First off, happy new year to those reading this (and those who aren't.)

I can definitely say 2012 was one heck of a year. It's during this year that I realized that photography is a much bigger part of my life than I had originally figured. Learned a whole lot in Street Photography, and still even more to learn.

So I figured I'd start 2013 by dedicating close to a month to that. I'm going to New York with the sole purpose of shooting on the streets. Then after a week I'm heading back to my second home, San Francisco, where, aside from a lot of shooting as well, I'll get to see family and friends who I haven't seen for a year. Hopefully this'll turn out well.

In other news, this shot below got shortlisted for the National Geographic photo contest 2012, 'places' category. I could not have been more excited. I don't really have high hopes to win anything, and trust me when I say this, it was frickin' amazing just to have been shortlisted. This being said, the website said that the results would be announced on Dec 15th, 2012. Then they changed it to 'December', and now we're Jan 2nd, and they still haven't. Oh well...



Cheers everyone!

I guess the three-year itch is a real thing. After close to that period working in the 'titillating' world of Risk Management, I woke up one day last month and realized that I couldn't take it anymore. I needed a change; badly. So up with the resignation and off we go. Now wondering what the next step will be, but it looks very likely I might uproot and move countries again. Guess Dubai will be the logical option for me this time...

On a different note, I'm quite happy with the direction I've taken with Street Photography this past year. Learned a lot, and much more to learn as well.

Can't be more excited about the 3rd DD I got a few days ago. Why beat around the bush, getting some notice is always an ego booster : )


My Daily Deviations

It's a bit hard to digest really, but yeah, now I can say I have one client-commissioned project under my belt

A few months back, I was dabbling with time-lapse photography and I had posted a 5-second clip on my facebook page. As luck would have it, someone saw the clip and was interested enough to refer me to a company that was looking for just that, a time-lapse video as part of a promotional campaign for a resort they're building. They asked me to meet with reps from their ad agency, Saatchi, so we could work out the details.  (By the way, I'm not divulging anything I shouldn't)

That was back in November, which I think was the most schizophrenic month I'd ever had. Very tiring as well and unbelievably satisfying. I'd spend 10-12 hours at my day job at the bank, dodging stock-market craziness, go home and work on the curriculum for an applied math annex class I was to teach on Saturdays, sleep for a few hours, then wake up at dawn to go up the mountain for 2 to 3 hours of photography. Then back to the bank... (I think my blood coffee level was just a 'tad' high for that period )

Back to the clip, here's the link on Vimeo: >>>>> [link] <<<<<

Cheers,

Fadi

There is some kick-ass pride to seeing your picture having received a DD in photojournalism!!




Thank you weird SF guy for the picture, ~the-arkz for the suggestion, and `Timothy-Sim for the feature!

Cheers y'all!

I've been noticing this pattern where, once or twice a year, I come back to dA, post a few pics, browse and comment on a few more, then two months later I'm out. I don't like that. It's surely not a way to stay updated on the works and news of people you get to know around here, but having other obligations can be prohibitive sometimes. Still, I'll take what I can get; I love being here, and apologizes for all the missed replies, unseen submissions, and unread journals.

Self-pondering aside, I've been recently reading Joe McNally's works. He's an amazing photographer that does wonders with small flashes; not the studio strobes, the ones you can hot-shoe on your camera. So I caught the bug and decided to venture into flash. I've only been using flash for less than a month now, but I can safely say that natural-light and artificial-light photographies are so different, I'm not sure they should be even in the same sentence. Of course that's a rookie commenting, so maybe no one does use them in the same sentence anyway.

For now I'm swimming at the kiddie side of the pool, taking pictures of water drops, fruit splashing, and stuff like that. (samples below)

       
But I'm aiming at something different, doing portraiture to be exact. Whether it's street or studio, the works of Vivian Meier or Richard Avedon, it's nothing less than amazing this whole light playing off off people's faces. And understanding "Light" is one big challenge. I try to educate myself as much as possible on how to read it, craft it, shape it and all that, but I suspect books can only take you so far...

Turning 180 degrees from this subject, last month I was sent by my bank to a 3-day conference on the 'global economy' in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Aside from a very interesting and funny speech by George W. Bush (and a less cool one by Gordon Brown), there were a lot of meetings that had the words solvency and liquidity in them. Naturally, I was fantasizing about ripping my suit to pieces, wearing my cargo shorts, and go driving in search of wildlife. After all, this was Florida, land of the gators. It's important to say that I've never seen these animals before, but the idea of being mauled scared the scheise out of me. Too many giant croc movies...

On the last day, me and my cousins, who had flown in from San Francisco, went to an Indian reserve to see the alligators. (I'll also post a few pics.) We were in an airboat on lake Okeechobee and it had quite a few gators. The boat driver stopped next to one, and the beast just approached the boat, which was only a few inches off the water. It was scary as hell. The guy had a bag of dog food with him, and he kept throwing fistfuls of it to the animal because, according to him, that's what's stopping the lizard from jumping on the boat. Joking or not, my bladder was threatening to embarrass me. Luckily it manned up and didn't.

All in all a good trip. And now re-reading what I wrote, this is one pretty scattered journal. Oh well...Coherence schmoherence!

Ever since I got into amateur photgraphy, I always assumed it was going to stay this way. I never even considered the idea of eventually becoming a professional.

