Transcript

The Beauty in Everything | Ryan Pyle | TEDxNantong

I want to talk today a little bit about finding the beauty in everything and as a photographer this is my life this is my job I came to China from Canada Washoe Jana Darrin and I had the chance to travel all around China and taking pictures and the most important thing about taking pictures is to tell the story and in order to tell the story you need to take beautiful pictures and you need to find the beauty in everything and even Confucius also thinks so everything has Beauty but not everyone sees it and one of the most important things about being a storyteller and being a photographer is seeing the beauty is finding the beauty documenting the beauty and then having a chance to share that story and share that image with the wider audience so today I'm gonna share some of my images about documenting China which I've been doing for a very long time so a little bit of background about me obviously from Canada went to the University of Toronto Toronto - we moved to China in 2002 and started working as a photographer and eventually moved into television production and I had the chance to also work with big publications like Newsweek but finding the beauty and everything can be difficult and here this is a picture of a woman in Dongguan she was from Hunan Province and she had actually lost her job due to the 2008 financial crisis and I had the chance to meet her and take a picture with her and trying to find the beauty in her in her difficult moment or in her misery so that I could tell the story of what was happening to people working in factories in Dongguan Shanghai voltage ODS I Shanghai I live in Shanghai I absolutely love Shanghai and I had the chance to photograph Shanghai so many times like this picture here this is actually on about the 90th story 90 floors up on the Shanghai World Financial Center in pudong telling the story of how the building was built Jack Ma right I had the chance to meet Jack Ma when he was very small right now if Jack mozz huge and very rich but when Alibaba was just a small company just a small company in Hangzhou I had the chance to meet a young Jack Ma and take a picture of him and I find the beauty in his smile he's a great guy ah this is in Yunnan Province you know China is so beautiful and the mountains and the culture and the minorities and the religion and the food and everything is incredible to photograph and document and here is a beautiful river in Yunnan Province and we actually walked and trekked over the mountains in order to get to this river and we saw it at a beautiful time of day right here twisting and winding through the mountains in northern Yunnan Province tea this is a hung Jyoti house I had the chance to do a story all about tea in Hangzhou and I had the chance to visit this tea house where young men pour tea in very creative ways and I had the chance to meet this young man pouring tea and his hat his hat did not fall off his mouth ah it's incredible just stays up this is an older woman she's doing some farming she's scattering out some corn on her rooftop and this is just outside Guo Yan and behind her is a brand new bridge that the government there just built this is a Weger man in Changsha in injunction and Hunan province and he's making kebabs yeah at night for all the passers-by on the street and I who was singing and he was dancing and I just love this picture I found the beauty in his craft I found the beauty in him working I found the beauty in him cook and it was just a lovely little moment and the light was perfect this is on the top of a holy mountain this is whoo Dan Xiang and this was early in the morning in the mist and a monk walks across the open courtyard and later on they go and they do their Tai Chi early in the morning but this is him walking across the courtyard wine this is in Shaanxi province and I had the chance to visit a vineyard in Shaanxi just outside Tai yuan and here they were doing the annual harvesting and I had the chance to document the harvesting for fortune magazine where we talked about how China was developing a taste for wine and I had to find the beauty and find the moment in the wine producing in order to tell the story for Fortune magazine food production this is actually also in Hunan Province same as an earlier photo where there was a young woman working in a pork factory where they slaughter pigs and turned them into the food that we eat every day this is a young a factory worker from Sichuan Province also in Dongguan this is in in Xiamen in gulong you and this is a chance that I had of a young woman just walking by with a beautiful umbrella and it was a beautiful purple umbrella with the cityscape of shaman in the background oh there we go this is something you never see anymore finding the beauty in counterstrike or the internet cafe and this was a chance we had where I visited a small internet cafe in Hangzhou and you can tell how old this picture is because no one goes to internet cafes anymore everyone has the internet in their pocket everyone has a mobile phone but back 10 15 years ago when this picture was taken people still went to internet cafes in the night they drank coca-cola they smoked cigarettes and they played video games beautiful moments walking through the streets of Beijing finding the beauty in a man feeding his bird and it was just a lovely little moment between two cracks in the door of a man taking care of his bird on a summer's day in Beijing which was really lovely and afterwards I went and chatted with him for a little bit and learned that he's been keeping birds for like 40 years and we had a lovely moment finding the beauty in destruction this is very challenging you know this was um this was from the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and you know sometimes in order to tell the story well we need to find beauty in the destruction and we need to try to make a great picture in a horrible moment and this was one of the