SDuffyPhotography.blog

The off-camera lighting journey begins

A few weeks ago, I ordered one of the Strobist Starter Kits over at Midwest Photo Exchange to begin my journey into off-camera lighting. On the one hand, I’ve never been so excited about photography… On the other hand, it’s frustrating. I feel like I’m starting at square one all over again… “This part of the camera is the lens, this is called a flash…”, etc.

Anyway, my wonderful girlfriend agreed to let me abuse her and blind her this weekend with my new set of toys… I wanted to share a few of my favorites below.

The following shot was taken with a Vivitar 285HV flash fired through a simple homemade snoot made from the cardboard box in which the light stand was delivered. The flash is camera left and up. Interestingly enough, this shot was taken in the middle of the day with sunlight coming through the bedroom windows. I wanted to try and effectively kill the sunlight and darken the room by applying enough light to a small area to get what I wanted. Mission accomplished:

The next three shots were taken, again, with a single Vivitar 285HV camera left and above her. This time, though, the flash was reflected off a soft silver 43″ umbrella. Oh, and many thanks to Hunter for (not) sitting very still.

The next two have a very similar set up but, for these, I added a Canon Speedlite 580EX II camera right and behind her. It was fired remotely by the Canon STE-2 IR transmitter. In both photos, it didn’t end up as dramatic as I had envisioned but it’s there.

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Palestine Photos Complete!

Yep, that’s right! I have finished processing over 14,000 photos from my incredible trip to Palestine. They’ve all been uploaded to Flickr where they’ve been tagged and categorized into different sets. There are sets for each of the major activities, a set of just photos of the volunteers, a set for photos of the kids of New Askar Refugee Camp, a set for Hebron, and also a set for each day. The only thing left is to geo-tag them and, perhaps, add titles and descriptions to each. No, small task but something I might begin.

In the meantime, I wanted to share just a couple of my favorites…

A Parade Through New Askar Refugee Camp

The following photos were taken on our first day with the kids from the refugee camp. As part of their welcome ceremony, they led us on a parade through the refugee camp to lay wreaths at the graves of children that have died from Israeli military actions over the last two years:

The Old City of Nablus

The following photos were taken while going on a walking tour of the Old City section of Nablus. The place is like a maze and is the almost-daily target of Israeli incursions.

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Nablus Night in HDR

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time now, you know I love HDR photos… maybe a little too much! But, given the kind of shooting I was doing in Palestine, there weren’t too many opportunities to do HDRs. There was one night, however, when we were visiting the Darna Center, that I was able to get on the roof, set the camera on a flat surface and get some high-dynamic range photos of my second home. You can see them below…

I’m almost done with editing the 14,000 photos I took in Palestine. I only have 3 more days worth of photos left. I am hoping to be finished this weekend, at which point I’ll be back to a more normal blogging schedule. I have some great things to talk about, too!

You can see my entire Palestine 2008 collection here.

Still editing, but visit me at JPG!

I’m still editing thousands upon thousands of Palestine photos… In the meantime, however, I noticed a new photo challenge over at JPG Magazine: Splash!. Since I noticed this right at the same time I was going through the photos from our day at the water park at al-Badan, I decided to submit the following photo:

My Palestine photo collection (or what’s completed so far) can be viewed here. I am about halfway through the photos and plan on being back to a regular blogging schedule by next weekend.

A few Palestine uploads

Given that I have about 10,000 more photos to edit from my trip, I won’t be updating the blog every time I finish a new batch… That’s just a little too much. However, I did want to post about the most recent batch because it was from a day where I probably shot more than any other single day during my trip.

This batch of photos is from June 15th. You might remember from previous posts, that June 15th was our first day at New Askar Refugee Camp. The kids from the camp led us on a parade through the refugee camp to the cemetery where they layed wreaths at the graves of children who have recently been killed by the Israeli army. It was quite an incredible event.

Anyway, I’ve posted some photos below… some of which you may not have seen yet. The entire set of June 15th’s photos can be found here.

Jerusalem Photos Complete

I want to thank all of you for your patience as I deal with some family issues and edit thousands of photos from my trip. I took approximately 14,000 photos during my trip, with about 2,000 of them being in Jerusalem. I’ve finally made my way through all of the Jerusalem photos and have uploaded them to Flickr. I’ve included a few of my favorites (some of which you may have seen already) from Jerusalem below…

You can see the entire Jerusalem set here. Next up, I will be going through about 12,000 photos from the West Bank! Stay tuned!

Bethlehem, Hebron, and our last weekend

Early Friday morning, we began a trip to visit a couple other Palestinian cities before the end of the camp. On the agenda were Bethlehem and Hebron. These two cities are the cities that I have wanted to visit the most since the last time I was here so I was very excited.

Below is an abridged version of the weekend since I am a little pressed for time right now…

In Bethlehem, we stopped at the Church of the Nativity, of course, and then we went on a walking tour of the Old City. After lunch, we went to Aida refugee camp and saw the Israeli “security” wall. What an experience to see it up close.

After the wall, we spent the night in a small village called Beit Sahour. We went out for dinner and then went to another place nearby for arguileh and live music. We had a blast! Some had a little too much fun.

