ZORIAH - A PHOTOJOURNALIST AND WAR PHOTOGRAPHER'S BLOG

I Promise...

I will do it this week...

An oil drilling rig rests on the hazy horizon in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill caused severe damage to region, its wildlife and inhabitants.

Pictures of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill - Part 2 Coming Soon

I hope to have a bit more time to get caught up on posting soon, which will mean getting the second set of images from the BP oil spill posted.  For those of you that missed the first set, you can find them here.  I still have more images from Haiti, an entire project in Bangladesh and probably a few more items to share once I can finally get a bit of time to sit down and do it.

 

Oil washing ashore on a beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana after the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Photos From My Window - Pictures of Life on a Ship

Fog hangs over a small village in rural Holland.  Seen through the steamy windows of my ship just before going to sleep after a long day of scraping rust and making sure I wont sink in the next few days.

Finally, A Home!

   A little less than a decade ago, I left my apartment in New York City and set out on what has turned into a long, difficult and life changing series of adventures.  I left a high paying job, a wonderful apartment, all of my possessions and a lot of close friends for the idea that I needed to try to do something to try to make the world a bit a better and also add to my own life experiences.  

   It took me about two years to get used to a constant life on the road.  I missed having a place to come back to, family, my personal space and for some strange reason a handful of odd food items such as Taco Bell, Panda licorice and sugar free jello.  Of course there were things about life on the road that I really loved and these things kept me going, but it took me two years to get over all the things I missed. 

   For the next five years I went pretty strong.  Usually I spent a couple of weeks in each country, sometimes a couple months and on a handful of occasions I was in up to seven countries in a week (and that I can definitely do without!)  I stayed with friends and strangers, in guest houses, pensions, refugee camps, tents, hooches, busses, barracks, with people from CouchSurfing.com, underneath a tank, in a meat locker, in hospitals, outdoors, on busses, in cars, airplanes, boats, helicopters, several roofs, restaurants, metal shipping containers, a homeless shelter, medical clinic, a M.A.S.H hospital etc etc etc.  On the odd occasion here and there, usually when giving lectures or shooting a celebrity I even ended up in the occasional mansion, castle, loft or five star hotel.

   About two years ago I really began to miss having a place to call home.  There is of course, always my mothers home and I am forever grateful for her door being always open to me.  However, I became aware that I was always in other peoples spaces and as a very solitary person, it is hard to be around others all the time, especially when you are trying to respect their space and privacy yet still try to have your own life.  I also began to realize that my life was consumed by documenting the lives of others and in some ways I had forgotten how to live my own life.  I realized that I needed to find a balance.

   It has been my dream since I was a child to live in Paris and a year ago I began to look into finally starting my life there.  I made some really wonderful friends, two of whom I will introduce all of you to very soon, and fell in love with the city again.  I began to look into buying an apartment but quickly realized that with no steady income and very little in the way of savings, that this would be nearly impossible.

  That was when a crazy idea popped into my head:  I could live on a boat.  I began to do research and quickly found out that Holland was the place to go to learn about and buy ships.  I took a barge handling course, got my license and then flew to Amsterdam where I began to search for barges that I could make my home.

   Fast forward a couple of months and I am typing this out while floating on a river outside of Amsterdam.  But, before you all romanticize this too much, let me give you a little background:  I purchased a large ship that was build in 1930 and needs a vast amount of work.  A lot of the work I can and will do myself, the rest of it will be done at a shipyard in the coming weeks and months. Once the work is done, I know it will be a wonderful home for me.

   For now, I just got my electricity working about three days ago, I still have no water, heat or sewage.  Rain comes in from above and the sides, there is plenty of rust to go around, the woodwork needs help....well, pretty everything needs some help at this point.  But, it is a home for me.  It is somewhere for me to go to do my editing and to come back to when I have been out in the world photographing in difficult situations.  It is a home that can move with me, a home I can live just about anywhere in, and never have to pack another moving box.  Hopefully it will also be the place that will allow me to spend more time on this blog.  

 

   I will also be offering new workshops which will be livaboards with me on the ship.  Dont worry, it will be nice by then, and students will have all the amenities of home, including their own room to stay in.  The idea will be to offer a new series of workshops (of course they are in addition to my current WORKSHOPS in the field) that will be friendly to those of you who may not be keen to drop into a war zone with your camera.  I will make a formal announcement about the new workshops soon, but they will be focused on travel photography and editing and be a unique experience to learn how to take better pictures while enjoying spending some time on the water in Europe.