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Equipment List for Making Better Smartphone Videos
In case you haven’t noticed, smartphone cameras keep getting better
and better. Not only do they take better still photos, but they also
record high-quality video. Many latest generation smartphones are
equipped with image stabilization, focus tracking, and the ability to
shoot in 4K.
This is especially notable with the recent release of IGTV and social
media platforms encouraging more video creation. With that in mind,
it’s worth investigating how to use your smartphone to take better
smartphone videos. As usual, it comes down to the tools you use. Here
are several accessories worth investing in to take your smartphone
videography to the next level.
A Way to Secure Your Phone
Smartphones today are being built tougher, but they still have a
sleek body that makes them easy to drop. To keep your phone more secure,
consider getting one of these accessories. This will help you take
sharper and better videos.
Pop Socket
In case you’re not already hip to the Pop Socket, here’s why they’re so popular.
Image courtesy of Pop Socket.
These
little devices look deceptively simple. They’re just a plastic backing
that sticks to your phone and pops out to give you a better grip. This
helps you hold your phone with one hand while taking selfies or shooting
tricky angles. They are especially helpful while shooting video.
But there are some problems with the Pop Socket. For one thing,
they’re bulky. Even when retracted, the Pop Socket sticks out just
enough to make it a hassle to stick your phone in your pocket or put it
into your car’s cell phone holder.
Secondly, Pop Sockets look about as cheap as they cost, at least in
my opinion. This can ruin the aesthetic of the pricey phone you’ve
invested in. Finally, these suckers are pretty permanent. Once they’re
attached to your phone, they’re useless if you remove them. For that
reason, I prefer using the next accessory to keep my phone secure.
Black Rapid WandeR Bundle
Image courtesy Black Rapid.
Black Rapid is known for their camera straps, but they also have a cool new product for smartphones. The WandeR Bundle is a nylon tether wrist strap that attaches to your smartphone’s case (above).
You can also use the included TetheR-Clip to secure your phone to a
bag or camera strap (see below). It’s a simple concept that is very well
executed and will make it hard to drop or lose your phone again.
Image courtesy Black Rapid.
A Smartphone Tripod
Like any other camera, there’s a time and a place to use a tripod
with a smartphone, especially when creating videos. The good news is
that you don’t need a giant tripod for your smartphone, although you can
certainly adapt any basic tripod for use with a cell phone using an
adapter (more on that below).
But if you want a more compact setup, consider getting a dedicated smartphone tripod. The Manfrotto PIXI EVO is a popular option, as is the JOBY GorillaPod Hybrid Mini. Both are small, yet sturdy enough to hold a smartphone or even a small mirrorless camera if needed.
No matter what kind of tripod you end up with, make sure you get a cell phone tripod adapter to properly mount your device.
External microphone
Most smartphones have pretty good built-in audio recording features.
But sometimes you need an enhanced audio solution. Note that for both of
these microphones, you may need a smartphone audio jack adapter if you have a phone without a traditional audio jack.
One of the best smartphone microphones out there is the Rode VideoMic Me microphone.
It’s very compact and comes with a fluffy windscreen (also known as
dead cat). To use it, simply plug it into your smartphone’s audio jack.
It worked well with my Samsung Galaxy S8 but didn’t work at all with the
Google Pixel.
The reason is the location of the audio jack. On the S8, it’s located
on the bottom of the phone, on the opposite end of the cameras. The
Pixel’s audio jack is located on top, next to the camera. Thus, the
microphone was in the shot both with and without the windscreen. So
check the audio jack’s proximity to your camera before investing in this
mic.
Another type of microphone you may need is a lavalier (or lapel) mic.
It is placed in close proximity to the speaker’s mouth to isolate their
voice from environmental noise. Lavalier mics are generally wired,
meaning they can be difficult to use when plugged directly into your
video recording device.
So the most convenient setup is to record your visuals with one
camera, and record audio with a lavalier mic plugged into a smartphone.
You’ll need an audio recording app to do this. A top of the line lav mic
option is the Rode smartLav+, or the more affordable Stony-Edge Simple Lav. Note that sound quality typically corresponds with price, but it truly depends on your budget.
Smartphone gimbal
Many smartphones come with built-in stabilization that will help
minimize or remove shake from your videos. However, you still need an
extra tool if you want buttery smooth, cinematic video footage. The
simplest video stabilization tool is an electronic handheld gimbal.
There are two main gimbals out there worth considering, and they’re very competitive in terms of features and price. One is the DJI Osmo Mobile 2, and the other is the Zhiyun Smooth Q.
I’ve been using the Smooth Q for the past few months and have been
blown away by how much my smartphone video quality has improved.
Best of all, a gimbal is easy to use and quite affordable for the features it offers.
Extra Power
While smartphone battery life keeps gradually improving, it’s still a good idea to bring a portable cell phone charger with you.
There are tons of external batteries on the market, but Anker is by far one of the more reputable brands. In particular, the Anker PowerCore 10000
is a compact, efficient, external battery. It can charge either your
smartphone or electronic gimbal or both at the same time. Just be sure
to charge the battery ahead of time and bring the right cables.
Over to You
In short, you don’t need a lot of tools to start using your
smartphone to make better videos. However, if you add these tools to
your kit, you’ll be well on your way to producing more
professional-looking videos.
Do you have any smartphone video accessories? Let us know your essential tools in the comments below!
(Pssst...as good a deal as this is at only $7.99, how would you like to
have access to the Smartphone Filmmaking Handbook absolutely FREE? Just
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The GoPro Hero 7 Black
is hands down the best action camera on the market right now. With
meaningful updates such as incredible stabilization, improved built-in
sound, and better app integration, GoPro makes a compelling case for
even its most loyal user base to upgrade to the latest model. If you’re
on the market for an action camera, read on to find out 5 big reasons
why the GoPro Hero 7 Black is the best one for you.
Specs
GoPro released three new action cameras in September 2018: the Hero 7
Black, White, and Silver. The Hero 7 Black is their most premium model
at US$399, with the other two being stripped down versions. GoPro’s
mid-tier camera is the Hero 7 Silver.
Priced at US$299, the Silver has most of the features of the Hero 7
Black minus Hypersmooth; it’s also capped at taking 10-megapixel photos
compared to the Hero 7 Black’s 12 megapixels. GoPro’s new entry-level
camera is the Hero 7 White.
At US$199, you get the same 10-megapixel sensor as the Hero 7 Silver.
Most features are retained except for the ability to shoot in 4K video.
Besides the price difference, the Hero 7 Black is also the only model
to receive three new key features: HyperSmooth, live streaming, and
TimeWarp video. More on all of these features below.
Look and feel
The Hero 7 Black retains the same rubberized design that was first
introduced with the Hero 5 Black. Side-by-side, it looks almost
identical to the Hero 6 Black. Both cameras have the same 2-inch
touchscreen, button placement, and the same ports (USB-C and micro
HDMI). They even use the same replaceable batteries.
Before you gripe about GoPro retaining the same camera design,
consider this: reusing old designs means you can keep using the same
GoPro accessories. This is key as GoPro, and many third-party
manufacturers such as Joby have created some truly helpful accessories
to get more use out of the camera. So if you have mounts, cages, or
adapters for the Hero 5 or 6, rest assured that you can use them all
with the Hero 7 Black as well.
