sheep herder

Bry Cox at Photo Beijing China & Inner Mongolia (Part IV)

After lunch in Mongolia, we were taken to see “a village” where the farmers lived. They had been given notice that we were coming and they were ready for us, dressed and ready to give us a parade down their main road.
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As the women danced, there was a little motorcycle trike-type-vehicle with a flat bed that drove down the middle carrying a drummer. Next to the motorcycle walked a cymbal player and a horn player.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_49

Of the entire crowd, I was drawn to the most interesting face, the cymbal player of the parade. I photographed him a few times, and at the end, he removed his gloves and shook my hand with a big smile.

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During the parade, these beautiful local ladies came out to see us and the parade.
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And this little boy came out of his house to show me his puppies by holding them out by their tiny paws. His mom, excited by him getting photographed went to get more puppies for him to show me. Interestingly, the puppies didn’t whine or squeal at all from being held this way. They seemed to like the attention from their little owner.
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After seeing the village, we went out to the farm were workers were hustling to bag corn. I found myself shooting a lot of horizontal portraits that showed the local environment. Here you can see the brown empty corn cobs in piles, ready to be hauled off, and bits of corn kernels that didn’t make it into bags get swept up with a homemade broom.
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Running and moving quickly as the sun was setting and these guys were working and didn’t want to be bothered, I would wave to people and smile. I love how big their smiles were back to me.
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This last woman was sweeping spilt corn kernels into piles, then separating the dirt by throwing shovelfuls into the air, allowing the dirt to blow to the side.
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That night, me and the other foreign ambassadors were given custom Mongolian clothes that were made for each of us, and then honored at a dinner. One nice touch for me was when they played the theme song from “The Magnificent Seven” as I walked up on stage to receive my award. Being a cowboy at heart, I’ve always liked that movie but it also has Asian roots being a re-make of the 1950’s movie, Seven Samurai. I’m not sure anyone else was aware of the connection, but it made the moment more meaningful to me, especially dressed as I was.
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As you can see, each day was an adventure and I was treated royally, for which I’m incredibly grateful. Coming up, I’ll share with you the images I created the next morning at a Buddhist temple at sunrise.

Until next time, America.

Bry Cox at Photo Beijing China & Inner Mongolia (Part III)

After Beijing, I was taken to Inner Mongolia as a photographic ambassador. There was a photo convention there too, and myself along with some of the other foreign photographers from the Beijing round table were the guests of honor. The drive was a long but beautiful 12 hours.

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The next morning a local government man who became a friend of mine over the next few days took us on a tour of his city. Being foreign guests, he was in charge of our well being and he also worked as our pseudo-translator. One of our stops included a desert area where he said, “You can photograph ships over there.”

I walked, looking for what didn’t make sense – perhaps some giant, land-locked ships deserted in the desert. But instead I saw a sheep herder and his sheep a ways off. “Oh SHEEPS!” I said in my mind. And being raised in farm country of Utah, I was less interested with photographing the sheep but instead enthralled with the sheep herder. I love faces, especially when I travel and I ran up to this man, waved, and pointed to my camera to signal that I wanted to photograph him.

I wasn’t prepared with my pro gear this morning. I thought we’d be shaking hands or something, so I was actually in my suit and only had my small Lumix LX100 point-and-shoot camera around my shoulder. But I love that camera for it’s dials and manual controls and I was quickly able to get these portraits of this man, shot just as you see them, un-cropped.

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I started to understand what it meant for this city in Mongolia to have us foreign photographers visit as “photographic ambassadors.” They were proud of their city and wanted to show us everything, from museums, to farms, to their cultural heritage of schools and Buddhist temples. They fed us great food each meal and wanted us to get great images of their part of the world which they hoped we’d go show the rest of the world. All of this was seen as good publicity for their city. Plus they mentioned multiple times what a great honor it was to have all of us from so many different countries, there to visit their city in Mongolia.

At this point we took a lunch break and returned to the hotel and I was able to change into my casual clothes and refit my leather shoulder bag with my larger, pro camera gear. I was also able to go on a short photo walk around the hotel in search of some gloves as it was below freezing there and all I had packed for clothes besides a suit was a couple t-shirts and a sport coat. I found some great gloves and also captured these abstract moments.

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After lunch we were taken to see a village where farmers were working. I shot so many images there. The local people heard we were coming and were dressed for a parade down their main road when we arrived.

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It was quite an experience and I have a lot of those images to share coming up. But as you can see, each day was an adventure, and I’m incredibly grateful to have been a part of this event.

Until next time, America.