It’s a common scenario in newsrooms around the world as broadcast and online newsrooms merge. It means you need to quickly learn new visual storytelling skills in order to adapt your stories for online publication.

While you can find loads of online training resources to help you get started, basic camera skills are only going to take you so far. If you’re required to produce photographs that document the story you’re covering, say an editor is suggesting to bring back eight photographs for a story or picture gallery, then you also need to employ skills from photojournalism.

OnMedia’s Guy Degen offers some tips for radio journalists to help produce strong images for their stories.

What type of camera?

Hopefully your organization places as much emphasis on good photography as it does on good audio. However, I like to think that it’s skill that makes a good image rather than a good camera. So before you go upgrading your camera, go upgrade your skills.

Of course, using the right tool for the job does make a difference. If I have to collect audio and take photos for the same story, then I prefer a camera that is small(ish), turns on almost instantly and is easy to use in manual and auto mode. But most importantly, the camera must be quiet. This is because I like to be less observed and there are times when I need to record audio and take photographs simultaneously.

For many years, I used a fairly basic point-and-shoot camera when  I was producing radio features – simply because it didn’t make the loud shutter noise of my DSLR. Later, a slightly more muscular, yet silent, Canon G10 offered the manual controls of a DSLR but in a small body. More recently, the near silent leaf shutter of the Fujifilm x100s has been my constant companion, and now the silent electronic shutter of the Panasonic GH4 (D)SLR will also be in my kit bag. I think even with a zoom lens the GH4 has a much smaller profile that a larger DSLR. It’s also great for shooting video.

Whatever camera you use, learn the essential functions.  It’s just as important to know how your camera works as it is to know how your audio recorder functions. Knowing how your camera works will make you far more confident when you’re out covering a story.

These days I also use my iPhone for taking photographs. Although the image quality is not as good my other cameras, it’s mostly fine for online publication. If you’re using a smartphone just be sure to use the silent mode or turn off any beeps or electronic shutter sounds.

The iPhone also has a neat trick of being able to record audio with an app running in the background and take photos at the same time – even in burst mode.

Planning is essential but keep your eyes open

Before going out to produce a radio feature, I usually write down a list of the interviewees (voices) I need to talk to and any potential ideas for sounds that might be interesting to record. Do the same for images. Write down a shot list of relevant people or locations or objects you need to photograph. As soon as I arrive on location, I walk around and get a feel for a place and add shots to my list.

In practice, I usually take photographs between recording audio. For example, if I record an interview with someone I’ll take a portrait shot of the interviewee immediately afterwards. But sometimes you need to plan a specific time for photography and a specific time for gathering audio. For instance, if you arrive at a location in the afternoon you might have to gather some shots quickly first to make use of available light.

But just as you would keep an ear open for interesting sounds to record, so too for photography – keep your eyes open to capture a moment.

What if you have to record and photograph at the same time?

I’ll be honest. Sometimes there might be a clash. Something visually interesting is happening at the same time as something essential to record. While reporting recently in Kiev, Ukraine, I wanted to record a group of old women singing in the Maidan square. They were so passionate and I knew it would make my story sound-rich. I also wanted to take photos as they were dressed in traditional costume, but I wasn’t sure how long they would sing for.

So to be safe, I began recording audio and taking photos at the same time – one hand holding a microphone, and the other hand snapping photos. It wasn’t ideal but sometimes it’s necessary. Once I had sufficient clean audio of singing, I put the microphone down and concentrated on getting better photos as the women were dancing with protesters.

Variety of shots

Having worked a lot as a video journalist, it’s second nature for me to document a scene or an action in sequences of shots: wide shot, medium shot, close-up, etc. This is a good technique to borrow for photography too and it will force you to keep moving and looking for interesting angles. What you don’t want to do is come back with photos that are all wide, or only taken from one point of view.

For a story about a building powered by a bioreactor I made sure that I delivered a variety of shots of the building’s bioreactor façade and of the bioreactor process for the editor to select.

