It's the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and with talk of it not being even half-way through, we are approaching the 4000th American combat death.
More importantly, a recent World Health Organization report based on Iraqi Health Ministry figures estimated that 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between March 2003, the start of the invasion, and June 2006.
Many of the reports of civilian deaths are disputed. What cannot be argued, however, is another grave consequence of the Iraq War: the displacement crisis as a mass exodus of Iraqis flee the instabilities and ever-increasing sectarian violence at home, tearing their families apart.
In mid-January 2008, with the support of the United Nations High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR), I traveled to Amman, Jordan to photograph and record a few of these families trapped in a no-man’s land; asylum seekers looking for refuge, too afraid to return to their blood-soaked country.
Here are a few of their stories.


For more information please check out.. The UNHCR Jordan Website

Tags: refugee, Jordan, amman, iraq, photography, UNHCR, poverty, war, iraqi, journalism, documentally, christian payne, Bill Cammack, documentary

I have been blogged a few times this year but it was really great to wake up to this blog post in the Guardian.

I met Jemima Kiss last night at a Seesmic meet up in Austin, Texas. I thought she was a really nice person..

Nicer now..


Leave a comment if you have the inclination and you never know.. i may get interviewed again.

Tags: podcast, new media, Ournaminside.com, documentally, photography, Jemima Kiss, guardian, bloggng

Tags: sxsw, photography, USA, Flight

This place is massive.. Sorry to state the obvious but on flying in on the approach in it looked like we would never find the landing strip and would have to put down in one of the ample parking lots that seem to adorn the county sized shopping complex's sprawled beneath us.

It was dark and everywhere was built upon.. I had expected a little but of desert and perhaps the odd nodding donkey but no such luck.

Oh and how cool is this..?

Thanks to the wonders of blogging and the fact there are people that do actually read this, Bill a podcasting friend from the Florida Soap Box and also the Progressive Podcast Network (PPN) managed to hook up with me for a brief hello at Texas airport where we were getting picked up by our friend Kity Kity aka Susan.

For each of us it is the first time we had met a member of the PPN in the flesh and a great welcome for me to see a familiar face and hear a voice I have listened to for ages.

Myself and Phil Campbell are the guests of Kity Kity in Wylie, Texas before we head down to the interactive extravaganza that is South By South West (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, about 3-4 hours south of here.

Make sure you check out Bills blog at http://filthandthefury.blogspot.com
You can also follow/add bill on Twitter

He is a really decent guy and I hope we can grab a beer together soon!

So.. In amongst making content and recovering from the trip we are slowly getting excited for the week to come..

We have some cool apps on the horizon thanks to Phil's magic hands.. Watch this space!

I'd love to have taken the time to have written my thanks to Bill Cammack regarding his job as editor on the recent UNHCR Podcast I have been working on but now I have seen his blogging skills in full swing..

I am glad i stuck with a brief video and didn't embarrass myself.


When Bill talks about the connections made within social media I think he hits the nail on the head. So much so that you should just click this link and read his post. That way I can get on with my packing and preparations for my flight tomorrow to Austin, Texas and the massive festival that is SXSW.

Let me just say though.. All these places we spend time on allow us to converse with people in some ways on better terms that we could do in the flesh.

A couple of days ago I posted my 3000 video post on Seesmic and soon after was asked.. "Was it worth it?".

I answered that I would have happily posted 5000 posts in exchange for the chance to have made contact with half of the amazing people I have met through the site. It has taken many of my previous 'Twitter' connections to another dimension, as I choose what conversation I wish to get involved with, with whom and when.

How many conversations do you have in a day where you do not have the chance to choose those parameters?

I have been podcasting for a couple of years now and before that I was a heavy forum poster.. That said, I still feel I am very new to many of the intricacies of social media and with this in mind I am more than a little excited to what the future may hold.

Project Update:
Regarding the UNHCR project.. As I type this there are a few representatives in a small office in Amman, Jordan looking over it now. I hope to hear back soon and have a date where I can put it out there. Then, hopefully it will start a conversation and perhaps direct some help to some people that really need it.

