FYI

http://www.vimeo.com/doczone

A short video of 1 minute exploring the highlights of the trip to Egypt.

It is now available on Vimeo in HD specifically at http://www.vimeo.com/2149112

The Vimeo home page for all videos is http://www.vimeo/doczone

SuezFarmers, originally uploaded by Sam Rabeeh.

Photographed at the Sinai side of the Suez crossing in the summer of 1997.

I was on my way to El Arish by bus for the first time. We crossed by ferry and rested at a cafe. I wandered around and ran into these gentlemen who quickly started to ask me all kinds of questions about who I was, where I’m from, what I was photographing and why…they didn’t stop! Egyptians are curious about other nations, people, their customs, what life is like. I noticed this is even more profound on my last trip this year.

Like most people in Egypt, they wanted to have their picture taken. I promised these men a copy of this picture but I’ve been unable to make it back to the crossing since to deliver on that promise. Soon hopefully.

Taken with: Pentax AE1 – 50mm

To say things have been busy is an understatement. The research in Egypt has made me anxious. Many stories not convcieved sprouted as the journey developed yet i don’t feel closer to discovering how exactly a story on identity should unfold. There are numerous smaller stories that I feel should be explored, community development, Christian Egyptians and their experiences, Democratic protests, foreign companies taking advantage of the state of Egyptian politics and society….but before that…..

Recovering from a media drive failure no less, yes there is backups thank god….

Flickr account is setup so there is some progress….

http://www.flickr.com/photos/srabeeh/

Struggling to find out why nobody at the mosque wants to assist. I began the cleanup myself only to find needles used by drug users under the water tank. The person who cleans only cleans once a week, and I confirmed he doesn’t even do that. How can I organize or mobalize people to clean up if even Muslims, or people involved in the organization of the Mosque don’t see the problem? I began the cleanup myself only to find everyone wanting to remove the vacuum or broom from my hands and ask “Why are you cleaning?”

I would insert an image in this post but the latest wordpress changes are a pain in the arse. Hopefully I’ll have it fixed soon.

Been very busy filming on the subject of Egyptian Identity, community development and Medical clinic at the Mosque El Rabeeh, the status of christians in Egypt and the myth that they are not welcome and live a live of burden under the Egyptian’s.

Unfortunately no progress has been made in home village of Uwlela in regards to garbage. Many people still throw it in the street, burn it, including plastic and because it was thrown in the water on a regular basis, the government has decided to put a concrete canal in it’s place and cover it with Earth. No longer are there beautiful trees, and no longer can people throw garbage into the water.

Why are there  no garbage cans lining the main street? I could go on but in short I plan to change this.

I plan to organize a garbage collection from the streets after friday prayers. Anyone willing to assist us is of course welcome. I hope to educate people that as Muslims, we are required to be clean. The Mosque can educate young and old. We can show by action that we can clean the village. If I need to do it alone at first I will. I will also drive it to dump the garbage if anyone stops us from dropping off the garbage at the central location for pickup.

I want to write more, but there’s much to do. God Speed.

Sameh

Have you read “Stuff White People Like“?

Take a quick peek at the link to the article “explaining” white peoples motivations surrounding health care. The blog is quirky and funny to say the least. But this post I had a different perspective, one I had reading a few other posts. At first I laughed as I thought another quirky article from a blog that just got a book deal. But is it?

As a Canadian reading several blogs I have discovered the majority of blog writers and commentors are Americans, the blog post is about Americans, or Americans abroad. It’s as though there are no other “white” people anywhere, or any other people for that matter. Or is it only American white people responding?

This myopic view of the world is extremely troubling, comments at the above post also reflect the utter lack of open dialogue between differening viewpoints. It’s extremely depressing and sad. The only hope I imagine is the illuminated behaviors, once hidden internally, are now exposed, digested, studied. As even though the article is humorous, it brings the out the worst in some.

It’s alot of work researching a documentary, especially as there’s always a few ideas being fleshed out at the same time. One never knows if someone else is planning the same thing or if it’s just to costly, or even possible. It’s been said to prepare for any story you must call all your references or notable voices, hopefully authoratitive to add strength to your story or script, heck anyone. I know from personal experience outside of film-making that cold-calling works! Part of this planning includes actually shooting with new gear and situations.