5 things I love about the GoPro Hero 7 Black
1. Hypersmooth
Hands down the best feature about the GoPro Hero 7 Black is
Hypersmooth. GoPro claims it is the very best in-camera video
stabilization on the market, adding gimbal-like stabilization to video
footage. After profuse testing, it’s hard to argue. Shooting with
Hypersmooth enabled does indeed produce ultra-smooth footage akin to
what you would get if you used a gimbal. In turn, this seems to kill the
GoPro Karma Grip gimbal as it seems the Hero 7 Black can record video
just fine without it.
You can shoot in Hypersmooth even when shooting at 4K 60fps at full
resolution. Just be mindful that Hypersmooth can’t be enabled when
shooting in 4:3 aspect ratio, and also when shooting in Full HD at
240fps and 120fps.
2. TimeWarp
Also new on the Hero 7 Black is a feature called TimeWarp. In a nutshell, this is timelapse
video with HyperSmooth applied. The resulting effect is being able to
capture timelapse videos that are ultra stable. This is key for
time-lapsing anything with movement, such as driving, hiking, walking,
running, or biking. When using TimeWarp, you have the option to record
at several different speeds including 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, and 30x.
3. Same form factor as Hero 5 and 6
On the outside, GoPro made almost no change to the Hero 7. It looks
exactly the same as the Hero 5 and 6, and even uses the same batteries.
This is actually a good thing. If you’ve invested in GoPro cages or
batteries before, you can reuse them with the Hero 7. Also, many
third-party companies have created accessories for the Hero 5 and 6. You
can use these just fine with the Hero 7.
One design change I’d love to see in future GoPros: a camera that comes with its own mount and doesn’t need to be put in a cage.
4. Touchscreen with revamped UI
While GoPros have had touchscreens for several models now, the user
interface has been revamped in the Hero 7 Black. Key information such as
resolution and framerate are condensed at the bottom of the screen,
while battery life and remaining memory card space are in the upper
portion of the screen. Portrait mode has also been added, allowing you
to shoot vertical photos and videos for platforms such as Instagram
Stories or IGTV.
Speaking of social media, the Hero 7 Black now allows for live
streaming. Using WiFi or cellular service, you can conduct a 720p live
stream on Facebook. At this time, live streaming to other platforms (ie.
YouTube) isn’t yet enabled.
5. Seamless smartphone integration
One of my biggest gripes about modern cameras is how terribly
unreliable their smartphone integrations are. While most cameras offer
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity for remote control via smartphones and
easily transferring images, it’s always hit or miss whether or not these
features will work. With the GoPro, connectivity is the most responsive
and reliable I’ve ever seen on a camera. This makes it very easy to use
your smartphone to control the GoPro and review photos and videos
immediately after capture. Well done, GoPro.
5 things I dislike about the GoPro Hero 7 Black
For all of the things that GoPro improved in the Hero 7 Black, there
is still room for improvement. Here are 5 features in particular that I
would like to see refined and improved in future generations.
1. Unresponsive screen
While the Hero 7 Black’s touchscreen is largely improved, it has one
major shortcoming: it’s not very responsive! This problem also extends
to GoPro’s other two buttons. In general, it’s hit or miss whether the
GoPro will react to buttons being pushed or the touchscreen being
swiped. This can be very frustrating, especially when trying to shoot
spontaneously.
2. Voice commands are unreliable
Another feature that is hit or miss is voice control. New on the Hero
7 Black are two voice commands that can control the GoPro: “GoPro
capture,” and “GoPro Stop capture.” While useful in theory, these voice
controls seem to work about half of the time.
3. No mic jack
In the past, GoPro was notorious for having awful built-in
microphones. All of that changed with the Hero 7 Black, which offers
remarkably improved in-camera sound. However, there are still instances
that require enhanced sound capture via a lavalier (lapel) microphone or
shotgun mic. Unfortunately, GoPro has withheld the mic jack from the
Hero 7 Black, opting instead to give us USB-C and micro HDMI ports.
GoPro does offer a solution in the form of a mic jack adapter. However,
it is bulky and expensive, and you must use GoPro’s adapter (other
brands will not work).
4. Battery life
Of all the things GoPro improved in the Hero 7 Black, one thing that
remains unchanged is battery life. It’s hard to give an estimated
battery life as it depends on how you are using the camera. But in
general, one battery lasts about an hour when shooting in 4K. Luckily,
all three Hero 7 models come with a USB-C port to allow for charging via
a wall socket or external battery. However, it is still a wise idea to
carry several spare batteries with you.
5. Low light performance
All three Hero 7 models have an f/2.8 aperture. This means they are
decent at shooting in low light, but the video and photo quality still
leaves room for improvement. In the case of the Hero 7 Black, it also
seems that HyperSmooth is automatically disabled in low light
conditions, further worsening the low light performance. In general,
you’ll get the best photo and video performance out of your Hero 7 if
you use it in daylight or good lighting conditions.
Despite some shortcomings, the GoPro Hero 7 Black is easily the best
action camera on the market right now. GoPro made significant and
actually useful improvements on this camera and it is worth using not
only for action scenarios but everyday use as well. Agree or disagree?
Let me know in the comments below!
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Jumping from a cliff. Diving with whale sharks. Documenting a road trip. The compact, rugged technology of the GoPro
has created incredible opportunities for capturing the action of events
like these. And while the GoPro is known mostly for its video
capabilities, improved senor technology means it’s also a camera capable
of high-quality imagery that can withstand harsh conditions such as
water and dust.
And being able to shoot in adverse conditions opens new opportunities for creative photography.
In the past few months I’ve been experimenting with a GoPro Hero5 to
shoot underwater photography. Although shooting underwater is a new
realm for me, I’ve found that by applying generic photography knowledge
I’ve grown quickly and made the GoPro work for me.
I hope you can learn and adapt what I’ve learned for your own
purposes with these five tips for underwater photography with a GoPro.
I used a GoPro under water to capture the behavior of these breeding salmon in Alaska.
1. Know the Minimum Focus Distance
You may already know that the GoPro has a very wide field of view
(FOV), which lets you frame a subject with the contextual scene around
it. When searching for an image, focus on your desired foreground
element and then get as close to it that foreground element as you
ethically can. Place your camera close and take advantage of the GoPro’s
12-inch (~30cm) minimum focus distance. Placing the foreground element
about 12 inches from the camera will emphasize it while still providing
surrounding context.
I kept the minimum focusing distance in mind for this coral. The image was taken from very close while snorkeling.
2. Pre-set your Camera Field of View
Following in line with the minimum focusing distance, be sure to
pre-set the FOV for your GoPro before entering the water. Even though
GoPros are waterproof, I use a third-party housing to further protect
the camera. And if you use a housing you can’t engage the touch screen,
so you need to set the FOV first.
If you can’t get close enough to your subject, set the field of view
to “Narrow”. This will require you to aim your camera precisely, which
can be difficult if snorkeling or swimming. Of course, you can keep an
eye on the back screen to help you compose the shot.
I used a narrow field of view to capture this image of this large trigger fish in Hawaii.
3. Set Your Camera Defaults to Maintain Image Quality
Setting your default settings ahead of time will help you capture
quality photographs. GoPros have pretty good image quality in well-lit
conditions, but the image graininess (noise) will increase quickly as
the camera adapts its ISO to low-light conditions. You can control the
image quality by setting a maximum ISO setting. With your phone
connected to your GoPro, go into your settings and change the maximum
ISO to a value of 800 or less. While you’re there, you may want to set
the default mode to “photo”. Doing this will ensure you can quickly take
a photo if your GoPro shuts off while underwater and you need to turn
it back on.
