Tag: journey

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contemplations morning coffee talk Photography street photography Travel

Morning Coffee Talk~ 23/365

Good Morning,

Do you remember travel? We used to travel a lot more on planes, trains, cars and boats. These days, it’s getting so complicated to plan, prepare for and make the actual journey.

I am planning to travel this coming week and suddenly so many considerations enter the equation. Keywords get highlighted in my mind like, omicron (sounds like an avenger name ), quarantines, lockdown, 2g, 3g, face mask, social distancing, PCR, disinfectant and the list goes on.

Whoever is in denial about the fact that we are living in the age of a pandemic should plan a trip. It’s surreal how much the world has changed in the last 2 years.

In the meantime, let’s keep baking cookies and preparing for a peaceful Christmas Eve, wishing the world health, peace and light.

Well that’s what I am doing 😊

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contemplations inspiration Photography

A brief pause for self evaluation~

In the speed train that is our lives, it feels so good to make a pause, survey the terrain, look at where we have been, evaluate the journey traveled so far and decide on the direction of our next steps.

These blog posts are my daily pause. What is yours?

Day 44 of 365~

Images are of my daughter in Germany taken a couple of months ago.

Categories
Photography

Choosing Wisely~ The Internal Struggle

the internal struggle
~the internal struggle

My daughter asked me after hearing of the sad events caused by terrorism in Beirut and Paris the last 2 days: “why do humans terrorize other humans?” Questions like this always get us into a journey of search for the truth, for reason, for sanity and for an explanation that can offer settlement, even if it was short-lived.

We are given a choice, the moment we were born to be as good or as bad as we want to be. We battle with our own morality throughout our lives here on this planet. We seek out desperately that bit of cool blue logic to give us strength to choose wisely.

I posted several ‘pray for Paris’ tributes on social media today and I was caught by one comment from someone saying that “if prayer helped, then the world would already be a better place”. But do we just give up hope in the face of an uncertain future? What kind of world are our children inheriting?

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CHINA Photography Yunnan

The Ethnic Minority Culture of Yunnan~ China

state of surrender
state of surrender

the bending force of habit
the bending force of habit

Leader of the marching band
Leader of the marching band

I returned with a small group of photographers last week to this remote region of China’s Yunnan Province that haunted me since my last visit to the area a couple of years back.

It is the type of journey you would do if you were really in love with photography and different cultures that make up pieces of the puzzle of the human story on our planet.

The journey was a great challenge from the long drives, to the heat, the spare accommodations and the great element of unknown.

It was the opening of my series of documentary photography workshops that I am doing in Yunnan and despite all the challenges we faced, I can happily call this a great success.

I will be sharing here a series of images, stories, portraits and special stories about this journey into a unique and mysterious part of the world.

Categories
CHINA Photography

Anhui Diaries~

Hongcun
Hongcun

Long Chuan
Long Chuan

Long Chuan
Long Chuan

Long Chuan
Long Chuan

Long Chuan
Long Chuan

Hongcun
Hongcun

Hongcun
Hongcun

From a recent journey to the old villages around Huangshan (yellow mountains) of China’s Anhui province, I was utterly inspired with the landscape, the feeling of calm that blankets the area and the mystical sense of being so far away from it all.

It made me think a lot about the nature of water, and reflections that are abundant in this place; the magic of seeing the world repeated, maybe for us to think twice.

A place I will happily return to.

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architecture cambodia history inspiration Photography

Day 1~ May 1st~ Cambodia

journey into the kingdom of Cambodia

A new month begins with images and stories from a land so enchanting called ‘Kampuchea’, the empire of the Khmers, the present day Kingdom of Cambodia, the land of the worshipers of Theravada Buddhism, of hill tribes, of stilt houses and of magical ancient temples. It is a place where mystery is alive and well and where today’s generation struggles to overcome the bloody history of its parents and grandparents, poverty, and social injustice to become once again the kingdom it deserves to be.

