Hakuna Matata Global Voices! My experience photographing the summit

As the summit was aproacching many things I had to take care of: luggage, documents, more than a thousand emails to be read from the summit, money, but most important of all, the camera and my fellow friends photographers with whom we will form the photography team. Faisal (@faisalkapadia) and Rezwan (@Rezwan). What a challenge for all of us!, So I had to make a checklist before departing to make sure everything was in place:

-laptop for uploading
-SC card memory 16 GB
-flash and batteries
-batteries for the camera
-lenses

Everything was ready. Oh yes, the plug adapter! it differs from the one we use in Argentina. Now, where the hell will I find in Argentina an adapter for kenyan plug which is the same as in England. Nowhere, specially in Rosario was impossible. Oh yes, in the airport duty free they have. solved!

Once in the summit I had to make sure the light in the conference room was good, where should I sit, where to charge the laptop..will I upload on line the photos? yes! Solana Larsen, who wrote a couple of emails to us, gave us a lot of courage and we gave her a lot of work since she had to tag the pictures or may be wasnt her? or may be was Faisal and Solana tagging?..I dont know, but the tagging was done online as well. It was of big help. I was hoping the internet conection would be perfect, and for me it was. never had problem with uploading.

Happy faces, aren´t day?

At the beginning I was using the wrong hash tag so a new email comes: use #GV2012 …wonderful! 5 days of photographiyng everything and in the meantime, surviving to the jet lag because at noon time I had to make magic to focus and keep my eyes open. Kenyan coffee makes is magical. 6 hours difference was too much. But also through the camera´s lense you can see other people were jetlagged as well, it wasnt only me! (I was thinking putting here the photo of someone jetlagged, but no, I dont want to be mean!)

In the meantime I wanted to listen to every conference  and specially learn from everyone new things since I had a lot to learn. Many ideas came to my mind of new things to do when I get back home. I learned more about Rising Voices, Advocacy, Threatened Voices and I insert myself in this wonderful world called Global Voices. The conference, every hour, made me feel at each instant I was getting more and more involved.

Richard teaching me the word Poa! which means it´s cool!

Oh no I run out of memory, Ok clear the memory in the laptop. Since I take all the pictures in .JPG and RAW format, each photo takes a lot of space, but I helps me a lot when I edit the photo, specially with brightness, cropping, shadows. So each picture I had to edit it, shrink the size and then upload into Global Voices Flickr account 

After the second day I was more relaxed at taking photos and did not have the pressure that I put to myself of doing my best. During the whole summit there was one constant thing that happen everytime: seing happy faces through the camera made it a lot easier at shooting. Yes, because everyone was happy, others thrilled of emotions. When people share knowledge, there is always someone able to receive and that makes a wonderful group. When people speak up for those that can´t, there is always someone able to listen.  To me, what makes Global Voices a wonderful group is the ability of talking and listening, sharing and receiving, writing and reading.

So, Hakuna Matata Global Voices! Everyone´s voices will be heard, are you listening? 

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3 Thoughts to “Hakuna Matata Global Voices! My experience photographing the summit”

  1. I guess mine was one of the jetlagged faces. Thanks for not posting those photos.

  2. haha, I knew it. Was nice meeting you through skype. Hope next time we can meet personally!. thank you for the opportunity! :)

  3. Solana

    Psst yes it was me helping to tag the photos behind the scenes! You guys did an awesome job. Thanks for everything :-)))) Solana

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