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

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 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

What Can I say.. Other than Thank YouI

There is nothing quite like getting post that isn't a bill.. I love unexpected mail and this box came out of the blue and has really brightened my day.

You can see more about my recent crash by clicking HERE ..HERE and HERE

Or you can click these links below.. If the links aren't working come back in a bit as the servers are being refreshed..

http://www.ourmaninside.com/blog/files/84acdca4295a8c386c63fbcf7954a1c2-77.php

http://www.ourmaninside.com/blog/files/0188b4e27e4482e04cf38d5effcd1afa-78.php

http://www.ourmaninside.com/blog/files/dbf66fea33e89f3defea42ce486c88e5-79.php

Thanks again to Summersault Communications

Tags: post, summersault, gift, beer, organic, crash, Land Rover

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

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

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 structures might enable real collaboration beyond the much celebrated interactivity touted by the corporations behind the Internet? And to what extent are corporate interests foreclosing the emergence and maintenance of truly democratic internet use that might conflict with their values?

If you would like to read the whole report.. Please click here.

Tags: look 07, photography, journalism, iraq, kurdistan, Open Democracy, magnum, RedEye, Geert Van Kesteren, podcast, Zone Zero

Everyday I see some new application, web based or downloadable that I didn't see the day before. I now am fully aware that for me to keep up with all these new cerebral arrivals I would need an army of clones and as many mac book pros.

Today in @sizemore's twitter post (tweet to those in the know) I saw a mini video he had made with a web app entitled Animoto.

Literally 2 minutes later I has sucked 15 music photos out of my flikr account and mixed them with some supplied music to produce this..

It wasn't even a a drag and drop affair, just a few clicks.. Where was all the messy editing.. where was the faffing about with cuts, timelines, titles and syncing?

The future is scary... Scary but very convenient.

p.s. The hairy guy with the camera at the start is not me.. It's 'Badly Drawn Boy' I am sat with Noel Gallagher on the last slide.

Tags: music, video, festivals, web 2.0, animoto, editing, Badly Drawn Boy, Noel Gallagher

In a time of everybody photographing everything, little seems new and fresh, from celebs, to tourist attractions, where are the original scenes, the original moments..? Perhaps nothing is left. Where is our desire to discover and document unknown territories, to see everything?

Today I stumbled apon a website today called 'Strictly No Photography'. It is dedicated to showcasing photographs taken in places where you should not really be taking pictures.



There have been loads of times where I have been tempted and not bothered and a few times where I have been warned not to and done it anyway. There is something about doing the opposite of what you are told. Especially when it comes to taking photos in places you shouldn't, you feel you have then captured something others have not.

Then there are the restrictions placed upon us by people protecting their corporate interests. I imagine most have seen the signs at art galleries. I could not help myself when visiting an exhibition of Nirvana photos in a london gallery. I was still gutted at selling the ticket to the last scheduled concert Kurt Cobain was to play at and always regret not getting to see them. So when I saw a corridor of photos with his face refracted in them I just had to take it.

The CCTV camera just visible in the frame but unseen to me alerted an attendant to my snapping and a moment after I pressed the shutter, the door in the picture flung open and I was dressed down by an irate security guard obviously bothered by having to sit in a cupboard looking at screens all day. Why assume I am going to rush home and made a calendar of someone else's art? I would argue the gallery is a public place and normally take pictures with that thought in mind.

Still, since then, whether it be art or science exhibitions, government buildings or places of religious interest I always look around for cctv cameras before I snap.

With phones as well as cameras now being banned from more and more places it is certainly a challenge and I would much rather see a respectfully grabbed shot taken in a place you would not normally get a glimpse into that any 'papped' shot of a minor celeb drunk in a bar or flashing themselves getting out of a car.

(To see more pix of places you wouldn't normally, I highly recommend the exhibition I recently saw at the Photographers Gallery in London... 'An American Index of Hidden and unfamiliar.' By Taryn Simon Interestingly there were very few places she didn't get permission to photograph, Disney had an issue with some behind the scenes location and also the US government disallowed access to the warehouse where the furniture is stored for ex tenants of The White House.)

Tags: photography, cctv, secrets, restricted, museum, gallery, nirvana, kurt cobain, internet

I was still the new boy at my local regional paper in Northamptonshire. I had been head hunted after three months at a weekly paper after one of the photographers saw me jumping across the roofs of canal boats trying to get a clear shot of actor David Suchet.

As I was the only person at the paper aware I had absolutely no qualifications in photography at all, I was still trying to prove my worth.

Always short staffed and short on equipment, the paper had sent all the available photographers down to Northampton's famous old market square to cover a walkabout by the then Ex-Priminister Margaret Thatcher.

