22 January 2012 Last updated at 19:08

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Yemen's President Saleh 'leaves country' for treatment

Ali Abdullah Saleh seized power in 1978

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Yemen's veteran President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has left the country to travel to the US for medical treatment, Yemeni officials say.

In a televised "farewell speech" he asked for forgiveness for "any shortcomings" during his 33-year rule.

His departure came a day after MPs approved a law giving him immunity from prosecution.

The law was part of a deal under which President Saleh would relinquish power and leave Yemen.

A spokesman for Mr Saleh, Ahmed al-Soufi, said the president had flown out of the country late on Sunday bound for neighbouring Oman, from where he is expected to continue his journey.

Afterwards, a senior official in Washington said the Yemeni president had been cleared to go to the US for medical treatment, AP news agency reported.

'In your hands'

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Analysis

Sebastian Usher BBC Arab affairs editor

Yemenis could be forgiven if they had a sense of deja vu. All day there were rumours that President Saleh had flown out of the country or was about to. There was similar uncertainty when he left for Saudi Arabia after being seriously wounded in an assassination attempt last June.

Most people then felt that after months of mass unrest and growing civil conflict, his departure was an admission of defeat and he would not be returning. But he did.

This time, in what sounded like a valedictory speech, he stressed that he was not leaving for good, but would at some point return to lead his political party.

However long it lasts this time, Mr Saleh's absence will be seen as at least providing a breathing space for Yemen to hold new elections next month and try to make a fresh start - although the only candidate is the vice president.

"God willing, I will leave for treatment in the United States and I will return to Sanaa as head of the General People's Congress party," Mr Saleh earlier told party officials in his speech.

"I ask for forgiveness from all my people, men and women, for any shortcomings during my 33-year-long rule," he said.

One official who was at the early-morning event which brought together senior political, military and security officials, quoted Mr Saleh as saying: "Today, I leave the country in your hands.''

The president's aides say Mr Saleh also announced the promotion of Vice-President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi - who is set to replace him as president - to the rank of marshal.

Mr Saleh, 69, was badly injured in an attack on his presidential palace in June after which he spent several months in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment.

Protests continue

The capital Sanaa saw renewed protests on Sunday calling for him to be put on trial.

Demonstrators want Mr Saleh to be brought to justice for offences they say he committed, including the brutal suppression of a year-long uprising that left hundreds dead.

The bill approved on Saturday grants President Saleh full and irrevocable immunity from prosecution for anything he did while in office.

However, Mr Saleh's top officials get limited immunity, and could still be prosecuted for actions deemed to be terrorism, or for corruption.

The outcry over immunity for Mr Saleh shows no sign of abating

Angry protesters carried banners on Sunday urging MPs to reverse their decision on Mr Saleh's immunity.

"It is our duty... to execute the butcher", chanted protesters in Change Square - the hub of the democracy movement over the past year, AFP news agency said.

Security forces controlled by the president and his family, as well as armed loyalists, have been accused of killing anti-government protesters.

Earlier this month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said that anyone who committed abuses during the mass protests which erupted a year ago should not be allowed to escape justice.

Flying the flag for North Africa's 'Berber spring'

While there has been much talk of the Arab spring, ethnic Berbers have played a key role in the changes sweeping through North Africa, which is leading to greater recognition for their culture and language.

In Libya, the group which has been repressed for decades by the Arab majority, has led fierce resistance against Col Muammar Gaddafi's forces in their heartland - the western Nafusa Mountains.

Their flag - bearing the symbol of the Amazigh, as the Berbers call themselves - flew high as territory was captured and or shrouded soldiers as they were buried.

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“Start Quote

Our King Mohammed VI is a Berber... we are everywhere. They cannot ignore us any longer”

End Quote Abdullah Aourik Agadir O'flla editor

It was also raised aloft in celebration at the annual Amazigh festival in the southern Moroccan town of Agadir as Tamazight was adopted as an official language as part of the country's consitutional changes.

Fathi Khalifa - who serves on the Libyan rebels' governing body, the National Transitional Council (NTC) - says the uprising has given Berbers hope.

"For 40 years, Amazigh Libyans have been oppressed," he says.

"When the era of openness and freedom started, the Libyan people gave some good signals. Today, the situation is very encouraging."

During the rebellion, the NTC has waged a strong media campaign for the support of the Berbers.

Rebel-controlled Libya TV, based in Qatar, broadcasts daily in the Berber language, Tamazight, for two hours, while a newspaper in Tamazight is also published in the Libyan town of Jadu.

An ethnic minority in most North African countries, Berbers see themselves as being oppressed.

But it is in Morocco where the real meaning of the word Amazigh or "freemen" is finding resonance.

