • Mona Isley
  • Andrew Fingerman & Lauren Margolis – Photoshelter
  • Helen Brunt
  • Gil Wooley
  • Emma Jenkins
  • Roger Munns
  • Yanti Saman
  • Mark Thorpe

And thanks to the following people for their amazing generosity – without you all, these shoots would not be going ahead:

  • Mike Veitch
  • David & Debi Henshaw
  • Peter Blumtritt
  • Nick Hope
  • Hannah Kitchen
  • Johan Peijnenburg
  • Lizzie Bentley
  • Dave Wallace
  • Sarah-Jane Gray & John Drake
  • John More
  • Roger & Jill Kitchen
  • Libby Lodh
  • Howard Angus
  • Edmund Tee
  • Andy Shorten
  • Michael Marten
  • Christos Kardana
  • Sue Chong-Hartley
  • Maarten van Alphen
  • Alex Bennett
  • Kate & Andrew McMichael

Over the last few days I have taken quite a 'clinical' look at why this particular crowd-funding project has worked and so, for visitors who are considering gathering support for projects in a similar manner, I have tried to break down the main reasons why I believe I have been successful:

  • I approached people that I know personally with projects that have considerable emotional interest;
  • The projects and stories are discrete and of real personal interest to me.  They are stories I want to tell and I am pretty certain I will be able to do so successfully;
  • The relatively small budget means that any contribution, no matter how small, will make an obvious difference – important when you are trying to attract as much support as possible;
  • The 'perks' on offer are of interest to a wide range of people and are a little more 'personal' than a simple print.  In particular, offering the opportunity to work with me on the final edit means that contributors will have a very real involvement in the final outcome of the project.

I suspect that if I had pitched a grand idea, with a huge budget and a less definite goal, I would never have reached my funding target.  In 'clinical' terms, crowd-funding needs an emotional hook and contributors must feel that their support, no matter how small, is going to make a real difference to the overall success of the project.

Would I try this again? I am already considering a much larger project for later this year which I will try and fund through a site such as KickStarter or IndieGoGo.  I have learned some valuable lessons from this crowd-funding project which I can apply to future funding campaigns on platforms that will give me a great deal of exposure.  I firmly believe that crowd-funding is a viable way of funding photography projects, although I now need to step away from my own fabulous and generous network of family, friends and contacts, and into the pulic domain.  That will be the true test of whether my ideas and stories are deserved of funding.

And I am off…  As the shoot progresses I will be emailing updates to my contributors directly, and will also be posting images on my FB page, tweeting away, uploading mobile images to my posterous site and writing up a few blog posts here – all dependent on internet access of course!  My aim is to share the experience of shoots like these with everyone that has made them possible.  Thank you once again!

Jan 31, 2012 | Categories: Thoughts | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Help me to help others…

At the start of February, I will be embarking on a journey to shoot three different personal projects in Sulawesi and Sumatra, all of which will support development and conservation efforts in these locations.  Why do I call them personal projects?  Because I have not commissioned to shoot these stories -  they are of great personal interest and concern to me and are stories that I think should be shared.

Sulawesi

In Makassar, Sulawesi, I will be working on two separate projects.  The first will be to document the lives of a group of families that live on a 'Trash Mountain' – Makassar's municipal dump.  These people make a living by searching through the tonnes of rubbish that is dumped there every day, recycling anything of value.  Children and adults work, and even live, in this horrendous environment.  The Sacred Childhoods Foundation has been working with these families for some years and has set up a 'Slum School' to give the children and families an opportunity to break out of the cycle of poverty through education.  This shoot will also form part of a long-term project I am working on – Fighting the Tide – Waste in Indonesia…

The second story in Makassar will focus on the residents of the Jongaya Leprosy Settlement.  Over 2,000 people now live there, of which close to 600 have leprosy.  In Indonesia, like many other places in the world, sufferers of this disease are mainly shunned by other people, including their friends and families, and victims of this disease are forced to try and scratch a living as best they can – most often by begging.  At the Jongaya settlement the residents have a chance to lead a more normal life.  They have set up their own support groups, run micro-finance and savings schemes and their own businesses, and are supported by several different organisations.  However, there is still a stigma associated with this disease and so my role will be to produce images that can be used for educational purposes – to show the people of Makassar and beyond that sufferers of leprosy are not 'cursed' or 'evil', but instead are just normal people afflicted by a disease.  Read an article about Jongaya here.

