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Regards Norman Norman Childs Mobile: +44(0)7831 519217 Tel: +44(0)1256 767611 Fax: +44(0)1256 767612 Website: http://www.greenshoots.co.uk Hi all Having just spent five weeks shooting for three major North American corporates in Ghana, I thought it might be appropriate to share some experiences in the light of the performance of digital kit is concerned. Such a trip, of course takes some organising, but that is one of the benefits I sell to clients as well as doing the photography. They have to do very little, other than tell me to get on with it and wait for the results to fall on their desks in due course. I do have a brief to follow, which amounts to no more than a list of the sort of imagery which will illustrate the R&A and investor relation presentations for the coming year. How I set it up and how I carry out the photography is entirely up to me. I fly discounted business class, which when divided between three clients amounts to about the same as a full economy ticket. I then get the additional baggage allowance - or I did, until my partner Pat came along too and used it all up! Eight cases 120Kgs. For those not in the know, discounted business class means flying with any airline to its hub and changing to the final destination, in this KLM to Amsterdam and onwards to Accra. It usually means a change over time of two hours, in the BC lounge, but it beats BA cattle class direct anytime. Now that KLM, Air France, Emirates, Continental, Northwest and Delta are all part of Sky Team, means that a large part of the world can be covered, in this way. Sadly, this time round there was a security problem at Accra so both the KLM and BA flights were delayed by six hours. That's travel for you in the 21st Century. Equally sad, is that Accra airport is not equipped to handle seven hundred passengers from two flights landing within fifteen minutes of each other. WA-WA! A long wait in immigration with no air-con. When landing in that part of the world, I am sure many of you will understand when I say that the heat, humidity and in particular the smell is distinctly Africa. Meet with client rep to settle bond to get equipment through customs without paying duty. Another three hours. Not because there is a problem, but it just takes that time to read through all the paper work (twice) and get four signatures on a bit of paper. Dash six porters to carry gear to 4 x 4. One comes back to complain one of his friends has taken his share - can he have some more! PO! Drive to Shangri La Hotel. Best Pizzas in town! Take it steady before launching into local groundnut stew and fufu! Dash porter to take cases to room. Fall into bed at 4.00am. Next morning - Saturday - late up at 7.00am. Breakfast, with friends from client also staying at same hotel transiting out to UK, SA or Oz. Meet up with Charles our Ghanaian driver for the next two weeks. Know him from last year's sortie so am comfortable about his quality of driving on Ghana's roads - no, dirt tracks - no, rutted fields under water much of the time! Change one hundred dollars into cedis - local currency. All 900,000 of them, which amounts to a huge brick in ones pocket. Dash porter 30,000 (�2.00) to load car with gear. Nothing to us, but nearly a day's wages to him. Set off at 9.00am for Waasa - our first location, some 75 miles from Accra. 2 hours later and we just reach the outskirts of Accra. Now we are motoring! Avoiding all the pot holes one side of the road, but hitting more on the other. Thank God for Lightware cases. Digital cameras and lighting gear all tucked up safely inside, but still getting thumped around the bumps. Stop for a comfort stop in a mud village the road. I find a palm tree, Pat declines. The advantage of being a male! Surrounded by happy smiling children wanting sweets. Oblige. By some bananas for lunch - the safest fruit to eat because of its skin. 12 bananas for 3000 cedis!(20p). Tropical rain storm slows progress, but we finally arrive at the camp in Waasa mid afternoon some six hours after leaving Accra. Fall out of Land Cruiser like a pummelled bag, but camp at Waasa is idyllic. Quiet, rolling countryside. Our bungalow with distant view of rain forest as far as the eye can see, is spacious and comfortable. Not much happening on Saturday afternoon. Check kit and shower before supper in the bar at the club in the evening. Meet up with old reprobates from last year, still propping up same bar! Beers at 30p per bottle taste really good! Food good! Sunday - meet MD of mine and do recce of entire site, involving process plant just coming on stream and exploration of gold baring ore, plus villages where we aim to get pictures of children at school, clinics and facilities such as water bore holes in the village centres. Discuss tactics, programme and content looking out from MD's pad high up on the hill surrounded by banana trees, paw paw bushes, mangos, fantastic coloured birds and the noise of the crickets and cedillas, plus the odd green and black mamba slipping away for peace. Sipping gin and tonics. Straight into action on the Monday, in the way the rest of the trip will be. Shooting exploration rigs, in the jungle. Gemini tables - where the gold is separated from other metals by gravity. The first gold pour at Waasa. Only 12kgs but worth 170,000 USD. The first pay day since the mine was taken over and refurbished and started working. They need a lot more of those to catch up with the millions of dollars already poured into the venture. Rain and more rain. Huge 100 tonne dump trucks stuck in the sandy soil of the heap leach pile, pushed out by bulldozers. WA-WA! Process plant has a problem with transfer of fine slurry bearing the ore. Production stops. WA-WA! More rain, lightning and deafening thunder. The essence is to create the drama