towns that I had visited during that earthquake and I was trying to make a beautiful picture in a horrible place so that my picture could tell the story of what horrible natural disaster had occurred here and it was just very difficult and very challenging but you can see the destruction and hopefully the picture allows people and makes people curious to learn a little bit more this is in shahe in gansu province and this is the mon lam festival which is a tibetan festival where i climbed up the side of the mountain and i was trying to find beauty in the tibetan mon lam festival and it was absolutely lovely this is a in the haka tulo area in Fujian province and this was Justin a lovely elderly lady locking up her her home her room in this in this beautiful tulip which is a the style of homes that they have there and it was just a nice little moment I had been inside her home with her and we were having some tea and then she said she had to go and we walked out together and she locked her her door behind her and I just took a little picture right at the end and it ended up being one of these little beautiful moments of finding and lovely picture of a one woman exiting her home Hainan Island this was a interesting one I had the chance to visit Hainan and do a story about golf and this picture has nothing to do with golf but as I was wandering around visiting the golf courses I also visited some of the small communities around the golf courses and had the chance to take this picture and it was a beautiful little moment of some guys coming back from fishing and they were taking their fish to the market by motorcycle across this amazingly dangerous looking bridge so don't ever go on a bridge like this because it looks pretty dangerous this is a young monk in Sichuan province and he's doing chanting in the early morning and I actually stayed with him in this monastery for several days this is in Kashgar in Xinjiang province and this is a man just drinking tea and he's just looking out on the street and I had the chance to do a story about kashgar many times actually for many different publications because it's such a unique part of China and such a beautiful part of China hangzhou opera chinese opera singer absolutely beautiful actress and had the chance to visit her while she was doing one of her performances old-age home in shanghai you know many people in shanghai and all across china are getting very old very quickly so I was asked to go and tell a story about an old-age home and I had to find the beauty I had to find the beauty of an old-age home and I ended up finding these older men all playing mahjong together having a really fun time and was able to capture the moment this is also in Sichuan province again the mountains the prayer flags the beautiful scenery that exists in China was remarkable another chance at documenting infrastructure this is just outside Gwang in Gong XI province another chance at understanding the golf culture here in China had the chance to visit this golf course that was under development and photographed this woman who was actually fixing the turf or the ground or the green on the Golf Course with the huge construction of the clubhouse in the background this is Lhasa that's the potala palace in the background early morning this is Wuhan and this guy was stretching before he was gonna go swimming in the Yangtze River and he really wanted me to go with him I said no but I did I got a really lovely picture and every day every day this man goes swimming in the Yangtze River and he tells me it's why he's so healthy and so happy and there's a beautiful little moment and trying to find the beauty in the routine of everyday life for people who live in Wuhan this is my friend Charles Tong he's a real estate developer in Shanghai I had the chance to photograph him for the New York Times story sometimes you have to find the beauty in just one person and try to take an interesting photo that shows someone in a unique way here's another photo not my friend I don't know who he is and this is in Chongqing imagine waking up in the morning in your hotel you open the curtains and there's a man cleaning your window you know his life is probably pretty difficult this job is pretty dangerous and you know I was also trying to take a great picture of him to tell his story another put another photograph from the Mon Lam in Tibet in Shahu and Gansu Province and this is a lovely image from Szechuan bana in southern yunnan of a woman with her child going out to the farm in the morning to do some harvesting of the vegetables and this was a very normal event every day but I had to try to capture some beautiful picture to show their everyday life and I loved the little baby in the background and this is actually in Nantong this picture this is in a shipbuilding Factory which is near the Yangtze River which is actually very close to where we are here and this man was climbing a pole and building this ship and I had to try to find the beauty in his life tried to find the beauty in his work at this shipbuilding Factory this is the Ganga monastery at the foot of at the foot of Ganga shem or Minya Conca in sichuan province beautiful rooftop early in the morning and this is a tea plantation also in Sichuan Bana and a woman in the hot afternoon Sun protecting herself from with her hat and picking tea you know it's amazing to have the chance to live in China as a foreigner as a Canadian and have the chance to document China for so long you know I've been here for 16 years and I've had the chance to visit every province and every territory in China photographing it every day finding the beauty in the lives of Chinese people every day and it's been an absolute dream and it's something that I love to travel around and talk about I love talking about photographing in China I love talking about the people I meet and finding the beauty in all of the lives of all the people I have the chance to meet that's all for me thank you very much guys