How To Photograph The Moon

East Africa: The Unholy Alliance in Somalia - Media, Donors And Aid Agencies

The season of giving has started -- and it not even Christmas yet. Leading international aid agencies, including the United Nations, Oxfam, Save the Children and Islamic Relief UK, have launched massive campaigns to save the thousands of Somalis who are facing hunger in their own country and in refugee camps in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked donors for $1.6 billion in aid for Somalia and the World Bank has already pledged more than $500 million towards the relief efforts.

The appeals for food aid have been accompanied by heart-wrenching images: children with swollen, malnourished bellies, emaciated mothers with shrivelled breasts that no longer lactate, campsites bursting at the seams with hordes of skeletal refugees. Almost all the large humanitarian aid agencies are rushing to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to witness, photograph and film the crisis. We have seen these images before -- in the mid-1980s when Mohamed Amin filmed the famine in Ethiopia that triggered the trend of rock stars becoming do-gooders. Since then, famine has become the biggest story coming out of Africa -- and one of the biggest industries.

Media-savvy aid agencies

Images of starving Africans are part and parcel of fund-raising campaigns, as are journalists. As one leading humanitarian official told the BBC's Andrew Harding, the UN can produce endless reports, but it is only when the images of starving people are televised or placed on the front page of newspapers that politicians take action.

The problem is that the story that they see or read is not as impartial as they would like to believe. More often than not, it is told by aid agency staff on the ground or independent filmmakers. News organisations that do not have the resources to send reporters to far-flung disaster zones such as the camp in Dadaab, have entered into an unholy alliance with aid agencies, whereby the aid agencies' spokespeople -- wearing T-shirts and caps bearing the logos of their respective organisations -- "report" the disaster via satellite to international audiences. Even when journalists are present on the ground, they rely almost exclusively on aid agencies' version of the disaster. The narrative about the famine in Somalia has, therefore, become both predictable and one-sided.

Dutch journalist Linda Polman believes that the "unhealthy" relationship between journalists and aid agencies does not allow for independent, objective reporting, and is often slanted in favour of the agency doing the "reporting".

How to Photograph Landscapes With the Moon | PhotoNaturalist

Including the moon in a landscape can sometimes add a nice sense of balance or contrast to an image, like in the photo above (taken in the Colorado Desert of California).

But, photographing a landscape with the moon is a little tricky and requires some patience.

One of the problems is that the moon won’t always be where you want it to be. And, since the moon is so far away, sometimes it’s hard to get both your foreground AND the moon in sharp focus.

So, here are a few tips for dealing with these problems:

The best time to photograph a landscape with the moon is when the moon is nearly full. During this time, the sun will rise as the moon is setting (and vice versa). This is perfect because the moon will then be low on the horizon during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset.

To photograph a landscape to the WEST, plan your shot for the day AFTER the full moon at sunrise. The moon will set as the sun rises.