Grok Steady

sports shooting

Eric Vandenbrink catches a strike at Baribo field in Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia, playing an impromptu "friendly" against the national team on 12 September 2009. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

I've never really shot sports -- some skateboarding, which is more like an action portrait, where you know what's going to happen and sometimes  light the scene, and surfing. But not traditional sports. In September I got to shoot some pretty decent games, at two really different events.

One was a trip a bunch of journos made to watch the Cambodian Baseball Federation play at their field in Kampong Chhnang province. Baribo field is bordered by rice paddies and cows and water buffalo roam the outfield. The federation exists because a Cambodian-American, Joe Cook, fell in love with the sport and wanted to bring it to his homeland. He runs the national team and the federation from Alabama, where he's a cook at a Japanese restaurant, and dude sends out some of the wildest and funniest emails and game updates.

A Cambodian national team player points out to the ball boy a foul ball that landed in the rice fields that surround Baribo field in Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia, on 12 September 2009. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

So a bunch of us roll out from Phnom Penh, four or so hours away to catch this game, break out the ice chest and make some hot-water hot dogs and just kick it. And then the announcer calls an "international friendly" with the Westerners. No one saw that coming. Half our team played barefoot, and we got smoked 17-4. 

Korea's Beon Yeonha drives past China's Zhang Fan in the finals of the FIBA's 2009  Asian Women's Basketball Championships in and the Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai, India, on 24 September 2009. China took back the gold from Korea 91-71 in a repeat matchup from the last championship two years ago. It was China's 10th gold. Beon scored the game high 29 points. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

A couple of weeks later, I was in Chennai, India, for a World Association of Newspapers conference. Our paper got a bronze award for cross media, and the CEO took me out there. The conference was way more technical newspaper stuff, printers and such, and nothing editorial, so I ditched, and ended up finagling myself under the basket for the International Basketball Federation's Asian women's basketball championships. I didn't know anything about these teams, but damn, China played a super physical game and dominated Korea, but Korea's Beon Yeonha is scrappy as hell.

China's Chen Xiaoli covers Korea's Jung Sunmin in the finals of the FIBA Asian Women's Championship in Chennai, India, on 24 September 2009.  China took back the gold from Korea 91-71 in a repeat matchup from the last championship two years ago. It was China's 10th gold. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

Sports is fun. Makes me wish I had bigger, faster glass.

Cambodia's new economic adviser

Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled and convicted former premier of Thailand, speaks Thursday, November 12, in Phnom Penh in his controversial role as economic adviser to Cambodia.

I didn't really think about how shooting video in a scrum would be so different from shooting stills. For one, instead of my neck aching it's my shoulder. Yesterday morning's Thaksin address was a little messy, and I ended up shooting off-tripod entirely. And squeezing myself into a spot, where a still photog kept knocking the back of camera.

Lesson: When this happens, shoot *lots* more cutaways.

full story

A moment in 16:9

A Thai soldier weaves a fishing net he says he will use back in his home village on Sunday, 05 July 2009, at the Keo Sekha Kirisvarak pagoda at the Preah Vihear temple complex. The UN cultural agency UNESCO listed the temple as a World Heritage site in July 2008, which has touched off an armed standoff with Thailand.

I'm really digging the widescreen aspect ratio.

Another frame grab in the paper today, this one running four-columns, from Preah Vihear, which has been a flash point and war zone with Thailand for a year. That said, a soldier's life there can still get pretty chill. This unarmed Thai soldier  is just calmly doing his thing only a few meters away from Cambodian troops. 

Full story here.

One out of 50i

Khem Samnang, 19, sits in a meeting session where drug rehab patients openly discuss transgressions and problems in a group to receive support on Thursday, 16 July 2009. After three years of using yama and ice,  Khem Samnang has been at the DARAC drug rebailitation centre, in the capital's Phnom Penh Thmei district, for one month.

Today's paper has my first picture taken with my new camera, which isn't a dSLR but a Sony Z1 camcorder. At the same time, the Web version of the article has a short complementary video done with the Z1. I've already been clowned by buddy Vinh and Post photo editor Tracey for making photos with the biggest still camera since the Speed Graphic, but working with the all-in-one kit is pretty decent.

Hello world!

Default blog head, but it says it all. Alongside an overdue revamp of my static Web site, this here spot is where you can find news and new stuff on a more regular basis.

Like, for instance, the small paper in Cambodia that I work for recently winning two big regional awards. The photo above was one in a five-picture submission that won excellence in news photography at this year's Society of Publishers in Asia annual awards. The entry, focusing on The Phnom Penh Post's coverage of forced evictions of some 3,000 families to make way for a commercial project, included three images from Vandy Rattana's photo essay and a single from reporter Chhay Channyda. I shot the picture above the day the company contracted by Shukaku Inc, a private developer tied to a ruling party senator, began pumping sand into the lake to fill it in for redevelopment. The lake, Boeung Kak, is the capital's largest natural reservoir, and its reclamation will displace at least 3,000 families. The boy in the photo lived next door to the pipe, and was thus one of the first to be forced out.

The Post also won an award for exellence in human right reporting, for May Titthara and Christopher Shay's article on Cambodians trafficked into forced labor on Thai fishing boats.

Our entries were in the local newspapers and small magazine group, competing against veterans like the South China Morning Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review as well as newcomers The Jakarta Globe and MINT. The heavyweights division had the IHT, FT, Time Asia, Newsweek and Asian Wall Street Journal duking it out. And, the only outfits in our group that came away with multiple first-place awards were the Post and SCMP. Not bad for the new kid.