Stop Terrorizing the Nature _ illegal rock carry مقلع الصخور غير الشرعية في لبنان

Stop Nature Terror

Lebanese nature is one of the best aspects of what makes Lebanon a truly beautiful country. If we don't do anything to preserve out nature, it will be just another wasteland. 

In fact change is so fast, humans can landscape an entire mountains in weeks extracting all that rock. For many months illegal carries have been stopped from working then again they restarted... Many can't do anything about it because they think that their action will take them nowhere and the project that started will reach its ultimate goal of extracting every gram of rock, cutting the last tree and killing what is left of the precious Lebanese fauna.

Well I'm not one of those and when something bad happens in my backyard I wanna raise against it... no matter what the cost is

Let's start by the destruction (click for larger view)

I come from a village  named Tamnine El faouqa  تمنين الفوقى

This little town holds about 3000 people. Main products are cherry, almond, fig, and grapes production. you can' believe hoe delicious they are here they are :

delicious cherry

delicious grapes 

delicious fig

Those trees are scattered all around on vast areas.

Temnine is at almost 1000 meters above sea level and is half mountainous. These mountains don't contain wild trees like Lebanese cedars but most of them are of cherry and almond. 

Still with all the *hunters* around there's practically no live animal left and that is sad. My father is one of the last real hunter, he hunts only adults and we eat them afterwards. He goes oldschool, travels kilometers for hours without using radio tracks and speakers to lure the birds in..that is practical genocide for birds, hopefully they are learning this pattern so they can avoid those crazy men.

Here's my dad with his hunting dog

After this quick introduction of my town I wanna raise the problem of the rock quarries (مقلع الصخور) in Lebanon. This business is chewing vast amount of landscapes killing all the living with it whether it has wings, legs or with green leaves.

As I can't have impact on all of Lebanese area, I wanna raise against of what is happening in my own backyard, in our own mountains. This landscape never changed for hundreds of years until the man came and poked his dirty hands in the land that raised him at the first place. When I was a kid I used to play and have fun around that area...  I still do but I take photos of each amazing day I spend there

It started approx 2 years ago way up in the mountains in some remote places in the upper mountains where it is hard to reach on foot.
- A couple of months ago the sites reached different zones easily visible from the valley.
-the men working there are private contractors mainly from zahle, they pay the locals to use the land for excavations. The worst part is that the municipality is in with them, they take 60$ for a load of truck "gemrouk". Note that municipality is also controlled by hezbollah.

cracks of evil are spreading fast disfiguring the hole mountain, when I see this from far away when I go up to the mountain I GET FUCKIN ANGRY

they leave the excavators unattended because they know that people wont poke there noses. well I poked even my lens 

I had only minutes before they came. I would have got real problems because of my camera. Now I hope they will get the PROBLEMS

As you can see for yourself, the situation is out of control and they will keep doing this until the authorities stop them. My camera, it doesn't know how to lie. It only shows you what's put right in front of it.
SO what you think ? isn't time to fight for some kind of future here ? I wanna see the nature fight back but it can't do anything if don't have its back

So please help me, share this post, share an illegal quarry near you, organize yourselves and lets get out there and fight for our right ! they don't own the mountain.. WE ALL BELONG TO IT

The Wedding

In the end it was my first wedding

Wedding photography... Wait what ? did I say that I'm so awesome now to photoshoot weddings now ? 

NO

It all started a year ago when I was passing a rotation in the Ear Nose Throat department. There I met amazing people : Charbel, Chadi, Nadim, Evana; those were the residents from where the impact of what I'm about to tell was the biggest. Not to forget the amazing ENT surgeons : W. Abou Hamad, E. Eter, S. Rassi, N. Matar, A. Haddad, B. Tabchy; those make miracles and save lives (literally).

At first when I joined the team, I was like an out-of-the-context guy. The team follows a strict hiarchy, strict timing, strict behavior, strict work, strict almost everything... they love order. I'm not saying I have a problem with it, I'm just saying that I have a problem following the order. At 7 am in the morning when nobody was in the mood to talk even about the weather, well for me I could talk about anything and they really find it irritating and disrespectful. So I held my horses for a while. 

In short because of my behavior their first impression was that I'm a hippie who is passing by to have some fun and laughter.

You should then look at their jaws when I presented my first presentation and then the second (Anatomy studies).

That was one of those moments where I turn and think that respect is earned, it is not inherited nor bought.

