In October, 2010 I traveled to Haiti to shoot a documentary project.

Some people have their panic attacks on shoots. I have my sleepless nights weeks earlier during prep. Will we have consistent access to power? Will we find ourselves shooting at night in areas with no lights? Will we need to film in areas where even a medium-sized camera would make people uneasy? How to be nimble and lightweight but also prepared?

Here’s my stab at answering those questions: Sony EX1R as the properly outfitted A camera. Canon 5DII as the B camera, for low light and low profile shooting. A Lite Panels 1×1, a pair of battery belts, a compact tungsten lighting kit, and a Zylight. A 4×4 frame with bounce and silks. Two MacBook Pros, a small RAID, and a UPS unit. And most important of all, good crew. Pictured (L-R): sound mixer Matt Geldof, assistant/B-camera shooter Jennifer Olsen, me.


In Port au Prince, a girl cools off in the overflow from a refilling water truck.


The compassionate eyes of a tireless fighter. Gerald Crispin explains how his group’s heavy machinery clears rubble to allow rebuilding to begin.


Woman sweeping debris in a half-collapsed school. We saw Haitians hard at work every place we went, putting their lives and communities back together.


I confess to not being the biggest fan of the Canon 5DII as an “A” camera due to a lack of professional features and a sometimes fragile image. But with a fast lens (a 50mm 1.2L) the camera is phenomenal at night. Here, running and gunning amidst a torrential thunderstorm in Petion-Ville, with a rain housing.


And here, again, with the lens wide open. I dialed the key light down to the faintest glow to get the look I wanted: out of focus car lights dancing in the background and only stray light on the background buildings modeling the subject’s head (Alban Nouvellon, DINEPA).

The day we left, Cholera broke out.

There was a poll on FoxNews.com last week, on the one-year anniversary of the quake, that asked whether it was worth trying to help Haiti. One of the options: “Haiti was an economic and social disaster BEFORE the quake. It’s time to put a “closed” sign on this country.” Can you imagine looking into this young woman’s eyes and tell her you chose the “closed” sign, as 74% of visitors to Fox News did?

If you’d like to read a little more about my experience shooting in Haiti, click here.

Jennifer has also shared some of her striking still photos from the trip and written about the experience on her blog.