Alice Smeets | Blog

I am on my way to Cape town and Durban. It’s an assignment for the German NGO “Kindermissionswerk”.

My pictures are in the German Geo this month!

I cannot write a long text, as I am at the airport and have to step into the plane soon.

If I will find a internetconnection in Southafrica, I will write more often and upload pictures when I am there!

PORTRAITS

PORTRAITS IN THE EVENING

hey,

it’s been a long time I haven’t written any news about my photography and what my plans are. In August I have been back to Haiti, some of the pictures I have taken there you have seen in my previous post about Miriam. When I came back to Belgium I photographed some portraits and a wedding (I will post the pictures soon on my blog), than I went to Perpignan to the festival Visa pour l’image, which was really fun. Also in September I went to Paris with two photography-friends to show my portfolio to magazines and newspapers there and the week after that I did the same in London. In the meantime I have travelled to the Northern Lakes in England to photograph a witches-weekend. Pics will follow soon.

My plan is now to also travel to Hamburg to present myself and my pictures to the magazines there and than work a little bit at home to earn some money. Selling pictures, photographing portraits and other commercial work. By the end of October I will than travel to South Africa. The German NGO Kindermissionswerk will give me an assignment to photograph their projects there. In November/December I will either go to Cameroun, Benin or back to Haiti another time. I will let you know. And I will soon update my website so that you can all see my new work.

I wish you all the best!

Alice

In Haiti there are over 300 000 “Restavek. The Restavecs are children of Haiti living in a family different from their family of origin and often used as domestic servants or as slaves. From poor families in rural areas, they are placed by their families in urban families. Often the economic situation of host families is not very different from those of biological families of these children. Also orphans often end up as Restavecs.

Miriam is a little 7 year old girl who lives in Port-au-Prince and is a restavek. Her father died 4 years ago. Her mother went to the countryside to organize the funeral and never returned. Today, she lives with her neighbors, who have a 6 year old son. When he is outside playing with his friends, she does the cleaning, dishes, and shopping. In return for her work Miriam has the right to sleep on the floor and eat the remains of the family meal.

More pictures - soon on my homepage

After I have written my last post “advises for young photographers”, I would like to add some more financial advises. It is hard to start out as a young photographer, as it takes a long time to find and get paid work.

So let’s start:

-first of all: it is not important where you photograph. You can find really good topics at home. For my witchcraft topic, I didn’t have to travel far. It was all in Europe. Think about what could be interesting to photograph.

I started out with photographing in busses in Liege, Belgium, I also photographed in a small bar where only immigrants went.

-if you nevertheless decide that you want to travel elsewhere, I will give you my secret for finding cheap flights: www.kayak.com. 

-if you are not in a hurry to get to your destination: flight companies often overbook their flights. If you wait until the end to check in, it is possible that there is no space left. Is that the case, the company will pay a good hotel to stay over night, you will get good amount of your money back and you can take the next flight possible.

-this is not only a way of  getting a free place to sleep, but also of meeting the most amazing people: www.couchsurfing.org - I am using it for 2 years now, i never had a bad experience and I made great friends. The network is growing and today you can even find a lot of couches in developing countries.

-if you have never been to a developing country and don’t want to go on your own, you can contact a small charity organization (the big ones won’t help you). As I did with Haiti Care. They came, to pick me up from the airport, showed me around in Port-au-Prince and gave me a place to stay. In return they could use some of my pictures to collect donations.

-don’t be too proud to photograph commercial work or weddings. This could be a good way of practise. A lot of great photojournalists do commercial work at the site. To live only from photojournalism is really hard.

-don’t think you need a professional camera to start out. I took the picture, that won the UNICEF Phote of the Year, with a semi professional camera and a lens that many people say has a bad quality. (Canon 400D, EFS 17-85mm). It is not the camera that takesgood pictures, it is your eye!

So I think that’s it for the beginning. I hope I could help you out a little bit.

I am in Haiti since 10 days. Today is my last day before I will leave tomorrow.

First I have spent 4 days on Ile de la Gonave, a beautiful little island not far from the mainisland of Haiti. I photographed the daily life there as I did on my last trip. Now I finished that project and the pictures will soon appear on my homepage.

The last days I photographed a Restavek child in Port-au-Prince. Her name is Miriam, she is 7 years old. 3-4 years ago her dad died and her mum run away, leaving her behind. Her neightboors took care after her, so that she does not end up as a streetchild. She can live with them, but sleeps on the floor while they sleep in their beds. She wakes up earlier as everyone else, so she can start doing the housework.. cleaning the dishes, cleaning the floor, go to the market, go to get water,…

She is one of the lucky ones, as in return she can go to school. She gets food as well, but only after the family has finished eating.

I will soon put pictures online!

Tomorrow I will be in New York for 2 days and be back home on Thursday.

I was a bit silent in the last month, because I worked on some commercial work.

Soon I will be back in Haiti - but only for 10 days beginning of August. I don’t think I will take my laptop with me, so I will tell you about it when I’m back and show you new work on my website.

Here are a few shots of a portrait session that I had with Mathei Grosch - a belgian politician - last week.

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Here a few pics that I shot for Kelleter, a backery in Eupen, my hometown.

Again, sorry for the long silence. I will try to keep my blog updated more often.

India was great. I still won’t tell the story that I shot over there, but I can tell that we walked about 100km in 6 days while the temperature was 43degree celcius. It was very exhausting, but a wonderful experience. I’m satisfied with the pictures I have taken and hope that they soon will be published in Geo magazine. I don’t know when it will be yet…

I am now back home and feel good here. I’m now working on my India pictures and also on my Haiti pictures (I will soon put some new work on my homepage). In September I will have an exhibition in Aachen, Germany in a museum, which is also in preparation right now.

Streetscene in Ahmadabad

I arrived in India this morning very early after a 14h stop in Dubai at the airport (were I finally answered most of my emails). The securities were going crazy about the swineflu. Everyone had to fill out a document and get tested by a doctor. It took us 2hours to check out and get to the hotel. The Hotel is really nice, except that the reception is calling every few hours to ask if everything is okay… So far I haven’t seen much of India. I will relax a bit more and go out this afternoon to explore the area. Before I forget to tell: The city is Ahmedabad.

Many things happened since I came back from Haiti. I didn’t stop in Miami as planned as I had to return back home to help a friend in need. This was much more complicated than I expected and I got myself many problems and my life fell into an extreme chaos. Now I finally find my normal life back (what is normal?), or maybe it’s better to say that I find my energy back.

In the meantime I had some of my Haiti pictures published in the Sunday Times and I have gotten a grant from the “fondation de la vocation belge” to go back to Haiti (So I will go back still this year - probably in September-October).

I will leave Belgium to go to India on Sunday evening - and I am looking forward to that. I cannot publish the pictures on my blog before they appeared in Geo magazine, so you will have to wait a bit longer for pictures this time. But I will try to update my blog with the experiences I make in India. The city I will go to is Ahmedabad.

Because of all the chaos in the last weeks, I didn’t work a lot on my Haiti pictures; to bring order to them and publish them on my homepage. I will do that after I return from India in two weeks.