Sumatra

The last project will be in Sumatra, where I will be working with the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme.  The SOCP rescues and rehabilitates illegally held pet orangutans, strives to conserve remaining populations of wild orangutans and their habitat, and promotes conservation and awareness through education.  My main role will be to focus on the SOCP quarantine centre where former pets are treated and rehabilitated prior to release, a new release site close to Banda Aceh, and the work being done to protect peat swamp areas from illegal clearance.

Why am I doing this?

The end result for each project will be a collection of images that will be made available to each of the different organisations, as well as photo features that I hope to get published.  However, the ultimate purpose of this trip is it to help the people or animals that are central to these stories – the 'Trash Mountain' story will be used to raise awareness and funds to support the 'Slum School', the images from Jongaya will be used for educational purposes to help reduce the stigma of leprosy and the work with the SOCP will help promote orangutan and peat swamp conservation.

Help me to help others

I will not be paid for any of this work, nor will my expenses be covered by the organisations I am working for.  Instead I am going to try something new; an experiment. Crowd-funding.  What I would like to do is give people the chance to contribute towards the cost of this project, in return for a print of their choice and the chance to be part of the editing process as I select images that will used in the final features.  Think of it as pre-ordering a print and by doing so, supporting these different projects through the work I am doing as a photographer.

What will this trip cost?

I am budgeting roughly £1200 or $1950 for the entire shoot, broken down as follows:

  • My daily costs – approximately 25 shooting days @ £30 / $50 per day for food and accommodation.
  • Airfares – £325 / $500 for return flights from Bali to Makassar and Medan.
  • Other transport, such as motorbike rental – £130 / $200.

How can you contribute, and what do you get in return?

  • £10 or $15 – A unique postagram from one of the locations.
  • £25 or $40 – A 5" x 7.5" print of your choice, plus a unique postagram from one of the locations.
  • £50 or $75 – A 12" x 18" print of your choice, plus a unique postagram from one of the locations.
  • £75 or $115 – A 20" x 30" print of your choice, a chance to become part of the editing process, plus a unique postagram from one of the locations.

Contributors of £75 / $115 will get the opportunity to help me edit the final selection of images for each feature.  Using my online Photoshelter archive, I will upload selections of images and together we will decide which images will go into the finished feature – your thoughts and ideas will help shape the end result.  All contributors will also get email updates of the project and receive a credit – and massive thanks – here on my site.  Each print will be signed and will come with a hand-written description of the image and project.

All donations can be made safely and securely through PayPal – simply send your donation to mjjoldfield@gmail.com.  Please include your postal address – I will need it for the postagram.

Contributions will not be used to pay for any salary, just the day-to-day costs and travel expenses.

Can you help in any other way?

If you feel you cannot or don't want to contribution financially, you can still help me by sharing this post with your family, friends, work mates, Facebook contacts and twitter followers.  Link to it on your Facebook.  Tweet it out.  Tell your colleagues at lunch about what I am trying to do and why.  I am passionate about telling stories through my photography and by contributing towards this project, you will be helping me to explore some important issues.

To save you time, I have prepared a shortened link to this blog post – simply copy and paste this to your twitter or Facebook page – http://bit.ly/x6nXyV

Please help spread the word!

UPDATE 24/1/12 – As of this morning, I have managed to raise nearly £900 towards my target.  A huge thanks to all my contributors so far!  I still have a week or more to go, so please share this post wherever you can.  Thank you!

UPDATE 25/1/12 – I have received a few very valid comments regarding accountability/transparency.  This crowd-funding exercise was mainly aimed at people that knew me, or with whom I have had some contact with in the past.  In other words, they trust me to make good use of their contributions.  However I should also state that I will be accounting for all my expenses as I travel, and any excess, plus any contributions made over my total once the project has finished, will be passed on to the organisations in question.  I think this will be the fairest way to deal with any excess funds, should I be lucky enough to find myself in that situation.

Jan 21, 2012 | Categories: Photography, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , | 8 Comments »