And when you’re documenting someone in action think about capturing both the action they are doing with their hands as well as the reaction of their face.

If you need to get in close, use your feet to “zoom”, rather than just relying on the zoom function of the camera.

Remember, most of the time your editor will want photos in “landscape mode” (horizontal) instead of “portrait mode” (vertical). Landscape mode photographs look better in an online photo gallery.

Don’t forget detail

As much as a variety of shots is useful, don’t forget to look for fine detail – getting in close to show the audience what something looks like. There may even be a good reason to use the macro mode on your camera to get an extreme close up of an object.

For a story on how people make bicycles from bamboo in Berlin, I made sure that I captured shots of fine carving the bamboo frame.

Get a good portrait shot

There’s nothing worse than recording a great interview and then walking away and forgetting to take a portrait shot of the interviewee. Good quotes in your story are going to work well with a good portrait shot. Whether it is a composed portrait or a shot of the interviewee doing something, I always make sure I have a shot of the people I talk to – even if I know it probably won’t get published.

Hopefully by the end of your radio interview, you’ve also made a connection with that person and established some rapport and trust. That’s also going to be reflected in how they react to you with the camera.

Keep it simple. Observing the rule of thirds is a good place to start for portraits. But be open to experiment. I usually try to take a portrait shot at the location of the story for context.

Below are portrait shots of a designer who has developed a new type of humanitarian shelter. I offered the editor two shots to choose from. A “classic” all purpose portrait and one that has the designer demonstrating a structural component he invented and described in detail in the story.

Practice, practice and practice

Some people have a remarkable eye for photography – they’re naturals. But like a lot of journalism skills, practice will improve your photography. You can turn a weakness into a strength. Always keep your camera with you to take photos. Make it an extension of your hand. Follow good photographers online and via social media. Borrow and adapt their ideas and shooting styles. If I had to choose just one website, a great starting point is Time’s Lightbox blog – it’s a fantastic online showcase of the best of photojournalism.

Author: Guy Degen

The question is: how do I make my SLR camera as “mobile” as my smartphone so I can transfer images quickly from the camera to another device and share them on the web?

Yes, I can use a USB cable to connect my camera to either my laptop or my iPad or take out the SD card and plug it directly into the computer. But another way is to use a WiFi enabled SD memory card and there are some interesting advantages of using these cards for covering events.

WiFi enabled SD cards have been around for a while now. The WiFi chip inside the card creates its own wireless network, which allows you to connect your camera via the SD card to another device.

In this post I’m going to refer to two Class 10 WiFi SD cards: the Eye-Fi mobi and the Toshiba FlashAir.

Shoot and upload on the run

At the recent Newsgames hackathon in Cologne I tested a 16GB Eye-Fi WiFi enabled SD card.

The hackathon took place inside a large seminar room. To document the event, I wanted to be able to walk around and shoot photos of the hacker teams, upload the images to my iPad for a quick edit and then send them to a blog and social media.

The Eye-Fi card allowed me to automatically push images to my iPad as I was shooting. To make the wireless transfer faster, I deliberately shot in .jpeg format to keep each image file size small – around 4-5 MB per image.

I was able to walk around up to 20 metres or so from my iPad and keep shooting, knowing that every image was being transferred to my iPad ready for editing.

This was exactly what I needed to cover this event in near “real time”. I was able to shoot lots of good quality images, far better than using my iPhone, and edit the images in batches in the Snapseed iPad application and then quickly upload to the blog, Twitter and Instagram.

It’s important to note that although the Eye-Fi card can record photos and video in various types of formats (.jpeg, RAW, .mpg, .mov, .flv, .wmv, .avi, .mp4, .mts, .m4v, .3gp) it can only transfer .jpeg files.

Fortunately my Fujifilm X100S produces excellent .jpeg images, and despite the smaller file size, my photos were published in The Guardian, Deutsche Welle, Page magazine and in several journalism publications.

But this workflow is not going to suit every situation.

