I dont think I have ever seen one of my images printed that large before! It certainly will be nice to be greeted with my own work as I head into the office each day. I only have my iPhone with me today, so here is a snap of it up on the wall in the office.

This guy was quite a character and really enjoyed looking at his reflection in the glass of my camera lens! Here is my favourite photo of him sitting proudly in his house in this traditional tribal village.

When I return back from the Philippines, I will put the rest up :)

I must say I am rather pleased with the results, but they do make me miss my D700 somewhat!

We started the day early by heading out from Guatemala City and heading north to the rural town of Salama, situated in the mid country (after grabbing a hearty breakfast to prepare for a long day ahead). The journey took around 2 hours by car, and we spent most of the time climbing high into the hills that surround Guatemalas many volcanoes. The scenery in Guatemala is stunning and literally translated, Guatemala means “the land of many trees” and you can certainly see why as the landscape is covered in trees.

After arriving at the Plan office in Salama, I had time to quickly greet our staff in the field office before we went straight to our first location, the Official Rural School in San Gabriel.

The school is located in San Miguel Chicaj municipality which shows high rates of poverty and malnutrition, areas in which children are more vulnerable. The school has an attendance of about 300 hundred primary school children. This area is indigenous Maya Achí and the locals speak their own language, Achí.

Plan support quality education, non violence, promoting education for girls and creating a safe environment for children to learn. Particularly in this school, Plan has been working most on providing water & sanitation to promoting hygiene and also provides resources to train teachers.

You can see here some of the children enjoying their time at school, and the teacher in her traditional dress.

Next we then went to a local house to meet a local community group. Plan works with local community members to train and promote children’s and women´s protection against abuse and mistreatment. In San Francisco´s community (here in Guatemala) most of the participants are women.

Doña Alicia (the owner of the house) is a member of a protection committee in her community. She and many women get together periodically to share and learn about how to stop violence and raise their children with love.

Carmen (pictured below) is participating in these meetings. About two months ago her husband was very upset and threatened to poison himself: “I knew he will not do it, he just wanted to scare me!” Her niece was passing by her house and called the police, when they arrived, Carmen´s son begged to the policeman not to take his dad to jail, so they didn´t. But Carmen´s husband attitude started to change and become more gentle. Neighbours are learning to work together and support each others in order to end violence in the community.

Doña Alicia: “I love that girls can go to school and not to repeat our stories. Before man wouldn´t let us go to the meetings, but now we have learn how to do more things ourselves and how to counsel our daughters.”

Plan works with teenagers and children in the same communities as well. They work on the same subjects but from the child’s perspective. They learn to know their rights and to protect themselves. Helena (15): “My mother got married at 18 years old, but I want to study to become a nurse attending emergencies.”

Even though I could only understand small snippets of the conversations that were going on (as my translater was busy talking to them) you could see real heartfelt emotion being expressed by the people attending the group. For the first time in their lives, attitudes towards woman are being changed and it is often starting with the men that these woman are married to. Woman in this area, through education and support, are now able to be free from abuse both mentally and physically and you can clearly see the relief in their eyes.

Abuse by men within a society is not something that can be changed overnight, but clearly these projects are having a positive effect and to see woman whos lives are changing for the positive is quite a humbling experience for me. All of this of course is going to affect the children here too, as well all know that children will learn directly from the behaviour of their parents. These kind of issues will not be addressed overnight, but affecting change now will have a lasting effect on the community.

Our next visit was onto a village bank. Plan will try to promote the increase of income in the poorest of families and works with a bank to provide these “Village Banks” in which mostly women have acces to loans to earn money.

San Francisco is a Mayan community and women will knit hüipíles (blouses) cortes (skirts) and produce textiles to sell in the market as napkins, mantle piece and house garments. This will help families to improve their quality of life. Women get together in groups and commit to pay the loans on time. The project will include woman´s trainings on saving and business administration.

Marta´s family have asked for a bank loan to by materials for the loom. In San Francisco community, Mayan women wear traditional güipiles (blouses) knitted in the loom. It will take 10 days to finish the güipil Marta is knitting, she chose the colours but each pattern has a special meaning and she will use them as she learned from her mother, and grandmother.

Plan promote youth participation training in community development and youth participation in decision making processes and children´s rights. Focused on girls to recognize their own potential, they will attend periodically and organize groups to share their experiences and learn to become active citizens in their communities.

This particular photo was taken as the parents were talking about the struggles that they face daily, and the look in the children’s eyes as they listened to their parents was quite a solemn image.

Then it was time for our last visit of the day, a center for childrens rights. The idea behind these community training courses is to teach young woman about their human rights and offer help and guidance with being a woman in their society.

Judith (14) Judith is a youth mother of an 18 month girl. She lives with her family and sometimes she fights strongly to change the women´s role in her family: “my mother is the same as my grandmother, why is that you want to study? Girls don´t need it!”, “my big brother and sister helped me to finish my primary school. I want my daughter to go to school until she graduate!”

Attitudes are changing within these societies with regards to woman and their beliefs too. I think the most poigniant moment for me was when we asked this group of young woman “do you understand what happiness is?” and “have you ever felt joy”. These questions fell onto blank faces as they struggled to understand the question. The only response from one of the girls was “we are supposed to raise children and support our men”. This really hit home for me, and in fact when we asked them “have you ever seen your mother happy?”, the answer was no.

This really goes to show what life is like for woman in these rural communities and highlights how important it is for charities like Plan to do the work they do. I for one have certainly had my eyes opened again, and I will be doing all I can to help.

