Danish feature writer and phtographer Thosten Overgard's photo documentary about the relief work by Scientology Volunteer Ministers in South East Asia efter the tsunami on December 26, 2004http://www.afterthetsunami.org anish photographer and feature writer Thorsten Overgaard traveled 12,000 miles throughout South East Asia after the tsunami, a virtual fly-on-the-wall, documenting the day-to-day lives of the Scientology Tsunami Relief Team Volunteers. "After The Tsunami" presents in detail a behind-the-scenes look at relief work when everyday western people - from the a real estate agent from Germany to a student from Los Angeles - leave behind families, studies, careers and businesses to help strangers in crisis, whom they only know from media reports. It is a heartwarming story of the spiritual bonds between religions, ordinary western world people engaged in dangerous but important work that will change their lives forever and daily miracles. It is a story in pictures that is in a sharp contrast to the seemingly endless pictures of overwhelming devastation that played again and again on televised newscasts and on the front pages of the world for weeks and months. It is a story that brings hope to the world and shows how ordinary people can make a difference - that something can be done about ithttp://www.afterthetsunami.org By: The New York Times (September 20, 2001) Amid faces gray with grief and grime, theirs are fresh, even smiling. Among blackened uniforms and sooty equipment, their yellow T-shirts are bright buoys. They are clean. At any time, well over 100 volunteer ministers from the Church of Scientology mill around the remains of the World Trade Center. On the day of the attack, they took in food to workers. Since then, they have taken the mind-altering techniques developed by the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. When rescue workers stagger from the wreckage, the ministers, identified by their T-shirts, try to focus the workers' minds and revive their bodies. In "locationals," workers are told to look at the sky, or at water bottles on a table Ñ anything to ground them in the present, the outside world, rather than the horror within the rubble. Rev. John Carmichael, president of the Church of Scientology of New York on West Street near Chambers. "They bring people back, so to speak, so they are in control of their mind and environment," said the Rev. John Carmichael, the president of the Church of Scientology of New York. "You want to help get rid of the fatigue and the fuzziness." At 54, Mr. Carmichael has the blond hair and blue eyes of a surfer, and the craggy face of a Mick Jagger or a Willem Dafoe. The result is an uncanny resemblance to "that congressman from California," Gary A. Condit, as one woman who saw him in a coffee shop yesterday put it. He grew up in Illinois and Florida, a Presbyterian by birth who had "gone atheist." He discovered "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health," Mr. Hubbard's best-selling book, at a roadside stand while a college student at Cornell University, and never looked back. He became an ordained minister in 1973. He has given half his life to the religion, he said, because "it works" and because it is not based on the promise of salvation, but on the premise that there are practical ways to improve lives. His work for the church has taken him to San Francisco, Paris and Munich, among other places. He has been president of the New York church for 13 years. The volunteer corps of ministers has been active in disasters, from earthquakes in Los Angeles to the bombings in Oklahoma City and Atlanta, since 1988. But the disaster this time far surpasses those in scale, and it is in Mr. Carmichael's front yard. At least 800 ministers have cycled through the scene, many coming from Quebec, Florida or California, he said. Yesterday, Mr. Carmichael's 19-year-old son manned the busy front desk at the church's building on 46th Street. Signs out front proclaimed it a "Disaster Relief Headquarters" and encouraged volunteers to ask how they could help. Though many religious organizations are supplying assistance for the disaster, few are as well-organized as the Scientologists, or as evident at the scene. When many volunteers were asked to clear out over the weekend, the Scientologists were allowed to stay, working alongside groups like the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. When he drove down to the site on Tuesday, Mr. Carmichael said, a police officer waved him through. "You're a Scientologist," he recalled the officer saying. "You're good." Scientology is growing rapidly, Mr. Carmichael said, and "growth bespeaks popularity." Others worry that disaster assistance could mask proselytizing. Dissidents have accused Scientology of having cultlike overtones, and of preying on members financially. One woman who on Saturday received a "nerve assist," in which fingers are run over the body in a way that Scientologists believe unblocks nerve channels and restores energy flow, said she was asked whether she would like a "little Dianetics session." Mr. Carmichael said that when people ask, "What was that?" after the assists, they are told it is Scientology, and given a "little piece of something" to answer questions. "It's not proselytizing," Mr. Carmichael said. "It's us trying to help." © Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company.http://www.afterthetsunami.org/new-york-times_20010920.htm I like the smell of film and I like well-designed equipment. And I like to know other photographer's tricks