This past weekend, I was on assignment in Angol, Chile for AmeriCares, the US-based humanitarian organization. It was the final visit to the field hospital that AmeriCares donated to the city of Angol, thanks to the financial support of the GE Foundation and MetLife. The assignment consisted of documenting the six modular tents that house the maternity and pediatric ward of the town’s public hospital which was left heavily damaged after the massive earthquake on February 27th.

It was my third time heading to Angol, a town of roughly 50,000 nestled beside the Nahuelbuta National Park. On the first visit, the earthquake damage was apparent simply walking down any of the central streets; rubble piled on sidewalks in front of buildings and houses that had cracks running throughout the walls. It had the air of a town that had been shook fiercely and even over a month after the earthquake, still found rubble to expel from collapsed structures. My job then was to document the technicians from BluMed, the company that fabricates the field hospital, who directed a small team of Chilean military recruits in the rapid deployment of the tents.

The second visit occurred a couple of months later and Angol started to regain its lively small-town bustle as the capital of the Malleco province. Life was seemingly back to normal despite large fenced off areas and new construction sites to replace fallen buildings. Much to the surprise of myself and Claudia (my lovely assistant and fiancée), the pizza place we had enjoyed on the first visit had been demolished and only a zinc-plate fence hid an empty property space between its neighbors. We had eaten at a place marked unsafe and ready for demolition… and lived to tell about it! This visit was about documenting the hospital for its inauguration while important local figures met with AmeriCares staff to discuss the present and future of the donation.

This visit aimed at photographing, filming, interviewing and gathering multimedia material of the field hospital running in almost full capacity. A few pieces of equipment were still being shipped, but overall, babies were being born, doctors were caring for patients and one tent had even been transformed into an Intensive Care Unit.

Below, a short selection of images taken in Angol’s field hospital dedicated to maternity and pediatric wards and an ICU.

Alas, I didn’t head out to La Tirana this year, instead I decided to cover the events at the National Sanctuary in Maipu, a borough of Santiago. But I wanted to challenge myself so it wouldn’t be as easy as grabbing the Canon 5D with her inseparable lens, the venerable 24-70mm f/2.8 L.

The challenge was set: Photograph the two days of festivities using only one lens and one body.

Nah, I wanted to go back to my photo roots, where I began with an old black brick of a Minolta x700 film camera and the standard 50mm lens that it came with. So much excellent work has been done with a 50mm field of view that I wouldn’t be able to secretly complain in my head that I didn’t have the right gear. In fact, David duChemin‘s motto came to mind: “Gear is good, vision is better.”

Problem is: I don’t have a 50mm prime lens at the moment.  So I grabbed my 28mm f/1.8 and stuck it on my trusty ol’ Canon 40D, giving me an effective field of view of 44.8mm, close enough to 50.

The challenge was set: Photograph the two days of festivities using only one lens and one body.  A call to basics set out to provoke my eye as well as any habits — good or bad — that may have developed from years of reliance on zooms. This is a brief selection from the two days of documentation.

One of the key messages within this ebook really strikes a chord with me as I plan my South Africa trip. Expectations play a part in any voyage and especially affect photographers as we by nature are visual people and are constantly seeing, creating and manipulating images in our heads before the actual click of the camera.  No matter where one goes, there is always a preconceived idea of what the place will look like and quite often we’ve got a stock of images in our heads that spring to mind as we prepare shot lists or sketches. David notes that our visual rolodexes can’t be ignored and must therefore be confronted. You’ll have to read it to find out how to do that.

…a photograph goes from mediocre to good to great depending on the strength of the layers of impact.

The other important lesson David presents is probably the most succinct way I’ve heard of describing the methodology of analyzing an image; he calls it “Layers of Impact.”  He writes, “a photograph goes from mediocre to good to great depending on the strength of the layers of impact.” Drawing from many photographers’ inability to go beyond meaningless superlatives (“Awesome! Great photo!”), he suggests a condensed way of looking at images and drawing out the Whys and Hows of image deconstruction.