 It’s very difficult deciding on any technology. Recently an opportunity came up to purchase a used Canon XL-H1 kit with warranty. This camera will add a whole new dimension to our New Media projects which previously have been on Digi-8 and DV from rented Canon XL’s and Sony PD150’s. I needed a small project to get used to exploring and working with the gear in the field. Incidentally, the most exciting outdoor product I have seen comes from Brunton which also makes fantastic binoculars. Their solar panels and batteries are ideal for staying off the grid for an extended amount of time. I wonder though about the reliability. Would they let me test one or two in the Sahara I wonder?

Do you remember the Hinterland Who’s Who series? I honestly don’t know anyone who hasn’t but you can see them here. I thought a 1 minute short on one or more of the mammals in Elk Island would be the perfect opportunity to get things going.

 As there’s alot of things you need to know before you run around in the prairies or Rockies in the winter I had to prepare my equipment as well as refresh old skills such as using a compass and maps. I hope to write a post in the future on how to make custom Garmin maps. I’ve had to delve into GIS systems before as a software developer so when I needed to find maps for Egypt I found the list quite short. So I created my own topographic maps as tests for a number of reasons.

The first thing I noticed in the field is I need snowshoes! Not just for myself but for my tripod as well. I continue to see more wildlife than people whenever I hike the trail system at Elk Island. I definitely have to change my behavior though as every little noise I make travels very far. Moose 300 meter away look up at me the second a swoosh of clothing or click of equipment. Shhhhh! I’m eating! They say with their faces. Note to self, be quiet.

Invariably, the first few times we use something we don’t know where everything is. The hardest thing with this camera is focus. Focusing precisely with the viewfinder is difficult at first but the Zoom (Not a lens zoom) and highlight feature’s assist in that task. But the zoom alone seems to work after a few times of learning how the viewfinder is representing information.

The other difficult thing is gauging exposure without an external monitor of some kind. Trusting your instinct on photographic principals as aperature and shutter speed leaves only the creative decisions left. It is extremely difficult to judge blacks and whites in the winter for example using the viewfinder but after a few days of shooting with any new gear we gain more confidence with it. After viewing the footage on an HD TV, I felt much better about my first days efforts but much of it was by way of experimentation. The second day left more to learn on that front. The temperature was -5C to -10C and I had the camera bare and mounted on the tripod once it came out which I was worried about but it appears needlessly so.

Here is a Windows Media (WMV) HD clip of the Moose above. I didn’t change any of the gamma settings just the exposure and left knee etc. all at defaults for at first. Great some footage caught. Good thing I’m trying these out now you see, as HDV editing is very different from regular editing as the footage is MPEG and comes in the flavor of I-frame and P-frame. Without getting technical I-frame is what we want for many, many reasons.

In three days I managed to see not only Elk, Plain Bison and Moose, but two Coyote’s entering the park from the north. But how I wished that we didn’t need to create a fenced park to begin with. Watching the Coyote’s above entering the park it was easy to see how they had difficulty navigating the terrain due to the deep snow and their legs sink in just like mine. I wonder if they want to try a set of snowshoes sometime. Joking aside, I see know how as trails take people into the woods it also makes it easier for predators to enter an area that they normally would not be able to.

 Preparing that simple video took some effort as I imagined. I appears that the footage has to be transcoded to on I-frame format to export to a Quicktime Reference file. For a 23 minute or 120 minute production that could be a problem when it comes time to make the entire sequence available to other programs.

This is the kind of thing that savvy people would say, “Isn’t there a button you could push?”

What would you do if you went into work tomorrow and the power was out with no sign of it coming on for 8 hours? What about the internet or resource on the internet?

I’ve thought about this alot as many of my customers call in a frenzy when their internet is down. As the recent cutting of the Mediterranean Fiber cable shows, business’s that rely on technology, even electricity have a host of challenges to contend with. Supporting clients remotely through the phone (i.e. technical support) and the internet (i.e. Voip, remote monitoring and control tools) are critical to any company that relies on computers.

What exactly constitutes a dependency? If a computer, phone or service is not available how many staff have nothing to do? Does your company have a policy of sending everyone home for the day as some coporations in distribution do? If you removed that service from your staff, would they still be able to service your clients? It’s not just the large corporations that require a reliable infrastructure on which to conduct daily business. Many of our clients are small with less than 25 employees. But with the loss of any of their communication abilities leads to a completely new workflow to deal with that loss. Rarely do companies ever plan for this situation and only wait hoping the service comes back on. In the meantime, the type of business dictates the size of revenue loss. Some companies cannot lookup important information on the internet previously distributed on DVD’s and some cannot place order’s.

What if you’re business relies on the intent, leased lines, corporate network for day to day business? Electricity? I know it sounds ridiculous to some but if you own your own business you won’t.