Underwater conditions can be very murky and may cause your camera to boost the ISO, which will result in greater image noise.
A slower shutter speed due to low light caused some of the darting herring in this image to blur.
4. Stabilize Your Camera
If the water is cloudy or the day isn’t sunny the camera will shoot
at slower shutter speeds, which may result in blurry or non-sharp
images. This will be particularly noticeable if you can’t keep the
camera stable. If you’re hand-holding the camera, keep it as stable as
possible. You can also mount the GoPro to a tripod and place it in a
suitable location. This is more useful when a phenomena or animal is
predictable, such as salmon in a river. Just as it does on land, using a
tripod will help stabilize the image.
I
captured this image from a tripod. This was necessary because this
salmon was wary of any movement in the river that reminded it of a bear.
If you’re out of the water and photographing something near you
(think of tide pools) you can keep the camera stable by mounting it on a
extension pole. You can buy one, or even build one relatively easily. A
long pole will help you photograph something far away, and if you have a
long pole (say 12 feet) the top of it will help counterbalance the
GoPro at the bottom. If you’re using the pole in shallow water try
bracing it against the bottom for further stability.
I
used a long pole and a GoPro to capture an image of this sponge during a
low-tide cycle in Alaska. I braced the pole against the bottom to take
this image.
This
image combines a couple of the concepts discussed in this article. I
kept the camera on a pole and maintained the minimum focusing distance
to capture the image of this octopus in a tide pool.
I used a pole and a GoPro to photograph these colorful tube worms and anemones under a dock.
Another camera setting useful for stability is the time lapse mode.
Set the camera to time lapse (say, one shot every second) and start
taking images. Compose your shot underwater, and then hold the camera in
place while it takes pictures. Since you won’t have to fumble for the
trigger button it will be easier to keep it still and ensure your images
are sharp.
I used the time lapse mode to capture this school of fish in the clear waters of Hawaii.
In some situations you may be able to trigger the camera with your
phone. The GoPro’s wifi network will cut out under deep water, but if
the camera is on a tripod with only a small covering of water you can
trigger the camera remotely from a distance. You’ll need to experiment
with how much water is too much for the wifi network. Remotely
triggering the camera may help you ethically and safely photograph
wildlife.
I remotely triggered this image of a large coastal brown bear moving up a river in Alaska.
Although I don’t use underwater lighting, you can avoid blurring by
using strobes or other versions of underwater lighting. These will help
keep your shutter speed up and your ISO low. But use them with
discretion depending on your subject. In some circumstances they may be
detrimental to wildlife.
5. Use a Housing for Split-Level Photography
Split-level imagery is a way to help give an image context and tell a
story. To create the effect, use an underwater housing with a convex
dome and then place the dome half-in and half-out of the water. By doing
so you get to observe both the underwater world and the terrestrial
world. I use a housing by GoPole to create split-level images capturing
the streams and local salmon runs of Alaska. You can use this technique
anywhere to create compelling images. You can create split-level images
by hand-holding the camera or using a tripod as I mentioned earlier.
A GoPole dome housing was used to create this split-level image of a large coastal brown bear.
The split-level shot helps tell the story of these spawning pink salmon under a large log in Alaska.
The Takeaway
I want to reiterate that I’m not an expert at underwater photography.
But I’ve enjoyed extending my capabilities and skills to that realm.
The GoPro is a fun way to learn underwater photography techniques
without breaking the bank. And since GoPros are naturally waterproof,
the likelihood of destroying gear is lowered substantially.
As I like to say, “pixels are cheap,” so I hope you make a lot of pixels while shooting photographs underwater with your GoPro.
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Canon Explorers of Light – Q&A with Photographer Vanessa Joy
In this Canon Explorers of Light Q&A series, we interview several professional photographers who are a part of Canon’s Explorers of Light program.
The Explorers of Light Program, running since 1995, boasts some
incredibly talented photographers. These photographers have spent years
honing their craft, and influence and educate other photographers of all
levels – something, we at dPS, can respect and relate to.
In this Canon Explorers of Light Q&A series, we interview
photographer Vanessa Joy. She shares her experiences and gives tips to
upcoming photographers.
Photographer Vanessa Joy
Photographer Vanessa Joy is a Canon Explorer of Light that has been
an influential speaker in the community for over a decade. Starting her
photographic journey in 1998, she has since branched into public
speaking, earned 5 college degrees, received a PPA Photographic
Craftsman degree, been named a WeddingWire Education Expert, sponsored
by Canon, Profoto and Animoto to name a few.
Vanessa has spoken at almost every major convention and platform in
the event industry such as CreativeLIVE, The Wedding School, Clickin’
Moms, WPPI, ShutterFest, Imaging USA, Wedding MBA, WeddingWire World,
MobileBeat, in addition to hosting personal workshops and numerous small
business and photography conventions around the globe.
Recognized for her talent, and more so her business sense, her
clients love working with her. Industry peers also love to learn from
her tangible, informative, and open-book style of teaching. Find her at www.VanessaJoy.com.
How did you get into photography?
My mother was a photographer, so I’ve been around it my whole life. Naturally, that meant I hated photography!
It wasn’t until high school, when I had to choose an elective (and I
felt like appeasing my mother who was sitting right next to me when I
was deciding what to take), that I got into photography for myself.
I fell in love with the darkroom.
My high school photography teacher photographed weddings on the weekends, so after graduation, I worked for him for five years until starting my own business in 2008.
What was your first camera setup?
My first camera was my mother’s Canon F-1 25mm film camera. I still have it. 🙂
What camera gear do you use now, and why?
I shoot weddings with the Canon 1DXIII (see video of why I love it here), and for other engagement and lifestyle shoots I enjoy using the Canon EOS R (check out my take on that here).
Both camera systems use the EF and RF lenses, and I prefer mostly primes at that. You just can’t beat the durability, color science, and customer service with Canon.
What area of photography do you specialize in, and why did you move into that field?
I am primarily an NJ NYC Wedding Photographer because that was all I
knew of photography when I graduated high school and started working for
my high school photography teacher.
That being said, I fell in love with it the same way I fell in love
with photography itself. There’s something wildly special about being a
part of such a precious time in my couple’s lives.
Are you working on any exciting projects you’d like to share?
I just wrote my first book!
It’s all about off-camera flash and making it easy, accessible and practical to beginner and intermediate flash users. The Off-Camera Flash Handbook: 32 Scenarios for Creating Beautiful Light and Stunning Photographs.
I’m also pumping out a ton of content on my photography education
YouTube channel, and I’m really happy with it so far. I’m creating my
channel to be a very applicable and tangible view on gear and
photography concepts.
If you could share any photography tips with our readers, what would they be?
The global commercial stock image industry is big business, and it’s
expected to grow significantly in the next four years, generating
revenues of more than $4 billion
by 2023. With the increasing demand for online visuals and the
accessibility of top-notch cameras, it’s no wonder more photographers
than ever are Licensing their images and bringing home a fresh stream of
income.
In 2020, it goes without saying that commercial stock photography is the perfect side hustle, with publications ranging from CNN to Insider highlighting its money-making potential—but what you might not realize is that it’s also a great way to kickstart your career.