and workflow. So I thought I would spend a few minutes for those of you who likewise have that interest. With me to South East Asia I had five of my nine Leica cameras. I mainly used three cameras at the time: The fully manual Leica M4 around my neck (mostly with the 21 mm Leica Super-Angulon-M f/3.4 lens on it for shots like the one at page 24 and in general where I moved in close). On one shoulder I then had my Leica R8 with motordrive, mounted with the 80mm Summilux-R f/1.4 that I used for 80% of my shots in South East Asia. Those who know this particular lens know that it is a deadly choice because it has such a narrow tolerance of sharpness. But when it works, you get three dimensional pictures with selective focus as the one on page 63. Using that lens at f/1.4 to f/5.6 is fun and creates a feel that is both dreamlike but also very much the way the eye works with selective focus; you have a wide angle view as a 35mm lens but really you focus only on a selective part of the scenery. For me, the 80mm produces that exact look. On the Leica R8 and Leica SL MOT I alternated with 35-70mm Vario-Elmar-R f/4.0, 35mm Elmarit-R f/2.8 and 90mm Summicron-R f/2.0. The 90mm I would use where I needed to be sure the shot was sharp but where I wanted an effect much similar as the 80mm. Some would argue, the Leica SL MOT should never have been on such a dusty and dangerous travel. Only 862 were made in black and mine had just come back from Leica in Germany after a general checkup, cleaning, lubrication and had gotten new top and bottom plates so it literally looked like a brand-new camera - even 32 years old. No doubt amongst the most well-preserved Leicas of its kind on the planet. However, I'm not a collector of cameras but a user of them. So the rare SL MOT came with me and it did get in a few bumps. But it is a lovely camera to use and it has the most sexy shutter sound any camera ever had. The equipment I brought with me: Leica M4 with 21 mm Super-Anuglon-M f/3.4 and 50mm Summicron-M f/2.0, a Minolta Flashmeter IV (used for measuring light manually), Leica R8 with motor drive and 35-70mm Vario-Elmar-R f/4.0 and the Leicaflex SLmot with 80mm Summilux-R f/1.4 and the 35mm Elmarit-R f/2.8 and 90mm Summicron-R f/2.0. Finally the Leica Minilux with buitd in silent winder and 40mm Summicron f/2.8 autofocus lens. A camera I recommend to all my friends who would like to start photography. Most of the stuff is described in details at http://leica.overgaard.dk Lighmeter I like to measure the light hitting the subjects rather than having the camera measure the light reflecting the subject (to rely on reflection light you have to measure the light reflecting from a neutral gray surface). So I used the Minolta Flashmeter IV for 95% of the shots. Usually I would measure the light in every 20 minutes and go from there. The Leica R8 has a very precise build in light meter which I used when there was no time for measuring light manually. Slide film I love Fuji Astia 100 ISO slidefilm because it gives very "Scandinavian" cool and natural colors. For this project I used a variety of other films as well because I had to buy stocks in India. It was really rare to find slide films and most of the rolls had to be shipped from other towns near to where I was. Quite many of the films - I calculated - has been through 24 x-ray machines all together. That together with the heat and in many cases, almost due last sales date on the film, made it unsure what the result would look like. When I had to, I squeezed the 100 ISO films to 400, 800 or 1600 ISO. The picture of His Holiness on page 112-113 in the book is Fuji Astia 100 ISO as 1600 ISO, handheld at 1/15 second (It's the moon behind him and the light on his face is a reflection from some distant lamp): Scanning I used an Imacon Flextight Photo scanner as well as a Nikon Coolscan IV to have two scanners working simultaneously. I ended up using the Imacon for most of the work and only the Nikon Coolscan for about 15% of the shots that ended up in this book. The Leica Minilux point and shoot camera I had as reserve and only shot two rolls with it. The 40mm lens on it is world famous and one could have taken that camera alone and done a fantastic series without anybody even noticing one taking pictures. Even though it has a motorized drive, it is so silent nobody ever noticed it. However, 40mm wasn't the range I wanted to work with for this trip. It's good for street photography and discrete photographing indoors in museums and cafŽs. Working The way I would usually work was that I would stay in the outer perimeter of an event. Of the thousands of digital pictures taken in South East Asia by others where I was present, I'm only in five of those pictures; that's how distant I worked. I might have only been few meters behind the scene at most of the time but that is usually enough not to get noticed. I would stay rather inactive in the beginning of an event. Usually a crowd of people will shoot their digital cameras in the beginning, often moving real close to the subject. I would mostly use the 80mm or 90mm to narrow in on the event from a distance why I had to wait for things to calm down before I could get some clear and natural shots. The thing is also that the best shots are to be gotten by the end of an event. At that point you are familiar with who's who, what the story is, you have had time to consider what the opportunities are in the event, and the people present feel comfortable with you and each other. With the kids in the Sri Lankan Sunday school (page 44-47) I had