Libyan children have started learning Tamazight at new cultural centres

The North African kingdom recently adopted a new constitution which recognised the Berber tongue, spoken by 60% of the population, as one of its official languages.

According to Abdullah Aourik, founder and publisher of Agadir O'flla, a magazine devoted to promoting the Berber cause, Morocco could well show the way for others to follow and is confident that further change is afoot.

"Our King Mohammed VI is a Berber," he says, explaining that the Moroccan monarch's mother is a Berber. His father claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad, born in what is now Saudi Arabia.

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Berbers in North Africa

• Name is derived from "barbarian" as they spoke neither Latin nor Greek
• Before the Arab conquest of North Africa, they were successful agriculturalists
• In their own tongue they call themselves Amazigh and their language is Tamazight
• They were Islamised and even played an important role in expanding Islam in Spain but have always retained their original identity
• Algeria: Estimated at between 20% and 30% of the population - the vast majority in the northern Kabylie region
• Egypt: Estimated 30,000 in the oasis of Siwa near the western Beni Suef regions
• Libya: Statistics vary. The most reliable suggest that there are anywhere between 25,000 and 150,000
• Morocco: The census does not distinguish who is Berber, but it is believed that Amazigh speakers make up 60% of that population
• Tunisia: Estimated 1% of the population in Djerba, Tataouine, Metmata and east of Gafsa
• Canary Islands: The indigenous people were Berber. The language survived until the Spanish invasion
• Tuaregs are nomadic Berber pastoralists living mainly in southern Algeria, north-eastern Mali, north-western Niger and northern Burkina Faso

"He is not against us but is helping move our cause forward," Mr Aourik says.

As the Arab conquerors swept across North Africa in the 7th Century they brought with them their language and the new Muslim religion.

Both of these were adopted officially at the expense of the Amazigh language and culture.

But Mr Aourik is confident that greater equality is on its way.

"Fidel Castro's mother was Amazigh, from the Canary Islands, so we are everywhere. They cannot ignore us any longer."

Hope was also in the air at a recent Berber conference in Morocco's port city of Tangier when representatives from five North African countries, as well as the Canary Islands, met to develop a common strategy to achieve greater rights.

Tunisian delegate Khadija Ben Saidane said the demand for the recognition of the Berber language, culture and identity was more likely to succeed in her country since the ousting of long-serving ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January.

However, different Berber dialects and social and political aspirations have stymied efforts to achieve a unified series of demands across the region.

Berbers have formed a cultural organisation called Tinas.

"Its name is inspired by the historical name of Tunisia that was faked by the Arabs who tell us that this word comes from the Arab verb meaning 'to be a companion', while tinas means 'key' in the Amazigh language," she says.

In Egypt, around 30,000 Berbers live in the oasis of Siwa near the Libyan border and the Beni Suef regions. They feel an Arab identity has been imposed on them.

According to Egyptian representative Amani al-Weshahy, they want to replace the Arab culture that has dominated since the time of independence leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Buses in Agadir, south-west Morocco, now have the city's name in the Arabic, Amazigh and Latin scripts

"We are now asking for the rights of the various cultures to be recognised," she said.

So far none of these Berber activists support making a clean break with their home country.

Algerian Amazigh, mainly from the country's northern Kabylie region, are promoting regional identities which, they feel, will give Algeria stability within a federation.

In the end the meeting in Tangier called for the establishment of a North African union, to embrace all the region's identities, languages, cultures and beliefs.

This would transform the greater Arab Maghreb from an Arab-dominated region into a confederation of states that would take the Berber voice into account.

But without a single unifying dialect and caught between very different situations in each country, their bid for unity and greater rights could easily be once more lost, especially if radical Islamist groups take the place of the deposed despots they helped to oust.

