ZORIAH - A PHOTOJOURNALIST AND WAR PHOTOGRAPHER'S BLOG

Photojournalism Workshops - Documentary Photography Workshop

My photojournalism workshops are designed to give advanced level students, photography enthusiasts and those interested in pursuing a career in photojournalism or documentary photography an intensive, real-world experience in which they will be pushed to learn and grow more than they ever thought possible. Unlike established workshops where students work in large groups and have limited access to the professional photographers teaching them, my workshops are one-on-one, for the entire workshop, giving the students unprecedented access and the ability to learn hands-on in a real, in-field working experience. Each workshop is tailored to the individual student's needs and no two are ever the same.  AND, workshops help me fund the work you see on this site!

More information on Zoriah's Photojournalism Workshops is available here

My most recent workshop brought Nancy Farese , a California-based professional photographer, to Kenya for 10 days of one-on-one study. The workshop was designed to fit Nancy's needs with a focus on pushing her photographically and personally to test the limits of her work and her comfort level. Nancy has more than 30 years of photographic experience and was interested in focusing on digital editing, breaking barriers in photographic creativity and documenting subject matter that she may shy away from on her own.

The workshop began in Kogelo, Kenya, where Nancy was guided through shooting an assignment on deadline. The story focused on the village of President Barack Obama's family during his inauguration.  I provided instruction and tips for Nancy on how to approach clients, which led to a newspaper in San Francisco being interested in the story. The focus for this segment of the workshop was on visual storytelling, producing stories for newspapers and other publications, working with professional editors, and transmitting images from remote locations via FTP clients, and more.

The workshop then moved to Kisumu, Kenya, where we documented local fishing villages, which have made a huge impact on the environment and region. The focus of this segment of the workshop was on photographic creativity, using light, framing, alternative camera angles and in-depth work each afternoon and evening on digital work-flow, editing and image post-production processing.

A short flight then took us to Nairobi, Kenya, where Nancy was pushed to go outside of her personal comfort zone and into the slums of Kibera and the city's garbage dump sites, where thousands of impoverished Kenyans scavenge for food and other items. The focus was on personal safety and working in difficult situations while still capturing the highest quality images and respecting those who live in these difficult situations.

The final segment of the workshop took place in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya. Nancy was coached in approaching and building relationships with aid organizations and built upon prior experiences with the International Rescue Committee. The final product was a feature story that will be printed and used online by the IRC for fund raising and awareness on the famine, which was just declared a national emergency by the Kenyan government.

It was a wonderful experience for both of us and I wish Nancy the best of luck in all of her future endeavors and look forward to seeing the growth of her brand new organization, PhotoPhilanthropy!

Photographer Nancy Farese photographs children in Nairobi's Kibera Slum during a Photojournalism Workshop.

"I had really wanted to be pushed to have new experiences, and shoot new stories. Zoriah created opportunities for amazing access, and wonderful support for shooting and editing.

I never will forget sitting in the remote, dusty bar in Kenya, having just captured the inauguration celebrations for President Barack Obama in his family village. We edited for hours, so excited to see what we had captured from such a momentous event.  It was one of the most extraordinary things I have ever done!"

Nancy Farese
Founder, PhotoPhilanthropy

Below are just a few of the wonderful images Nancy produced during the workshop. You can find more of her work on her personal website. All of Nancy's work here is used with permission under copywrite, so please contact her directly if you would like to re-publish it.

President Obama's inauguration day:

Fishing on Lake Victoria:

The Kibera Slum:

Working Nairobi's dump sites:

The Kenyan Famine:

For more information on Zoriah's Photojournalism Workshops, click here.

Behind the Image – July 4th Independence Day in Baghdad, Iraq

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In the summer of 2007 I was based at a tiny Joint Security Station (JSS) in Baghdad's Ghazaliya neighborhood. It was infamous at the time for being extremely violent and still plagued with roaming death squads and insurgents, and prone to bombings, rocket attacks and sniper fire.

The JSS was a small cluster of Iraqi homes that had been "requisitioned" by the U.S. Army and was being shared by both U.S. and Iraqi military forces. The homes had an otherworldly feel about them, with their large columns, front lawns and ornate interiors. There was something bizarre about this small taste of luxury in the middle of a war zone; a palace with windows packed with sand bags, whose roof was home to snipers and .50 caliber machine guns. It made me wonder what it had been like a few years before — who lived there, what where their lives like and how different those lives were from those of the troops occupying the space beneath its roofs.  