Tags: Bill Cammack, UNHCR, seesmic, social networking, social media, twitter, Jordan, iraq, podcast

Thanks to Phil Campbell for the edit.

All three parts of the video are here.. Part One Part Two Part Three

Tags: imaging, photography, birmingham, nec

Thanks to Phil Campbell for the edit.

All three parts of the video are here.. Part One Part Two Part Three

Tags: imaging, photography, yellow snapper, think tank, nec, birmingham

Thanks to Phil Campbell for the hard work in editing this film and to Yellow Snapper for introducing us to some great Think Tank kit..

All three parts of the video are here.. Part One Part Two Part Three

Tags: imaging, photography, thinktank, yellow snapper, nec, birmingham

Whilst i wait for a lift to the hospital.. Here is a record of what happened today..

Tags: Land Rover, landrover, crash

I have been playing with a video streaming mobile phone application called QIK (pronounced quick). This enables me to stream live video from my Nokia N95 straight to the web and simultaneously hold conversations with people viewing on Qik's site.

As you chat and explain what you are up to, little text comments scroll up onto your phone screen and a real time conversation is possible with anyone in the world who is viewing your video on Qik. As an added bonus as soon as you film you can notify anyone following you on twitter that you are live and as soon as you stop filming the video is also sent to Seesmic.

Not content with all that exposure I have also embedded the clip here below...

Tags: qik, twitter, iraq, seesmic, Jordan, journalism, amman, photography, phone, podcast, refugee, podcasting

Here is a turn up for the books..

Instead of grafting away at a podcast all of my own I have relied on the very professional skills of David Bailey over at The DFBMBE Podcast

I feel I am bowled over with my various projects at the moment so I am literally popping the url to his podcast in my feed. This not only saves me some valuble editing time but also helps me to introduce and thank a British podcaster who lives in Canada called David Bailey.

David kindly took the time to phone me up whilst I was working In Amman, Jordan and stole a few moments to record this brief interview. This may go a little way to explaining where I have been these last few weeks. Maybe it will even go some way to apologising in advance for my lackadaisical approach to podcasting as I finish up the project and get it over to the UNHCR.

David's content can be found at http://dfbmbe.wordpress.com and of course my podcast is at Documentally.com

You can also stream the podcast here.. DFBMBE Blog

Many thanks to Dave in taking the time to call me in jordan and for making the interview available as a podcast.

correction: During the interview i should have said... It is the largest refugee crisis to hit the Middle East in 60 years. We must not forget Afghanistan.

Tags: documentally, dfbmbe, amman, Jordan, podcasting, podcast, UNHCR

It's the beginning of my fourth full day here in Amman, Jordan and I feel I have hardly stopped. Friday is a holiday like the west's Sunday here so while we catch up on a little sleep I have sacrificed an extra hour to try to get a few words down on the blog.

On my arrival into the country I was to meet my friend Phil Sands. He is a friend from about five year back, where we both worked on a regional daily paper in Northamptonshire. As my trip here was delayed I had arranged Phil to come here and be a 'fixer' for a few days. Setting up some interviews with my contact and smoothing the way.

Phil has lived in the middle east for a good few years now, commuting between Iraq (where we have worked together before) and Syria where he has made Damascus his base. It's about $10 4 hour taxi ride from Amman to Damascus.

Phil has also has spent some time here in the past and knows some good people. One of these 'good people' a professional guy who runs a business mag called Karim came with Phil to pick me up at the station and instead of waiting with a normal white placard with my name on, they thought it funny to stage a fake kidnaping.

After a nervous welcome and hello we headed out into the dark cold night.. Only to be met by a short hairy guy on a mobile speaking in arabic and telling us we had to follow him. With secret police all over the Middle East It is not unusual for people to be taken off the street in this way. I was nearly taken hook line and sinker but Karim was a little to short and not at all threatening. Phil's acting was thankfully not that good either.

Amman is a sprawling city without a visible centre.. This does not so much make it a soul-less place but draw parallels with western developments where the old town is forgotten as the new multi billion dollar developments spring up on it's outskirts with their plazas and manicured gardens, surrounding condos and expensive apartments.