trouble staying unnoticed even if I just hung around for half an hour without using the camera. When I finally started, hell broke loose; but then we had fun and made some funny pictures of each other (those are not in the book but I exchanged addresses with some of the kids so I could send them). Digital photography The Leica Digilux 1 I only used very little for private shots to send home via e-mail to my wife and three kids. I had hoped to get the new digital back for the Leica R8 with me but it wasn't released yet when I went. Traveling Even though my equipment added up to about 20 kilos of cameras, it was not a problem. Usually, I was able to store the cameras I was not using in a building or a van. My photo bag was a very discrete $30 black photo bag with no symbols and logos that would literally say "this bag does not exist" whenever I dropped it in a corner. I also had a backpack with an 12" Apple iBook laptop and cables and card readers for the volunteer's cameras, plus shirts and stuff for several days of travel at the time (I never knew when I would meet my suitcase again, which was parked in Colombo in Sri Lanka). Pockets My trousers - believe it or not - was an important part. It's Swedish made FjŠllrŠven which can last for ten years of use and has seven pockets. Besides money, cigarettes, film rolls and the flashmeter I used the pockets for pens and notebooks; one large notebook for journalistic notes and a small black one for notes on the photos. Admin Each roll of film I would mark with a number when loading it in the camera. Then in the small black notebook I would note that number, the date and what ISO and camera I used. For each roll I would note names of people and events in an approximate sequence as it had happened. After a roll was shot I would mark it as done in the book and put the roll into a cylinder I would likewise mark with that number. The lab home in Copenhagen developed it all in three hours and was able to maintain the numbering which made the work very easy when I sat down and had to put data into the picture files. Archiving For archiving I used iView MediaPro which is a quite fast and handy database for picture files and - actually - also sound files, PDF files, etc. The main thing about it is that it doesn't archive the actual picture file but create a small preview and keep track of the original file, which in my case lay on external LaCie Firewire drives. Inside iView Media Pro I would organize each roll in a numbered folder referring to the actual roll number and the corresponding notes in my notebook. Thus I had a clear overview of what was there and the keywords, texts, etc attached to each picture file. In doing the DVD and slideshows I could simply create a new folder for each slideshow and drag the picture files to that folder, arranging sequences and even run a test slideshow with soundtrack and all (the large QuickTime slideshows available from the website is actually exported directly out of iView Media Pro). What to shoot Being there and being observant you will soon start anticipating the photo opportunities that are likely to occur; you see the events that are going to happen and you figure out where you have to be in 40 seconds to capture it in the way you envision. I obviously needed to have lots of photos of volunteers in "uniform" (the yellow t-shirt) working. If some had forgotten to wear t-shirts I had to make sure they put a t-shirt on because in a picture they would just look like an ordinary civilian and nobody could tell who was who. The t-shirt makes it very easy. This of course also ruled out taking black & white photos. Then I was looking for aesthetic shots which for me are mostly of people. I don't take photos of dead objects like forlorn tree stumps no matter how interesting it looks. There has to be life in pictures and that means people. I shot for numerous things and purposes. The overall purpose was documenting which meant taking pictures of everything that happened. For the book the editing rule mainly was "if it doesn't have a photographic value and/or an important value as a testimony of what the volunteers did, it's not part of this book." This way many interesting pictures went out, simply because those pictures would only be interesting to those of us who was part of the events or some other limited audience. A photo can have great value for few people even it is not technically or aesthetically great. But not for a book like this. My friend and award-winning graphic book designer Claus Due helped me getting rid of the doubles and a lot of lovely pictures that was just "too many pictures." It was painful. For the DVD and slideshows quite a few more shots from each series could be added to keep a storytelling-flow. And thus many photos of less photographic value was included there. The tools The Leica M4 and the other M cameras are great cameras in the way they are precise, sturdy and simple. The only thing a Leica M4 does when you press the shutter is say "click" in a very silent way. There is no moving mirrors, no moving motors. Just a simple click - and you have a picture. That way you as a photographer aren't separated from the subject by a lot of sophisticated stuff. It's just you and the subject basically, which does make some different pictures than if you bring a fully automatic motorized picture-machine like most press photographers do these days. Also, one should not forget, the surroundings you are there to photograph react differently to large professional looking equipment than a small, amateur-looking