For starters, this was my own medium of self-exploration, be it through shooting landscapes or homeless people; it's liberating letting your right-brain rule for a change. Second, shooting on your own, for yourself, is 180-degrees away from dealing with clients, and I have littlt experience with that. Lastly, the guilt of throwing an engineering degree and an MBA down the drain is too much. (I'm not even done with the student loans yet!)

But a year and a half into my current job in investment banking, I can already feel its toll. High blood pressure and the works, but all minor. (Oftentimes I take small breaks by logging in to Deviant Art just to wind down. `majnouna's graphic novel Malaak always does the trick )

Now to the main point. A few months ago, ~georgyin, with whom I've been friends since high school, suggested that we start a business together; a studio for children and family portraits. It sounded like a great idea. I could already picture not working 14-hour days anymore. Maybe even have time to build my small carpentry shop again. Those were the days!

Ideally, I'd quit my job right now and dive in. But realistically I'm too hesitant to take the risk (which is expected since I'm a risk manager ). So the only way I see this working is to divide my week 5/2. Five days for the day job, weekends for photography; at least until I can see clearly.

In any case, I uploaded to my scraps, posted below, a few would-be-client-type pictures. (Credit mainly goes to my cousin for asking me to photograph her wedding, and to my baby nephew for tolerating my constant shutter snapping.)

All input is much appreciated (the good and the bad).

Cheers for reading this!

               

               

Last month I decided to go to Alaska on a hiking trip. I had been thinking about it for a while, and now that I had a job, it seemed like I could actually do it. Plus I missed the US, so doing two things at once, I spent a week in San Francisco seeing family and friends, and another week in a little town in South Central Alaska called Girdwood.

Being in Girdwood was absolutely amazing. First of all, it was weird getting used to the idea that the sun doesn't completely set in the summer. I would walk around at one in the morning, and it would look like it was 4:00 pm. I wonder how people live there during winter when it's almost the opposite with it being dark most of the time.

As for my sleeping arrangement there, I stayed in a hole in the wall, literally! It was this really cool hostel where the attic has holes in the tilted ceiling, a fitted mattress inside, and a curtain to shield the light. It was funny! What was even funnier were the showers. In order to preserve water, you couldn't turn on the water with a faucet. You had to pull on a chain for the water to come out, and it would turn off the second you let go. So imagine shampooing with one hand with the other one pulling the chain.
The other hostellers there were really cool though, and I ended up making friends with some of them. Sure it's not luxury, but the shared experience is awesome.

On a different note, my timing getting to Girdwood was really lucky as it coincided with the start of "Forest Fair", a music festival set, well, in the forest, and acting like a magnet for hippies from all over. Believe me, I've lived in San Francisco and I know hippies. These people out-hippie SF any day. They looked like they came straight out of Woodstock! I had a lot of fun watching them, and they were more than gracious letting me photograph them. (It was probably the weed

But the bulk of the trip was spent hiking and looking for animals. I saw a lot of moose, caribou, and reindeer (reindeer sausage is delicious!) I wasn't able to see any polar bears, but I did see two grizzlies. At one point, we were hiking a glacier - awesome blue ice! - under pouring rain, and then we see bear poop, a puddle of blood, and pieces of animal flesh. Man was it scary thinking that the grizzly might actually eat us. We headed back right away, making loud noises while running trying to scare it away. We made it safe and sound, albeit really wet (rain, sweat, or something else? No need to go into specifics

So all in all, I'd say it was a really good trip. Hope to get to do it some other time, maybe in winter to see the Northern lights. If not, well this was plenty!

Last time I was active on this site, it was Summer 2008. I was still a photo enthusiast, working on my MBA thesis, living in California and looking for a job.

Almost two years later, things have changed a bit. Now I'm back in Lebanon, working in Investment Banking, and living as far away as possible from a photography environment.

Two years off the shutter and many a stock market crash have taken their toll on me, and now I can feel it. Maybe that's why I'd like to ease myself back into Deviantart again. Perhaps uploading a few older pictures and interacting with fellow devvies will bring back the spark. Who knows?

Semester's almost over, and I can finally get back to DA for a while.
Lots of news, so here we go:


1- I'm going back home for a month in July. Hopefully it'll go better than last summer.

2- Many apologies for not following up on the "panoleb" competition. Hopefully Jubatuz and I can resume that soon enough

3- I'll be writing my thesis next semester, and if everything goes right, I'll graduate in December. After that I'll get back to work, and I don't ever want to go back to school full time.

4- I still don't like San Francisco, but ever since I started being involved in politics here, it's gotten more fun! Still, I'll be probably moving to a 'redder' place.

5- I bought my first DSLR in March. It's a Canon Digital Rebel XT, and it's frickin' awesome!! I bought 2 Sigma lenses for it, a 28-70mm and a 70-300mm.
All I need is a wide angle, but too damn expensive for now.

6- "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be out in July 21st. I can't say enough how excited I am. I'll probably be waiting in line at Virgin's Megastore at midnight on the the 20th. Geeky, nerdy, whatever, I just can't wait.


Now it's time to reply to all the comments and to review new deviations.

Cheers,
Fadi

Some of view can tell that I really like panoramic pictures. Probably half my gallery here consists of wide angle and stitched photos. I recently came across ~Jubatuz, another deviant who shares this interest, and we decided to create a new club to encourage this type of photography, so we came up with ~PanoLeb.




All you have to do to join is us. We also appreciate you spreading the word to those who might be interested. In the next few days we're planning on running a contest. We'll give the winner a one year subscription to DA.

All the details will be given in the next journal. For now, watch us, visit our page, and we'll be looking forward to your deviations.

Cheers!