These developments only serve a very small percentage of the population but help to push up the cost of living for all. As a result those coming in from Syria and other neighboring countries may be surprised at the cost of living.

Phil and I are currently living in a small apartment in the Hotel Draghmeh in the region of Webdah. It costs about $40/night.

The work has been relentless and hard. Iraqi's keep strange hours at the best of time and Iraqi refugees trying to lie low in a country that does not necessarily see them as having any legal status are even harder to pin down. As a result, there never seems to be a time when I am not working and somedays can stretch into the morning of the next. Lunch-times are spent with some of the poorest yet still incredibly hospitable people while we interview and take pictures and the late night moments we snatch to find food and sustenance are spent making calls and arranging the next day. Everyone has a mobile phone here and I could not imagine even beginning to manage a project like this five years ago.

The people I have met so far have harrowing stories. One well educated guy from Baghdad fled to Jordan having had his life threatened, only to hear five members of his family were killed in a car when passing US soldiers in their neighborhood.

None of these stories are easy to hear and I am amazed at the strength of spirit of these Iraqis forced into exile. There is an infrastructure attempting to help these people headed by the UNHCR. It is these people who have asked me to come here. I can see now that giving assistance is a much harder job than any could have imagined.

I just hope that once I have finished this project it will make some people sit up and pay attention to what is probably the largest single migration of people since 1945.


(Photos and audio taken of Iraqi refugees will follow in the coming weeks.)

Tags: Jordan, iraq, refugee, syria, amman, damascus, migration, UNHCR, photography, muslim

Since I went freelance about four, almost five years ago, I traded under the name 3rd Eye Photography. I still love it but the creation of this site and I guess.. brand 'Our Man Inside' brought together many of my projects and offerings under one roof.

Our man inside was an old blog going way back. Many of the original anonymous posts have been moved and hidden in another location to protect the names of the innocent. (Mainly me).

As I pack to fly to Jordan in the early hours of tomorrow I thought it reasonable for me to tell my clients I will be away and thought I would also take the opportunity to officially launch this new site and the direction I wish to take for the foreseeable future.

Photography is still my main focus (scuse the pun) and I feel it will always be my main passion. There are so many other skills I wish to expand upon and incorporate too.

I won't write late into the night as I am a little sleep deprived and I don't feel tomorrows flight to the Middle East will be the most conducive for sleep. So I have linked the pdf newsletter I sent out to a few clients at the end of this post.

Should anyone want to contact me from tomorrow night (the 14th) I will be on my Jordanian mobile.. +962 795 316 772 or the usual electronic places. I will warn you in advance though, communication may well be sporadic.

Please click the link to read the PDF..
OMI-rebrand

Tags: 3rd Eye Photography, photography, rebrand, blogging, podcasting, Jordan, assignment

Great phone.. crap network.

Am I asking too much to want my cake and eat it too?

The black Nokia N95 8GB is my third new phone in as many months. The first a sony K850i was sent back as it's user interface (UI) turned out to be too weird and fiddly with the Vodafone firmware. The LG Viewty bought from Hong Kong was sold on as I didn't realise it didn't have wifi and my latest tool/toy the N95 seems to be the mother of all phones.

I have only had it a day or so and am pleasantly blown away at not only the UI but by all the apps floating around out there.

The only issue that arose on day one was the realisation that the 'Unlimited Data' package I was sold by Vodafone was infact limited to 120meg.

Hang on.. let me pause for a moment so you can realise jut how ridiculous that is.

The Nokia N95 8GB prides itself on being able to use Vodafone's lightning fast High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Vodafone brags that their network can handle up to 7.2Mbit/sec.

So if my maths serves me correctly, on a connection running the mythical top speed of HSDPA, my entire monthly data allowance would last me around 17 seconds.

This is hardly what I would call unlimited. Especially when T-mobiles Web and Walk offer up to 3GB and an Iphone on O2 offers true unlimited data (all be it at 2G speeds).

So this morning I looked at my data-crippled phone as it chomped at the bit aching to behave as it was bred and decided to call Vodafone.

I got myself a hugh double scoop of coffee and dialed 191 expecting to be listening to some old pop track for an hour. Less than a minute later and i was talking to a human called Amy. This was a bit of a shock as I always remember Vodafone as being a nightmare for keeping people hanging on the line.

