Sorry to all for getting this out so late… I’ve been in Africa and really on the run for over a month… mostly with very limited internet connectivity. This month’s desktop comes from Marsabit, Kenya. A couple days ago we were sitting on the back patio of the lodge, watching the elephants below this tree…While we were relaxing after our day of woodwalking, I exposed this frame over a period of about half an hour (these are the trails left in the sky by the stars, as the earth rotates.) Enjoy!
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I’ve spent the last few days working with an amazing organization called The Paradigm Project. Paradigm has a unique low-profit model in which they subsidize costs of efficient wood burning stoves to get them into the hands of women all over Kenya at significantly reduced costs.
In the deserts of northern Kenya, women are often forced to walk 40 miles or more in a day to retrieve firewood for cooking… and sometimes do this two or three times a week. They begin their journey at the crack of dawn and are back just as the sun is setting… and they all this just to fuel their stoves so they can feed their families.
The climate is incredibly dry, the landscape arid as can be, and walking in the 110°F temperatures with 80-100 pounds of wood on your back is near impossible. I got to experience (and shoot) this experience for an entire day yesterday… Today, I am incredibly sore all over… I have bruises on my collar bone from the ropes, my hips are locked up and my calves feel like rubber. Though it was difficult, I was deeply honored to get to experience this and share this time with the women…
Paradigm Project builds and distributes super wood-efficient stoves that reduce smoke levels inside the hut significantly and burn wood much, much slower… They work with organizations like Food for the Hungry and World Vision and they are really doing amazing stuff.
I definitely have a whole new respect for the women that are faced with these hardships all over the world, and a new understanding of the need for carbon and fuel efficient cooking solutions… Check out The Paradigm Project.
Woodwalk in N. Kenya from Austin Mann on Vimeo.
Five years ago today marks one of the most monumental days in my life… November 1, 2005.
I was 20, a sophomore at Baylor University, living what I thought to be the college dream. I was spending most of my time with a rowdier crowd, and loving it… constantly drinking, often getting belligerently drunk and acting with no regard for the Law.
October 29th, 2005, the Saturday before Halloween, marked one of the biggest frat parties of the year. That night I got drunk enough to pass out and have zero memory of who took me home. The next morning I woke up around noon, feeling pretty hung over. I finally got out of bed, only to discover that someone had drawn in Sharpie on my face after I passed out.
I didn’t really mind, writing it off as just another crazy “fun” night in college. I washed my face, laughing to myself, and sat down at my computer for my normal wake up web surfing routine. Shortly afterward, my roommate came in and hit me with some shocking news.
Kyle Lake, head pastor of UBC (the church I attended), was dead. While preparing to baptize someone in front of the church congregation, he dropped his microphone in the water, short-circuiting a faulty electrical system… he was gone a few minutes later. He was 33 years old and had a wife and three kids.
Kyle’s funeral was the following Tuesday, November 1st. I can still remember it well. Kyle’s friends and family shared stories of joy and passion, his intense love for all and his drive to share the love of Christ. His very being exuded love, and this came out over and over and over.
Through it all, there’s a specific moment that sticks out like no other. As I listened to stories about this passionate man of God, the Lord struck me and opened my eyes. In an instant, I found myself thinking, “wow… if I died today, people would say ‘Austin was a nice guy and could fix computers.’” There was no substance to the life I was living, no eternal impact… only self-indulgence and foolishness. I can remember this epiphany as vividly as if it were yesterday… I can remember where I was sitting, who I was sitting next to, where I was looking and most importantly, the overwhelming feeling of conviction for the life I was living.
That night, I decided it was time to make a change. The first step was to give up alcohol (I was underage at the time and had a conviction somewhere deep inside against it, but I had been conveniently suppressing it.) My goal was not to drink again till the end of semester… nothing huge, but a step in the right direction.