It’s quite a useful way of putting it and it sure is more practical than the semesters of art history filled with semiotics, Marxist and feminist theory that I studied in college. In conclusion, at exactly a month away from my first trip to South Africa, David’s advice about expectations and creating better imagery through layers of impact comes at no better time. As I’ve noted in my other reviews of Craft & Vision’s growing library of great ebooks, there’s no better bang for the buck than these mini-passports into the minds of David duChemin and his creative cronies. Click here to visit Craft And Vision.

After photographing for the MOP (Ministry of Public Works) while the Minister watched the Chile-Honduras World Cup match with 250 construction workers, I turned my attention to the streets of Santiago, pulsing with the sounds of vuvuzelas, cheering, honking, and screaming for joy.

I knew this mass of people would be headed to Plaza Baquedano (popularly called Plaza Italia) for the traditional celebration of sports events.  So I headed there to capture the reaction to Chile’s 1-0 victory over Honduras.

Afterwards, I submitted my photos to Demotix.com, a UK-based company that aims to help distribute citizen journalists’ images.  I figured I’d submit since I wasn’t working for any agency at the moment and I’d try the Demotix experience out.

My photos are published in this photo gallery and I’ve also had the fortune to have a photo selected for the Demotix Widget, which is a widget that’s added to various newspapers and online media sources.  I found my photo displayed at opendemocracy.net as seen here.

I’ll definitely be submitting more photo stories to Demotix.

UPDATE: One of the articles was published last Saturday in La Tercera, Chile’s most widely distributed newspaper.

contrasts, color, and Pehuenche cooking

The recurring theme of Araucania in autumn is the beautiful contrast of reds, yellows, and oranges with the evergreen colors of the Araucaria trees, the deep blue skies and cold snowy tops of the volcanoes.  Part of our tour took us through the budding touristic town of Curacautin, the jumping off point to head off to see the Tolhuaca, Lonquimay and Llaima volcanoes.  We headed to Malalcahuello, a town south of the national reserve of the same name, where we visited a beautiful waterfall that comes complete with a native Mapuche legend about a Romeo and Juliet-esque love sacrifice.

Our early morning hikes were graced by a crystalline frost on everything in sight, from the red and orange nothofagus tree leaves to the frozen tire tracks on the ground.  The golden light of the rising sun eventually melted it all away, giving way to the intense colors of autumn interspersed with the tall Araucaria trees.  These trees have bark that even looks like it belongs on a dinosaur, and give a certain Mesozoic look to the whole environment.  In fact, if you saw the film “Walking with Dinosaurs”, some of it was filmed in these very forests.  I fully expected a tyrannosaurus rex head to appear at any moment, bursting through the lush green canopy while we hiked among these majestic living fossil trees.

One morning, we decided to hike in the private reserve “Ruta de los Pehuenches” or Route of the Pehuenches (“Pehuen” = Araucaria and “che” = man), where various natives continue to occupy the land for summertime grazing of livestock and the traditional collecting of the piñon, a pine nut from the Araucaria trees.  The piñon is an interesting nut, with a distinct taste and a smooth texture that’s one of the prime ingredients in the Mapuche kitchen.  We were able to witness and taste first-hand the art of using the piñon to its culinary extreme with Anita Epulef, owner of Mapu Iyagl, a gourmet restaurant that serves amazing Mapuche food.  Anita explained to us that her kitchen only uses ingredients that are local and in-season, echoing the ecological local foods movement of more “developed” nations.  I was so impressed with the ability to turn piñones into flour and go on to make a huge variety of foods that I’ve vowed to buy myself an old-fashioned food grinder and try it at home.

Last month, I worked on an assignment for Delta Airlines’ SKY magazine, illustrating an article by none other than Andrew Zimmern, he of Bizarre Foods fame on the Travel Channel. I had a great time working on this assignment, even though I had only recently moved to Puerto Varas and wasn’t exactly a stone’s throw from Santiago.  But when a job calls, I answer.