Imagine…your country has had it’s single greatest cultural treasure stolen. Now imagine two. Now many. How would you feel?

This National Geographic video features the illegal Antiquities trade from several perspectives. I found the different polls on each video a nice touch, the latest Rosetta poll to return items is 72% for 27% against. Video: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/treasure-wars/index.html

During the interview with Patty Kim, Hanna Boulton spokeswoman of the British Museum, Boulton mannerisms and body language are interesting,

 ”The Rosetta is important for all of humanity. It’s important for all of us to have access to, to seeing as object that’s as a…as significant as the Rosetta Stone. And I think that’s why we feel it’s important for it to be, to be based here… in the Museum.

then how it came into the collection of the British Museum about 200 years ago,

“…..when the British beat Napoleon, they um, took the material he had collected.”

Another illuminating response by Hanna Boulton after being asked what if Egypt invaded England, and scholars discovered Stone Hedge 2000 years ago and took it to Egypt, wouldn’t Britain demand their return? Her response,

 “…I think again we come back to this issue about ownership an um…..I think, the, the, the then Trustees, or the Trustees that ended up being setup to run the, the Egyptian museum if you like, would probably use the same argument that the Trustees, at the British Museum use here. Which is that actually, you know, uh, that there is a, a, a need, and there’s great benefit to have a, a museum of World Civilizations. Because you’re able to compare and contrast. There’s always new things you can learn. There’s always new connections that you can make.”

It has a mission as the Museum of all World Cultures? What about Egyptians right to compare and contrast? Learn new things? Make new connections? With their own historical records no less! Why does British Museum think it’s now the bearer of all of civilizations records?

The British Museum doesn’t lend out items to parties that don’t agree with it’s ownership of said item? Who gave it that title and power by the way? There is more than meets the eye and economic reasons such as tourism are certainly in the mix.

Gary Vekon, Director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in the video says

“The English and the French have contributed to what the Rosetta Stone is….The Rosetta Stone didn’t come out out of the ground with a neon signs around it… it took work, it took knowledge, and I think that has to take translate to at least some sort of metaphysical ownership.”

I might add he appeared to be struggling to find a term,  and finally visibly shrugged with “metaphysical ownership”. What does that mean i wonder. Certainly the French cracked the code, they and the the British put so much resources into interpreting the stone. But does interpreting something entitle you to ownership? That’s preposterous. The creators are the owners. That’s why everyone is struggling to find a term to redefine ownership of Antiquities.

In the “Treasure Beneath My Home” segment is about Egyptian residents living on top of artifacts buried beneath their homes. I believe it’s Lisa Ling interviewing Fredrik Hiebert, a National Geographic Archaeology Fellow, who explains the following,

“…there is a, whole set of artifacts that do so sort of get excavated in the dark, um by people who are just digging  in their own backyard. And…that’s terrible because, if you sell what you have, you lose your connection,  right? That artifact came from your land, people who had the land before you.” 

Why is stolen property, no matter how many times it’s re-sold, still returned to it’s right-full owner? Because it’s the law. Why should works of art and antiquities be different? In Canada stolen property is treated as one would expect, when it’s found to be stolen, the right-full owner is determined and the item is returned to them. Regardless of how many people went through the chain. If the right-full owner cannot be found then it goes to auction for government funds. I’m not a lawyer but I know this to occur in Alberta, Canada.

If someone just found an antiquity it won’t be in a database of stolen artifacts as one of the segments mentions. A fake history is created and the purchaser has done their due diligence in the eye of the law. This sounds much like a pawn shop. Whereby the pawn shop (gallery or dealer lets say) is purchasing items, they must report it to the police who search their records of stolen items. If it isn’t reported stolen, it’s a legitimate item for sale. With no dis-respect to pawn shops but I dislike the practice is it’s predatory in my humble opinion.

I want to believe the once art smuggler highlighted in the video, Michelle Van Ryn, who says “Art outlives us all.” I certainly know it will outlive the people around the world who willingly trade in illegal activities under the guise of respectability. The dream of Dr. Hawass to reclaim Egypt’s artifacts is important, they are OUR heritage.

I don’t think anyone is trying to limit any countries contribution to archaeology, but I contend that it’s harder to to define theft when you get to be the one defining it as you go along. If they dismantled the Great Giza Pyramid and put it in London would it make it any less Egypt’s?

It certainly would take away something would it not?

Copyright © 2008 Rabeeh Consulting Inc.