With an old battered Canon digital and two lenses, I knew my options for a decent view were limited and set about looking for a spot to shoot from. Walking around the market I spoke to a few of the stall holders and found out that a couple had been visited that morning by sniffer dogs. I figured it was a safe bet they were scouting out her route and told another photographer I was going to get a better view from a window over looking the square.

He seemed pleased at this idea as everyone of us was out to get their picture in the paper and he seemed to think that with me stuck up and out of the way, it would leave him with the best shots.

It was all about who's picture got in and with a brief as wide as 'Show the chaos', it was anybody's day.

Of all the windows on the square, I chose the second floor of a pub, 'The Moon On the Square' or something. Well I figured it could be a long wait so why not grab a beer in the meantime.

I had a comfy chair and a half opened window. I had chosen the only lens I could use at that distance which was a 70-200mm f2.8.

So, there I was, beer in one hand and camera in the other with a view over the whole square. I won't go into all the parallels I was thinking about, that revolved around a similar window with a view in a certain book depository. But yes.. I did feel a little like I imagine a sniper would.. Waiting for his 'mark'.

Just as i was thinking if the police had actually thought about checking upper windows a black Jag pulled up on the edge of the square and out of nowhere press, TV, close protection units and members of the public swamped it.

As if the crowd were one swirling beast it slowly swayed and morphed it's way across the square on more of a float-about than a walkabout.

My camera was to my eye and still i could see no old lady with big hair. Just suits and cameras, ear pieces and furry microphones.

Then, as they had moved across and in front of me I saw her. Just a flash of face in the tiniest of breaks in the crowd.

And I shot.

Just the one shot, but I felt that excited rush when you know you have caught something close to what you were after.

Looking at the back of the camera I had what looked like a little face in a crowd. Not really the award winning photo I had in my minds eye, but with a shrug and a gulping down of the last of my beer I decided it would have to do and headed out into the street.

Down the stairs, out of the front door and straight into the mass of people rolling as one across the square. The people were packed so tight I could not even raise my camera.

I decided to duck out, squeezing myself through the throng and behind the counter of a vegetable stall. The people who owned it were the same that I had spoke to earlier.

Just then a really strange thing happened. Appearing right in front of me, like a little old lady after pound of mixed veg, was a smiling Margaret Thatcher holding her handbag and a bunch of flowers. She looked as if she were about to ask me a question. Then she clocked my camera and held out her hand. I took it, and as I shook I looked into her eyes. She had a grip built up by years of greetings and a million hello's.. and a look in her eyes that... Well I won't go into it here suffice to say it's a look i have seen in the eyes of other former world leaders..

Leaving me momentarily stunned she moved on to have a staged chat with the real owners of a store and I took a couple of photos that looked as if she were hassling some shopper oblivious to her presence and just trying to grab a bargain amidst the chaos.

Then magically she was gone as quick as she had arrived leaving everyone to carry on as normal. I headed back to the paper to put my pix in as no doubt the afternoon was calling with it's cheque presentations and other undisguised anticlimaxes.

The next day I arrived at work to see the photo department standing round the paper. Looking over shoulders to see the cover I saw my photograph unashamedly pasted across the front page. I couldn't help to smile the kind of smile you know would upset others. But i did.. and it did, just as the editor walked by and slapped my shoulder. "Good work" he said. That was a lot from him, and the others new it.

I felt i had arrived.

Tags: photography, new media, news, thatcher, prime minister, journalism

I have really missed having a camera phone. Although I am only into day two of playing with my new toy, having been without one for a year, I forgot how bloody handy it is to have a camera in your pocket at all times.

I imagine you could be thinking.. "Wait a minute, this guy works as a photographer.. Surely he has a camera at the ready at all times anyway.. and a good one at that?" Well, just as a bricky doesn't take his trowel everywhere or the artist his brushes, I too neglect to carry around my very heavy pro kit, or even sometime my pocketable compact camera. I always seem to have my phone with me though.

This I think is a really important point and on that basis alone, I feel I could comfortable argue that the camera phone is the best type of camera you can own.

How could this be? Well the best camera is the one that gets the shot. We have seen phone pix from air crash victims, protesters using mobiles to keep the police accountable for their actions, Burmese sending at one point the only news from their oppressed country and let us not forget the most famous pix from the heart of the 7/7 bombings.

It's all about being there.. with a camera. It doesn't really matter what kind of camera as long as you can push a button and some kind of legible image is captured.

Initially the first time I thought you could actually take a decent picture was with the 2MP Sony k750i and now I have the K850i I am really beginning to think we are getting there. We still need the leica lens's of this world and a decent sensitive