Within a few minutes she agreed that I had been duped into an unlimited contract that was nothing of the sort. She said 120 meg is nothing and that she would upgrade me to unlimited at no extra cost. I was in shock. This was all to good to be true. I asked for her to email what she had said just so as i had it on file.

I could only imagine that i was not the first to raise this issue and infact Trading Standards were in fact breathing down the necks of this mobile giant ordering them to make things right.

I was a very happy bunny and the call ended with me thinking all wrongs had been righted and that I was going to have to eat my previously harsh words in this very blog post.

Not so.

Twenty minutes later I still had no confirmation email and while mid call to a friend the phone cut off. I thought nothing of it. Perhaps he was driving and dropped the signal.

When it looked like I was not going to get an email i picked up my mobile and dialed 191. No connection. All I got was the error tones. I called a landline.. the same tones.

I could not believe it. I had been cut off.

Luckily I have a land line handy so i could call vodafone customer services. And i did.

Within a few minutes with the assistance of another advisor we had ascertained that Amy had assigned to my phone a data card tariff which had cut my phone services off. WTF.

Not only that, but the tariff I have been on for the last few years is now unavailable to me. I was only kept from migrating away recently because I could keep my pretty decent free minutes and texts with free weekend calls to both landlines and mobiles! They blocked me out from it and now I am not allowed to get back in! Surely they are in breach of some kind of contract here...

"Ok", i said. Trying to remain composed.

To cut a long and stress filled story short.. Vodafone have buggered up my contract and stomped on any faith I had left in them. To top this they have absolutely nothing bigger than 120 meg for on-the-phone data and I think this is just ridiculous. Especially when T-Mobile offer 3gb on an unlimited (fair use) tariff.

Vodafone's offerings are hardly cutting edge. Why advertise spangly new 'VMI' (Vodafone mobile internet) if all it is good for is downloading a few email headers and surfing wikipedia in the pub quiz?

So, the way things stand at the moment are they are offering me an extra 100 mins a month making it 300 free minutes to any landline, 500 free texts, Vodafone 'stop the clock', which means after the first three mins on a weekend and every evening I can talk for an hour at no charge. On top of this they will give me £30 credit on my account and a free month of the £7.50 bolt on data tariff to see if i like it.

This is the absolute best they could offer me. The only thing I really wanted is a few mins and a decent data tariff, which they don't can't give me. They can't even give me my old tariff back.

So i have about 14 days to make up my mind and in the first 14 minutes of this, my friend Giles has informed me that I can have a free Nokia N95 8GB on their Flex 35 contract (900 units, either text or mins) and for an extra £7.50 Web and Walk which is up to 3GB !!!

I seriously think that Vodafone are missing a trick here. If they really thought 120 meg was enough for anyone why not have the confidence to offer 1GB a month or even 500meg for starters? Why not put their meg where their mouth is.

Today mobile phones should enable us to leave our laptops at home. They have the capabilities to run a multitude of apps and stream data from cameras with decent resolutions. Never-the-less, some of our mobile network providers (namely Vodafone) seem to want us to stay in the dark ages.

Tags: mobile phone, vodafone, Contract, HSDPA

It feels like it has been days since I last posted. It is days, weeks. Days and weeks spent on Seesmic.

This is what I wanted to talk about today.. Not the fact that I need to work on my time management, not that I have been short of bloggable inspiration, but the fact I am hooked on a new video blogging application I have been meaning to write about since my first 'seesmic post'.

Initially I saw Seesmic as a video-polaroid. A place to sound off in a timeline with a random thought, question or instance of craziness. Then as more and more pre-alpha testers were admitted, conversations started. Then it became more of a Video-Twitter.

Look it up on Wikipedia a few days ago and you would have seen nothing.. today it says "Seesmic is a video micro blogging web application in pre-alpha stage being developed by French Entrepreneur Loic Le Meur" And it was Loic that gave me my invite.

Phil Campbell mentioned it in a twitter post so I DM'ed Loic and moments later I was in. I think that being on twitter already may have helped as Loic did not know me from Adam. He has spent more time hanging out with Bush than he has talking to me..