BSSM Intern, Joel Hill, received a call that was a wrong number on his cell phone. A lady was trying to reach her granddaughter. Fellow intern, Ben Church, whispered, “Dude, get a word of knowledge for her.” Joel felt like God was saying that she had arthritis in her hands, so he asked her if she did. She did. She said, “Yeah, I do, actually!” Ben said, “Right knee!” The woman also had had a full knee replacement in her right knee and was missing two-thirds of her kneecap. When Joel asked about her knee, she said, “Do you go to Bethel?” Joel said, “Yeah, I do, actually.” It turns out she comes here on occasion. She used to be in a wheelchair, but she was healed here. She still had difficulty walking because of her knee though she didn’t need her wheelchair anymore. She had arthritis in her hands and a messed up arthritic arm. She couldn’t fully move it, so she was going through physical therapy. Both knees had pain and she couldn’t fully move one, so she had difficulty walking and lacked mobility. Joel asked if he could pray for her. He began to pray, and as soon as he did, she got touched by the Holy Spirit and started both weeping and laughing. The prayer was only about a half minute, and she was healed. She could suddenly walk with no limp and no pain, and she could fully move that leg. And her hands had no more arthritic pain. All the pain left her arm, and she could swing it around, lifting it fully up and moving it. She started weeping again, “I won’t need physical therapy now.” She continued, “I was just with my intercessor friend yesterday, and she told me I just needed to get filled up again.” She’d been praying for that and asking God how to get filled up again. She was just talking to the Holy Spirit about it and speaking in tongues right before calling. When Joel answered the phone, she felt goose bumps all over her body. He called her back after to find out what all had been healed. As they were talking, she said, “I feel the Holy Spirit touching my back?” Joel said, “Did you have a back problem?” She said yes, and he asked how it felt. She said, “It’s all gone.” Just as they were talking, the Lord touched her back and completely healed it.

That's worth the price of a wrong call!

President extends sympathies to dead mountaineer's family

LORNA SIGGINS

PRESIDENT MARY McAleese has extended her sympathies to the family of the Irish and international mountaineer Joss Lynam, who has died after a short illness.

Mountaineering Ireland has also paid tribute to the mountaineer, walker and orienteer who was regarded as the father figure of Irish climbing. Mr Lynam, who was in his late eighties, died in a Dublin hospital on Sunday evening.

A spokeswoman for President McAleese said she was sending a message of sympathy to Mr Lynam’s wife, Nora, daughters Ruth and Clodagh and family.

Mountaineering Ireland chief officer Karl Boyle yesterday described Mr Lynam as a “remarkable man”.

He said that he was a “shining light within climbing since his foundation of the Irish Mountaineering Club in 1948”, who had played a key role in development of hill-walking, orienteering and adventure sports in general.

“He was known around the globe, serving as expeditions committee president of the Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme, and he played a key role in initiation of the Association for Adventure Sports and development of the national adventure centre at Tiglin, Co Wicklow,” Mr Boyle said.

The Dublin-based engineer participated in his first international climbing expedition in the 1940s, and led his sixth expedition in 1987 to the 7,500m Himalayan peak, Zhangzi, when he was 67 years old and was recovering from a coronary bypass.

He was one of the first to be contacted when Irish Everest expedition leader Dawson Stelfox reached the 8,848m summit of the world’s highest peak on May 27th,1993.

He was author of many guidebooks to climbing and hill-walking, and edited Irish Mountain Log for a number of years.

Mr Lynam’s funeral takes place in Mount Merrion Church, Dublin, at 10am on Thursday.

The news that fresh doubts are being cast on the Korean Oh Eun-Sun’s claim to have summitted Kangchenjunga has raised again the spectre of false summit claims among the high altitude mountaineering community. Miss Oh had been engaged in a race with the Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and Spaniard Edurne Pasaban to become the first woman to climb all fourteen of the world’s mountains over 8000 metres, a race which most people, including Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner herself, had accepted she had won.

We had our own unproven doubts about Oh Eun Sun’s ascent of Gasherbrum I in 2009, having chosen ourselves to turn back at Camp 2 on the mountain two days earlier, but we gave her the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that eleven people claimed to have summitted that day, and eleven was ‘too many for a conspiracy’, our assumption being that there would be at least one honest person among those eleven who would have owned up had the summit not been reached.

Kangchenjunga (8598m) on the far horizon

While I don’t intend to cast any doubt over Miss Oh’s ascent of Gasherbrum I, I was forced to revise the view that eleven is too many for a conspiracy on Baruntse last month when an expedition tour operator claimed on their website that all sixteen of their clients and Sherpas had reached the summit, when we had seen quite clearly from base camp half of them turn around at the significantly lower second summit. It seemed so unnecessary. It was -30C at base camp that morning, 1700 metres lower, and must have been closer to -50 up there on the summit ridge. We were surprised to see figures up there at all, as deep snow over the preceding days must have buried the fixed ropes that the same team had put in place a little earlier. It had undoubtedly been some achievement by the team to be up there at all, so why discredit that achievement by claiming something that everyone at base camp could see wasn’t true? Let’s be explicit about this: around half of their team undoubtedly did reach the summit in very difficult conditions. We could see from a plume of spindrift that winds were picking up on the summit ridge and the risk of frostbite must have been high. It was certainly a wise decision by those we saw turn at the second summit to turn back when they did, and they could be well pleased with their achievement in getting that far.

