Steve Chao

By Al Jazeera Staff in Asia on March 11th, 2011
A ship is washed aground in Kamaishi City, Iwate, by the tsunami which followed the Japanese earthquake [Picture: Reuters]

(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 18th, 2010

According to popular lore, during one of Captain Robert F. Scott's famed expeditions to the Antarctic in 1912, his weather man - a genius known to give amazingly precise predictions - walked out of camp one night and got caught in a sudden storm.

He trudged endlessly on until morning when, desperate and tired, he managed to catch site of the base. 

As the storm passed, his footprints revealed that he had been going around in circles only 30m from the rest of Scott's men. 

There are many other examples of explorers who never made it back, their bodies later found to have been within a stone's throw of their travel companions. 

These were the types of tales Catlin's Ice Base staff shared with us on our first days in the high Canadian arctic.

"The thing about polar regions is that you can't take anything for granted," says Paul Ramsden, the Ice Base Manager. 

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 17th, 2010
Holes were dug into the ice to study the acidity of the waters beneath

"So what were you guys in the arctic filming?" asked the check-in lady at the hotel.

"We were following scientists doing research on climate change," I replied.

"Oh. How boring," she said, her momentary interest at our northern adventure having peaked and evaporated on the mere mention of the environment.

My cameramen, Manu Leus and I had just returned to Toronto from a couple of weeks of living with researchers from the Catlin Arctic Survey on a base plopped on floating sea ice, not far from the North Pole. 

We thought the project sounded interesting enough to us, but the hotel employee's reaction seemed very much a barometer of how people in general are feeling about the topic of the environment. 

She wasn't the first. We watched the eyes of many others we had met along the way glaze over when we began to explain the story we were filming.

"How interesting," was the common reply.

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 16th, 2010
Photos by Steve Chao

There was a time when Russell Atagootak would first look to the sky as he prepared to hunt seal.

"The clouds told us the weather," he says, "then we would know if it was a good day to hunt." 

Forecasting the weather through cloud formations was once a reliable Inuit tradition, passed down through generations. 

"It was elders in my community that first noticed the clouds were changing," says the 23-year-old hunter and guide.

"The patterns were no longer the same … they became more and more unpredictable. Now they're impossible to read."

About 10km out into the bay from his town of Resolute are other reminders of how the Arctic environment is fast changing. Fields of broken ice stretch as far as the eye can see, and beyond is open water. Not long ago, Inuit and their dog sled teams could count on smooth ice to roam and hunt. 

Not any longer.

By Matthew Allard in Asia on January 28th, 2010

I have been using big cumbersome broadcast cameras for 20 years now. While they haven't got any lighter, the quality has improved dramatically. From standard definition 4:3 to full 16:9 HD, they have come a long way in a short period of time. At Al Jazeera, we shoot on Sony's XDCAM HD system, which basically records to a disc that is similar to Blu Ray technology.

The biggest problem with most TV cameras in general is their lack of dynamic range (i.e. the ability to show dark and bright images in the same shot). This is where film cameras have a huge advantage. Up until recently most film cameras were very expensive and out of reach of most people. Now there are fantastic new DSLR cameras available from Canon and Nikon that enable you to get a film-like image for a fraction of the price.

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