跟随无人机，深入中国沙漠化重灾区

Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times. In this piece, Josh Haner, a staff photographer and senior editor for photo technology, takes us to the Tengger Desert on a recent assignment for a continuing series about climate change.

“时报内情”(Times Insider)专栏为读者呈现《纽约时报》新闻、专题报道以及评论的幕后故事。在本篇文章中，摄影记者兼图片技术高级编辑乔希·哈内尔(Josh Haner)前不久在进行一次有关气候变化的系列报道时，带我们走进了腾格里沙漠。

The scenery is breathtaking, but I feel helpless: We’re a half-hour drive from where we need to be, and the sunset means that my assignment — along with the limited time left on my visa — is slipping away from me.

景色令人惊叹，我却感到无助：我们离要去的地方还有半个小时的车程，日落意味着我的任务——以及我签证上剩下的有限时间——正在从我身边溜走。

The truth is, the drivers here aren’t accustomed to journalists. Their usual customers are tourists looking for a roller-coaster ride through the dunes — which explains the death metal blasting from the radio and what seems to be a broken axle. The music should have been my first clue.

事实是，这里的司机对记者不熟悉。他们的顾客通常是想坐一次沙丘过山车的游客。这也解释了收音机里传出的死亡金属以及现在遇到的问题：似乎是一根轮轴断了。那音乐应该是给我的第一个提示。

But now, halfway to Moon Lake, we’re watching the sun go down, and I’m missing the opportunity to make the picture.

但现在，在离月亮湖还有一半路的地方，我们只能看着太阳渐渐落下。我正在错失拍摄机会。

Getting here wasn’t easy: a 14-hour red-eye flight to Beijing, a two-hour plane ride to Yinchuan (after a series of cancellations and delays because of summer thunderstorms — along with a four-hour nap in an airport hotel), a two-hour drive to the edge of the Tengger, and a rapid price negotiation to get a dune-capable vehicle.

一路来到这里不容易：先是坐14个小时的红眼航班到北京，然后坐两个小时的飞机到银川(在这之前因为夏季雷雨，航班多次被取消和延迟起飞，我还在机场的一家宾馆小睡了四个小时)，之后再坐两个小时的汽车到腾格里沙漠边缘，最后再经过一场匆忙的讨价还价，找到一辆能在沙丘地带行驶的车。

Making the pictures hasn’t proved easy, either. For traveling purposes, I had brought along a relatively small drone, and I knew it would be a trade-off: Smaller and lighter means it is more susceptible to being swept up in a windstorm, which would make the footage unusable. We also have to get very creative when launching and landing the drone to ensure minimal sand exposure. I’d already ruined one in an assignment months before by getting sand in the motor. I couldn’t risk having that happen so early in this trip to China.

事实证明，拍摄也并非易事。因为是出差，我带了一台相对较小的无人机，我知道这是一种妥协：更小、更轻意味着更容易被卷进风暴中，导致画面素材不能用。我们还必须在无人机的起飞和着陆上想些办法，尽可能少碰到沙子。几个月前，我就已经在执行一次任务时报废了一台无人机，因为马达里进了沙子。我可不能在此次中国之行一开始就重蹈覆辙。

How did I end up here? We’d chosen this exact spot, from back in New York, months earlier. A group of editors on the graphics desk and I had sat down with a map of the Tengger, after hearing suggestions from Edward Wong, the Beijing bureau chief. We were looking for communities along the edge that might be affected by the desert’s changing footprint.

我怎么来了这里呢?几个月前，我们就在纽约选定了这个地方。听到北京分社社长黄安伟(Edward Wong)的建议后，图片编辑部的一群编辑和我坐在一起，研究一幅腾格里地图。我们想在沙漠边缘寻找可能受到沙漠足迹不断变化影响的社区。

Jeremy White, a graphics editor at The Times, analyzed satellite data to determine three communities where the desert seemed to be encroaching. Our challenge was to find a story there. Was desertification impacting people in these locations? If so, how?

时报的图片编辑杰里米·怀特(Jeremy White)分析了卫星数据，以确定三个似乎正在被腾格里沙漠侵蚀的社区。我们的挑战是在那里找到一个故事。沙漠化是否正在影响这些地方的人?如果是，又是怎么影响的?

What Edward, the writer on the piece, and I found was eye-opening: stories of people having to change their livelihoods, of farmers trying to supplement lost incomes by catering more to tourists, of families resettling and sending their children to cities in hopes that they would succeed in a new industry.

撰写文章的黄安伟和我发现的情况令人目瞪口呆：从人们不得不改变生计，到农民试图通过迎合游客来冲抵收入的减少，再到举家搬迁并送孩子进城，希望他们能在新的行业里成功，这些都是我们看到的故事。

One of the ways to capture the extent of the change — and the emotional heft of these stories — was to rise above the desert with a drone.

变化的幅度之大，是这些故事令人心情沉重的地方，要捕捉到这一点，其中一个办法就是利用无人机俯瞰这片沙漠。

Our replacement car eventually arrives, and a new death metal song crackles out of the speakers. Unfortunately, we’ve missed the light for the evening; we’ll have to try again at sunrise — which means sleeping among the dunes.

我们换的车终于来了。喇叭里传出的是另一首死亡金属歌曲。遗憾的是，我们错过了傍晚的光线，将不得不在日出时再试，这意味着我们要在沙丘过夜。

That light is stunning the next morning as we bounce back across the sand, and I finally have time to film what I need for the story.

第二天早上，当我们在沙漠中重新振作起来时，光线非常好。我终于有时间拍摄这个故事需要的素材了。

Then, by what seems like a miracle, we notice a 4G cellular signal, so I tether our drone to Facebook Live and share the flying experience with our readers (a task made ever more difficult by the fact that Facebook is blocked in China).

然后，像是奇迹似的，我们注意到了一个4G手机信号。于是，我把无人机和Facebook Live绑定，和我们的读者分享这次飞行经历(Facebook在中国遭到屏蔽这个事实，让这件事变得更加困难。)

Up next? We’re off to another part of China for the next story in the series — and for many more challenging modes of transportation.

接下来呢?我们出发前往中国另一个地方，寻找这个系列的下一个故事，并体验很多更具挑战性的交通方式。