July Challenge - E - Emergency Change

An emergency change to today's blip. What I had thought about doing wasn't going to happen, and I didn't have a lot of time to do much else. So when 2 photographer friends of mine made it onto the BBC News site with the story of their latest trip to Irag, I had my new blip, and it fitted the theme of E as it was an Emergency Change.

Ben Hodson and Ian Rowlands have just returned from Iraq where they have been visiting some artists that they met there a few years ago. Read more here. Their first visit was to bring to attention the plight of some of the children in Northern Iraq who had been born with congenital heart problems as a result of Saddam Hussein's gas attacks on the Kurdish people in the north. They were working with a Christian charity (The Pre-emptive Love Coalition) out there who arranged vital heart surgery for these children. On returning from their first visit they organised exhibitions of Iraqi art work in the UK to bring this to people's attention. The BBC have managed to get Ben's name wrong 5 out of 6 times, he really is Ben Hodson, not Ben Holden.

I have a busy weekend ahead as I am working for Ben photographing the Love Luton Festival, which sees the merging for this year of the Annual Mela (Asian carnival), Luton Carnival and also the overnight stay of the Olympic Torch. I will probably end up back blipping from the weekend and will inevitably get behind with commenting, but will catch up eventually.

I do have ideas for themes to keep up with the challenge, tomorrow is E again, so maybe Excitement, Sunday is F - the day the Olympic Flame arrives, and Monday is G - the day the torch heads towards the Games. The way that has worked out you'd think I had set the challenge :)