Humanitarian photographer and videographer for GIZ – Water stewardship and catchment preservation in Kenya: Sustainable farming

My main business as a commercial photographer and filmmaker is of course commercial assignments. That usually means promoting a person, a company, a place, a service or a product, and this is how I make a living.

But my heart beats for humanitarian and environmental solutions. So when it’s possible I like to take on those assignments. The end result is not about a polished photo or video, but a story of how to help and create a better world.

The story of this post is about sustainable farming in water-scarce areas. I have met around 100 farmers in my commercial and my humanitarian work, and the one thing that strikes me every time is how proud the farmers are of their work and life. That is very beautiful and I love it. Kudos to all farmers out there.

People in the video

  • Josphat Macharia, sustainable farmer
  • Johnstone Terer, sustainable farmer
  • Teresa Christopher, sustainable agriculture trainer

About the assignment

During 2018-2019 (simultaneously with my commercial assignments) I worked as a photographer, videographer and audio-visual expert, documenting water security around Eastern Africa and South Africa for GIZ. The project was backed by UK AID and German Cooperation. The documentation resulted in 12 videos, thousands of photos, case studies and fact sheets.

It’s often demanding work where you have a very limited amount of time and material to get the story together. You have to work in different time zones and even if you have stomach sickness you have to get the job done.

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Thanks to my fantastic colleagues Vincent Lee as the producer, Jim Daniell in charge of the interviews, script and story we managed to get this quite complicated multi-country assignment together. In this NGO, INGO and IGO world it’s the same as always in the commercial world. You do the best out of the situation, but the situations are completely different.

GIZ is short for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH. And yeah, Germans sure know how to have long names for their organisations.

Production team

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