One problem with the Eye-Fi mobi card is that it uploads every photo you take whether you like it or not. In other words, it uploads the entire album. This might be fine if you have the WiFi transfer mode on as you’re shooting, but if you capture a lot of photos and then engage the WiFi transfer mode, you might find yourself waiting for the best image to be transferred.

One work around is to shoot in RAW and then convert selected images to .jpeg format in the camera’s playback mode. The card will then transfer only the .jpeg files. Bear in mind that not all cameras offer in-camera .jpeg conversion. Another way is to “protect” the files you want to transfer. This might be a bit fiddly to do depending on your camera.

The set up of the Eye-Fi mobi card though was very straightforward. You simply download a free iOS or Android app that works as the dashboard for transferring images and enter the card’s activation key. The card creates its own b/g/n WiFi hotspot allowing your smartphone, tablet or computer to make a connection. My camera also supports the Eye-Fi SD card and offers an upload option directly from the camera’s menu.

Only transfer the pics you want

I’ve also been using the Toshiba FlashAir (version 2) 32GB Wireless SD card and it works in a similar way to the Eye-Fi. The card creates its own WiFi network and you install an app on your smartphone or tablet to capture the images.

I think the big advantage the FlashAir has over the Eye-Fi mobi is the possibility of using selective transfer for the images. From the iOS or Android app on your device, you can see all of the images you’ve taken and then you can select the ones to transfer.

This could be really handy if you’re working in a team to cover an event. Photographers can get on with the job of shooting while editors can see the thumbnail images they are capturing on their tablet or computer and then select an image for editing and uploading to the web and social media.

The FlashAir also allows up to seven devices to connect to the card simultaneously. Again this could be useful for small teams covering conferences or panel discussions via “live blogs” and social media.

Great solution but not perfect yet

Both cards have their selling points but also a few drawbacks.

Connecting my iPad or iPhone to both the Eye-Fi and FlashAir card was not always instantaneous – even when both devices were side by side. Sometimes it would take a couple of attempts to connect. But once connected, the transfer of images was usually stable. Make sure you disable your camera’s auto-off function otherwise transfer will be interrupted when the camera goes to sleep.

Both cards can be draining on batteries.

On the Eye-Fi I encountered “Read Errors” messages several times. Ejecting and installing the card usually solved this problem and I have never lost images. However it doesn’t inspire confidence, especially if you want to use this in a professional capacity everday.

The Toshiba FlashAir also has a quirk. If you reformat the card in your camera, you will wipe the firmware that controls the WiFi chip. This means downloading and reinstalling the firmware from Toshiba’s website. It’s not a reason not the use the card, but it’s an easy mistake to make as in-camera card formatting is a common practice.

I also found the app for the FlashAir app a little bit clunky to use. It seems as if user interface was an afterthought in design. As an alternative, Photosync is a good mobile photo file transfer app that works with the FlashAir.

Hopefully competitors in this market will look each other’s products and produce a card that offers both quick and instantaneous connections, and a choice between batch transfer and selective image transfers.

Keep in mind the cost of these cards is usually two to three times that of normal SD cards, so expectations on functionality and reliability are understandably high.

Gradually, WiFi connectivity is becoming a standard feature in cameras. My new Lumix GH4 sports WiFi. And with Photokina in Cologne almost upon us, WiFi is bound to be a function that will become more widely available in new models.

For now though a WiFi SD card does a brilliant job of adding wireless functionality to “upgrade” almost any digital stills camera.

And while these WiFi SD cards are not yet perfect, they are well worth testing to see how they might give you more options for covering events and making your stills camera “mobile”.

Written by Guy Degen, edited by Kate Hairsine

After all, crowdsourced maps are often an easy way to put visuals on a web page and show what’s happening in places that reporters or rights activists can’t or don’t get to. But this doesn’t mean media organizations or advocacy groups can slap together an online map and people will automatically start sending reports. Many crowdsourced reporting projects are unfortunately short lived, attracting few reports and having little impact.

