Today at my internship, I went with the TV crew to cover a protest at the Chinese Embassy in Brussels. Amnesty International was protesting in front of the embassy on the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on student protesters on Tiananmen Square. Amnesty International was calling for increased human rights in China.
Amnesty International protesters perform a dance in front of the Chinese embassy in Brussels, Belgium. The protesters’ bags represent the bags held by the famous Tank Man on Tiananmen Square 20 years ago.
We couldn’t have been on the scene for more than 10 minutes, and I spent much of that time conducting an on-camera interview with the Belgian head of Amnesty International. The AP people I work with handed me the microphone and said “Go do the interview!” I wasn’t expecting that, but the interview was fairly straightforward, and it went pretty well. After we finished filming the interview, I had just over one minute to shoot a few pictures, and here’s my favorite one. Just after I shot this, we had to rush back to our office to edit and transmit the video. While on the scene, I also met Yves Logghe, one of AP’s photographers here. In addition to working with APTN (AP Television News), I’m going to get to work with the photographers in a couple weeks, and I’ve very excited about that.
In addition to covering the Tiananmen Square anniversary today, we also got reactions to Obama’s speech to the Muslim world from Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief. I wasn’t there to film the interview, but I put together a shot list that we always need to send to APTN headquarters. So today I was involved in covering (however remotely) the world’s top two news stories. Fun stuff.