It’s true that licensing your photos on 500px is a good way to
receive passive income, but that’s not the only benefit you can reap
from submitting. Here are just seven unexpected ways licensing your
images can improve your work, introduce you to the commercial
photography business, and familiarize you with key themes in modern
advertising.
It can help you grow as an artist
Psychologists like Anders Ericsson, co-author of Peak,
have devoted decades to studying how people become experts in their
fields. The research suggests that practicing your craft isn’t enough by
itself. In order to excel, you have to engage in “deliberate practice.”
True masters constantly identify clear and specific areas where they
can improve and actively work on them, often without distractions and
with immediate feedback.
For photographers, this idea of deliberate practice can translate
into shooting intentionally. It’s easy to get comfortable and stuck in a
creative rut, but luckily, 500px regularly releases Photo Quests,
with a cash prize going to winning artists. Participating in these
Quests can serve as a regular reminder to push yourself out of your
comfort zone and try new things; in addition to setting goals and
outlining key topics, they provide a suggested shot list you can follow,
and that are based on current commercial trends.
Licensing Quests, in particular, are based on current trends, and
they illuminate important themes emerging in commercial stock
photography. Use them as opportunities to hone in on areas in your
practice that you want to improve and get real-time feedback on your
work.
It teaches you how to work from creative briefs
Speaking of Licensing Quests, they’re designed just like the creative
briefs you’d get from a specific client while working on a commercial
job. Doing them regularly will get you in the habit of catering to the
needs of image-buyers and executing a job professionally.
Aside from learning how to follow a shot list, you’ll also get
comfortable with introducing models into your photos. A Licensing shoot
doesn’t necessarily have to include a big budget or professional models;
you can invite your family members and use your home as a studio. Even
eating dinner at home, participating in a favorite hobby, or taking a
walk with your dog can pose the perfect opportunity for a photoshoot.
Once you complete a Licensing Quest, submit it to Licensing if you
want to receive feedback on whether your images are commercially viable.
From there, the 500px Photo Editors will review it, and you can make
precise corrections to improve the technical quality of your photos.
Learn what works and what doesn’t by keeping track of which images get
accepted.
It introduces you to the business side of photography
These days, photographers tackle everything from shooting and
retouching to indexing and bookkeeping, and as a Licensing Contributor,
you’ll see your projects through from start to finish. These photoshoots
can be casual, and you can recruit friends to help out as models and
stylists. Genuine and relatable photos are hugely popular in the
commercial space, so working with people you already know can help
foster that sense of authenticity.
The workflow of a 500px Licensing Contributor mirrors the process
expected of you on any commercial shoot—you’ll get into the practice of
securing model releases and property releases prior to the session—you
can do this easily with an app like Releases—and you’ll learn how to edit and curate your portfolio to appeal to buyers around the world.
If you license your photos exclusively through 500px, the Content
Team will also ensure that you have a complete set of metadata,
including camera and location details, embedded in your image files, so
that your photos show up in buyer searches. By going through the
process, you’ll learn how to keyword your photos effectively and add
relevant search terms to every shoot.
It helps you stay up-to-date on emerging trends
Commercial stock photography is often at the vanguard of emerging
trends in the larger commercial realm, so staying updated on what
companies and publications are searching for (and purchasing) will help
you improve the marketability of your work. Pay special attention to the
campaigns you encounter throughout your everyday routine; look at the
ads on the subway or on billboards, peruse magazines, and watch
commercials on TV. See if you can pick up on any themes in styling or
subject matter.
Karen Biilmann, Art Director & Creative Research Lead at 500px,
provides trend reports to all Licensing Contributors via regular blog
posts. Search for ‘What’s trending in Licensing,’ and you’ll get
information about what’s trending within commercial photography. Keep
your finger on the pulse of movements within the industry, and be the
first to incorporate them into your work.
Another way to learn more about what sells? Check out the ongoing Galleries
series ‘New and Exclusive in Licensing’ to see what Contributors are
uploading in real-time. If you want inspiration, it’s also a good idea
to keep an eye on what the 500px Ambassadors are posting each week;
these Galleries give you a window into the kind of creative content
industry leaders are producing—and how they’re making the latest trends
their own.
It helps you build a stellar portfolio
Developing a cohesive portfolio is the first step in the working life
of any professional photographer, and 500px is the perfect place to do
it. Through the process of taking and submitting photos for Licensing,
you’ll naturally build up a comprehensive, well-rounded body of work.
Plus, by experimenting with different kinds of shoots, you’ll be able to
identify the niche areas where you shine.
It can boost your exposure
500px works directly with two distribution partners—Getty Images and
VCG (Visual China Group)—so when you license your photos through them,
you get access to their client bases. Getty Images alone has more than
one million buyers. That kind of reach is invaluable in today’s market.
It gives you access to valuable feedback
500px is unique because it’s more than just a Licensing platform;
it’s also a community of people who live and breathe photography. When
you submit your photos for Licensing, you’ll receive feedback from a
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This is a departure from our usual "How To" postings. We think you'll enjoy this account of life as a Photojournalist in the middle east.
Every Inch of Earth
Sebastian Meyer and Kamaran Najm co-founded a photo
agency in Iraq and teamed up to document a new era in Kurdistan, a
region with a long history of suffering. Until Kamaran was captured by
ISIS.
Kurdish-Iraqi photojournalist Kamaran Najm in Hawraman, Iraq.
All photographs by Sebastian Meyer unless specified.
On the morning of June 12,
2014, two days after ISIS took control of Mosul, Kamaran Najm headed to
Kirkuk, a city in northeastern Iraq. He’d received a tip that Kurdish
forces were launching a counterattack on insurgents south of the city.
As a Kurdish-Iraqi photojournalist, there was no way he was going to
miss covering the story. Kamaran and another Kurdish
photographer, Pazhar Mohammed, followed the peshmerga from Kirkuk. On
the outskirts of a nearby village, ISIS jihadis opened fire with
belt-fed machine guns and a torrent of mortars, hitting a building next
to Kamaran. It burst into flames. Pazhar and Kamaran jumped into a dry
canal alongside a group of Kurdish soldiers. Slowly, they began to move
down the ditch. But there is next to no natural cover in the flatlands
south of Kirkuk, and Pazhar said later that he could tell the insurgents
were firing from at least two sides, maybe more. Bullets snapped all
around and the pall of smoke from the burning building began to drift
over them. They were lost and scared and knew they were in over their
heads. A flock of starlings, startled by the explosions, whirled in the
sky above them. “Look,” Pazhar said. “Even the birds don’t know where they’re going.” “Oh, yeah,” Kamaran grinned, flashing his mischievous smile. “They’ll fly right into my ass.” A group of Kurdish soldiers appeared
nearby and opened fire on the insurgents. This gave the pair some cover.
