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.

By Sebastian Meyer

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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/Metrography

I 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 wiggled free 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. Now his 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.

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Sebastian Meyer

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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6 Tips for a Faster Lightroom Workflow So You Can Get Back to Taking Photos!

By: Simon Ringsmuth

Many photographers rely on Lightroom to organize, edit and share their photos. While this software has a vast array of tools to help people in several key areas, it has not always been known for speed. Recent updates and GPU acceleration have helped, but if you really want to have a faster Lightroom workflow, there are some simple things you can do to supercharge your post-processing. These aren’t hacks or plugins, but simple tweaks to Lightroom that can make your life a lot easier.

1. Apply a preset when importing images

The first thing you can do for a faster Lightroom workflow is to apply a preset when importing images.
Lightroom has a mind-boggling number of options and sliders to adjust when editing images. If you find yourself using the same types of edits on most of your pictures, you can use Presets to shave hours off your editing. Most people already know this, but you might not be aware that you can apply Presets when initially importing your files.
On the right side of the Import screen, there is an option for “Apply During Import.” Use this to select one of the many presets built into Lightroom (or select one of your own that you may have saved) and have it automatically applied to your pictures as you import them.

In the screenshot above, you can also see an option called Nikon RAW import. That’s a custom preset I made that contains specific adjustments I like to apply to my Nikon RAW files, which gets me to a good starting point when editing. That alone has helped me with a faster Lightroom workflow, but applying it to a batch of photos on import is even more of a speed boost.
Don’t worry about messing anything up if you apply presets on import. Like everything else in Lightroom, they are non-destructive, meaning you can always go back and change things later.

2. Sync settings across multiple images

If you have spent any time editing multiple similar images in Lightroom, particularly from an event or photo session with clients, you have no doubt found the Copy/Paste Settings to be useful. Right-click on any image in the Develop module and choose “Develop Settings->Copy Settings…” Then check the boxes next to any (or all!) the settings you want to copy.
Finally, go to another photo, right-click, and choose “Develop Settings->Paste Settings.” Or better yet, use Ctrl+C (cmd+C on mac) and Ctrl+V (cmd+V on mac) like you would on any word processor.

I shot dozens of pictures of this wasp. The Sync Settings option let me instantly edit a single 

image and then apply those edits to all my other images in an instant.

This process works great, but what if you want to paste your settings on to five, ten, or a hundred images? Even the fast method of using Ctrl+V starts to feel like a chore.
Fortunately, there’s a better way.

Image 21 is selected, and Images 17-20 are also highlighted. After clicking the Sync… button, 

all the edits from 21 will be applied to 17-20.

In the Develop module, select a single picture in the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen. Then hold down the [shift] key and select more images. Finally, click the “Sync…” button to synchronize any (or all) of your edits on the original image to the rest that are selected.
When I discovered this trick, I almost fell out of my chair! I didn’t just speed up my Lightroom editing. It supercharged my editing.

3. Straighten your pictures with the Auto button

I’m always a little leery of anything that says Auto when I’m editing pictures. I don’t need my computer to do what it thinks is best – I want my computer to do what I think is best! At best, I use some Auto options, like when setting white balance on RAW files, as a rough draft that I go and refine.
However, there is one Auto setting that I have learned to use over and over again. Learning to embrace Auto for straightening my photos has saved me a lot of time and really led to an overall faster Lightroom workflow.

The Auto button in the Crop & Straighten panel can really help make things go faster when you 

need to straighten your photos.

The reason Auto works so well for straightening images is that it doesn’t try to make a guess which affects the artistic goals of the photographer. It simply looks for straight lines such as light poles, buildings, or horizons, and then adjusts images accordingly. It works far more than I initially thought. Plus, it can really speed things up when editing in Lightroom.

My tripod was askew when I shot this, but Lightroom fixed it with a simple click of the Auto button.

4. Automatically organize with smart collections

Collections in Lightroom are an easy way to organize your images. You can create as many collections as you want, and one photo can exist in multiple collections. What you may not realize is that Lightroom lets you create Smart Collections, which are populated dynamically according to rules you specify.
To create a Smart Collection, choose the + button at the top-left of the Collections panel. Then select “Create Smart Collection…” and specify your parameters for the Smart Collection.

As an example of how this can lead to a faster Lightroom workflow, I create Smart Collections to sort my photos by month for an entire year. I do this each January, and for the rest of the year my photos are automatically sorted month-by-month without me having to do anything.

I create Smart Collections for my personal images at the beginning of each year. My images are 

then sorted automatically.

These Smart Collections also do not include any photos with the keyword “PhotoSession” which I apply to all images that I take for clients. Photos with that keyword go in another set of Smart Collections that I use to keep client images separate from personal photos.
Smart Collections can contain dozens of parameters including Rating, Pick Flag, Color Label, Keyword, even metadata such as camera model or focal length. They are an incredibly powerful but very simple way to make your day-to-day Lightroom editing significantly faster.

5. Multi-Batch Export

Lightroom has long offered customizable export presets. These allow you to export photos with certain parameters specified such as file type, image size, quality setting, and even specifying custom names.