I happened to be living in the home, embedded with U.S. troops on July 4, which is America's Independence Day. There was a different feeling in the air leading up to this day and everyone seemed almost happy. An armored convoy of tanks and fighting vehicles rolled up in the morning and delivered a barbecue feast, which was closely guarded until the afternoon. When the baby-pool was blown up and filled, and the non-alcoholic beer was being distributed, a soldier and I noticed the writing on boxes of food: "U.S. Beef — Military and Prison Grade ONLY." We laughed and pointed it out to a few others, whose reactions ranged from amused to infuriated.

This photo was taken that evening, after we had eaten a nice meal and played football (soccer) with the Iraqi soldiers.  As we all stood around talking and munching on Fica's (the Iraqi equivalent of Lay's Potato Chips) the calmness of the night was shattered by an explosion directly above our heads. We all hit the ground and began to scramble. Then we heard laughter. The soldiers had come up with a few fireworks and when they ran out they dug into their supply of flares and shot them out of the grenade launchers on their M-4 assault rifles. I set my camera up and caught this long exposure.

Technical: This was shot wide, at 16mm with an 8-second exposure at f/2.8. My ISO rating was 500. No tripod was used, just a portion of a brick fence to prop up the camera and a rock underneath the lens to give it a good angle.

Behind the Image - U.S. Army and War in Afghanistan

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This image was taken in the fall of 2007 in northeastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. I was spending my days going out on patrols with the Afghan National Army, crossing over the border into Pakistan in search of militants and rebel fighters.
  

At night, I was in a small combat outpost that was split between U.S. and Afghan forces. Myself and a German photojournalist arrived on the same day, and much to our dismay, did not receive the warmest of welcomes. Apparently there was some miscommunication between the Army public affairs officers and the commanders on the base, because no one had any idea who we were or why we were there. As you might imagine, showing up at a military base in a war when no one is expecting you is a bit awkward for all parties involved.

We ended up being housed on the far side of the American half of the base, in an area that was still under construction and, unfortunately for us, was not close to being done. We were shown to a small, concrete building with a partially finished roof and told that this would be where we would sleep.

Inside the building there were several green Army-issue cots that we assumed were surplus from either world World War II or possibly even World War I (that is to say they were not the most pleasant devices to sleep on...or assemble!). The recessed floor was filled with water, which required a fair amount of acrobatics to protect our equipment from getting wet. All of this was further complicated by the fact that there was no electricity and we had to illuminate the room with flashlights. The bugs that dropped from the ceiling onto our faces as we slept are another story for another day.

On our second or third day, we were sitting in our dark room complaining about how miserable we were when an explosion blew our metal room door off of its hinges and wide open. We jumped up and ran outside in our socks, soaking our feet in the lake we called our floor.

Outside our room we saw a several other groups of soldiers exiting their barracks. We ran up to them and were told that they had just received a new artillery cannon that packed an unbelievable punch.  The German photographer went immediately to photograph the happenings and I set myself up with the night shift to photograph later that evening.

It is hard to describe the nights in Afghanistan, but they're about as dark as you could possibly imagine. I forgot my flashlight one night when I went to the chow hall and had to crawl back to my living quarters on my hands and knees—something that the soldiers on base watch wearing night vision goggles must still be laughing about. This utterblackness can provide incredible challenges for a photographer, as that which is hard to see is even harder to photograph.

That night I arrived to the location of the artillery crew as they were cleaning and preparing the cannon. I used a wide angle lens and propped the camera up on some rocks on the ground and attached a remote shutter release to avoid jarring the camera during the long exposures I would need to get the shots to come out.

The soldiers were using red flashlights to illuminate their work, common in the military because red is easier for your eyes to adjust to in dark conditions and also makes you less of a target if an enemy happens to be trying to attack you. This image shows the trails of the red lights as the crew cleaned the barrel of the cannon and adjusted the firing settings. One LED light provides the purplish glow toward the back of the cannon. A close look at the sky, especially to the right of the image, lower to the horizon, the stars appear blurry due to the long shutter speed, which capturedthe rotation of the Earth.

Technical: This image was shot with the shutter open for 30 seconds at f/6.3. I kept the ISO at 400 to avoid noise in the blacks. I spend very little time reviewing images like this as I shoot them and focus on getting as many exposures as possible in a limited amount of time, giving me the ability to choose the best frame later on, in better conditions.  