Kamaran scooted down the canal for a better view. Just as he popped his
head up to snap a photo of the gunner, a bullet whizzed past, pinging
off a piece of metal. “Holy shit!” he muttered in English. He tried to
reorient himself, but before he could, the ISIS sniper fired a second
round. This time there was no ping, just the sound of air escaping a
human body. Kamaran grabbed his neck and crumpled to the ground. Pazhar scrambled towards Kamaran,
screaming for help from soldiers dug in further down the canal. He
leaned over Kamaran, and whispered that he’d be O.K. Kamaran moaned, but
didn’t say anything. Three peshmerga rushed towards them
with a blanket to haul Kamaran out. Kamaran mumbled to Pazhar, “I’m
dead,” and then again, softly, “I’m dead.” The soldiers rolled Kamaran
onto the blanket and he let out an almost indistinguishable sigh. “I
love you all,” he whispered in English, and then, in Kurdish, “I’m
dead.” Pazhar and the soldiers lifted
Kamaran onto the blanket and carried him to the closest pickup, pushing
him onto the truck’s bed. ISIS spotted them and fired, hitting the
windscreen with two shots. The terrified driver slammed the gas; he had
no idea that the tailgate was open. As the truck bounced over the uneven
terrain, Kamaran fell out the back. Pazhar yelled again. This time,
Sarhad Qadir, the commander of the Kurdish forces, heard him. Sarhad and
his men grabbed Kamaran, and started hauling him across the hill. They
moved slowly. The jihadis spotted them easily and opened fire. The
Kurdish soldiers dropped Kamaran and raced for Sarhad’s bulletproof car.
Pazhar tried to stop them, but they grabbed him and pushed him into the
car. He was thrown against the door just as a bullet hit the window by
his head, webbing the glass with a dull thud. “Where’s Kamaran?” Pazhar shouted. “Where’s Kamaran?” Sarhad turned. “Kamaran’s dead.” In
one of the last photographs taken by Kamaran Najm before his
kidnapping, a Kurdish soldier runs through grass, under fire from ISIS
militants; Mullah Abdullah, Iraq. Photograph by Kamaran Najm/MetrographyI first met Kamaran in 2008, during a
photo assignment in Iraqi Kurdistan, when we were both in our late
twenties. We were introduced by mutual friends, who thought that two
young, ambitious photojournalists would get along well. They were right:
from the moment we met, Kamaran and I clicked. In my days off from
assignment work, we would travel around the region, shooting in
far-flung mountain villages or the dangerous, dusty plains of the
disputed territories. Traveling around Kurdistan with
Kamaran was stupidly fun. His penchant for practical jokes was
limitless. He’d change out the sugar for salt right before you tried to
sweeten your tea, or throw cold water on you while you were in the
toilet. But you couldn’t stay angry. He had impish eyes that twinkled
under his weighty eyebrows, and before you knew it, you were laughing
along with him. His energy and appetite for life were infectious. At dawn the day after Kamaran was
shot, I drove to Kirkuk with his brothers and a small group of his
friends to try to retrieve his body from the battlefield. We hadn’t
slept the night before, and were running on the toxic adrenaline of
grief. We parked on a quiet street, and one of Kamaran’s brothers
started making calls to the police. By 7 a.m., the June sun was already
scalding the bare streets of Kirkuk. Coordinating the retrieval of
Kamaran’s body was a slow, painstaking process. We stood around,
stony-faced and silent, waiting for the go-ahead. Sweaty arduous minutes
crawled by. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Eleven. Twelve. Fifteen.
Seventeen Finally, a phone rang. It belonged to
Birwa Hijrany, Kamaran’s childhood friend. Birwa had always dreamed of
working for the Kurdish security services and had an app on his phone
that recorded all his calls. He picked up. “Birwa?” said the voice on the other end. “It’s me. Kamaran.” “Kamaran?” Birwa asked. “I’m in Hawija,” Kamaran responded.
Hawija was a Sunni town that ISIS had recently overrun. The jihadis had
found Kamaran, wounded and bleeding, on the ground after the Kurds had
retreated and had taken him prisoner. My clenching rib cage released and
filled with light. My eyes, open and unfocused, began to water. Ari,
Kamaran’s older brother fell to the ground. “Allah! Allah!” he cried. He
began to pray. Ahmed, Kamaran’s younger brother, pitched forward,
clutching his chest. An ISIS fighter grabbed the phone
from Kamaran. “We are the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham,” he barked.
“Tell Sarhad that if he shoots at us, we’ll execute Kamaran.” Then the
line went dead. Our convoy raced to find Sarhad,
still on the outskirts of the village where the Kurdish forces had
retreated. As soon as Sarhad heard Birwa’s recording, he dialed the
number Kamaran had called from. An ISIS member picked up, and Sarhad
demanded that he let Kamaran go. “Kamaran is a journalist with a
camera,” Sarhad told the captor, “not a soldier with a gun.” The captor was unmoved. Only the
leader of his group could give release Kamaran, he said, and the leader
wasn’t around. He added that if Sarhad attacked again, they’d kill
Kamaran. He hung up. Sarhad called back—several times—but the answer was
always the same: “We’re not releasing Kamaran, and if you attack us,
we’ll kill him.” After the sixth attempt, Sarhad
received a call from his men stationed at the front: ISIS had just
launched another attack on the Kurds. He shoved his phone into his
pocket and took off for the frontline, leaving the group in stunned
silence. We got in our cars and left. Sebastian Meyer and Kamaran Najm in Kakheti, Georgia. Photograph by Rebecca Bradshaw.One afternoon in 2008, when I was on
my first assignment in Iraq, Kamaran told me a story about covering the
aftermath of a car bomb in Kirkuk that had killed thirteen people. It
was the height of the sectarian war in Iraq, and he was spending a lot
of time in Kirkuk, shooting for the wire agencies. He’d arrived just moments after the
bomb had gone off, and had shot powerful images of the ensuing chaos.
But his editor had turned him down with a grunt. There had been a bomb
in Mosul that had killed thirty-five people that day, so the smaller
bomb in Kirkuk wasn’t going to cut it. Kamaran explained to me that in his
world, photography was just about blood, death, and body counts. Where
was the beauty? he wondered. Where was the curiosity? The desire to see
the world in a different way? We were in Kamaran’s parents’ house, and
he pulled out an old edition of the New York Times that he’d stashed under the family TV. He wiggledfree
the Arts section, the Sports section, the Real Estate section. Why
didn’t they have this kind of stuff in Iraq? We talked for a while about
exploring different parts of the country, and what it would take to
shoot stories that weren’t just about bombs and death. The conversation touched me. While
Kamaran and his colleagues were only asked to shoot moments of extreme
violence, foreign photographers like myself were being assigned more
subtle, in-depth stories. Iraq’s nuanced visual record wasn’t being made
by Iraqis. I left Kurdistan that winter
unsettled. I felt I’d barely scratched the surface of the place. Kamaran
and I stayed in touch, and the following year he told me that he’d come
up with an idea to start a photo agency that would represent Iraqi
photographers. Did I want to join him? A few months later, I said goodbye to
my life in London and moved to Sulaymaniyah, into the office Kamaran
had rented. He’d named it Metrography, a portmanteau of “photography”
and “Metro,”
the Iraqi news magazine where he’d been working when he came up with
the idea. The office was an outer room with two red pleather couches and
an inner room with a large faux-wood table and a swiveling chair. There
was also a small space for a sink and a hotplate, as well as a bathroom
with a spigot coming out of the wall at about head height—our shower.
This was Metrography HQ, and it was our home. The first thing I told him was that
we needed to change the name. Metrography wasn’t just unpronounceable, I
said; it didn’t say anything about what the agency did, namely
representing Iraqi photographers to the international news media.
