I added Ello to my social media a while ago but am only now beginning to explore it. A kind of Facebook without ads, it seems to be preferred by people in the arts. Lately, Ello has been publishing interviews with particularly interesting users.
Here are excerpts from Ello Chief Marketing Officer Mark Gelband’s interview with Ben Staley.
“Ben Staley is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, storyteller, photographer, and professional adventure-haver. His striking portraits and nature photography are a constant source of inspiration to the Ello team. …
“Mark: I started paying really close attention to your work when you were documenting the film you’re making about ships and welders. Could you tell us more about that project?
“Ben: The project is called ‘Starbound’ and it’s about a boat of the same name. The boat is a catch processor that fishes on the Bering Sea. It’s a top performer but the factory was outdated and inefficient and they were losing money. The construction project would lengthen the boat, making it as environmentally friendly as possible and saving the jobs of the 100+ crew members. The owners are doing it for the best reasons. They could have taken the easy way out and and saved a lot of money up front and had no risk, but they undertook this incredible challenge because they care about the environment and their employees and their families. …
“For me as a storyteller it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capture this process and tell their story. The family that owns the boat are incredibly committed and hardworking people and they will willingly spend more money and take on this risk to do things the right way. …
“Picking a 240 foot-long boat up out of the water, cutting it in half and sticking 60 foot section in the middle, welding it back together and putting it back in the water. All in the space of a couple months. The hard work, skill and craftsmanship are incredible. … I’ll be making the first trip to sea with the boat later this summer and hope to have the doc done by end of year. …
“The Bering sea is a hard place. One of the hardest. It’s two oceans coming together and under the oceans there are two plates of the earth colliding and forming volcanoes. It’s incredible. I’ve spent hundreds of days out there living on boats with those guys and you get to see them (and they see you) at your lowest points.
“Sleep deprivation, exhaustion and oftentimes, just the plain absurdity of life on a boat with six or seven guys crammed into tight quarters. Those kinds of immersive environments make the best photographs. You can’t show up for an hour or even a day and capture that stuff. It comes from days together.”
Read the rest of the interview at Ello, here.
Photo: Ben Staley on Ello
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