But it’s clear when cocooned in their own little world high up on a mountain, climbers forget that on a popular peak, there are likely to be people watching. This wasn’t the first time I had experienced this. While descending from Gasherbrum I on that same occasion Oh Eun-Sun reached the summit, we saw two climbers on the traverse beneath Gasherbrum II’s summit pyramid, a few hours from the summit itself, at a time when they later claimed to have reached it.

The consequences of lying are predictable. If you tell one in these circumstances, you are fairly certain to be doubted about subsequent summit claims. On big expeditions there is always great interest about success and failure among all the teams on a mountain, but after we’ve all gone home and memory of the expedition fades, in the overwhelming majority of cases most people don’t really care whether you made the summit or not. The only person who cares is yourself, so why lie to yourself when you know you didn’t get there?

Climbers on the summit ridge of Baruntse - do they think nobody can see them?

Yet it still goes on, and it has made me wonder why people do it. So here is a list of eight reasons why false summit claims might be made.

1. Fame and fortune

While most full time mountaineers earn their living as guides, an increasing number are finding alternative means of financing their careers, such as having books published about their adventures or engaging in lecture tours and presentations. Many position themselves as inspirational speakers or experts in team building to the corporate world. Reputation and success at what they do are vital in order to be able to promote themselves. Although failed attempts often demonstrate a climber’s experience and good judgement, they don’t have quite the same appeal to the general public as a successful summit, particularly as more and more people take up mountaineering, and achievements such as climbing Everest or the Seven Summits (ie. the highest mountain on every continent) become more commonplace.

2. To impress a sponsor

The above reason accounts for what you might call the elite of mountaineering, people with a special talent or aptitude for climbing and survival, who organise their own expeditions, and try to do something that nobody has done before. The vast majority of high altitude mountaineers, however, are amateurs with an ordinary job, and while most of these finance expeditions through their work and carry out their climbing during holidays, career breaks or between contracts, an increasing number of amateurs are managing to get sponsorship from companies, often outdoor equipment manufacturers, to climb standard routes on commercial peaks. Such climbers commonly engage tour operators to provide ‘base camp only’ services to look after them at base camp, but look after themselves higher up the mountain. Sponsors generally only want to sponsor ‘successful’ climbers, so again there is a temptation for people to lie about a summit attempt to keep their sponsor happy.

3. To impress clients

There are now a great many expedition companies competing with each other to get climbers with differing levels of experience to the top of high mountains. There are a great many criteria which go into choosing a suitable expedition tour operator, and often previous success on a mountain is given priority over the tour operator’s safety record. While an operator may be making the correct decision to abandon a summit attempt in adverse weather conditions, it’s a decision that may affect their ability to tempt clients to join their expedition the following year. In such a situation there is an obvious temptation for them to stretch the truth a little, particular if they abandoned their attempt very close to the summit.

The summit pyramid of Gasherbrum II, another mountain where it's very easy to see climbers from down below

4. To claim a summit bonus

Most teams operating on 8000 metre peaks in the Himalayas use Sherpas and high altitude porters to carry out much of the work higher up the mountain, such as carrying loads, setting up camp, fixing ropes and looking after the clients that need looking after. On summit day there is usually a bonus system in operation to give Sherpas an incentive to help clients reach the summit. A summit bonus of $500 USD is a significant amount of money in a country such as Nepal, and while Sherpas are often more honest than their employers, it is possible to imagine the following scenario. A single western climber, perhaps one with sponsorship from a clothing manufacturer who is keen for them to succeed, has hired a Sherpa to climb with him, but very close to the summit the weather closes in and they’re forced to turn around. The climber wants to claim the summit, but the Sherpa is with him and knows they haven’t made it. The climber offers the Sherpa his summit bonus as a bribe in exchange for his silence, the Sherpa accepts and nobody is any the wiser.

5. Self delusion

One for the psychologists rather than the mountaineer, so I’m just going to touch on it briefly and allow others better qualified to read into it what they will. I’ve already mentioned that in the long run climbers who lie about their summit claims are really only fooling themselves, yet still there are people that do it, and continue to convince themselves until they eventually believe it’s true. Why, I don’t know. How, I don’t know either, but it does happen.

6. To persuade a client to turn around

To be a successful mountaineer requires a great deal of determination to push yourself up to the limits of your endurance and beyond. Many are so determined, and push themselves so far beyond that they exhaust themselves, and are no longer capable of making rational decisions on summit day. They don’t even know where they are, or how far they have to go to reach the summit, yet still they are aware that they have to keep going. These climbers are often guided, and their guide can see that it’s time for them to turn around but is unable to convince them. On such an occasion, to save the client from further misery, and often to save their life, the guide might be justified in telling the client they have reached the summit when they may only have reached a subsidiary peak or a slight rise in the terrain. It’s possible to imagine a situation where the guide is then too afraid of the consequences to own up to his deception back at base camp, and the deception is maintained.

The Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda, a place notorious for poor visibility

7. They don’t know any better

There is a hilarious passage Bill Tilman’s Snow on the Equator about an expedition to the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda with Eric Shipton in the 1930s. Most of the mountains in the Rwenzoris have multiple summits, and it is an area of rain forest renowned for wet and miserable weather conditions. Tilman and Shipton climbed a number of summits but often had no idea which summit they were climbing until a gap in the cloud offered them a momentary glimpse of another summit close by. Anyone who has climbed in Scotland will be very familiar with this scenario. The fact is, if you’ve not been there before, in times of poor visibility it can be very difficult to tell whether you’ve reached the summit or not. On a slightly less justifiable note, a number of 8000 metre peaks, such as Broad Peak, Cho Oyu and Manaslu, have fore summits some distance from the true summit. For reason 3 above, the expedition operator might tell their clients they’ve reached the summit when the client is unaware that it’s not the true summit. A prime example of this is the popular trekking peak Mera Peak in Nepal. Nearly every tour operator takes their clients up Mera Central without telling them that Mera North, just a stone’s throw away, is 15m higher.

8. It was only a rumour

Base camps on popular 8000 metre peaks are rife with rumour, gossip and one-upmanship. Everyone is keen to know how everyone else is getting on, and they become even more keen when summit days are approaching and teams are beginning to break trail towards the summit, as it affects the timing and success of their own summit attempts. But information is spread by word of mouth in a series of Chinese whispers, often getting distorted or embellished in the process. Sometimes a rumour is spread that such-and-such a person has reached the summit, only for it to be quashed later by the very person it has been claimed about.

So here are the top eight reasons. I realise this is an emotive and controversial subject, but false summit claims seem to be getting more common, and certainly more high profile, and although I really shouldn’t care, they always raise my temper a little. Just like drug taking in athletics or cycling, they cast their shadow over the vast majority of honest people who would never dreaming of lying about their achievements, by causing them to have their own summit claims doubted. I would love to know your thoughts on this topic.

Tags: 8000ers baruntse bill tilman edurne pasaban eric shipton everest false summit claims gasherbrum gerlinde kaltenbrunner kangchenjunga mountaineering nepal oh eun-sun rwenzori mountains seven summits

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A Photographic Workout

So, you want to get better at taking photos. Ok, great. Are you ready to work at it? I often get this comment either in the form of a question or a declarative statement. It reminds me of my own declarative statement that I keep coming back to: “I need to lose weight.” In many ways both of these problems and their solutions are similar.

For both losing weight and getting better at photography, you need to be determined and willing to work hard to see progress. This is not something that’s just going to happen. You will no more find yourself waking up 30 lbs lighter than you will waking up one day and putting a camera to your face, miraculously start shooting like Steve McCurry. It simply doesn’t happen that way. It takes many hours sweating at the gym, pushing yourself to burn those calories, changing old eating habits and creating new ones. In the same way, it takes the novice photographer hours of working with his kit and a willingness to develop new habits. Neither will happen without time and determination so let me suggest a workout regime for you.

In the gym, you need to know what equipment is used for which purpose. You can’t expect the bench press to tone your legs. It won’t happen; it wasn’t designed to do that. In the same way, you need to know what your camera can do. Learn those buttons and dials. They are not there just to make the camera look cool—they all have a purpose. You may never use them all but you still need to know what they do. Get very familiar with your gear. Not only do you need to know what these buttons do, you need to know where they are even with your eyes closed. No kidding. Every photographer can tell you stories how he or she missed that “Decisive Moment¹” by lowering the camera from their eye to try to find the ISO or meter button. When you take the camera away from your eye you risk losing the shot. Trust me I know. Here is a drill you can do. Take your finger and touch each button on the camera and say the name out loud. After a few minutes try to do it with your eyes closed. Repeat this till you no longer have to look at the camera. Now try it up to your face. Keep at it till you no longer need to lower the camera from your eye to change a setting²