Kamaran disagreed; he loved the name. And so began a lesson in his
mischievous charisma. Over the following months, I would press him on
changing the name, but just as I’d begin to argue, I’d find myself
laughing about something completely different. By the end of the
conversation, the agency’s name would still be Metrography. Every few
days, I’d give it another shot, but there was no changing his mind.
Metrography it was. In the early days, we were hectic and
scattered, writing emails to magazines and newspapers, traveling around
interviewing photographers, sitting in the office and building the
website. Most evenings, we’d hang out at a restaurant with friends, and
then, more often than not, everyone would end up in the office, where
we’d turn on Kurdish music and dance around like idiots, holding
cellphones and pillows under our noses, pretending to be Aziz Waisy, a
Kurdish singer with an elephantine mustache. I’d fall asleep on the
pleather couch, and despite my blanket, would wake in the morning with
my face stuck to the cushions. Within a few months, we’d assembled a
team of photographers who were eager to shoot, but also to improve.
Kamaran and I added an educational wing to the agency, and in 2011 we
ran a weeklong masterclass with photographers and editors from Time and National Geographic.
We organized lectures, dinners, shoots, and even a final gallery show.
By the end, Kamaran and I were exhausted, but as we stood back and
looked at the images up on the gallery’s walls, we realized that we had
turned a group of amateur photographers into actual professionals. One member of the team, Aram Karim,
who had grown up in a tiny village on the Iranian border, began working
on a project about the life and culture of Kurdish smugglers. More often
than not, Aram was flat broke, and had to borrow cameras, batteries,
memory cards, cash—and even, at one point, shoes—to go off into the
mountains and shoot. After five years, the New York Times
bought Aram’s story, and published it under the title “Following
Smugglers in Kurdistan.” Normally that kind of success would send other
photographers into paroxysms of jealousy, but Aram’s humility and quirky
artistic sensibility were so endearing that the other photographers
nicknamed him “Mr. New York Times” and would shout it out whenever they
ran into him in the bazaar. Successes like Aram’s were a huge
deal for both the agency and the photographers. Two years earlier, Hawre
Mohammed, a policeman with a passion for photography and a breathtaking
natural eye, had his photograph of the Kurdish New Year run as a
two-page spread in Time.
The night the photo was published, and for the next thirty-six hours,
Hawre stayed awake, just so he could field the deluge of “likes” and
comments he was receiving on Facebook. For the next year, I feigned
yawns whenever I saw him, mercilessly mocking him for his ego-driven
Facebook all-nighter. As the years progressed, the
publications and awards began to stack up. Seivan Salim had her
portraits of Yazidi women published in National Geographic. Binar Sardar, another of our female photographers, had a story in the New York Times.
Zmnako Ismael won the Rory Peck Award for his Channel 4 News
documentary about Sinjar. And Ali Arkady, our hardest working
photographer, won the Prix Bayeux-Calvados—the top award for war
correspondents—for his work uncovering human-rights abuses during the
Mosul campaign. The year after the masterclass,
Kamaran and I decided it was time to introduce the photographers to the
wider photojournalism community. In 2012, we organized a trip to the
Tbilisi Photo Festival, in Georgia. Our group stole the show during the
final evening of the open-air slide show. That night, our team dressed
up in traditional Kurdish outfits; Aram played folk songs on his Iranian
sitar; and Pazhar, Rawsht and Ahmed performed traditional dances on the
cobbled streets of old Tbilisi. Kamaran and I beamed like proud
parents. By this point, Kamaran and I were
inseparable. We’d spent three years side by side, on the road or in the
office. Together, we’d covered P.K.K. guerillas, anti-terror raids
around Kirkuk, daily life in Baghdad, and an extremist madrassa on the
Iranian border. In that time, we’d become cultural
and linguistic ambassadors to each other. Kamaran taught me about
Kurdistan and Iraq, taking particular pride in cultivating my ability to
string Kurdish swear words together in a litany of filth. I also took
pride in my friend’s growing ability to cuss in a new language, but I
was in awe of his bottomless cultural appetite. One evening, Kamaran and
I went through Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory speech. “It’s
been a long time coming,” Obama intoned to the Chicago crowd, “but
tonight, because of what we did on this date, in this election, at this
defining moment, change has come to America.” Kamaran nodded along, but I could
tell he didn’t understand the hidden reference. I pulled up the Sam
Cooke version of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and went through it line by
line, a cursory lesson in African American history. Then I put on the
Otis Redding version, and Kamaran began to cry. “I’ve never heard a
politician in my country give a speech like that,” he said softly. Otis
Redding became a Metrography favorite. A few months later, Kamaran and I
flew to the US for a full-immersion tutorial. We holed up in my
childhood apartment in New York, where my mother still lived. It was a
struggle to keep up with Kamaran’s ravenous cultural hunger. My mom, who
used to teach in the Manhattan private school system, worked her
contacts and managed to wrangle a backstage tour of the Metropolitan
Opera and private access to the Frick, where we were allowed to bowl in
the bespoke wooden alley in the basement. We ate sushi, pizza, curry,
bagels, hotdogs—anything and everything that caught our eye. Kamaran’s
appetite was not just cultural. Kamaran had grown up with snowy
winters in the mountains of Kurdistan, so January in New York didn’t
faze him. We went to synagogue with my cousin and joked about sending a
photo of Kamaran in a yarmulke to his older brother, a very devout and
conservative Muslim. We attended a New Year’s Eve house party in some
achingly cool part of Brooklyn, where I had to explain why the guests
kept taking secret trips to the bedrooms, reemerging louder and even
more self-involved than they’d been before. Later, we travelled to DC and toured
the monuments. At the Lincoln Memorial, Kamaran and I sat on the floor
and went through the Gettysburg Address line by line, just as we’d done
with Sam Cooke. I’d forgotten what a beautiful and moving speech it is, a
consecration of the ground where men gave their lives for their
country, but also a call for the continued fight for democratic ideals. A
Kurd who had lived through decades of violence as his people fought for
self-determination, Kamaran was overwhelmed by the eloquence and
idealism. By the time we reached the end of the address, we were both in
tears. Kamaran’s friends and family listen to the recording of his phone call from captivity; Sulaimaniyah, Iraq.These were optimistic times in
Kurdistan. The region was booming as international investment poured in.
