At breakfast this morning, Lobsang told us that there was a press conference happening at the Tibetan Government in Exile, and if Bennett wanted, he could go down with Phuntsok to record footage for Voice of America. If you ever watch the Tibetan news on VOA and see video from Dharamshala, chances are that one of the Archive staff shot it.
The topic was particularly dark: yet another official statement regarding the increasing number of self-immolations by Tibetans. Self-immolations in China hadn’t been getting much media attention until this incident in New Delhi a few months ago.
“All the Tibetans have tried so many ways to get attention, and somebody had to take the lead.”
There are posters up everywhere in McLeod.
It’s Bennett’s third day here and he’s already attending a press conference at the main government building.
From a photographic perspective, the press conferences room could use a lot of improvements. Here’s a comparison of a typical Tibetan government press conference to one in the U.S.
In the U.S., the speaker is standing, the background is both darker and further away, and there’s no distracting text. Also, if you look closely, you can see something out of focus at the edges of the Tibetan frame. These are people in the foreground, which the camera has to avoid. This is because the press conference table (and thus the camera) is at the same height as the audience. Raising the conference table and camera would solve this problem.
After the press conference, Phuntsok took Bennett on a brief tour of the Tibetan Library and Archives, located in the same complex as the Tibetan Government in Exile.
Back at Namgyal, Bennett reviewed the footage and discussed some possible changes to the lighting. Making changes to the press conference room isn’t something the Archive has any control over, but we’re hoping that by raising the staff’s standards of video quality, the bar will start to rise throughout the media community here.
Eventually, the conversation drifted to an impromptu conversation about prime lenses and polarizing filters.