Leica M camera. In most peoples eyes it looks like your grandpa's camera you borrowed (which it almost is because the M model haven't changed that much since it came out in 1925). In many ways it feels like painting. It feels slow, thoughtful and you have no help remedies but your imagination and talent. The Leica SL MOT was the first SLR (Single Lens Reflex camera) Leica made and it has the feel of an M camera, but with the facilities of "modern" cameras where you see through the lens and see the exact picture. Besides that, though, it has nothing automatic to offer (which I state with enthusiasm). The Leica R8 is fully automatic and fast. It is a picture machine. However, it does not have autofocus. That, along with using manual light metering, brings down the photography process to a tempo where you have time to reflect, think and compose. I hope this was helpful and informing. Any questions or comments are welcome. Feel free to e-mail me Ð I shall try my best to answer you back.http://www.afterthetsunami.org/Photographing_this_book.asp "The wrong thing to do is nothing." That is a quote from L. Ron Hubbard that resonates as a profound truth for me and how I think and how I work. My two biggest regrets in this life were (and are) that I didn't drive to Berlin the night the Berlin Wall fell and that I didn't go to New York after September 11. In both cases I had a strong urge to go, but something in me said, "be sensible." We all carry an urge in us to reach out and do something as well as a voice urging us to be sensible and behave as if everything wrong is somebody else's problem. In the instance of the tsunami in South East Asia my urge to reach out and help conquered all my fears of strange diseases, pictures in my mind of dead bodies floating in a sea of chaos and a generally low knowledge about Asia and the people living there. 496 Scientologists from all over the world as well had that strong urge to reach out and help their fellow men. Strong enough to have them arrive in Asia. To them the After The Tsunami project is dedicated. As a volunteer from Los Angeles said "Home in LA they [asians] were just somebody living on the other side of the highway. I never talked to any, nor knew their problems in life. Now I know many people here with whom I have personal relations. People I have helped and who will be my friends for the rest of my life." If you think about it for a while, isn't it strange that a person from LA travels to Asia to help? When in the middle of it, the answer to the question "What are we doing here?" is quite obvious. When in Asia, being able to help people in a crisis like this - there is no more important thing to do in life. As Herbert, a real estate agent from Germany said after he had been in Sri Lanka for two months: "I left my real estate business just after New Year and came here. Both my wife and my partner in the real estate business understood and support me. My partner takes care of business while I'm here. He has to. As long as there is somebody here I can help, I'm staying." Part of the story is that every single person on the Scientology Tsunami Relief Team have not only uprooted their life, income and whatever projects they were in the middle of at home. They have also paid the cost of their flight ticket themselves. And they continue to pay the costs of their daily expenses; approximately $26.00 per day that goes to a bed, some food, transportation and telephone cards necessary for internal communication between teams. From Denmark five people arrived: A acupuncturist, a millionaire, a workman, a student and I. That's quite a varied cross section to find among just five people. At the same time in Denmark about three staff in The Church of Scientology worked full time to provide support and back up to the five of us who would be working in the field. Each country had a similar picture; a variety of people arrived and back home a number of staffs in the churches and among parishioners worked to back up the activities, making sure that friends and family at home got daily updates on what was happening in Asia. The first Scientology Volunteers arrived from Australia and New Zealand within 48 hours after the tsunami. The first three Danish volunteers arrived to Sri Lanka the 4th of January 2005 along with 23 Germans. The first ones set up a base in Colombo and started finding out what was needed. They spoke with the ministers in Colombo and then sent out teams to Trincomalee in the North East and to Galle in South. From them we learned the nature of the work that had to be done. In the beginning it was administrative contacts to various officials in Sri Lanka. The mayor of Galle was literarily crying for help for his devastated city. That's why the volunteers set up a large yellow tent as a base on the grass in front of the City Hall in Galle where it stayed for the next many months with the UN building towering on the opposite side of the street. A team of Italian Scientology Volunteers built a tent village of hundreds of blue military tents they had persuaded the Italian government to donate. A German engineer supervised local workers on clearing a field and leveling it out for the tent base in 24 hours - those workers had never worked that effectively in their whole life; three weeks of work completed in one day! In the tent village Assists was delivered to the locals - who then were trained in helping their fellow men with Assists. Swiss volunteers worked for a couple of months with American military and Australian workers on removing the remains of wrecked