After that Charbel (the senior resident) approached me and had a chat with me for like an hour. He really liked my photography think and was amazed on how much I know about the subject. Then He always stressed on how important is the first impression, the self image. New people, new faces, they all *at first* are shallow, they all don't have time, they all have important stuff to do. So at first you gotta give a sample of what is best of you and then let the relation stream across its natural pathway. Being a wildcard among people like you is a real advantage, use it wisely. In the end people have to spare some time with you because they just want to know how you simply function and what happened with me. 

After passing this rotation my attitude towards new people changed and I didn't get too much frustrated in the beginning because I always stay hopeful and positive. Because the wrong man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world *not a mistype*

So the wedding ? 

Skipping months after my rotation, we became not only colleagues but also friends. We created a circle called the ENT leftovers were the members are old new colleagues who passed the same rotation. We try to meet and have some good quality times. That circle of friends is the most amazing because it joins people of different backgrounds and with this mix it makes my time with them very fruitful.

In the end Charbel invited all of us to the wedding and that was my first wedding I attended by personal acceptance. It was at a lovely church in the middle of Beirut and then the actual soirée was at Mir Amin (beit el Din).

What I wanted to point out is that your photography technique will drastically differ if you are close friends with the subject you're photographing. That emotional bond is priceless between you and your subject because it translates in your exposures. Getting to know the couple before the wedding was a huge game changer for me. I was never particularly vibrant in portrait photography, but at this wedding I had some shots that even the professional photographer of the wedding hadn't made. In fact the couple ended up engraving my photographs into their lives by printing them and putting them in canvases in their home in France. 

So if I will have to face this situation again but with a couple that I don't know, well I don't really know how to communicate the idea but I need to know the couple and at least have a chat with them weeks before the D-Day. It will just transform your work, it will make it much easier. The exposures will reveal themselves because you will try harder.

Charbel and Victoire, the lovely couple

 So the gear I used wasn't fancy at all, my Nikon D5000 and all the night I used my telephoto lens the nikkor 55-200mm VR. That night I learned that I have at last reached the limits of my camera because of its low light capabilities. My D5000 was so noisy without Noise reduction and the photos as you can see after treatment were like painted so I end it up making the whole album black and white. With B&W the soul, the power, the emotion of each moment were more potent and it was absolutely fascinating because the couple never expected to see black and white photographs.

before their first dance

With the telephoto lens, I was able to capture the moment without interfering so basically the couple weren't aware of my snooping around. Like in this photograph on the right, in fact in front of them was this huge and massive entertainment/show called the "zaffeh" it is like a tradition in Lebanon on every wedding, it is the Lebanese Wedding Entrance. So here in the photograph it seems that they really weren't sure about the hole idea, Charbel who is Lebanese loves fattouch not tabbouleh and he do not really like the zaffeh thing but Victoire is french and she never saw/experimented the whole shebang hence this nervous smile, on both of them. 

The zaffeh

Her shadow really loves the smell of the flowers

 Here was the beginning of the zaffeh, when the groom and the bride are brought to stage. Well the challenge of this photograph was the distance and low shutter speed. Because she was on heels I was able to capture the moment when she freezes before she take another step. With that and a little help from the overhead projector I later found out that her shadow really loved the flowers and didn't accept to let go of them. What I like in this photo is the harmonious position of all the elements inside one frame, from the foreground to the background which merge flawlessly without creating distraction from the main subject who is Victoire.
 Then came the dance, there is not much to tell, any photographer would have taken those....

 But there is such moments where it is difficult to decide on when to press the shutter like the photograph below, each position of her eyelashes even her hand would tell a different story...

 Same goes here, in the photo bellow you could see his face but only guess hers. That leaves a great memory for the couple alone to enjoy and an enigma for the others. Not much of an enigma but still I granted you the power of imagining the moments thus bringing it to life...

 Now they are really happy, no more nervous smiles...

 In this photograph bellow I wanted to snap the intense moment of their dancing focusing on their hands alone... It summarizes a lot of the action but THIS is what I love about photography over videos, you got to REALLY live those moments because your activating your deepest brain matter, you only need a spark provided by photographs like these.

 

In the end it was a great experience and I thank you both for inviting me into the beginning of your story , the story of Victoire and Charbel.

With this experience I discovered a side that was practically hidden in me, I was really emotional that day and shed some tears because those people really meant something for me...and I really liked it.

I am writing only now because I miss the couple and hope because of this blogpost they will respond and return to Lebanon just for a couple of days...pretty please.

The Chadded or Vlad or Chaddad..... this post was written with a happy face and with love.