HAPPY BIRTHDAY ED

Thursday, November 16 is Ed Kashi's birthday!

From the studio to Ed who is far away in Uganda...... Happy Birthday!

STUDIO NEWS - IRAQI FLIPBOOK

The Ed Kashi Iraqi "Flipbook" is making its public debut today as the top headline on MSNBC.com. To view the flip book go to the MSNBC.com site: MSNBC

PDN Online also ran a feature story about the flip book today. For more information about the creation of the presentation please visit the story here: PDN

The flip book features thousands of images that Ed made while on assignment for National Geographic in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2005. Ed's story was featured in the January 2006 issue of National Geographic. For more info: NGS Magazine

Meet the Studio

When Ed is traveling to exotic locales like Uganda, you can often find myself or someone else from our studio who will take on the mantle of the "official blog keeper" from time to time. I run the studio for Ed, I have been working with him since January 2005. Aside from the day to day operations of running the studio, I am also the Webmistress of the Edkashi.com site. If you haven't seen our new site design yet, I highly recommend taking some quiet time to check it out soon!

I'll be stopping by the blog occasionally to report the latest news on the homefront. In addition to myself, we hope to have contributions by Michael Curry, our digital guru. I'll try to persuade Mike to reveal some of his magic to everyone, he's saved us so many times and has deservedly earned the title "Hero" in the studio.

Lauren Rosenfeld works closely with Julie keeping Talking Eyes Media running smoothly. You'll be seeing Lauren's name popping up a bit lately! Lauren worked with Ed on the initial concept of his Iraqi Flipbook that is making news today (see the next post). Hopefully we will see Lauren posting here soon about the magic she works for Talking Eyes Media!

And that brings us to Julie Winokur, writer, director, producer extraordinaire! In addition to her creative talents, she is Ed's beautiful wife and all around Mom, not just to their children, but to all of us! We'd be lost without her!

With that out of the way, stay tuned for more exciting news from Uganda and New Jersey!

~Kristin

Photo Camp in Uganda for Refugee Children

I am now taking part in a wonderful project in Uganda. National Geographic Photo Camp is holding its first international Photo Camp, with the support of the International Medical Corps. I've participated in two others, in San Francisco and New York, but this is the first one being held abroad. We are in western Uganda teaching three two-day workshops to refugee children ranging in ages from 12 to 20. The participants are mostly from the Congo and Rwanda. So far it's been a dizzying experience with not enough sleep and too much to do. But the children are lovely and patient and seem to be getting a lot out of it. The goal of this workshop is part photo class and part art therapy. I've attached a few images of mine and one image by a very talented young man from the Congo who is 17. His image is a setup tableau of the difficulties the people face here when they get sick. They get malaria and don't have enough food, but their neighbors come to help and share what they have. He set this up on his own without any guidance from any instructor. This is quite an inspiring image and is filled with insight into the plight of the people here.

His image is the one of the man lying on a straw mat surrounding by villagers.