HarassMap has won several awards for mapping incidents of sexual harassment in Egypt. onMedia takes a look at what the organization has learned since it launched in 2010.

HarassMap‘s goal is to make sexual harassment no longer acceptable in Egypt. The independent initiative combines community outreach programs with a digital platform that lets people report sexual harassment either directly on the HarassMap site or via Facebook, Twitter, email or text message.

The HarassMap founders decided to use an sms-based system as it gives people without access to a computer the chance to report harassment. Even back then, nearly everyone in Egypt had a mobile — the country’s mobile phone penetration rate in 2010 was 97 percent.

The initial idea of the platform was to create a “safe space” where people could anonymously talk about harassment, said Noora Flinkman, the head of marketing and communications at HarassMap. Sexual harassment was then (and still is) a relatively taboo topic in Egypt and there were virtually no other initiatives addressing the problem. At the same time, the map would provide a tool to show the reality and scope of the issue.

Filling a need

“When we launched our reporting system, it crashed because we had so many reports,” Flinkman told onMedia via Skype from Cairo.

After this first torrent of messages subsided, the site began to regularly receive around 40 reports a month. For the HarassMap founders, the information was a “gold mine” on a subject about which there had been very little research.

In the first year, the initiative collected nearly 700 accounts (to date, they have just over 1,300). It analyzed the data, which revealed that women in both rural and urban areas were victims of harassment, that it wasn’t restricted to particular areas in cities, social background or age, and that it took place independently of what women were wearing or their nationalities.

The knowledge was then used by outreach volunteers when they went out to talk to people in the streets. It also informed the initiative’s anti-harassment campaigns.

“These reports were definitely really, really important,” said Flinkman. “We wouldn’t necessarily have had this type of information as quickly and in the same way if we hadn’t had the reporting system.”

At the same time, the site received 76,000 unique visitors in its first year, showing there was a real interest in finding out more information on the subject. The media, both in Egypt and internationally, reported on the site, increasing its profile.

Ups and downs

However, the number of reports received by HarassMap has slumped over the past year to around just five a month.

According to Flinkman, there are two main reasons for this. When HarassMap started, no one else was really using such a platform to document sexual harassment and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter weren’t as popular. Now, many groups are addressing the issue and people often use these groups’ Facebook accounts to share stories.

Earlier in 2014, the organization ran a campaign to encourage more reporting, which did result in a boost.

But as a result of these ups and downs, HarassMap is now evaluating how they should develop the platform.

The next step

One possibility may be for HarassMap to act as a so-called aggregator, to use the site as a place to collect stories on sexual harassment coming from multiple media platforms and organizations. This would allow the mapping of information without people having to know about HarassMap specifically or having to send a report directly to them.

Another possibility is to create an app to simplify the reporting itself.

“We don’t have the best way of reporting; we don’t have the best system or the most beautiful map and the most user-friendly reporting,” Flinkman said. “Creating new ways of reporting that are more sexy can also give people an incentive to send us information.”

Such as app could also ask for different kinds of reports. Currently, HarassMap only collects incidents of sexual harassment from victims. One option to extend this might be to ask for reports where bystanders or witnesses have intervened. That would add another layer of information.

What they’ve learned

Flinkman stresses that it’s vital for organizations to have a strong sense of their goals before they start.

“We spent years analyzing the issue in Egypt – the different dynamics, what had already been done, what had not been done, what seemed to work, what doesn’t work,” she said. “This is why it took us years to actually launch: we did a lot of planning.”

And then while organizations are up and running, a “key part of the work” needs to constantly appraising strategies, programs and activities, especially since the digital world changes so rapidly.

“You need to have this constant process of evaluating and analyzing yourself,” she added. “That’s the most important thing.”