and the romance of gold mining. Paddle around in the mud taking night shots of the plant lit up by sodium lamps, with excavators lit by electronic flash to provide contrast of light. Pull two guys into shot, four lighting kits standing in mud. Digital cameras getting damp in the humidity. Bitten by buggies and wondering where the snakes are! Oh joy! Repeat at various intervals during rest of week. WA-WA! Audiences with two tribal chiefs of local villages. These guys are normally well educated to university level and are very polite and formal. Offer bottle of whisky, which is well received plus 100,000 cedis. Make speech about clients commitment to helping in the welfare of the village. Photograph chief and entourage all dressed with much gold hanging around their bodies. Pat takes additional shots for Alamy. Photographed clinic with specially set up young patient, recently knocked down in a car accident. He said: I'm Peter, do you remember me from last year. Good shots of Ghanaian doctor and assistants (very important) treating him. Dashed him 50000 to go a little way of making up for him loosing his job, being unable to work. We didn't photograph the next patient - 13 year old girl with a three day old baby with an infected umbilical cord. The witch doctor had rubbed cow dung into it to ward of evil spirits! Photographed a local seamstress with her Singer sowing machine. Beautifully dressed in the local Kente cloth, out come the umbrellas for reflected flash in her little mud hut, to capture the scene. Dashed her fifteen(thousand). Children pumping water up from the bore holes.(sweets). More night shots to hide the crud lying around the mining plant. Reflections in the tailings pond, turn the carbon-in-leach plant into a floodlit bonanza. More rain. Stuck in more mud. WA-WA! Thank goodness Pat brought four bottles of gin out from duty free for revivers back at camp! Another gold pour. Lighting set up in advance. Guys in aluminium suits. Ore heated to 1300 degrees C. Two hours later pour takes no more than 30 seconds to complete. Experience knows how much to balance shutter speed with four electronic flash units. More revegetation shots, replacing the old pits with indigenous trees to green the land again. Guys planting and hoeing. Fill in flash for dark skins against the searing light of the tropics. Temperature rising to 36 degrees C. Digital camera to hot to touch. Oops! As they say in Ghana. No Worries! Download camera cards each evening onto laptop. Back up onto external hard. Then write to disc. Can't afford any WA-WA's! Uh-oh! Power cuts several! WA-WA! The week passes and Saturday sees us off to our next gold mine at Bogoso and Prestea. A two hour 4 x 4 drive over rutted tracks through the rain forest. Arrive at camp and into the Palace. A bungalow built last year and finished for our benefit. The loo didn't work and the shower went everywhere. WA-WA! Now the plumbing is fine and we are ensconced in luxury! Meet up with more old timers in the bar, with a year's tales to tell. This mine is going like a train and producing gold like there is no tomorrow. Up to eight bars a week! 1,800,000 USD's! Our affinity with this part of the world is that Pat's father worked at the Prestea mine in the 1950's and we have met many people in the town that knew him and caddied for him on the golf course. There have been many poignant moments of amazing meetings and coincidences. More night shots. Lots of people shots doing their work, lit by four flash units. More gold pours. One Pocket Wizard radio slave melted by molten gold. They scrape the gold off it to go back into the process again. Unit miraculously still works! Open cast mining shots of even bigger trucks and equipment. Investment is high here and the Canadians are keen to show their commitment to the area, both in jobs and the welfare of local communities. It is easy to become cynical in this regard, but I do believe they do have the local community interests at heart here, with many Ghanaians in key positions in the company. More shots of revegetation and this time alternative livelihood projects. Schemes to move into other areas of employment when the gold runs out in twenty years time. Photographed silk worm farming and the mulberry trees on which they feed. Fish farming where they now catch tilapia in nets by the traditional means in a dug out canoe. This is in a lake that two years ago we photographed the ore still being extracted. Gorgeous pictures against the light. Descend 1700 metres underground and walk 25cm up to our ankles in water and mud through old tunnels just high enough to stand up in. Six porters help to carry gear. Temperature 40 degrees C, Humidity 88%. Digital cameras take some time to dry as do flash units. Great shots in the stifling heat. Photograph the gold reef for the first time! Shots of miners at pit head. Laughing Ghanaians. They are clearly the most friendly of people in all of West Africa. Probably Africa as a whole. More rain and thunder storms. Lightening all through the night. No photography in pit today. Trucks stuck again the mud. WA-WA! Try to get to top of very steep hill in 4 x 4. It gets stuck. WA-WA! We climb with the kit to get view of an exploration rig and rain forest. A black mamba slithers across our path and disappears. It's his forest not ours! Shots of a school library in local town. Shots of the market place and its myriad of opportunities, its people, the food the traffic. Alamy should do well from Pat's adventures. Another week passes and we move on northwards to Kenyase to another gold mine in the beginnings of its life. This is real deep rain forest and the trees get thicker and larger. More shots of different drilling techniques as the strata has changed. This new client wants a sunrise image for the front cover of the Annual Report. Although being up at 5.00am each morning we still have to witness such an event after three weeks. Neither a sunset. More shots of communities and villages affected by the mining activities. We really get into villages normally so far from everyday civilisation. 