As it turns out, I hit my goal of not drinking till the semester’s end, though I still hung out with the same crowd and frequently went to parties. I decided to go ahead and hold out at least till my 21st birthday nine months later in September. At this point, I had never seriously picked up a camera, much less traveled outside of the country. I had no idea what was coming. Over Christmas, I sold some old medium format film equipment on eBay for Wichita-based photographer Paul Bowen, and he gave me his old Canon D60 and a 70-200 f/2.8 as payment. This was Canon’s second dSLR after the D30, with a sweet 6MP sensor.
When I returned to school in January ‘06, I decided to drop the party scene altogether…it offered me absolutely nothing. All of a sudden I found myself home alone frequently while nearly all my friends were out getting hammered…
I was bored and decided to play around with my new camera. And that’s how it all began. Next thing I knew, I was shooting on Baylor’s campus all night long, sometimes even till sunrise to get epic images of golden skies and liquid light pouring over campus. I would spend hours in my room with my dad’s old Vivitar flash, dropping water into cereal bowl, hoping to create a beautiful image of the water drop splashing on the surface.
This time in my life was a peak of creativity, full of experimentation, failing, trying again, failing again, changing settings, working the light, studying the work of fotogs around the world on sites like deviantART, finding ways into restricted rooms/rooftops on campus just to get the angle I wanted… and really just doing anything it took to create the image I had in mind, despite the limited tools I had.
As I shot, I listened to Rich Mullins incessantly on my iPod. I was inspired by his creativity and the vast number of tracks he’d laid down in beautiful harmony. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my photography was drawing me closer to my Creator. It had turned into a form of worship for me, a way to glorify God by capturing the Splendor I saw in everything around me. Photography had given me an avenue to take the talents God gave me and run as hard as I could with them.
On my computer, I’d edit and manipulate pictures for hours on end, striving to achieve my artistic vision. I called my Dad, a passionate photographer by hobby, hundreds of times saying, “hey, check your email for a new image.” He’d always view it immediately, we’d talk about how I created it, and I’d always learn something new.
Looking back, I can clearly see how God used stories about the life of Kyle Lake to bring me to my knees, to gut check my life, and to ignite a burning fire inside me to bring glory to God instead of run away from Him. Five years ago from this morning, I thought the life I was living was just fine, in fact I thought it was great… but as Isaiah writes, just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than ours. His plan for my life far exceeded my wildest imagination.
I write this with tears of thankfulness streaming down my face, for Kyle’s life, for the enormous impact it had on me, and for the grace of God. Today, five years after Kyle’s funeral, I can’t help but urge you to live a life that exudes love and passion, a life that is making an impact on eternity. Kyle knew not his time, and most certainly knew not the dramatic effect his untimely passing would have on me among so many others, but he lived his life like there was no tomorrow and because of that, I write about him today.
Finally, I leave you with the conclusion of the sermon Kyle wrote and planned to give on Sunday, October 30. It was a divinely appointed message that he never delivered, and one I’ll never forget:
“Live. And Live Well.
Breathe. Breathe in and Breathe deeply.
Be present. Do not be past. Do not be future. Be now.
On a crystal clear, breezy 70 degree day, roll down the windows and feel the wind against your skin. Feel the warmth of the sun.
If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool Autumn day to freeze your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE.
Get knee-deep in a novel and lose track of time.
If you bike, pedal hard and if you crash then crash well.
Feel the satisfaction of a job well done, a paper well-written, a project thoroughly completed, a play well-performed.
If you must wipe the snot from your 3-year old’s nose, don’t be disgusted if the Kleenex didn’t catch it all because soon he’ll be wiping his own.
If you’ve recently experienced loss, then grieve. And grieve well.
At the table with friends and family, laugh.
If you’re eating and laughing at the same time, then might as well laugh until you puke.
And if you eat, then smell.
The aromas are not impediments to your day. Steak on the grill, coffee beans freshly ground, cookies in the oven.
And taste.
Taste every ounce of flavor.
Taste every ounce of friendship.
Taste every ounce of Life.
Because it is most definitely a Gift.”