buildings along the coastline North of Galle. As the mayor of Galle later stated: "There was no other person, no other institution who walked in. The first to walk in was the Scientology Volunteer Team. And they came with a purpose, in good faith for our people. I especially thank the Volunteer organization for giving this courage." In Trincomalee one Danish and one German volunteer took a walk the day they arrived to see what was most needed. The volunteer reported back later that day, "send 1,000 volunteers more, they need help in every regard." Because of the civil war in Sri Lanka - Trincomalee is next to the "border" to the Tamil Tigers in North - thousands of land mines were unearthed and misplaced by the tsunami. Usually land mines would lie outside towns as a barrier against attacks. Now landmines could be anywhere; one more aspect of the catastrophe to consider amongst the many. The friendly people of Sri Lanka would invite volunteers to their homes - if they still had one, else they would invite them to the place where it once was - and show them pictures of their lost babies, parents, sons and daughters. Some would show videos of how the tsunami hit the town and the volunteers would look at people crying for help, dead people, trees and cars being pushed by the wave and heavy concrete buildings falling like paper. "Look, there's my mother," the Sri Lankan would say, pausing the video to point out one helpless person amongst many in the wave. I personally must admire the volunteer's coolness in organizing the relief work. Yes, they cried. But then they thought ahead. There was - and is - so many things you could do. Trincomalee serves as a good example of effective organization. The two volunteers arranged things so that 20 people from each tent camp in the area would learn how to help their fellow men and how to teach them to help as well. In this way thousands and thousands of Sri Lankans received help and also learned how to help others. This system is so wise and effective you must applaud it. Scientology Volunteer supervises staff of the Harbor Police in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka during an Assist seminar where the police learn to use the Assist technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard to assist tsunami suvivers in north-east Sri Lanka. On request from the police chief the Scientology Volunteers trained most of the police and military staff in the North-East Sri Lanka during 16 seminars. If the 496 Scientology Volunteers had worked day and night for a year they would not have been able to produce the same result as they did in a month with this strategy. The Scientology Volunteers helped 250,000 people with mental relief in two months while in the same period the Red Cross helped 750,000 with food, water, tents and first aid. The techniques applied by the Scientology Volunteers are ingenious therapies designed to raise people's emotional state. It might be hard to realize, but the government of Sri Lanka could deal with the physical damage from the tsunami. In much of the country the waves had only penetrated 500 meters inland (the South and the East coast). Most of the country's infrastructure lay beyond the reach of the waves and remained intact and could be used to get supplies to the affected coastal areas. What the government seemed completely unprepared to handle were the mental and emotional impact on people living in the affected areas who had survived, as well as people in the rest of the country who lost friends and family. When you met a Sri Lankan he would smile and go to great effort to make you comfortable. It lies in their whole philosophy - and the Buddhist philosophy - that helping others is more important than helping yourself. To the casual eye a Sri Lankan may seem okay and in control despite having lost half his family, his house and his boat. Truth be told, he was more like one of the living dead who just sat there amid the ruins, didn't eat, couldn't sleep and didn't provide food for his family. In other words; apathy. But when you started to help that person, he would crack up, start crying, see how hopeless his life was and then - thanks to the simplicity of the Assist technology - he would get better and better to a point where he smiled, realized his losses were part of yesterday and that life can and must continue from this point forward. If somebody can help you to look at it and point you to a future life as happy as the one you had before the tsunami, you have been helped beyond what you thought was possible. And that was what the Scientology Volunteers were able to. It was the same role the Scientology Volunteers played after September 11, 2001 in New York. 220 Scientology Volunteers helped the rescue workers overcome the hopelessness they felt after hours of looking for survivors with no sleep, food and water. Back then Red Cross again provided food, water and shelter. The Scientology Volunteers provided mental relief. Restored hope and will. When you are able to help yourself rebuild your life, things become less complex and you see solutions. You get into action. Then you don't sit around waiting for something to happen, you don't have to commit suicide and you don't have to wait for the government to help. You can do something about it. Which was exactly the point. As Dr. Walther, an acupuncture doctor in Colombo, Sri Lanka, said: "When we, the Sri Lankan people, are in need, we go by the Scientology Volunteers. From south to north, they cater not only the materialistic needs but also Ð and actually more importantly - the spiritual needs. Many help organizations are doing things but I noticed that the Scientology Volunteers are also doing many other things such as educational, health, spiritual and more. That is the important thing with the Scientology Volunteers; that they try to study and understand our way of life and support us with their very valuable service. It makes me interested and makes me ask what is Scientology and who are those people.