It gives me so much joy to dive back into this archive, and I hope that you will enjoy contemplating it with me through 31 images and not too many words.

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congo inspiration life Photography story

Day 1~ April 1st~ Congo

a smile where you least expect it

At  times when I hear myself grumble about my coffee not being the right taste or temperature, my mind goes back to this smiling girl and to her story…

After months of living in terror, running from prosecution by militias, escaping bullets, rape, sickness and capture, this Rwandan child arrived in a UNICEF supported medical clinic in Goma(Democratic Republic of Congo) on the Rwanda border. She receives milk in this orange cup and still has energy to flash me a heartfelt smile from her beautiful face and eyes heavy with exhaustion. 

For the month of April I will share stories and images from a live changing journey into war-torn Congo. 

All photos were taken in October of 2009.

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Egypt inspiration life Photography

Day 30~ March 30th~ Egypt

a journey like no other~ boy on a camel in the desert~ Egypt

There are some places you travel to that remain alive in a very special place in your heart…

It really was a journey like no other, this adventure in Egypt. The pyramids, the sphinx, the desert, the camels, the ancient ruins, the mind boggling architecture, the friends, the strange carvings, the sense of being so different to the ancient culture that has been, the bedouins, the Nubians, and most of all the children of Egypt.

Our life experiences come together and culminate to make us who we are. This journey for me in this year to collect the salient bits of pieces of 12 of my life journeys, one a month, and to go through the process of examining them as one would a sand painting, with different colors, different essences and experiences and to then brush them away into the archives of my memories, hopefully learning a lesson in the process.

 

Categories
inspiration lebanon life Photography

Day 29~ February 29th~ Lebanon

Farewell to the ancient mountains

I am 2 days late in posting this because I am finding it so hard to leave my one month process with Lebanon, the most special place for me on this Earth. But life and this project must go on. On to the next journey in the next place which you will know about in the next post. It has been quite a journey the last month mentally traveling through my archives of photos, through my diaries and through the hieroglyphs of my mind. I hope you were able to get a small sense of how wonderful and extraordinary Lebanon was, is and can be. Thank you to all the wonderful people who have been following, commenting and encouraging along the way. Great thanks to the people at wordpress who added this blog to freshly pressed twice! And many thanks to those who have been nominating me for awards. I must admit, I have not figured out how the whole process works and what to do with them, but I will.

I am posting 2 self portraits from Lebanon, one with my beloved mountains and one gazing at the deep blue Mediterranean.

See you tomorrow elsewhere 🙂

farewell to the deep blue sea

Categories
lebanon life Photography

Day 10~ February 10~ Lebanon

valley of the saints

“Kadisha”, the name given to this valley and to the river that runs in its belly. Kadisha is ancient Aramaic for ‘holy’. This gorge has been used for burials and shelter as far back as the Paleolithic time. In its walls are thousands of caves that house monasteries, churches, thousands of meters high up in the cliffs and extremely difficult to reach. These served as a place of hiding for early Christian communities like the Jacobites, Melchites, Maronites, Armenians, Nestorians and Ethiopans who were escaping campaigns aiming to persecute and destroy them in the 13th Century by the Mameluks and other Sultans. Later it even became a place of meditation to the Sufis, historians, artists and clergy who settled in the valley. On its shoulders lies the village of Gibran Khalil Gibran.

One of my favorite churches as a child was a in the middle of a cliff facing our village in the valley and I remember the excitement every time a pilgrimage was planned to the church with family members and friends. The journey involved a very long walk down one side of the valley, pausing to have a meal at the cold fresh river to then hike up the other side on a tiny, steep, red soil track with the occasional olive tree, all the way up to the church, now a monastery. We all believed as children that the church was a place of miracles and we swore to seeing lights, visions and all sorts of magical things along the way.

The valley was and still is an enchanting memory that has a special place in the archives of my heart. I try to pass this to my daughter by taking her there whenever we can and telling her stories of what was, hoping that the spirit of the holy valley will choose to live with her too.