{"id":1708,"date":"2013-01-30T10:03:04","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T10:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/?p=1708"},"modified":"2013-01-30T10:38:29","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T10:38:29","slug":"very-big-swiss-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/?p=1708","title":{"rendered":"Very Big, Swiss Cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nLast week I rode a train through the Swiss mountains, hanging out of a window, whilst ducking back in to avoid cartoon style decapitation. I was on my way to Davos for the World Economic Forum or WEF<\/a>.
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\nThe WEF is an annual conference for corporate big wigs and financial leaders, where they discuss the economy and schmooze each other in equal measure. The venue for this meeting of minds is Davos<\/a>; not a Greek island but a ski resort a couple of hours away from Zurich.
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\nOn my first day at the forum I found myself searching for these various luminaries in the main communal hall, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, a very dark barrel!
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\nWithin 20 minutes I had headshots of the CEO\u2019s of Coca Cola, JP Morgan and Britains richest man Lakshmi Mittal<\/a>. Everywhere you looked pinstriped millionaires either sipped their coffees or fended off eager journalists.
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\nAs you can imagine security was tight, and that dictated the brief for one of my first images. I was asked to recreate an image that had been shot in previous years; a sniper standing next to a \u201cDAVOS\u201d sign on top of a hotel. To achieve this we brought over a Canon 500mm F4 lens which gave me the perfect crop. That only meant that I had to wait in the freezing cold for my balaclava clad model to do his stuff… 2 hours later, I had my picture.
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\nOn the second day of the conference, Prime-minister David Cameron arrived. Having already made his now famous European referendum statement and dominating the front pages, he was big news; especially if he met with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkal, who\u2019d likely give him a good dressing down. Publicly the two were still \u201callies\u201d but the closed meeting was made away from the cameras. Cameron made his address to the WEF with the charisma of a breakfast TV host, stylish but contrived.
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\nIf Davos was a frenetic place for me, it\u2019s hard to imagine what it\u2019s like for some of those attending officially. One day I was also tasked with following Irish billionaire Denis O\u2019Brien with reporter Matt Miller as part of his Day in The Life series of interviews.
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\nHaving flown on his private jet to Zurich from Boston the night before O\u2019Brien blustered through meetings as I struggled to keep pace, eventually losing Matt who was needed elsewhere I jumped into his chauffeur driven Lexus while he chatted away on a conference call. Having already taken a punt by getting in the car I didn\u2019t have a clue where I was going; hopefully not back to Zurich. Next thing I knew we had been ushured into a hotel room to meet The President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma<\/a>, where I was faced with the terrible \u201cgrip and grin\u201d. They shook hands for what felt like forever as I fumbled for my flash and managed a couple of frames before being ejected back into the snow. Read the full story here<\/a>.
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(L to R) Chris Ratcliffe, Me and Simon Dawson at WEF2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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\nThe days were long and hard but fortunately I was with a great team from Bloomberg<\/a> who are as talented as much as they are brilliant company. Collectively under the supervision of Bryn Colton, our onsite Editor and fondue connoisseur; we survived the week, despite my colleague Simon Dawson<\/a>\u2019s hatred of dairy products and my propensity to fall over in the snow (because of the ice or otherwise).
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\nImages from this post are available from www.bloomberg.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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