Ó As you may recall, the Sri Lankan government, as others in the affected area, said "we have the situation under control, don't send more people. Just send food and money" - or whatever the exact wording was. One reason was vested interests influencing a government which seem corrupt to a degree beyond comprehension for a western world citizen. Another cultural factor is that Sri Lankan - and Asian peoples - are proud people. I must confess I thought they needed help to figure things out and organize stuff. But what I learned is that even the smallest Asian man turned out to be a bigger person in may ways than most western people I know. They appreciated our help - many people we met on the streets stopped us to thank us for being there and for our efforts - but they resent western, often materialistic, people coming to their country and try to run things, tell them to change their religion, eat pills to be happier about the tsunami, paint their houses in some trendy colors and what have you. What they wanted was help and support to help themselves come back to the life they have been living for thousands of years in harmony with nature and their soul. Driving to the airport for my trip home, I looked at the worn out houses along the road. Cottages with rusty metal roofs, worn out cars from god-knows-what-century and the endless dust and dirt that seem to stick to anything and anybody. That was when I started to appreciate the true nature of Asia. These people are spiritual beings who live to help others and to become better and more decent people tomorrow, next year and in their next life. They strive upwards spiritually by Dharma (which is Morale, Concentration and Knowledge). I would be traveling home to my western world where we live in nice and perfect constructed houses but with very little knowledge as to what life is and with no real answers to life's big questions. Questions every kid in Asia seems to know the answer to. Asia might have lost a lot of buildings and people but they definitely didn't loose their soul. Sri Lanka is 95% or more Buddhists. Perhaps 1% or 2% don't have any religion. But almost everybody has a religion they actively adhere to. You would see tuk-tuk drivers [taxis] decorating their tuk-tuk's every morning with fresh flowers to praise their religion. Others would stop by the synagogue, monastery or church several times a day to praise their religion. Others would just live by their religious code as best they could. But very few did not believe in anything. It would be an insult telling these people their religion was wrong by trying to convert them. The Scientology religion doesn't espouse any particular explanation or description of God. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhist or anybody are welcome to use Scientology to become better Muslims, Jews or whatever. The purpose for going to Sri Lanka was to help: Therefore the word "minister" and the Scientology cross were omitted on the shirts worn by the volunteers working in Sri Lanka to avoid any confusion as to what their intentions were. Numerous people and organizations have helped and are still helping in Asia. In Sri Lanka for example 2,500 US Marines cleared roads and rebuilt bridges for two months. I saw UN cars in Colombo and Galle and US AID t-shirts on 100 locals who were cleaning up bricks in Galle. Ironically, one also occasionally sees a full blown, Madison Avenue advertising film crew replete with klieg lights, Panavision movie camaras, directors chairs, assistants, and French chefs working the catering wagon while dozens of people are standing around wearing sunglasses -- right next door to acres of tents packed with tsunami survivors. Let's hope the commercial being filmed raises lots of aid money. Help come in many forms. One of my reasons for going was, as I said, to help in any way I could. But I also wanted to learn for myself what was really going on. On one hand the Red Cross announced that they didn't need more people in the affected areas. Yet the Scientology Volunteers on the ground reported that they could use all the help that could get there. Contrary information that just didn't add up. I wanted to find out what was going on for myself and I wanted to let others know. I wanted to document and report things as they were - especially the good things, because the bad things had been reported so extensively, we all felt we could be hit by a tsunami any moment. That was about as clear - or vague - as my concept was when I left Denmark. I followed the advice from Volunteer Ministers International headquarter in Los Angeles as to what personal equipment I should bring with me. And then I arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka with that stuff plus five of my Leica cameras and 100 rolls of slide film. I might get time to take pictures, or maybe I would work day and night helping people out of ruins. I had literary no idea how this would turn out. The actual scene was much different than what I had expected. It wasn't a chaotic war zone as the pictures I had seen suggested. It is obvious that even with