Not only do you need to know what your camera buttons do, you need to understand what they do. It’s no good knowing where the shutter speed dial is if you don’t understand what the shutter speed does and what it will to do to your image. You need to not only know but also understand your camera. Make no mistake, there is a difference. In fact, this was probably the hardest thing I had to do early on. Knowing that the aperture affects the depth of field is one thing; understanding what the aperture does is another altogether. Realizing you can keep your aperture at f/1.8, but by moving closer or further away from your subject, your depth of field still changes shows an understanding of how this all works. So does knowing that an image shot at f/1.2 evokes a completely different feel in an image shot at f/22. The same goes with shutter speed. Get familiar with what shutter speed you need to use when a person is walking, a bicycle is passing or a car driving to give you just the motion blur you need. Also, understand how the ISO is connected with both the aperture and the shutter speed. Understand the “exposure triangle³” and how each part of that triangle affects the other. And for goodness’ sake, take the dang camera off program mode and start shooting in manual, aperture priority or shutter priority! Contrary to what some folks say, program mode does not stand for “professional”. In fact, it is a crutch that controls creativity. It’s like those vibration machines I see at the mall here in Asia. They tell you, you will lose weight with them but the only thing they do is make you lazy and keep you from your hard workout. Program mode will only keep you from learning your craft. Photographer, Bambi Cantrell has a great quote, “Most young photographers can’t tell an f-stop from a bus stop.” Don’t let yourself be one of those.

Every weekday I go to the gym, walk the treadmill and work on my back and abs but the one area in which I fail is my eating habits. I’ll never lose the weight I want because I can’t keep from snacking and returning to the trough. The same thing happens with neophyte photographers. They are going to have to stop some of those old bad habits and start developing new ones. I don’t know all your bad photographic habits but I bet I can guess a few. How familiar does this list sound?

1. Framing your subject in the center of the image
2. Shooting with a telephoto at a shutter speed too slow to hand hold the camera
3. Getting excited and shooting in a hurry, thus not composing your shot
4. Not keeping your sensor clean
5. Not “zero-ing out” your settings after or before each shoot
6. Did I say, shooting in a hurry?
7. Using your popup flash just to get the picture
8. Using any flash directed straight at your subject
9. And lastly, shooting in a hurry

Developing new habits and patterns will keep you from getting a fat database of junk.

I used to have a trainer. He would always harp on me about the details, the small things that I was doing wrong when working out. He would gripe at me for turning my wrists wrong when I was doing curls or the position of my back when doing squats. He kept telling me that if I wanted to see results more quickly to concentrate on my form. I might be pushing this analogy to the breaking point here, but you might call understanding composition and visual weight (how your eye moves around an image) as developing good form in creating an image. There’s a reason why we don’t generally stick the subject in the center of an image. It creates a stagnate image, one without movement. There is a reason why we shoot low to the ground when shooting children; it creates intimacy and keeps them from looking overly vulnerable. Why does shooting in the midday sun make things look flat and boring? These are all examples of ways to take control of the photo and make it yours to communicate your vision–what you want to say. Understanding these things and turning them from happening by luck to happening by intention makes you a better photographer.

No workout regime will work overnight. As I said earlier, it takes time, determination and hard work. So it is with photographers. You can do all the above, but you have to keep at it. You will not see the results overnight. It will take weeks, maybe months. But you will see results. Just as fad diets don’t work for long-term weight reduction, fad photo techniques and image processing will not improve your photography. You can’t get good by cutting corners. Lay off the HDR for now and focus on the skills and techniques listed above and in a few weeks or months you will start seeing a vast improvement.

I hope this helps and gives you some encouragement. If you live in the Penang, Malaysia area, I will be teaching a short three-hour introduction to photography at my house in the mornings of Dec 11th and Dec 15th. Email me for more information.

1. A term popularized by Henri Cartier-Bresson ↩
2. One wish of mine is that camera manufacturers would make the LED readout in the viewfinder brighter. This would make it a little easier to know you got the right button under your finger. ↩
3. This is a term that I think David duChemin coined. At least I first heard it used by him in a workshop we taught together four years ago. It refers to the interconnection that the aperture, shutter speed and ISO have with each other in creating the perfect exposure. ↩

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Blog, Opinion, Photography, how to and tagged with Bambi Cantrell, Creativity, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photography, steve mccurry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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I like the excercise in paragraph 3!

Four dates in 2011 for this great 8 day Pyrenean Mountain Journey in the Ordesa and Cirque du Gavarnie regions have just been posted on our website.

June 5-12; June 12-19; Sept 11-18; Sept 18-25

Click on the thumbnail for more details.

Follow that microlight: Birds learn to migrate

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News

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Sky high: The BBC joins Dr Johannes Fritz and his flock on a leg of their odd migration

"Yes, people think we're crazy," says Johannes Fritz, with a wry smile.

And surveying the scene, it is easy to see why.

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Biodiversity: The threat to nature

• The cost of damaging Planet Earth
• A new washing powder?
• 'Ten years' to solve nature loss
• Website to whet wildlife appetite

We are in a playing field, in a small village in Austria, close to the Slovenian border.

In it stands a makeshift camp, with all the usual outdoors paraphernalia.

But it is the large aviary, containing 14 northern bald ibis and two human "foster parents" who are gently tending to their avian flock that really draws your attention.