- Kyle Lake
Today was a little slower so we took the Rhino (off-rhoading beast) about 10 kilometers up the road to some pretty epic waterfalls. They’re beautiful at first, but once you hike about a 1km back behind the first falls, there’s a beautiful pool with some stunning waterfalls hidden there. It was raining, too, which made it even more epic. Here’s a handful of images from the afternoon…
Driving the Rhino… this thing can handle just about anything… they have two of them out here, jealous.
Today was the first day we really had any contrast in clouds… every other day has been pretty much completely overcast. Nice to have some beautiful skies.
This dude was fishing in the run off of the pond we were swimming in… I wonder what kind of fish there were in there…
Native people to Burkina Faso are called Burkinabe. Can you find the Burkinabe?
This last weekend I had the opportunity to spend 4 days as a student at the annual Eddie Adams Workshop. EAW is unique in that each student is selected based on their portfolio and it’s tuition free… Some of the top names in the photography come out to invest in up and coming photographers from around the world… a few folks world renowned in this industry graced us with their presence: Bill Eppridge, Nick Ut, John Moore, Tom Bol, Ami Vitale, Sabine Meyer, David Griffin, Carolyn Cole and so many more…
Had an amazing experience and met so many of the faculty and students… excited be in touch with such fantasticly talented people stationed all over the world. It was four days of very little shooting, lots of shooting and a bunch of great presentations. If you want to learn more about it… or apply for next, check it out here: www.eddieadamsworkshop.com
Now, about the title of this post… I am writing to you from the coolest named city on the planet, Ouagadougou which is in the small west African country Burkina Faso. Tomorrow we are headed out to Mahadago, along the eastern border of BF…
I arrived at the airport a couple days ago to find that I was walking through a construction zone as soon as I was off the plane (literally, I needed a hardhat) and INSIDE the airport the floors were uneven, rough and broken concrete. Amazing. I had trouble getting through the customs because I didn’t have a Burkina Faso phone # to put on my visa, I listed a couple of Sudan numbers and Kenyan numbers trying to fake her out, but she wouldn’t have it unless it had the right country code prefix.
Finally after 30 minutes of trying to smile my way thru it, they said I was going to have to sleep in the airport unless I had a phone number with the proper prefix… so I busted out my phone, turned on data roaming, googled “Burkina Faso Phone Numbers”… found the prefix, and wrote down a completely random number (with the BF country code prefix.) They said OK and let me thru. Ha.
I am working on a project with Centre for Advancement of the Handicapped (their blog seen here) They work under the umbrella of the larger organization I’ve worked with before, SIM (www.sim.org.) Centre for the Handicapped works to provide medical care and transportation to people all over the Mahadago area… they currently have over 1700 open cases of people they working with!
Although their base is in Mahadago, each day they have team members that hop on their dirtbikes and go out into the bush to the people in need… Tomorrow we drive all day long to Mahadago and then we’ll soon be hoppin on dirt bikes of our own, riding out into the bush (w/ a ton of gear on our back) to capture what is going on with this incredible organization.
Project brainstorm over (surprisingly good) pizza in Ouagadougou.
Pumped to be working with my good friend Taylor Martyn, who I’ve worked with before in Sudan… and also Rob Morris, a new friend that is a media guy currently based in Nairobi. I’ll be shooting mostly stills, putting together one or two multimedia presentations (photo/video/audio) like you see on www.mediastorm.com. We talked about this a lot at the workshop and I’m really excited to try this new method of story telling…
I don’t expect I’ll be able to update my blog again til I’m in Kenya on October 30th but check back, cause i’ll have updates asap!
Thanks for all your prayers and support –
Austin
The project I was just on with Living Water International had me going around to about 20 different water well drilling sites (all of which were schools) in southern Uganda. Of course… I wanted the school kids in the video and although they are super happy and joyful about having clean water, sometimes they get a little camera shy. The number one rule to overcome that, as seen in this short clip, is… act like a CRAZY MAN(N)! 
Such a joy and blessing to get to work with kids like this, they radiate with energy.
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