So now as videos were being batted back and forth at close to real time speeds. Comments made and themes formed, I realized this wasn't just a chatroom I was looking at. These were multi dimensional people not too dissimilar to me and I was getting to know them in a face to face kind of way. In a far more personal manor than on any other social network. The international timezones crossed have tested my ability to survive on only a few hours sleep as i have been facinated with the threads and conversations spanning the globe.

It is still early days for 'seesmic' At the moment it is in Pre-Alpha release and the number of people signed up and online have formed a tight nit community posting snippets of their opinions from their home computers, from there work spaces and sometimes even out on the road streaming through 3g networks or public wifi.

I feel like I have been a part of seesmic for a lifetime and I feel like seesmic has taken a chunk of my life and placed it online for the world to see.

Whilst podcasting I had previously made a point of not giving too much away about my life or my opinion.. Seesmic has really brought out the Jeckell to my Hyde the yin to my Yang and I find it very therapeutic. Cathartic I guess.

I could go on and on but I won't, Seesmic is a different application to all who use it and to really find out about it's intricacies you need to be signed up and a part of the myriad conversations helically intertwined across the globe between anyone with an internet connection, a webcam on a computer.. and of course.. the golden ticket.

I feel I have so much to say.. but it's easier to show you.. to 'seesmic' it..

Check out the embedded post below and... "Seesmic ya later.."


Incidentally the Seesmic Crew have been kind enough to give me a couple of invites to pass on to anyone that has read this far and is willing to leave me a blog comment below telling me why they want to join Seesmic. Let me know..

If you want to see what I see.. Here you go..

Tags: seesmic, video blogging, internet, social networking, twitter, loic le meur

I was very pleased to receive an email today telling me of a published report being released on a symposium I attended earlier this year.

The report from The Democratic Image - Photography and Globalisation held in Manchester last April covered this groundbreaking event that sought to investigate how digital technology was aiding representation in a connected world.

My initial invite came out of the blue after a listener to my podcast recommended me to one of the 'Look 07' organisers. Before I knew it I was giving a talk on Photography and New Media to some seriously influential movers in the world of photography and journalism. Pedro Meyer of Zone Zero and Geert Van Kesteren the Magnum Photographer behind Why Mister Why were amongst the many that left a lasting impression on me. (In the photo above.)

I didn't blog my experiences at the time as the moment it ended I was continuing further north to commence an expedition by canoe down the river Spey in Scotland. Once at the end of that successful trip I was back in the thick of work and assignments.

Now it seems I can summerise by means of clipping my mention and linking the whole report below. Please take the time to read what Redeye do as Britain's largest photographers network.

NOTES ON THE BLOG In collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery and hosted at openDemocracy.net (http://thedemocraticimage.opendemocracy.net), The Democratic Image blog launched on 11 April and posed the following question: Time magazine has voted you `The Person of the Year’ for `seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game’. As a `pro’, what is your take on the democratisation of art and media in the digital age? First to respond was Christian Payne, the blogger and podcaster behind OurManInside.com, who thanked Time `for the recognition’ and the `corporate media [...] for making me switch off, for making me sick at heart, for making me angry’. Thanks to them, he turned to his computer `to get a bearing on some kind of meaningful truth’. For Payne, the Internet revolution counters the mediation of Big Media, allowing `diversity’ and `a deeper, wider, discourse’ that has enabled him, in his words, to `make up my own mind’. Switched on again, Payne became a blogger, primarily of images. More than that, the medium inspired him to self-finance a journey to Northern Iraq in 2006, video-podcasting a photo-documentary about the Kurdish Peshmerger warriors under the title of `Those Who Face Death’.Payne is very clear of the political importance for image makers like him of increasingly accessible new media, which in his view `are reviving our dwindling hopes for genuine freedoms’. But he is equally clear that the only alternative to corporate mediation for the new `pros’ striving for these freedoms is an alliance with other bloggers, podcasters, and other internet users, in which new work can be mutually financed and supportively criticised online. This raises the issues of the blurring between image makers and audiences, and of how cooperative might the Internet be. What