The most difficult aspect of this shoot was moving my camera after the cannon was fired each time, as they would re-aim and fire as quickly as possible. Trying to avoid getting in their way, being in front of the cannon, setting up the shots and getting my earplugs inserted in time before the next round was fired proved extremely difficult. The images of the cannon firing were impressive, but the shock waves generated by the blast made getting the perfect frame nearly impossible. The frame below shows the canon firing as well as an electrical storm that was illuminating the clouds on the horizon.

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Technical:  Shutter speed was 30 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 1000. The ISO was boosted a bit higher than I like due to how dark it was. A tripod would have minimized the shake generated by the blast and allowed me to set up the shots quicker but I prefer to travel without tripods and often like the low angles when setting a camera up on the ground or on rocks, as in this case.

Behind the Image - The Pakistan Earthquake

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I have chosen the photograph above as the first installment of my new Behind the Image series. The concept behind this new segment is to give background details to some of my more well-known images and some personal favorites. Sometimes the stories behind the images are more moving than the image itself, other times I may talk more about technical aspects of the image or what it was like to be in the situation in which it was captured.

This photo was taken in a hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan in 2005 in the wake of the Great Pakistan earthquake, which struck on October 8, 2005 and killed nearly 80,000 people, injured 100,000 more and left more than 3 million people homeless. It was the first week of this project and I had been documenting life in the refugee camps and hospitals while planning my route into Kashmir, the region hardest hit by the earthquake.

I will never forget my first few minutes in this particular hospital, as I was invited into the emergency room that was taking care of several severely wounded individuals. The tile floor of the ER was slick with so much blood in certain parts of the room that I actually felt my feet getting soaked through my boots.

 
Earthquakes are difficult disasters because of the large number of people who survive with massive injuries. Houses collapse on people, causing bricks, rocks and other items to fall, buckling walls and rupturing propane heating tanks,which spill boiling water on children or blow up and catch people on fire. An earthquake of this magnitude would have caused severe damage in a developed country with sound building codes and adequate medical care; here, there was not much people could have done to escape and those who did found an already stressed hospital system completely overwhelmed.

As I was walking through the hallways of the hospital, taking photos of the patients who were overflowing out of their rooms and into the cramped passage ways, I was approached by a man in his 40s who put his hand on my shoulder, gestured to my camera and gently waved for me to follow him. Most of my communication overseas is non-verbal and I usually am able to understand people's intentions, so it was obvious to me there was something he wanted me to see and photograph.

He brought me into a small room packed with people, all of whom were visibly distraught. A woman was crying, sitting on a bed holding a lifeless body. A doctor came in and explained to me that the young woman's husband had just succumbed to injuries he sustained in the earthquake. He then told me that the family would allow me to stay and take photos.

I snapped images as the woman cried and sang a mournful hymn over and over. Two female family members comforted her from either side, holding her shoulders and doing their best to console her. It was a surreal moment for me and I felt the emotion of the moment deeply.

This was one of the few times I cried while working. It was an intense and emotional atmosphere, but I was most touched by the fact that the family had brought me in and allowed me to document what was likely one of the worst moments in their lives. The fact that they trusted me with their story fundamentally changed my approach to my work and produced an image that will always be dear to my heart.

TECHNICAL: This image was difficult to capture because of the lighting situation in the hospital, as it turns off its lights during the day and relies on natural light coming in from the windows to illuminate the rooms.  It can be stunning for photography if you can manage to use the available light, but it is often tough to work with. This image was shot at 1/30th of a second at f/2.8. The ISO was 400 and it is shot at 35 mm. I have a lot of frames from this series but this one caught the drama in a way the others did not. I also lost a good number of images because of the low shutter speed and the movement of the subjects.

Post Script: The important events and issues I cover aren't always the subjects that sell to corporate media. These human stories need your support and funding to be told. The cost to produce this work is substantial and I can not continue to do this without your support. Please consider a subscription of $25 per month to help insure I can continue my work:

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-- Thank you -- Zoriah

War Photographer - In Harms Way - Documentary Excerpt

This is an excerpt from the Warner Brothers and CBS documentary television show called "In Harms Way."  It features Zoriah documenting the Israeli Palestinian conflict from the Gaza Strip and provides insight and motivations into why he became a war photographer.

You can view the full documentary in the post below or by following this link: In Harms Way - War Photographers