the loss of 30,000 lives, in a country with a population of 20,000,000 people, the whole country would not be covered with corpses and ruins. Along with the five people I arrived with, I went to the Scientology Volunteer headquarter in a sports hotel near the Olympic stadium. I was assigned to a 6 person room with six beds, one closet and a shared bathroom that only had cold water located 25 meters away in another corner of the hotel. After two other Danish guys and I had bought cleaning equipment we cleaned the bathroom and shower room so that we would avoid bacterial infections or similar horrors. I had heard terrifying stories about what exotic diseases could do. Some hours later we sat down with the Scientology Volunteers and ate rice and eggs. The only food they could recommend. "Stay away from meat," they advised, "if any, only eat chicken because that is killed fresh before it's cooked. Other meat lies out in the heat for days." After many hours traveling, adjusting to a different climate, new sounds, the smell of gasoline in the air and different foods, we went to bed to be eaten by mosquitoes during the night. I had about 20 bites in the morning and that was when I decided I was now adjusted. There were so many new things to be afraid of that I just decided to stop torturing myself and just get on with whatever work was needed. The first thing that was needed was to gather up and organize all the digital pictures the different volunteers had shot with their digital cameras. There were 8,000 in total and after spending a day collecting, cataloging and sorting through them on my laptop, there were about 100 shots that were ok and conveyed some kind of story or message. These I categorized with captions, dates, etc. and sent them on to the Scientology Volunteers International in Los Angeles. The remaining 7,900 digital photos on my laptop were group shots, funny shots or typical touristy snapshots. But very few of these pictures were taken for the purpose of showing the world what the post tsunami scene was here and how help was being provided. That was at the point I decided I would indeed devote a great deal of my time photographing and documenting the volunteer work. It was clear to me that it was a worthwhile effort to ensure that the story of the wonderful work of the volunteers in Sri Lanka and elsewhere would not be forgotten. And that was what I worked on most the time. I joined up with Chrisztina from Hungary who were there as videographer. We were both looking to document the same scenes, people and shots - plus volunteers were only allowed to travel in pairs for reasons of personal security. The two of us traveled across Sri Lanka North to South, East to West, then went to India where we traveled for some time before we traveled back to Sri Lanka where we wanted to get a first-hand look at the scene, as well as travel with Alissa Sears who met with religious and political leaders to organize help. In the last few days, while organizing tickets home, we captured whatever last shots we felt we had missed, then headed home. My wife was furious when I came home. It turned out that our e-mail had been down for two weeks, but she hadn't realized it. She just thought I had stopped writing and was either dead or had left her for one or more Asian woman. After restoring the marriage with silk dresses from India and the usual supplications for mercy I could resume work on the tsunami relief. Which first and foremost consisted of looking through the 3,300 slides I had taken and decide which were good enough to be scanned for use on web pages and in print. I had deliberately taken mainly film cameras and only one digital, which meant high quality and a lot of extra work. One of the secrets of professional photographers is that they take a lot of pictures. I had expected 10% of my shots to be worthy of scanning. It turned out there were about 1,100 which I felt had value for some kind of use. Whenever I saw a water truck from UNHCR or a tent from US AID I shot pictures to send to them. Now all these needed to be scan, categorized and annotated with data such as the names of the people pictured as well as the places and dates for future use. It is time consuming. Even operating in a highly organized and efficient routine, each picture is about 20 minutes of work. A news photo is typically processed in minutes and then it's gone. I felt that my shots were for history, magazines and such. I really had not figured out how I would use it yet, except I would let the Volunteer Ministers use as many pictures they wanted. This would be my donation to the project. Many volunteers have donated months of their lives to this. The terms were the same for me. Call me naive but I soon learned that nobody was going to drop what they were doing to take on a project of the scope warranted by this large collection of pictures. If I wanted to make sure the stories behind these images were not lost, I would have to take the project all the way to completion and provide a finished product that others could view and understand. I sent out collections of pictures to all magazines I thought might be able use them. I learned how to create a slideshow that ran to music and burned it to DVDs, which anyone could run on their home DVD player. And then came the idea about the book. It popped into my head while I was there. I know that many travelers have thought their time in Asia to be so packed with miracles and wonders that they had to write a book and I am the first to admit to feeling the same. Thus I was very disappointed