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Author: Kate Hairsine, edited by Kyle James

Visualizing Palestine, Palestinian Territories (in English and Arabic)
Infographics, visualizations, data journalism, design

Part of the “Guide to Administrative Detention” poster

Visualizing Palestine uses beautifully designed infographics to tell stories about Palestinians and the Palestinian territories. It covers topics usually absent from the discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as detailing the lack of access to medical care in Lebanon, or showing the school enrollment rates of Palestinian refugee children who have fled Syria for neighboring countries. Each infographic is accompanied by a list of sources. The site makes the complex data behind the infographics understandable and publishes its visualizations under a creative commons license so they can be used by other media.

“You don’t remember numbers or statistics. You remember stories. We create the visualizations so people can use them as tools to advocate for something.” Ramzi Jaber, co-founder of Visualizing Palestine in an interview with DW

HarassMap, Egypt (in Arabic and English)
Mapping, social media, crowdsourcing, social research, mobile technology

HarassMap was set up in response to the high rates of sexual assault in Egypt. Launched in 2010, it allows people to anonymously report when and where they were victims of sexual harassment. They can do this by calling, texting, emailing or tweeting. Incidents are then documented on an online map, based on the open-source Ushahidi mapping software. The idea is to use crowdsourcing to better understand sexual harassment in Egypt, where there is little research on the subject. HarassMap is a volunteer-based, independent initiative. You can read more about the project on DW.

Stop Fake, Ukraine (in English and Russian)
Fact checking, citizen journalism, social media

Run by a small group of current and former students from the Mohyla School of Journalism in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, StopFake curates and refutes false claims spread by Russian media about the conflict in Ukraine. The fake-busting site has proved hugely popular since it started in March 2014. In its first few weeks of operation, it had 1.5 million visitors and some of the weekly video round-ups detailing the fakes have more than 100,000 views on YouTube. Many of its reports make the rounds on social media.

“We do the same things as anyone else would do – find the truth, check the facts, talk to people, and these are universal ways to improve journalism in any country.” Co-founder Yevhen Fedchenko in an interview with onMedia

CGNet Swara, India
Citizen journalism, mobile technology

CG Net Swara allows people to ring up and leave a voice message about something important to them, or listen to the stories of other users. The service is most commonly used to air grievances, such as the non-payment of wages, or to pass on local news. Selected recordings are checked by journalists and published on the site, as are text summaries. Some issues are also passed onto contacts in the mainstream media. The idea is for CG Net Swara to act as a citizen journalist’s forum in India’s impoverished Chhattisgarh state, where there is a shortage of media services in local tribal languages.

“Our primary goal and area of operation is media dark zones. There are 100 million people living in central tribal India and they have no voice.” Founder Shubhranshu Choudhary in an interview with the Doha Center for Media Freedom

Rutas del Conflicto, Columbia (in Spanish)
Database, mapping, crowdsourcing, mobile technology

The Routes of Conflict project tracks massacres and violence that have taken place in Columbia since 1982. Users can search the online database according to victims’ names, locations or armed groups. The resulting map shows how many people were killed in each incident, who the victims were, who was responsible for the killings and also provides links to relevant documents. The information is also available via a mobile app.

African SkyCam, Kenya
Drone journalism

African SkyCam is a group of journalists who want to show newsrooms that there is a cost effective way of capturing aerial footage to give African audiences new and independent perspectives on a story. Because African media organizations usually don’t have their own helicopters, they have to rely on hitching lifts with police or military to get certain shots. Drones are a way of being more independent.

“With an eye in the sky, African journalists can tell stories that might have been impossible without access to aerial footage.” Founder Dickens Onditi Olewe in an interview with onMedia

Khabar Lahariya, India (in English as well as several other languages local to India)
Citizen journalism, newspaper collective

Khabar Lahariya is a small weekly newspaper published in several local languages by a group of marginalized rural women in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states. The idea behind the eight-page paper is to spread and promote information about life in rural areas – covering everything from reported rape to a house fire in a local village. Founded in 2002, the paper now has 40 women journalists and a print run of around 6,000. It’s estimated a single copy of the paper is read by ten or more people. The collective launched an online site in 2013.