Untapped oil reserves were being developed; luxury hotels and mega
malls were being built. Construction cranes dominated the skylines of
all the major Kurdish cities, and even some of the towns. Kamaran and I
easily found commercial work to supplement the agency’s meager editorial
income. Oil companies from Australia, Switzerland and Norway were
looking for photographers. So were US construction companies and French
cement corporations. Kurdistan was a bright spot of
emerging peace in a country at war. What made this so remarkable was
that the Kurds were barely emerging themselves from decades of
oppression and violence. In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein had waged a
genocidal campaign against the Kurds, in retribution for their perceived
allegiance to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to1988. Saddam
appointed his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known to the rest of us
as “Chemical Ali,” to carry out the pogrom, which he named “Anfal”—a
word from the Quran that translates as “spoils of war.” Chemical Ali rained poison gas on the
Kurdish civilians. Many of those who survived were rounded up and
bussed into the desert, where they were executed and dumped into mass
graves. The villages they left behind were bulldozed. Their animals were
killed, their wells poisoned. By September 1988, ninety percent of
Kurdish villages had been destroyed, and as many as a hundred-fifty
thousand people had been slaughtered. This was not the first time the Kurds
had fallen victim to political violence, nor would it be the last. Only
three years later, buoyed by the success of the US military against
Saddam’s army in the Gulf War, the Kurds rose up and overthrew the
Ba’athist regime in northern Iraq. But without backing from the US
military, the uprising failed. Saddam launched a vengeful and
bloodthirsty counterattack, sending his elite Republican Guard to quash
the rebellion and murder Kurdish civilians. Thousands of Kurdish
families fled Kirkuk. Those who could fled across borders to neighboring
Iran and Turkey; those who couldn’t were killed and their bodies tossed
into collective shallow graves. One cold December day in 2009,
Kamaran and I drove out to one of those mass graves, in a town called
Topzawa, southwest of Kirkuk, where an Iraqi forensic team was
excavating a new site. Just as we approached, Kamaran got a call saying
that the central government had decided to block journalists from the
excavation site. I was surprised. I’d thought the forensic excavation
would be good news for the government. Kamaran killed the engine and turned
to me. Topzawa was a disputed town, he explained, claimed by both the
Kurds and by Baghdad. A mass grave of Kurdish civilians there could
underline Kurdish claims of victimhood and give the Kurds moral
authority over the area. The bodies being unearthed were not just
victims; they were political weapons. The situation reminded me of a poem
by Abdulla Pashew, one of Kurdistan’s great modern poets. In “The
Unknown Soldier” the narrator directs an imaginary foreign delegate who
is looking to pay his respects at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. “At
the bank of every stream,” the narrator tells him.
Under the dome of every mosque, At the threshold of every house, every church, every cave, Under the boulder of every mountain, Under the branches of every garden in this country, Over every inch of earth, Under every yard of sky, Don’t be afraid, bow your head and there set down your crown of flowers.
The tomb, nowhere and everywhere at
once, is Kurdistan itself. So many Kurds have died in the struggle for
independence that the entire country has become a grave, consecrated
like Gettysburg by the bodies of the fallen. As we sat just a few miles from
Topzawa, Kamaran started making calls. By this point, I’d seen him
negotiate access to Sunni extremists in Mosul and smugglers on the
Iran-Iraq border, or sweet-talk a skeptical mechanic when our car broke
down in an al-Qaeda village. I sat back and let him work. As Kamaran talked, I stared out the
window. I was struck by the blandness of the place where I could just
make out the forensic team working, sheltered under tents—a flat,
yellow-brown expanse that started at the edge of low-slung, cheaply made
concrete houses and yawned outward to nothing except for a few scrubby
brushes here and there. I hadn’t had expectations exactly, but this
landscape felt like a betrayal. Something as devastating and important
as a mass grave deserved more. Then, Kamaran started the engine, an
impish smile spreading across his face. He’d done it again. We continued
toward Topzawa and stopped at the forensic team’s first tent. I hopped
over the razor wire that encircled the excavation area and looked down.
Human bones poked up through the earth. Everything was silent. All I
could hear was the quiet scrape of trowels in the dirt. I put my camera
up to my eye and pressed the button. The clack of the shutter was
deafening. I looked up, expecting to see everyone staring at me, but no
one else had taken notice. I drew the camera up to my face again and
started working. A broken sliver of belt still in the loops of crumpled
trousers. A tattered T-shirt from the 1990 World Cup, once white, now
the color of earth. Scattered ribs. The remnants of a lower leg—a tibia
and fibula—quietly lying next to each other. A solitary vertebra. Human remains in a mass grave on the outskirts of Kirkuk.The site of that mass grave at
Topzawa is about twenty miles west of Mullah Abdullah, the village where
Kamaran was wounded and taken prisoner. But this didn’t occur to me
that afternoon in 2014, as we left Sarhad Qadir and headed back to
Sulaymaniyah, exhausted and furious. Back at the Metrography office, I
transformed our guest room into a war room. I printed out a map of
Kirkuk Province and taped it to the wall. In the corner, we propped up a
white board, where we listed leads, contacts, and phone numbers. I
started a spreadsheet with an official log of our progress, and took
notes fastidiously. Hiwa, a friend of Kamaran’s with
connections to Iraqi officials, called politicians and tribal leaders in
Iraq and across the Middle East. Dana, a Kurdish journalist who had
translated for the Kurds at Saddam’s trial in Baghdad, was working
contacts in Hawija to find Kamaran’s exact location. All of this had to
be done carefully, discretely. ISIS had told us that if they saw
anything about Kamaran’s capture online, they’d kill him. We instituted a
strict media blackout. That evening, we huddled around
Birwa’s phone, replaying the recording of Kamaran’s call, trying to
extrapolate any tidbit of information. We analyzed the tone of Kamaran’s
voice, the accent of the kidnappers. In those first few days, everything
we learned was treated as gospel truth. We rejoiced over every new piece
of information, as if it were the breakthrough moment. The day after
the kidnapping, Dana made contact with a doctor in Hawija, who said he’d
managed to hand off some painkillers to Kamaran. He thought Kamaran
needed surgery badly. It was terrible news, but at least it was an
eyewitness account that Kamaran was still alive. I logged everything. Somehow, I thought that the more I wrote, the faster we’d get Kamaran back. June 15: “Dana speaks to Sheikh X: A group has Kamaran and he’s well.” June 16: “Ari speaks to Aqit Karim who speaks to Sheikh Ali: Kamaran is either in Baghara or at the Hawija/Riyad Checkpoint.” June 17: “Hiwa speaks to contact: Kamaran is with Sheikh Abu Maher whose 4 sons are prisoners of Sarhad.” By June 16, the sleepless nights and
constant stress had begun to overwhelm us. “Heart rate pumping from the
moment I wake up,” I wrote three days after the kidnapping. “Shaking
from time to time.” We never really rested; we just crashed out wherever
we happened to fall when our exhaustion overwhelmed our will—a bed, a
chair, a blanket bunched up on the floor. Around Kamaran, wherever exactly he
was, there was a war raging. As we followed contacts across northern
Iraq, ISIS was making huge advances, even threatening to invade the
Kurdish safe haven where we lived. We were oblivious. We didn’t pay
attention when ISIS massacred fifteen hundred Shia cadets at Camp
Speicher, and we barely took note when, two months later, they overran
Sinjar, murdering three thousand Yazidi men and imprisoning three
thousand Yazidi women. Our world had narrowed. There was only the
kidnapping. One afternoon—six days after Kamaran
was taken—I was in the war room with Ahmed, Kamaran’s younger brother,
and thought I’d cheer us up with some Michael Jackson, who was Ahmed’s
favorite. We danced, we laughed, and Ahmed sang along to every word,
including—especially—M.J.’s falsetto squeals. We collapsed, out of
breath, grinning from ear to ear. When Ahmed left to meet his brothers, I
put on some Otis Redding. Alone and without anything specific to do for
the first time in months, I lay my head on the desk. The adrenaline
dropped off; my mind went blank. When I lifted my head a few minutes
later, my face was soaked with tears, but I have no recollection of
having cried. Each new day meant dozens more leads.
