Flow Media Productions

New Website

Simon Sticker — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:00:42 +0000

Check out the new Flow Media website for all fresh & new content here.

Wamba Education Project

Simon Sticker — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:09:05 +0000

Wamba is a small towm in the north of Kenya with a hospital that has to care for people even 500 km north of Wamba, people from Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. The hospital is the reason why there is a little bit more than nothing in Wamba. Not only sand, dust and stones. The people here have a hard life to live. The rain season did not came for a longer time and the prospects are not high. Especially for the young children it’s a tough life with no real chance for education in the region. And it’s a very poor region of Kenya, what means that most of the parents have no chance to afford their kids a good education what means a better life. Education is also here the key to get out of poverty. Combine that drastic prospects with the epidemic HIV/Aids (more about it here), what kills many before their kids get even in the age to care for themselves, and you look deep into a powerful crisis.

In February 2009 we came to Wamba on a field trip and met Theresa, Alice and William. They had lost parts of their families or both of their parents to Aids and were facing a life without future. Theresa for instance was living at her uncle and he wanted to push her into a forced marriage, a absolute horror as you might understand. And this was not even badly thought by her uncle. He just could not give her a chance for education or not even care for her because of poverty.

We started the Wamba Education Project in these days to give this three young now-students the chance for a better life. It’s a start and some might say: There are more fates like that, it’s a drop on a hot stone. But where to start? You could not change to whole world. But you could do something. And doing something is always better than nothing. And especially when you know exactly where your support is going to and you could follow how it helps. So visit the website for more information and feel free to donate, to give these children the chance for a better life.

[Vimeo 4591245 w=500&265]

HIV/Aids prevention

Simon Sticker — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:24:19 +0000

Two month ago i was working for this NGO called the Baobab family in Mombasa, Kenya to capture their projects, which is beside an orphanage mainly about HIV/Aids, two subjects which are standing in a very close conherence (as you could see here). On the one hand they support HIV+ women to give them the power again by giving them the feeling of not being alone with it and also with giving them the chance to work and care for their families that way by doing a little bit of money. But another big part of their work is doing prevention and reconnaissance work to fight the stigmatisation of HIV/Aids in the community and create a new understanding of the disease. They start with it at a very young age now, in the schools, doing little clubs where they write poems and do little theater about the theme. For me, as said before, it seems like that education is the only sustainable way to get out of this when you look at it on a larger time scale.
I was happy to join some of these clubs in the small school at the end the Bangladesh slum. So what you can see below is just a pretty rough cut of one of the plays the kids wrote and performed in the clubs, to fight against HIV/Aids and shout out loud that is something everyone is effected by in one way or another, so nothing what should be stigmatized.

[Vimeo 4586316 w=500&h=282]

Sand & Sorrow

Simon Sticker — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:06:55 +0000

I wrote about the Darfur crisis one or two times before, a crisis which is, beside Congo, maybe the biggest forgotten crisis in the world. 200.000 people died in this conflict in the last years, being killed or dying because of starvation. 2.5 million people are living in the IDP camps, most of them in the nearby Chad, without any chance to live a normal life. We don’t hear about all that here in our world what we sometimes think is THE world, in daily routine we forget about that there are human beings being killed, raped and suffer because of famines. Is there one world? Can we believe in that? And if your answer is yes, isn’t it our responsibility to listen, following the thought that when you listen you get involved and when you get involved things may have the chance to change?

While in Rwanda i started reading the book ‘Darfur- the ambiguous genocide’ by Gerard Prunier, a deep inside look into the roots of this conflict and the role of the international community as well, which i can highly recommend.

Also i’ve seen this two films in the last days about Darfur. Don’t be recoiled by the fact that there are also some celebrities involved, it is fine balanced i would say.

Darfur NOW

Sand and Sorrow

Always north

Simon Sticker — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:51:14 +0000

Just came back from a short trip to Denmark to visit my girlfriend and spent some days in the beautiful house of her parents south of Copenhagen on a little island. Perfect place to relax and feel the wind cleaning your head.

Enjoy a little picroll here.

Fifty people, one question

Simon Sticker — Sun, 03 May 2009 23:40:26 +0000

If you could wish for one thing to happen by the end of the day, what would it be?

[Vimeo 1737450 w=500&h=282]

An easy but brilliant idea they had. Ask fifty people one question and film their responses. Is there a better way to get to know how diverse the people and their lifes are? If you would like to join this, visit fiftypeopleonequestion.com and give your answer.

Wax & Gold

Simon Sticker — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:42:05 +0000

Directly after the meeting for the Bronx Rock Invitational i drove to Bonn to help two friends doing the finalization (lots of finalization recently…) of a movie about a field trip to Ethiopia last year. The movie had his premiere yesterday evening in front of a crowd of 300 people, who wanted to get to know more about this country at the Horn of Africa. If you also would like to get to know more about it, here is the chance! Enjoy!

[Vimeo 4411491 w=500&h=375]

Editing by Simon Peth & Christian Sefrin, movie in german…

Bronx Rock Invitational ’09

Simon Sticker — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:27:17 +0000

Yesterday we finalized the last bits and pieces of the format for the Bronx Rock Invitational 2009, held on the 15th of August. The Comp will be held outdoors this time with six women and six man on new build artificial structures…

Check out the BRI-blog for more information here.

What makes you happy?

Simon Sticker — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:58:14 +0000

[Vimeo 4256849 w=500&h=290]

Update time

Simon Sticker — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:29:27 +0000

(click on the pictures to get to the links)

A couple of month ago i met Fred Moix somewhere in Switzerland. We were shooting Toni Lamprecht together that day in The Dagger, one of the hardcore classics in Ticino (read the article here.). A couple of days later i got an email from Fred asking me to join bouldering.info. Bouldering.info is a collective of climbing photographers, really high-class as i would say, so i was pretty stoked about that invitation. It took some time now and the site is right now a bit under construction, ’cause we have a couple of ideas how to make things better, also for clients. But have a look if you find the time. It’s worth it for sure…

Another great thing where you could watch a small selection of my pics is on a website called seen.by. Seen.by has only fine art photography, which is also possible to buy as prints. The standards are pretty high. So also beside my pictures it’s worth it a visit.

And all the good news did not end here. Another collective i joined is VII Visionaries, founded by VII, a photoagency with famous photographers as James Nachtwey, with a focus on conflict/ humaiterian photography. So there you will mainly find pictures from me of harder topics…

And to the end there is one last thing to mention: I opened a group on facebook for FLOW MEDIA. So if you are on facebook, join me there to get frequent updates.

I also updated the climbing gallery. So click on the picture below to see the new one.