This image illustrates to me the basic reality that we find ourselves living in: that life is a journey and our tomorrows are dependent on every action we take and every step we make. To author one’s destiny is a huge responsibility that most of us abdicate from. ‘Choice’ remains our greatest gift whether we see it or not.
My absolute favorite time to practice photography in Lebanon is the magical summer sunset. The sun takes its time and teasingly threatens to sink in the blue Mediterranean Sea ever so slowly whilst tossing beautiful colors of pastel into the Western Lebanese sky. Every day is a new performance, breathtaking, calming, inspiring and beautiful.
Like our eyes and how we process light and dark, the camera is addicted to light, and it’s absence.
Day 96 of 365~
Paris
Possessions: What do we really, truly possess? We think of possessions as things we plan and hope on keeping permanently, and the more we have the more we want to collect. But in the end, does it really matter? Maybe we can call them temporary belongings, because that is all they are. When we leave this place, the only possessions we are allowed to cary are the immaterial ones. How much love did we invest, how much care did we give and get, and how much goodness lived in us? Maybe these are the fuels that will be needed in our onwards journey into the next destination if there is one.
Day 65 of 365~
image is a composite of a bird I watched this week and an old portrait of my daughter.
Sometimes life invites us into a brief interlude between the folds of time. There we see beyond the obvious, we feel more deeply and we re-evaluate our lives and where our importances lie. The past month has been just such a life changing happening and as I emerge trying to find the end of a thread I let go of, I find that a whole new selection of threads present themselves to me. I pray that I may choose wisely where to get back on the train we call destiny.
Photographs taken during the past month in Germany, Lebanon and China
More images on my instagram feed
Alone (O-Lane), the planetary lane, the way of the planet, how we are born and how we die. These truths are what make human connections we build while alive so utterly important, otherwise life would be nothing but a long cold walk. Our friends make it warmer, infuse it with joy, with pain, with sadness, with passion, with challenges, with drama and most importantly with companionship along the way.
A very strange phenomenon I have encountered repeatedly is with the fear islanders have of the sea or it might be a great awe of the mysterious waters. I keep finding out that locals that live near the sea or ocean never really go into it with the exception of fishermen and sailors. Even in Lebanon, my grandmother who lived all her life 15 minutes away from the shore of the mediterranean, had never set foot in its waters before she passed away. It is also said that the fishermen of the Isle of Aran near the Irish coast, never learn how to swim as they claim it would be much better to die faster by drowning in case they ever fall from their boats.
photo taken: local fishermen on the shores of Boracay~ Philippines
When fire meets water, when legends merge with life, when mystery overshadows skepticism, when fantasy touches your heart and you fly with the dragons…
A haunting place where your mind can fly with the dragons if you let it.
One of the greatest powers of being human is the ability to move on. No matter how difficult or hopeless a situation is for a person, there is always the chance that they will be looking back at it with a lighter heart. Maybe this is what gives us all the hope to keep moving and to seek the lighter side of life, because we know that there is a certainty of the good overcoming the bad and of the light overcoming the dark. It is the constant sacred dance between our nights and our days that demonstrates to us this simple law.
photo taken: a girl on the streets of Phnom Penh~ Cambodia