“We expose problems and we follow up on the solutions.” Reporter Meera Devi in an interview with The Hindu

CONNECTAS (in Spanish, Portuguese and English)
Networking, investigative journalism

CONNECTAS is a non-profit journalism project for Latin America with the aim of promoting transnational investigative journalism and training.

“The media in Latin America have focused excessively on what happens in the countries’ capital cities, and report very little about what is going on countrywide, much less what is happening around the continent.” CONNECTAS founder Carlos Eduardo Huertas in an article published by the Nieman Foundation

Poderopedia (in Spanish)
Database, visualizations, fact checking

Poderopedia provides a verified source of information on influential politicians and business people, such as who their family members are, where they went to school and university, and who they have worked for in the past. It also visualizes the relationships between the people and the organizations in its data base, revealing networks of influence. The platform first started in Chile, where business and politics are closely connected, and has subsequently expanded to Venezuela and Colombia.

“We consider Poderopedia, in its call for transparency and dissemination of data, to be a mechanism against the lack of transparency that currently, above all, characterizes Venezuelan institutions, both private and public.” Marianela Balbi, director of Venezuela’s Press and Society Institute.

Africa Check (in English)
Fact checking

Africa Check aims to sort fact from fiction on a variety of African topics, such as the real population of Nigeria or claims that cancer causes more deaths than AIDS on the continent. Founded in June 2012, the project runs in a partnership with the journalism department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. It has 50,000 to 60,000 unique visitors each month. It also has a slew of resources for journalists on its site about how to fact check properly. Read more about the project on onMedia.

“There is a huge increase in the flow of information and also of misinformation One of the things we are concerned about is giving journalists tools to verify this information.” Africa Check founder Peter Cunliffe-Jones

Animal Político, Mexico (in Spanish)
Digital media, social media

Animal Político is an online news site devoted to Mexican politics that is especially popular with young readers. It attracts more than three million visitors per month and has nearly a million likes on Facebook – numbers that continue to grow rapidly. The site started off as a Twitter news service in 2009 and since its inception, the founders have emphasized the use of social media to attract readers. Interestingly, it’s a freestanding digital media organization – which means it’s not supported by grants and foundations, or by another media institution.

“We don’t care that the (Mexican) president went to Querétaro or Michoacán today and gave a speech….We actually care a lot more about … the social impact that policies have on people, the civic organizations working to better the country, and about human rights violations.” Founder Daniel Eilemberg in an interview with WLRN

Chicas Poderosas, Latin America (in English and Spanish)
Data journalism, networking

Chicas Poderosas is a network and training model to encourage female journalists in Latin America to embrace digital technologies and data journalism. It’s about building a diverse digital network of digital journalists.

“At Chicas we help journalists learn technology and we connect them with mentors, developers and designers so they can keep learning.” Founder Mariana Santos in an interview with the Knight Foundation

InfoAmazonia, Brazil (in English, Spanish and Portugese)
Mapping, database, geojournalism, citizen journalism, news aggregator

The project tracks forest loss and other environmental issues, such as bush fires, in the Amazon basin and displays this information in interactive maps. To do this it, InfoAmazonia uses a combination of satellite and other data as well as citizen reporting from the nine countries of the Amazon region. It also aggregates news stories about the Amazon.

“The ultimate goal is that displaying this information with such impacting visuals will help to elevate the debate on public policy in this region to another level.” Gustavo Faleiros, founder of Infoamazonia in an interview with Visualloop.com

Plataforma de Periodismo (in Spanish)
Networking

Plataforma de Periodismo aims to improve the coverage of conflict and post-conflict Columbia and create a network of journalists who cover these issues. The website is set up as a training space, with resources, case studies and digital tools.

“We saw the need to create a digital space to train, inform, and reflect on these topics,” said project coordinator Edilma Prada Céspedes in an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

Code for Africa
Data journalism, networking

The Code for Africa initiative aims to nurture the skills necessary for people to find, access and use data in order to promote more transparency. There are already country chapters in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa and plans for several other countries to follow.