in myself when I quickly gave up keeping the necessary notes for a book. I mean, we were all down to just two to five hours of sleep a night already. Who had the energy to take notes. I've created brochures, pamphlets and newspaper stories based on my pictures and experiences. When I came home, I regretted I hadn't taken any pictures that truly captured the scope of the disaster. In Galle I could have taken a great shot of a sad man standing in the midst of one square mile of devastation. At the time I felt there was no worthwhile purpose to these types of pictures, that they were too negative. So I never took that shot. Now sorting through the thousands of pictures I did take, I regretted it. But then my wife said something wise. We had all seen those types of pictures and videos repeated again and again, all over the media. There was absolutely no reason to show still more. People need to see what else happened. There were hundreds of examples of miracles and hope and the indomitable spirit of the Sri Lankan and Indian peoples and the marvelous work of the volunteers cannot be denied. And I have pictures that show happiness and hope amidst the disaster. That's the real truth documented here. I hope this website, the book and the DVD has helped you to understand what happened in South East Asia and I hope you will go there someday to experience Asia for yourself. Each of you who've read this book should realize that you have helped the people of Asia in some form or another. It does not matter if your help was thinking of the families there or if you donated $2 via your mobile phone or if you spent a year as volunteer. In any way or form you have helped, I know the wonderful people of Asia appreciate it tremendously.http://www.afterthetsunami.org/AfterTheTsunami_The_Story.asp "One of the most important and powerful effects that I created was on my very first night in Nagapattinam here in India. We were thrown into the chaotic activity of a place called St. JosephÕs Hostel. It was a place for housing many of the surviving from the Tsunami. Many who had lost their houses, children, mothers or fathers. ÒAs we drove in, the children began screaming in exhilaration that we were there to play. The noise was truly overwhelming and cured me of any nervousness I had been feeling previously. Through the chaos and hilarity of the uncontrollable masses who longed to shake hands or be picked up and hugged, we set out a circle of chairs ready to deliver Assists. I worked hard to get my face straight and focus on the job in hand. ÒI began giving Touch Assists, firstly to an elderly gentleman whose body was in a poor shape and then to a lady with a bad ankle. After her assist she smiled, looked me in the eyes and asked me if I would give her daughter a touch assist. On the surface the daughter seemed fine but her mother informed me that she had not slept since the tsunami and kept hearing the waves, creating a deep fear of the sea. ÒNow I should introduce one of the true stars that we met in India. A girl of 23 called Lydia who has been working tirelessly as our translator on the project since that day. Taking on the hat of making sure that our communication to the people with no alterations, and with the intention that we desired, she demonstrated a natural presence and strength of intention. ÒSo I sat the girl down and prepared, unaware of the miracle that was in store for the 11 year old girl, and myself. Lydia explained to the girl what a touch assist was and that she should acknowledge my command of Ófeel my finger.Ó ÒThe assist began with commands and acknowledgements per the textbook. Five minutes into the assist she lost consciousness and slumped into her chair! I almost panicked. Stuart Guy Ð our in charge at the time Ð came over and supported her head and me as I continued. She continued to give me a ÒyesÓ even though she was asleep. ÒForty-five minutes passed before she began to come around and take some control of her body back. In the following minutes she straightened up in her chair and grew more conscious. Her eyes opened very slightly and tears streamed down her cheeks. I continued for a further fifteen minutes as she slowly moved towards present time. ÒSuddenly her eyes flickered and she looked me dead in the eyes. She hit present time. Through Lydia I asked how she was doing. Her response was that she no longer felt any fear of the sea. Physically she felt stronger and had lost the pain in her back. ÒLydia collapsed in amazement as she had been through most of it with me. Being new to benefits of the assists she was blown out by the result that had just occurred. She shot me a look and beamed me a huge smile thanking me for helping the girl and for proving that these assists really work. ÒFor me it felt like Lydia had collapsed on my behalf as it was exactly what I wanted to do but I felt the need to make sure that the girl had fully recovered. She wandered off into the crowd that had gathered around us during the assist and I never saw her again. ÒThe moment was over in flash and although I continued to deliver assists for a further four weeks this is the one that will stick in my memory for decades to come. A truly beautiful moment in my life.Óhttp://www.afterthetsunami.org/Become_One_Who_Helps.asp Soundslide slideshow by Danish photographer Thorsten Overgaard documenting the relief work performed in South East Asia after the 2004 tsunami by 496 Scientology Volunteer Ministers who traveled to Asia from all over the world to perform relief work http://www.afterthetsunami.org/slideshow5