4 x 4 gets stuck again in a river bed. Several hours lost before it is freed. WA-WA! Shots of nurseries where different grasses and crops are nurtured by way of replacement, even at this early stage. Rivers monitored for pollution and quality levels. More chiefs to pacify and photograph dripping with gold. Another five hour drive and onto Akyem for the same client. It is simply incredible how thick this forest is. Great shot of dust control equipment in a clearing with all the operators wearing the right kit. This takes sometime to set up. I disappear into the forest to get a view through the palm trees. A frond is in the way so I give it a strong pull. Bad news. I am covered in hundreds of stinging ants crawling all over me and the camera and tripod. Not to be recommended! WA-WA! After four weeks we finally get a sunrise. And a good one too. Such a relief. Client does not understand that although the tropics are very hot, that does not necessarily mean the sun shines all the time with blue skies. A six hour drive to now to Tarkwa, where the earth and ore moving trucks get bigger, reaching 150 tonnes. The terrain has become very rocky and tears the tyres to shreds within hours. A very costly operation, but the gold is available in significant quantity to make it worth extracting. Lots of shots people here in their different jobs in the running of the mine. More night shots and lighting effects. More rain and thunder storms. Temperature rises to 45 degrees C in the pit. Cameras roast gently and get covered in in fine white dust from the drilling operation. At least they dry out from the humidity very quickly. Food here is excellent in the bar at night. Pat informs client of an event in my life, who then arranges a birthday cake for me one evening. Any excuse to celebrate something is ceased upon by all the guys here and we imbibe well into the night. Life is good! The following morning Pat is suspected of having malaria and is rushed to clinic. A beautiful new building built by the mining company, staffed by an excellent doctor and nurse. Although already on the normal prophylaxis, she is given a Chinese herbal medicine which stops the disease in its tracks. It is a sworn antidote in this part of the world as those who work here permanently do not as a rule take any precautions. It is not approved by the British Medical Council. After another week, we bade our farewells for a return to Bogoso where we meet up with a helicopter to do two days of aerial photography over the 35km route of the concession. The pilot has been ferrying expats out of Abidjan for the past two weeks and is relieved to get an innocuous job with us. Seeing Ghana from the air at 800 ft is a wonderful experience - that is until we fly over a big pit only to see the earth rippling upwards below us, followed by tracer rockets reaching for the sky. No one had warned us but we flew over the pit just as a terrific blast erupted to loosen the rock in the mining process. A different view from usual, plus a few red faces all round in the bar that night! All ending in good fun as I get another birthday celebration. All the directors have flown in from the States and we are to photograph them in working mode a al on the mine. I am pleased with my close wide shot of them clambering on pipes and track with the process plant behind them. We hitch a lift back to Accra airport, with the helicopter, thus saving us the road journey of six hours. Dashed our driver 150,000 as a commiseration fee for him driving back to Accra without us. With ten cases of gear and personal luggage and four of us as passengers we just manage to fit in for the amazing trip back. Kotoka Airport is quiet on a Sunday afternoon and we land gently at the rear of the airport with no fuss. Our driver from Accra is not there to meet us. WA-WA! But a convivial French Managing Director of the helicopter company kindly takes us to our apartment in Accra, where we finally relax in the swimming pool before the start of our final week. New week - new client. Construction of roads, bridges and apartments and large buildings. We have been working with them for some time now and as always, the mix of people working and structures with a Ghanaian flavour make for interesting photography. It is mind boggling to see how the traffic simply pours down the same part of the road being constructed with large earth moving vehicles. A lady carrying plantains on her head is dashed to remain in the picture while we set up the equipment around her. The hustle and bustle of Accra has to be seen to be believed. Much like Mumbai and Calcutta, but with a greater friendliness. From interior photography of classy apartments with models, to a bridge construction where the train rattled through at 7.00am in the morning with passengers hanging on for dear life on the front of the engine and all down the sides of the carriages. WA-WA! Another typical trip comes to an end, with us being ferried to the airport on the Sunday afternoon. Check in time at Accra is now six hours before take off! I dash our driver for the past week, a weeks wages as a thank you for his help. So there you have it. Now for the tedious bit of re-downloading all the images onto our main computers and working on them and writing to discs and writing to discs and writing to discs and writing to discs ad nauseum. WA-WA! WA-WA! West Africa - Wins Again! Regards to you all Norman Norman Childs Mobile: +44(0)7831 519217 Tel: +44(0)1256 767611 Fax: +44(0)1256 767612 Website: http://www.greenshoots.co.uk =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
