bob sacha » camera

Road Trip: Ohio Republicans

bob sacha — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:58:10 +0000

I was walking off the US Air flight to a snowy Cleveland, Ohio when I spied Miki Meek, my collaborator, parked on a seat near the gate, cellphone plugged into the wall. “I’ve got one,” she said “and we can see her tomorrow.”

Thus began our 5 day road trip down route 71, from Cleveland to Cincinnati and back through Ohio for Yahoo!News, talking to Republican voters and learning a few things along the way.

The character she hooked was the wonderful Ebony Grantonz, the wife of an African American minister and a registered Republican. Early next morning, Ebony and her husband and their three kids allowed us to invade their home and ride to church with them. After the service, Ebony talked about politics and religion. She was smart, well spoken, frank, and described herself as “politically incorrect.”

You can see Ebony’s story and the three other short films we reported and filmed then edited and posted in a week (without much sleep) to the Yahoo!News Destination2012 political blog. Chris Suellentrop was our wonderful editor at Yahoo!News.

Stop Torture in Healthcare

bob sacha — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:09:59 +0000

It’s time to stand up and speak out against the terrible things that are perpetrated on people in the name of health care. Here are three films I directed and shot along with Scott Anger as part of a campaign to Stop Torture in Healthcare.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you want to do something about this problem? Send a letter to the Namibian Health Minister to demand an end to forced sterilization of HIV positive women.

Here are the two other films we did for the campaign:

Vlad is suffering from incurable brain cancer. Despite his chronic pain, doctors in Ukraine are only allowed to prescribe 50 mg of pain medicine. In another country, doctors would typically prescribe more than 2,000 mg for a patient like Vlad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In many countries, governments forcibly detain people as a form of “treatment” for medical conditions such as drug addiction, mental disability, or tuberculosis. This is a story about Venta, a former drug abuser in Cambodia.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Scenes from recent work

bob sacha — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:19:10 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Excerpts from five recent projects where I directed and also did the cinematography. I’d love it if you watch the full films

The full versions of these stories were edited by Linda Hattendorf (Namibia), Chad Stevens (New Orleans), Scott Anger (Ukraine) and me (Dwayne Betts and Cambodia).

Scott Anger co-directed and also did the sound and additional camera on the Namibia, Ukraine and Cambodia excerpts.

Brad Hamilton shot second camera on the Dwayne Betts interviews.

Change from Within: Stories From New Orleans

bob sacha — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:28:11 +0000

New Orleans suffered devastating blows on many levels from Hurricane Katrina. But the storm gave the city the unique opportunity to start over from scratch and to try to re-imagine government and other institutions.

Five years later the Open Society Institute wanted to look at three areas to see if things had changed. I spent a week with three characters to try to answer that question.

This is the last part of that short film, looking at online journalism.

You can see all three stories at the Open Society Foundations website, U.S. Programs. I directed and recorded the story on a Canon 5d, Scott Anger recorded the sound, Chad Stevens edited and Pamela Chen of the Soros Foundation was the executive producer.

What Does Justice Mean to You?

bob sacha — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:44:10 +0000

Dwayne Betts tells his story very well and what a story he’s lived.

This is my favorite story from the five videos I produced for the Open Society Foundation,U.S. Programs, Criminal Justice Fellows.

Formerly incarcerated, Betts is an author, poet and teacher.

You can see all Six of the videos at the Open Society Foundations U.S. Programs Multimedia page

digital dreamscape

bob sacha — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:15:22 +0000

This is an interactive portfolio, click on the arrows to cycle through the images (and my dreams).

Every Sunday I’m left as an internet widow by my partner, who writes the wildly popular website Gastropoda. So while she was ranting online about food and politics, I was posting pictures. The site was designed by Audrey Chen and Billie Mandle, making a site that reflected both my dreams and photography in an even cleaner and more clever mode than what I imagined.

Luz, a new photo agency

bob sacha — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:05:12 +0000

Grazia Neri Agency was the best European photo agency I worked with: they sold every story I sent them. So I was sad when they called it quits. But now there’s Luz, born from the ashes of Grazia Neri and with an eye toward new media also.

I’m also a big fan of it’s founders, especially Alberto Giuliani, an amazing young photographer. Great to be in such good company.

1 Magazine 3.5 minutes 21 years.

bob sacha — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:49:02 +0000

Published work from National Geographic Magazine.

Here’s a selection of the photography I published in National Geographic Magazine, on assignment for more than 20 years.

How fast time flies…

Thanks to Pamela Chen who wrote the music.

Far Away Lands

bob sacha — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:52:24 +0000

This is short film I made with a point-and-shoot pocket-sized digital camera.

It was the opening piece for a lecture on travel photography at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY. The series was called Wish You Were Here.

Poverty in the Face of Resource Wealth

bob sacha — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:14:06 +0000

I know what “transparency” is but mostly from my days as a photojournalist working with color slide film. So when the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) came to MediaStorm to create a multimedia piece explaining what they did, it took me a while to figure it out. In the process, I learned a lot more.

For this story, I had the pleasure of traveling to London. Berlin and Washington to interview 6 people that represented all sides of the issue. Fifty or more countries in the world are rich in resources: gold, silver & oil but more than half of their population lives below the poverty line. This projects looks at why.

Maybe the new paradigm is someone like me traveling with 2 HDV cameras, tripods and mic stands plus my laptop. In each country, I worked with a camera person (Kimberley Williams in Washington, DC, Karveh Shirdell in London and Bjorn Forster in Berlin. We used a single light for the interviews. I edited the transcripts and pictures and cut the piece.

Of course, none of this would be possible without all the amazing photographers bravely working in these countries.

Thanks to all for teaching me so much.