Compiled by Holger Hank, Peter Deselaers, Guy Degen and Steffen Leidel, edited by Kate Hairsine

Oudom also produces radio stories and video pieces, and his film about the shooting of three workers in the Cambodian garment sector was selected as a finalist entry at the 2013 German Development Media Awards. These days though, Oudom is mainly doing what he loves best, taking pictures of news events around Cambodia, which he hopes will help bring about democratic change in the country. He spoke to onMedia about his work.

Why did you decide to become a journalist?

I grew up seeing plenty of problems and corruption in my society. My father always taught me about the importance of fairness and independence. But the news on television and radio in Cambodia is mostly pro-government, and “very thin,” you might say. They just broadcast stories about the prime minister inaugurating something or praise some social initiative he has backed. They never broadcast information about government crackdowns on people, such as what happened in early January this year. I decided I wanted to try to help change my society by providing real, professional-quality news to the people in Cambodia.

What did your parents and friends say about your decision?

My family was very proud. They’ve always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do. If you feel good about it, they said, do it. But my good friends were afraid. They know if you want to be a fair journalist, you can come up against a lot of problems. They told me I should get an office job. I thanked them for worrying about me but told them I wanted to help change my country into a real democracy. I think they understand now.

What do you like most about your job?

I love taking pictures and then writing captions for them. I like to present information to people, not telling them what to think but allowing them to make up their own minds about what’s happening in the country.

These photos by Oudom Tat were taken on Dec. 23, 2013, during a demonstration in Phnom Penh calling for a host of reforms in the country.

What do you dislike most about being a photojournalist?

I don’t like it when the government discriminates against the media. We have a lot of problems with them. Government officials don’t provide us with good information and rarely let us interview them. Journalists also face a lot of general harassment. I myself have been harassed and intimidated a lot, even threatened. When I was reporting on the problems of garment workers, I was kicked off my bike once. My bike was stolen on another occasion. I can’t be sure if the people behind it are from the government or the garment factories, but there have been problems and I’ve been told to stop doing my work or I’ll “get in trouble”. During a recent government crackdown on striking workers, I was taking pictures when someone in the military pointed a gun at me. He said: “Do you want to die for just a picture?” I stayed calm, put down my camera and stepped back to let the tension subside. But afterwards I started taking pictures again.

What was the most difficult story you have covered?

They are all hard, because it is so difficult to get information from the government. Getting an interview with a minister is the most difficult thing of all. They almost never agree to talk to independent media outlets.

Is there a story that you have covered that has particularly affected you?

I helped produce a video on garment factory workers and during the reporting I saw first hand how much many of them have suffered. I talked to women who had fainted on the factory floor. They told me they didn’t make enough money and didn’t have enough food to eat. It really made me think about how I was fortunate compared to them. I really felt I needed to do something to help them and get their stories out.

How did you acquire your photography skills?

I never had any formal training in photography. After I got a smart phone, I realized I liked taking pictures with it. Then I realized that I knew a lot of people at work who really knew how to take good pictures. So they taught me. I just practiced and practiced until I got it.

What kind of media do you listen to/watch/read?

I follow both local and international news. I like keeping up with international developments with Reuters, CNN and the BBC. I real the local Phnom Penh Post newspaper and of course, listen to my own station, the Voice of Democracy. But as far as Cambodian TV goes, I watch something maybe once a year.

How do you feel you are developing as a journalist?

I love what I do now, since what I enjoy best is taking pictures and putting a simple but powerful caption on it. I think it’s one of the best ways to get easy-to-understand information to a large number of Cambodians. So now, I feel I’m being successful in informing my community, my country and even abroad. My aim is not to become famous and I don’t really need a lot of possessions. I would just like to do more of what I’m doing and continue to learn more about journalism and the challenges faced by my society.

Interview: Kyle James