That, and the microlights parked nearby.

For the past couple of days, this unassuming spot has been home to the Waldrapp team, "Waldrapp" being another name for the northern bald ibis.

But the group will not be staying here for long: they are part-way through a month-long effort to take these birds on a 1,300km flight from Germany to Italy.

However, this is no ordinary migration. The scientists are teaching the birds their route by getting them to follow a microlight.

Building trust

The project forms part of a wider conservation plan to save this critically endangered bird, explains Dr Fritz, leader of the Waldrapp team.

The northern bald ibis has not fared well in the wild

The northern bald ibis was once common throughout Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East.

But today, because of habitat loss and hunting, it has vanished from Europe, leaving diminished populations in Morocco, and just a handful of these distinctive birds in Syria.

Along with other groups around the world, the Waldrapp team is looking into the feasibility of reintroducing birds born in captivity into the wild.

But it is not as simple as opening a cage and setting them free.

Without any knowledge of their migration route, which is usually passed on by their parents, the zoo-born birds cannot survive.

The foster parents spend all day in the aviary with the birds

So, inspired by a similar project in America called Operation Migration, the scientists teach them their flight plan instead.

But it is a time-consuming process. It begins in spring. As soon as the birds hatch, they are introduced to their new human foster parents.

Then for the next few months, the human stand-ins spend almost every waking hour with the birds, feeding them, grooming them and playing with them.

Sinja Werner, one of the two foster parents in this year's team, says: "We try to be their parents, as best as we can. It's important that they trust you."

Finally, this bond becomes so strong that the birds are willing to follow their parents anywhere. Even if they are sitting in a microlight.

Conservation crisis

While no doubt expensive, people-power heavy and time intensive, the Waldrapp project forms part of a growing movement that is taking conservation further than it has ever gone before.

Gone are the days when saving the flora and fauna was just about safeguarding habitats and putting species protection plans into place.

Continue reading the main story

EXTREME SCHEMES

This is the first in a series of three articles looking at the radical measures conservationists are turning to to save species from extinction

Thanks to the fact that we are in midst of the biggest extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped out, some researchers are saying we have to go further.

As well as concentrating on the traditional methods, they claim that we need to invest in and embrace more extreme, more experimental approaches, from hands-on reintroduction programmes like these, to shifting species around the globe and even cloning.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Species are so low in numbers that the only way to deal with their survival is through more intervention”

End Quote Professor John Fa Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

Professor John Fa, director of conservation science at Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, says: "We are talking about over 6,000 species under threat, we are talking about pollution increasing, we are talking about habitat fragmentation, we are talking about invasive species. There are many, many threats and these threats are still there.

"In some situations, species are so low in numbers that the only way to deal with their survival is through more intervention, and I think it is pushing us with coming up with more innovative ideas, it is pushing us into coming up with extreme ideas."

And this project certainly fits the bill. The next morning, we get to witness the team in action.

The idea is to get the birds to follow the foster parent in the microlight - but it does not always work

As dawn breaks, the camp emerges from the darkness into a hive of activity, getting ready for a planned 200km flight that should take the team across the border into Slovenia.

The final preparations are made, and foster parent Sinja takes one last look at her birds before climbing into the microlight.

With a quick burst of speed, it powers across the dewy meadow before gliding up into the air, the fog-drenched countryside becoming ever more distant below.

The aviary opens, and the birds also take to the skies, encouraged by their adoptive mother who repeatedly yells into her loudspeaker: "Here Wileys, come come".

But, it soon becomes clear that the "Wileys", an affectionate nickname for the birds, need a bit more convincing.

Every now and again the foster parent's efforts seem to be working, and the birds gather in a tight V-shaped formation behind the aircraft.

But moments later they scatter, accompanied by increasingly desperate yells from above, pleading with them to come back.

This bizarre mid-air procession continues back and forth for the next 90 minutes, but today, just like naughty children, the birds simply will not do what they are told.

Finally, the team calls it a day, landing a measly 10km from where they set off.

Back on track

A few weeks later, Dr Fritz gets back in touch.

The team travelled only 10km along their planned route

After this early setback, he said, the birds started to behave, eventually completing their 1,300km migration and arriving in Italy in record time.

He said: "The migration 2010 was fantastic and extraordinary.

"For the first time, the flight speed and the flight distances are fully comparable with that of the wild migrating birds."

With the migration now complete, this flock now have their "flight plan" in place, hopefully allowing them to make their own unassisted migration back to Germany when the time comes for them to breed.