On Saturday morning, we all awoke and had breakfast and then we drove to Hebron. Visiting Hebron is a very sobering experience. If you want to understand Palestinian anger, a visit to Hebron is absolutely necessary. Hebron is the only city where you will find Israeli settlers living in close proximity to local Palestinians. The result is horrendous. Entire streets are closed to Palestinians, there are checkpoints and road blocks everywhere. On some streets, Palestinians have had to erect fences and nets above the street to prevent the settlers above from throwing garbage and rocks on them. I had heard about this before but to see it with my own eyes is disturbing. And, yet, you’ll never hear about this on the news. In fact, we went to visit a mosque and before you enter the mosque, there are literally three checkpoints within 20 meters of each other. And, at each checkpoint, you have to take everything out of your pockets, sometimes completely disrobe, and let the soldiers go through your bags. All this just so that Palestinian Muslims can enter a mosque to pray. Unbelievable.

Anyway, there are a few photos from both days below…

Our last day with the kids

Regretfully, today was our last day working with the kids. Tomorrow, we will be heading to the refugee camp but instead of working with the kids, we will have a farewell party. So, instead of signing up for only one section, I decided to wander around and take photos. I ended up taking about 1000 in a couple hours so the photos below are only a small excerpt…

On a side note, my blogging frequency may slow down even more in the next few days. For our last weekend in Palestine, our local hosts are taking us to Ramallah (where we may get to meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas), Bethlehem, and Hebron. I have already been to Ramallah but I have been dying to see Bethlehem and Hebron. I imagine we’ll be on a pretty tight schedule and I don’t know what the Internet situation will be like. Rest assured, though, once I am in one place at the beginning of next week (either Jerusalem or Ramallah), I will update the blog with some stories and photos.

If you like, you can always follow me on Twitter @sduffyphotos or you can subscribe to the blog via RSS or email.

Death in Nablus

This morning we awoke to news that the Israeli army had entered the city last night and had killed two Palestinian men, one of whom was a student at An-Najah University. Apparently, the IDF was looking for a militant from Islamic Jihad and had entered a Nablus neighborhood where they believed he was located. According to eyewitnesses we talked to, the Israeli army blew open the door to a university dorm building and then broke into the dorm itself. One person, a student at An-Najah was shot fifteen times while still laying in bed. The second person, allegedly the man the IDF was looking for, appeared to have been injured by explosives set by the IDF and may have been shot afterward.

I was able to gain access to the dorm building to take photos as soon as the Palestinian police had given me the green light after they finished their search for any unexploded ordinance. The scene inside was surreal. A large hole had been blasted through the wall into the apartment next door. Furniture and personal belongings were strewn about almost as if a tornado had gone through. In the bedroom, you could see blood that had already soaked into the mattress and spilled on to the floor.

I don’t think I quite realized what I was shooting when I was shooting it. You just go into a zone and start shooting. It really didn’t hit me until later that I had photographed a scene where, only a couple hours earlier, two men had been killed.

After photographing the building, my fellow photographer, who I call Judge, took me to Rafidia Hospital where we heard there was going to be a martyr parade through the city. Despite the morbid nature of the event, I have to admit I was quite excited for the opportunity to photograph something I had only previously seen on the news. When we arrived at the hospital, however, we learned that the bodies had been taken to Jenin, which is where one of the young men was from.

Reuters is reporting that both young men were militants. One from Islamic Jihad and one from Hamas. From what I gather, one may have, in fact, been affiliated with Islamic Jihad but it is unlikely that the other was associated with any militant group. In fact, Israel, at first, denied killing two people. It was only later that this was changed and they claimed the second person was with Hamas. Doubtful.

Anyway, here are a few photos…

A Palestinian wedding shoot

I haven’t had a chance to blog in a few days… Sometimes, I’m simply too tired and other days the Internet connection is not working. But tonight, I opted out of the football match at the university so I could stay behind and catch up on some blogging.

Saturday

On Saturday night, all of us went over to Sa’ed’s house for dinner. I met Sa’ed the last time I was in Nablus when he was head of Public Relations for An-Najah University. He is still very much involved with the Zajel program. On Saturday, he had us all over at his house where he gave lecture on the geopolitical history of the conflict, complete with a ton of maps showing different stages of the conflict. He also recounted the story of how his mother was killed in 2002 by the Israeli army while she was sitting on her front porch during a curfew. You can read about it on the website www.remembershaden.org.

Sunday

On Sunday, after all of us had returned from the refugee camp, all of the international volunteers gave a presentation on the country they live in. Since most people know more about the United States than we could possibly cover in a single presentation, we decided to do short presentations on where we are from in the US. This meant that I gave a brief presentation on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, complete with a few Terrible Towels. I gotta try and start that Steeler fan club here.!

After the presentations, one of the local families in our village invited us out to a wedding party that was happening right in front of our castle. What a blast! I was warmly welcomed with my camera and I was able to get inside the huge crowd and take some shots. With the action and lighting, it was probably some of the most technically difficult shooting I’ve done yet. But, I am really happy with some of the shots. You can see a few below… I’ll even be putting a bunch of them on DVD before I leave so that the wedding party can have them. Who would have thought my first wedding shoot would be in Palestine?