Well, after all of this it was a long day of travel and photography ending up with a cool Cerveza and a good meal in a local restaurant. It’s at those moments that you can reflect back on the work that we do and how even small things can make a real difference in peoples lives.

Loads more photos from the trip can be found here: http://www.lomayani.com/guatemala-2012/

Thanks for reading, and here are a few behind the scenes photos (taken by Miguel Vargas Corzantes, Plan International Guatemala) (with a video to follow soon).

I am still doing the write up which will be added to the page next week, which will give the story behind the photos and the context in which Plan works with these rural communities.

I have started working on selecting and processing the images and video from the trip and I will post them here soon. I saw some amazing sights over there, but more importantly, I have been exposed to the kind of work that we do at Plan at a social and personal level and to be honest, it has inspired me greatly to ensure that I do as much as I can to help out.

I will post a full writeup and images here in the next few days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you want more information on the work that we do, visit the Plan International website.

Time to go and grab what sleep I can :)

Speak to you all soon from sunny Guatemala :)

Yup, thats a pretty profound (and somewhat dark) way to start a blog post, but thats what happened to me towards the end of last year. Lets just say that 2011 had its up’s and some rather major downs! Here we are in the new year now, and I hope that this one is considerably better than the last, and so far its certainly shaping up that way.

My next two trips are planned and just around the corner. These aren’t going to be particularly lengthy ones, but they will certainly be an experience for sure!

I will be heading out on Jan 19th to go to Guatemala. As I am travelling on business with the NGO I work for I shall be going with two hats. Firstly, I will be in Guatemala city in the national office working on my day job (IT Management) and then once I have finished that, I will be heading out to the field with my documentary photographer hat on. From here I will provide Plan with photos of the children and the projects that we run out in rural Guatemala. I will write a small documentary piece to highlight the kind of work that we do in central America, and I will post the story here.

I won’t lie that I am a more than a bit nervous about going to Guatemala, as its not exactly what you would call a “safe” country, especially when you have a backpack full of expensive gear, so the idea is to dress appropriately and not display any wealth whatsoever. I guess I shall have to keep my wits about me, be sensible, and hope to return safely! Oh, and I need to stop reading the government safety reports… they don’t make fun reading!

Luckily, from here things get somewhat easier! In early March I am doing the same kind of work but this time in the Philippines, but as I need to fly via Thailand, I shall take a weeks holiday in Bangkok beforehand. I am going to take an internal flight to Chang Rai, and go and visit the golden triangle, perhaps even crossing the border into Laos for a bit of trekking and photography.

After my hols, its time to fly back to Bangkok for a connecting flight to Manila, where I will spend time again on my day job, and then into the rural provinces to provide more photo documentaries. I have not finalised my itinerary for the Philippines yet, but there is talk of visiting hill tribes (which would be right up my street!).

So that’s my coming months, which is exciting, and I am planning a trip to Vietnam later in the year (another large personal project) so more details to come.

This will be the first time that I use my new camera out in the field too. At the end of last year I sold all of my Nikon equipment, which was incredible painful. I knew I wanted to change to a much lighter system (the nikon and pro glass was just too heavy), but I was also forced into the change when a major change in my personal circumstances forced me to sell all my gear to get myself somewhere to live and rebuild my life again. I have deliberated over the choices for many months, before deciding to make the jump to the Sony a77 (with its amazing 2.8 kit lens) and a Minolta 85mm 1.4.

Many people think I am crazy going for (a) a crop sensor camera after having full frame, and (b) a Sony, when they are a relatively new brand in the dslr market.

Well, Sony may not have the most amazing reputation for cameras, especially in the pro market, when the competition is in the form of the venerable Nikon and Canon, but they do make some very interesting tech.

Coming from an IT background, I am very interested in technology and sony’s a77 is certainly no slouch in that department. With a 24mp sensor I can render out huge amounts of detail in my photographs, which for my style of photography, is perfect. Also, I love the EVF (Electronic Viewfinder). Its crystal clear and can provide me with a view that in certain circumstances cannot be done with a normal viewfinder. For example, when I shot the photograph of the young Maasai girl in her hut, the interior of that hut was almost pitch black (well it looked that way as the contrast of light and dark was huge). I was focusing with a torchlight as the camera was struggling, but trying to see her through the viewfinder was near impossible, so the EVF with its ability to provide a view in almost darkness is perfect.

I also love some of the other things it does so well, 12fps, no mirror so nice and quiet to use, really useful rear LCD that can be angled any way I like, internal image stabilisation, weather sealing… the list goes on.

Of course, all of this is great on paper, but the proof will be in how it performs in the real world in challenging situations… this is where my Nikon D700 was the king. Well I hope I haven’t made a huge mistake, and only time will tell, but I will post up the images and stories here for you and you can see how the new breed of SLT cameras works in the field.

I am really positive about this year. 2011 was a bad year for me in general after returning from Cambodia and having my life torn apart, literally. Its been a hard struggle to rebuild my life from such pain, but since then I have found the perfect job with an NGO that I really respect, have found a new place to live and my independence and strength is returning. Winning a few awards recently has helped rebuild my self confidence and shows in the work I am producing now, it really is the best that I have ever managed to create. I am working on building my portfolio in the hope of securing more work within the NGO market for my type of photography. Thankfully, I have a job that offers me the chance to travel to the kind of places that I love to photograph, so things are definitely on the up.

Thanks to all of you that helped me through those dark times (you know who you are), but especially my father for making me realise that the strength to keep moving forward was always there within me, I just had to dig deep and find it.

So to those of you still reading at this point! Have a great 2012, I hope its full of many adventures for us all, no matter how big or small :)

Click here to view the embedded video.