But whatever the future holds for these birds, one thing is certain: these kinds of hands-on conservation efforts are far from easy - or predictable.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco (right), pictured with Gabonese president Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba earlier this year. Photograph: Abdeljalil Bounahr/AP

Leading Moroccan journalist Ahmed Benchemsi has difficulty speaking about Nichane, the vibrant Arabic-language news magazine he started four years ago, in the past tense. A passionate advocate for secularism, gender equity and individual rights and a vociferous critic of Islamist ideologies, Benchemsi was forced last Friday to close Nichane after major state-owned corporations subjected it to an advertising boycott that drove down revenues by almost 80%.

The motivation behind the boycott is absurd to the point of hilarity. But since it reflects the official policy of King Muhammad VI, no one is laughing. Last year, Nichane ran an opinion poll asking Moroccans to rate their satisfaction with the monarchy. Ninety-one percent expressed approval of His Majesty – a stratospheric approval rating like that would be the stuff of sweet dreams for western politicians.

Yet the palace declared the very idea of such a poll intolerable, and the king beyond questioning. According to Benchemsi, the security apparatus was worried not so much about this particular poll but what other, future polls might reveal. "They pretend to like democracy, but don't want to bear any of its costs," he muses.

The royal response was swift. The police burnt 100,000 copies of the poll issue in the printer's plant. Not long after, the palace-owned Omnium Nord-Africain Group, Morocco's largest corporation, pulled all advertising and began pressuring other palace-linked businesses to follow suit. Nichane's francophone sister publication, TelQuel, also a bestseller, could withstand the pressure thanks to a diverse cohort of international advertisers. But the same multinationals have little advertising interest in Morocco's Arabic press. Despite being the country's most popular Arabic magazine, Nichane was effectively asphyxiated by the regime.

When he founded TelQuel in 2001 at the age of 27, Benchemsi hoped to enjoy the increasingly open media environment under Morocco's new king. But reporting under the tagline "Le Maroc Tel Qu'il Est" – "Morocco As It Is" – meant wading into dangerous territory: the king's salary, Morocco's secret service, and even reinterpreting the Qur'an. Initially, Benchemsi's legal woes were merely civil: a member of parliament sued for defamation and he received a suspended sentence for libel.

Then, in 2006, Nichane ran a cover story on Moroccan humour, printing popular jokes about the king, religion, and other taboo topics. Moroccan Islamists declared Nichane worse than any Danish publication, and the prime minister banned the magazine for several months and closed down its website. Staffers were charged with "damaging the Islamic religion, lacking proper respect for the king, and publishing of writings contrary to public morals".

In 2007, Benchemsi himself went on trial over simultaneous editorials in TelQuel and Nichane that used a familiar tone to address the monarch. Police raided the printing plant to destroy copies before they hit the stands. Benchemsi was interrogated for two days in custody and charged with "disrespect for the king". Three years later, the case remains pending – while other journalists face an even harsher fate. One spent seven months in jail earlier this year for criticising the state. Another publication was forced into bankruptcy after being subjected to a massive boycott similar to the one that brought down Nichane.

Of course, high-profile trials carried a price for the regime, offering Benchemsi a platform and free publicity for his articles. When a judge challenged Benchemsi as to why he dared address the king with the term "brother", the young editor quipped: "King Hassan II always told us he was the father of all Moroccans – so that entitles me to respectfully call his son my brother." Even the judge could not suppress a laugh.

The regime's advertising boycott, therefore, marks a strategic coup. Nichane has disappeared without any trial or police raid. Morocco, which hosts the World Economic Forum later this month, has hit upon a PR-savvy way to suffocate dissidents. Unlike, say, Iran, which faces global condemnation for torturing and killing journalists, Morocco and other "moderate" regimes are increasingly leveraging their command economies to crush independent media without bloodying their hands.

For Benchemsi, the real loss is his prominent platform for spotlighting some of the Middle East's top young liberal journalists. Nichane – one of very few Arabic-language publications broaching such topics as gay rights and religious freedom – offered average north Africans a powerful cultural counterpoint to growing Islamist forces. The real winner from Nichane's untimely demise is thus the very Islamists the Moroccan monarchy claims to hold at bay. Perversely, autocrats and Islamists share an interest in silencing the liberal voices that threaten their respective power bases: the state apparatus and the "Arab street".

Benchemsi might seem a provocateur who overstepped the boundaries of his "native culture". But it bears noting that he launched his publishing venture the same year Osama bin Laden launched the September 11 attacks. Middle Eastern "culture" remains up for grabs, with both Islamist and liberal voices vying for market share. To defeat extremism, the west must help nurture genuine liberals like Benchemsi, who offer their audiences authentic alternatives to both the Islamists' poisonous ideological brew and the autocrats' stifling vision of modernity without freedom.