Dana with his contacts in Hawija. Hiwa with his contacts in Baghdad,
Jordan and Beirut. Kamaran’s family was contacting Kurdish tribes who
might have backchannels to ISIS. Each new piece of information made us
dizzy with excitement. Then a lead would go dry or our intel would
contradict itself and we’d be back to square one. The head of the elite
Kurdish military wing said that Kamaran was dead. Dana’s contacts said
that Kamaran was about to stand trial. Another source said that Kamaran
had been taken to Tikrit. My spreadsheet grew, but I’d started to feel
that Kamaran was slipping through our fingers. Meanwhile, we could no longer ignore
the world around us. Kurdistan was in an economic downslide that had
forced the government to cut electricity. By mid-afternoon each day, the
temperature hit 115 degrees Fahrenheit. With no electricity for a fan,
let alone air conditioning, we would sit and sweat, our nerves in
tatters. Then Iraq began to run out of gasoline, and the government
rationed each car to eight gallons twice a week—hardly enough to travel
the distances we needed to meet our contacts. We hacked the system as
best we could: each of us would fill up with the allotted amount, then
syphon all the gas into one car, so we always had a vehicle with a full
tank. We were nauseated from siphoning
gasoline, anxious about the faltering rescue operation, and helpless in
the oppressive heat. With so many different stresses, our rescue group
began to collapse. Trust had worn away between Kamaran’s family and the
rest of us. By July, I was asking Birwa to pass me information from
Kamaran’s family on the sly. We were supposed to be a unified front;
instead, we’d started spying on each other. “WHAT THE FUCK???????” I
wrote in my diary. June turned to July and then August.
The spreadsheet dwindled to one item a day, then one a week. My acute,
adrenaline-fueled sleeplessness morphed into to a dull, plodding anger.
Anything that didn’t involve finding Kamaran felt frivolous. I only
wanted to talk to people involved in his case. I deleted my Facebook
account, ignored messages from friends, spent evenings alone whenever I
could. Some days, I would go running at noon, when the air turned acrid
with heat, intentionally scorching my throat and lungs in an effort to
dispel my anger. Information became more sporadic and
farther flung. Kamaran was seen in Mosul. Kamaran was taken to Syria.
Kamaran had joined ISIS and they were using him to film their
beheadings. One person even claimed that they had recognized Kamaran’s
distinctive photography style in a video of Muath Safi Yousef
al-Kasasbeh, a downed Jordanian pilot, being burned alive in a cage. By early 2016, our most reliable
information placed Kamaran in Mosul. But without a single proof-of-life
in eighteen months, we were losing hope. Ahmed was working nonstop, with
diminishing results. Even a trip to Baghdad to meet high-ranking
members of the Iraqi intelligence service came to nothing. My frustration gave way to despair
and self-recrimination. I felt that I should be doing more. I tried
getting the State Department involved and appealed to the White House
Special Envoy on Hostage Affairs. When nothing came of any of it, I
blamed myself. My mind was spinning, repeating the same thing over and
over: “You can do more. You can do more. You can do more.” Despite that incessant
phrase—skipping like a scratched CD in my head—I made my final diary
entry on February 9, 2017. It had been almost three years since we’d
heard Kamaran’s voice. Despite all the leads, sightings and promises, we
were no closer than we’d been when he disappeared. In November, we
decided to break the media blackout and officially announce his
disappearance. We knew that Kamaran was most likely dead, his body
probably somewhere in the dusty landscape of southern Kirkuk. We
couldn’t say for sure. A whiteboard of leads on the wall of the room where Kamaran’s rescue operation was located; Sulaimaniyah, Iraq.
We weren’t the only ones in Kurdistan to lose hope. After almost a
decade of peace, optimism and prosperity, a bitter cynicism had settled
on the region. Thousands of Kurdish civilians were dead or missing.
Millions of refugees had fled to Europe, among them all of our founding
Metrography photographers. Aram—Mr. New York Times—was claiming asylum
in France, as was Ali, the winner of the Prix Bayeux-Calvados. Binar was
in the U.K. Pazhar was in Germany. Rawsht and Bahar were in Italy. Kamaran’s kidnapping was one in a
long history of disappearances and death in Kurdistan. Anfal. The
Kurdish uprising. The civil war. The sectarian war. ISIS. The
International Commission on Missing Persons estimates that over the past
thirty years, up to one million Iraqis have disappeared. The
“uncertainty surrounding the fate of the missing,” the report reads, “is
a continuing source of anguish and an obstacle to rebuilding civil
society in Iraq.” A friend told me that the word anguish
makes him think of groups of mourning women, clad in black, tearing
their hair out and beating their chests. According to that definition, anguish
is absolutely the correct word—a feeling so overwhelming and painful
that you need physical suffering to express the heartbreak. I didn’t
tear my hair out or beat my chest, but I found other ways to externalize
the pain, like those lung-scorching midday summer runs. In the fall of 2017, the Kurds called
for a referendum on independence. The region had changed dramatically
in the past twenty years. Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Duhok, once major
battlegrounds between the peshmerga and the Iraqi Army, were now
Kurdistan’s major cities, with those mega malls, luxury apartment
buildings, and extravagant theme parks we’d watched rise in the
skylines. Kamaran had told me stories about growing up so poor that, for
a time, he’d used a piece of metal to hold up his trousers. The metal
dug into him so deeply that it had left a permanent scar on his stomach.
At the end of these stories, he would hold up his phone—always a
brand-new iPhone—to show what he could now afford. Yet the changes that had come to
Kurdistan hadn’t affected every region equally, and opinions about the
referendum differed wildly. I was traveling around, documenting
reactions. Deep inside the borders, in the safe and wealthy areas of
Kurdistan, people were ecstatic about the possibility of independence.
But for those living around Kirkuk and other disputed areas, the feeling
was different. If forced to choose, they would, of course, vote for
independence. But the violence, recent and historical, weighed heavily
on their minds. Kurdistan, I was told over and over, might be wealthier
and safer than it had ever been, but chaos still lurked terrifyingly
close. These fears turned out to be
well-founded. Three weeks after the referendum, Shia militia, backed by
Iran and the central Iraqi government, swept into Kirkuk, killing dozens
and taking the city back from the Kurds. One morning, I drove to Tuz Khurmatu
to interview a Kurdish militia leader. As I pulled out of Kirkuk and
onto the long highway, the buildings fell away, and the dusty scrubland
of southern Kirkuk extended all around me. My mind flashed back to that
December day in 2009, eight years before, when I’d been looking at the
remains of some of Kurdistan’s disappeared with Kamaran in Topzawa. Only
a few miles away, Kamaran had vanished, too. No more charming his way
through checkpoints as we tried to access villages hidden behind the
boulders of the same Kurdish mountains in Pashew’s poem. No more staying
up till the small hours, listening to music. No more traveling,
collaborating, or laughing together. In the seven years we lived and
worked side by side, Kamaran and I had become brothers, our lives
intertwined. Nowhis body lay somewhere out there, an unknown tomb in the dusty plains, and I had no idea where to lay my crown of flowers. Sebastian Meyer and Kamaran Najm; Sulaimaniyah, Iraq. Photograph by Rebecca Bradshaw.
Sebastian Meyer is an award-winning photographer and
filmmaker and a recipient of multiple grants from The Pulitzer Center on
Crisis Reporting. His editorial photographs have been published in TIME Magazine, Fortune Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, The FT Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times,
among many others. Meyer has made films for National Geographic, PBS
Newshour, Channel 4 News, CNN and HBO. He is the author of Under Every Yard of Sky, from which this work is adapted.
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By: Caz Nowaczyk 
