Gaia Visual

29/02/2024

Do you want to see how small scale farmers in Kenya are reaping economic and environmental benefits from planting trees?

Of course you do!

This is a short film I made with the emminent Phil Clarke Hill with the Forest Stewardship Council about a group of farmers in Western Kenya who are planting trees on their smallholdings to supplement their income, relieve pressure on the national forests, and mitigate the effects of climate change.

If was a real privilege to spend time with these farmers, and learn about their lives, challenges and successes.

They are piloting a new FSC certification model for smallholders and we intend to be back to record their successful completion of the training later in about a year.

We ran a short training to support them in telling their own stories and documenting the process by shooting photos and videos with their phones.


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Welcome to Western Kenya - One of the most fertile and wet areas of the country. However, like the rest of the world, it is affected by climate change with u...

20/02/2023

We have arrived with the tree planters of Western Kenya!⁣⁣
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This was our first stop, Stanley and Linet's magical house, shop and smallholding.⁣⁣
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We are here filming a group of smallholders on their journey to sustainability certification by the Forest Stewardship Council™.⁣⁣
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We are also training them in video and photography, so they can also tell their own stories.⁣⁣
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Check out Stanley and Linet's wonderful murals...and Thomas The Tank Engine!⁣⁣
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19/01/2022

Is there anything in comms more immediate and engaging than a powerful photograph? ⁣⁣
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(And anything more frustrating than duff images of a project that you just *know* has so many good visual stories to offer?)⁣⁣
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As a comms person, you’ll know how much more engagement visual content gets compared to words alone, and how important good images are.⁣⁣
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But how can you improve the quality of photography you’re getting from your programmes on the ground?⁣⁣
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You’ll be flabbergasted to hear this, but…I have a solution. 😁⁣⁣
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More than one in fact.⁣⁣
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I can remotely train your colleagues in the field to take better pictures - with their phones. ⁣⁣
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In just a few hours we can:⁣⁣
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* dramatically improve their technical skills⁣⁣
* increase their confidence⁣⁣
* help them understand what makes a good story and character⁣⁣
* underline the importance and process of informed consent, ethical storytelling, captioning, and information gathering⁣⁣
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By the end they’ll better understand what kind of image you need so that you can increase engagement and support from your audiences.⁣⁣
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Or, I can come and deliver trainings in person…and work my magic with the camera while I’m there. ⁣⁣
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I can even combine training and making pictures by working closely with selected team members on an actual shoot and supporting them with 1-1 mentoring afterwards.⁣⁣
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Lots of possibilities!⁣⁣
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Please message me if you’d like to explore how I can help you take better pictures and tell better stories. ⁣⁣
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06/01/2022

Welcome to 2022! ⁣⁣
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Do you want to know one thing you can do that is pretty much guaranteed to help you lead a happier life this year?⁣⁣
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Practice gratitude.⁣⁣
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It’s one of the best ways to increase contentment, happiness, even joy in our lives - as I’m sure you’ve heard many times.⁣⁣
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So, this is a very simple photographic gratitude exercise, and it goes like this:⁣⁣
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Close your eyes and take 3 deep luxurious breaths.⁣⁣
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Open your eyes and intentionally think of things in your life to be grateful for - big or small. ⁣⁣
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I like to start with the miraculous human body: our senses, our ability to breathe, digest food, and sing a song all at the same time!⁣⁣
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Then, I invite you to explore your surroundings and take pictures of 5 or more things or beings around you that you are grateful for.⁣⁣
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You can do this anywhere - office, home, inside, outside.⁣⁣
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You can do this as a quick break in your day, or set aside 20 minutes and take yourself on a photographic gratitude walk.⁣⁣
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This sense of grateful presence is so useful and powerful to maintain in our daily lives, and particularly helpful for humanitarian and environmental fieldworkers who do demanding and sometimes stressful jobs.⁣⁣
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It’s one way to care for our own mental and emotional health, in order to continue to serve others.⁣⁣
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If you’d like more tips and resources to help you and your teams, feel free to reach out - I’m always happy to help. ⁣⁣
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#2022⁣⁣
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09/06/2021

Are you a communications specialist with important stories to tell about the work of your humanitarian or environmental organisation, but frustrated by inconsistent and unreliable photographs from the field?⁣
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Or a busy fieldworker who would like to take better pictures to do justice to the vital work your team is doing on the ground?⁣
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Swipe left to find out how Gaia Visual’s new online course can help you improve your organisation’s visual storytelling, quickly and cost-effectively.⁣
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08/06/2021

What does this portrait say to you?⁣
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In the distant depths of lockdown winter, I had the privilege of spending time with Nurse Jessica in the beautiful old stone courtyard of St Bart’s Hospital in London.⁣
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She is one of the many nurses who were redeployed from their usual roles to front-line Covid care.⁣
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It was an overwhelming and stressful experience for her, which she was able to process with help from the RCN and a psychologist at Bart’s.⁣
One of the things I love about being a photographer are these moments of connection and intimacy with a subject, where we collaborate to create an image that hopefully shows something of their character and essence. In this case I think, her resilience and strength.⁣
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In the last few months, I’ve been creating our new online photography course for fieldworkers, and I’ve been working a lot on how to help people create portraits and tell engaging visual stories.⁣
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If you’re a fieldworker or comms specialist, maybe you should sign up for the pilot and see if I made a passable stab at it?!⁣
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We launch in a few short weeks.⁣
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Places are limited.⁣
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More information in the link in bio!⁣
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01/06/2021

Light, colour, moustaction!

A soft warm kiss of light, as the sun slips languidly lower, over the dusty desert around Pushkar.

Look how the exquisite light makes the colours pop, how soft the shadows on these magnificent faces are.

Getting the light right can make the difference between a shot telling a clear, strong story, and it being distracting and even irrelevant.

For humanitarian and environmental organisations needing to tell strong stories about their important work, photographs of their projects are an essential resource.

Many comms teams are relying on pictures taken by colleagues on the ground - who are busy and often not trained to take pictures that do justice to their work.

And that’s Gaia Visual’s new online course comes in - specifically designed for these kinds of teams.

Fieldworkers - like medics, engineers, foresters and researchers - learn key skills and build their confidence and ability in just a few hours in their own time.

We cover the basics of photography, visual storytelling and ethics, so our partners create images to engage audiences that matter for funding and support.

We pilot the course v soon, and there are a few discounted places left - click the link below to learn more!

31/05/2021

It’s been a long while since I posted properly on social media.

This King of the Castle (and dirty rascal) is most of the reason why.

We’ve spent a LOT of the last year tootling and rootling around by the River Lea and the woods and marshes near where we live in Clapton.

Climbing magic oaks and gnarly willows,
Digging holes and building dens,
Paddling in the river and skidding around on the ice,
Making up names for special places: ‘Knotweed Beach, Octonauts Log, Dead Bird Tree, Wavy W**d Bridge...’

A poem by Mary Standing Otter, which has done the meme rounds for sure, popped into my head today, and the line: 'millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way’, brought this photograph to mind and a simultaneous sense of hope and heartsink.

I know these days of innocence are numbered, and I treasure every one of them.

And I feel the weight of the challenges we have bequeathed his generation.

The poem lights me up in times when those challenges seem too heavy. I'll post it separately in a minute (cant fit the word limit).

This time with Nico has also inspired exciting new ideas and projects, which I’ll be sharing more about this week.