New in the November 2019 update to Lightroom Classic is the option to perform a single export operation that utilizes multiple Presets. This means you no longer have to do an export operation for full-size JPGs at 100% quality, another export for low-resolution proofs at 80% quality, and so on.
Just check any boxes in the Export dialog box for the presets you want, and Lightroom will take care of the rest!

The November 2019 update to Lightroom Classic lets you select multiple presets for a single export operation.

This is a great way to save time when you are ready to export your images. It’s not the kind of workflow addition that will change your life, but it’s another simple but highly effective process you can utilize to shave precious minutes from your editing. And as someone who exports a lot of photos regularly, those minutes add up.

6. Cull on Lightroom Mobile

One of my favorite aspects of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan is the synchronization between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Mobile. While the mobile version of Lightroom isn’t as full-featured as its desktop-based big brother, it does one thing incredibly well that has made a huge difference for me when editing photos for clients.
Click the checkbox next to any Collection to sync those photos with Lightroom CC. This means you can access low-resolution previews of all those images on the web, your phone, or tablet. (Note that this does not work with Smart Collections, only regular Collections.)

I don’t find Lightroom Mobile particularly useful for detailed editing, but it absolutely runs circles around the desktop version when it comes to culling operations. If you have an iPad, this could honestly change your entire approach to culling your images. It also works pretty well on other mobile devices too.
Load a picture in any collection that you have synced to Lightroom CC and then click the Star icon in the lower-right corner. This switches to a mode where you can quickly assign star ratings or flags to any picture. Tap one of the Flag or Star icons at the bottom of the screen to change the status of the image. A quick swipe of your finger will load the next image.

Tap the star icon in the lower-right corner of Lightroom Mobile to quickly assign Flags and Star 

Ratings with a swipe of your finger.

This is all well and good, but there’s one trick here that will send your culling into overdrive.
Slide a finger up or down on the right side of the photo to change the Flag status. Slide a finger up or down on the left side to assign a Star rating. Then swipe to the next image and repeat.
All your edits on Lightroom Mobile, including Star ratings and Flag statuses, are instantly synced back to Lightroom Classic on your computer.
I’m not kidding about the speed of this operation, either.
I used to dread the culling process, but now it takes a fraction of the time it used to. A few weeks ago, I returned from a photo session with over 1,100 images. In about an hour, I was able to cull them to a fraction of that amount, thanks to Lightroom Mobile.

There were hundreds of images from this session that I had to sort through. Lightroom Desktop 

makes this a burden, but Lightroom Mobile makes it a breeze.

All six of these tips have saved me a huge amount of time over the years. I hope they are useful to you as well.
If you have any other tricks or suggestions for a faster Lightroom workflow, leave them in the comments below!

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How the Switch from DSLR to Mirrorless Changed How I Edit Photos

By: Viktor Elizarov 

When I started in photography more than 10 years ago, the only viable option for editing images was Adobe Photoshop. At that time, 100% of my photo editing was done there.
A few years later, Adobe introduced Lightroom and I embraced it right away for its speed and organizational features. I immediately adopted it into my photo processing workflow and it was the first big transition that drastically changed my processing.
The next big change in my processing happened when I discovered HDR photography. As a photographer with a background in graphic design, I quickly saw the potential in the new processing technology and, again, I incorporated it into my workflow.

Canon 60D, HDR processed

By the end of 2014, after 10 years of shooting with a Canon DSLR, I had established my own photo editing workflow – one that I was comfortable with, that reflected my style of photography, and covered different scenarios of travel and landscape photography. Below is a list of four main processing techniques in my editing workflow, with the percentage of the total use for each.

HDR Processing in Photoshop HDR Pro and Lightroom – 50%

The foundation of my natural looking HDR photography style, this technique is based on merging bracketed photos in Photoshop HDR Pro and later editing the new HDR image in Lightroom. The beauty of this method is that Photoshop HDR Pro does not change the pixels (luminosity, contrast, saturation) of the original images. Instead, it combines data from the bracketed photos into one enormous 32-bit TIFF image.
I outlined this technique in detail in one of my previous articles: Natural Looking HDR in Photoshop and Lightroom in 5 Easy Steps.

Canon 60D, HDR processed with Photoshop HDR Pro

HDR Processing in Photomatix – 30%

Photomatix is the most popular, and matured standalone HDR program. It has a completely different approach compared to Photoshop HDR Pro. Besides standard HDR features like image alignment, de-ghosting and merging for HDR, it has unique image editing tools that allow me to create distinctive looks in my photographs.

Canon 60D, HDR processed with Photomatix

Luminosity Blending in Photoshop – 10%

This technique is based on blending multiple images together in Photoshop using transparency masks. It gives me the most flexibility and control over image processing but, at the same time, it is the most involved and time consuming. I use it in the most complex cases when everything else has failed.

Canon 60D, digital blending with Luminosity Masks

Single RAW processing in Lightroom – 10%

When the light is not very dynamic, I use a single image and process it in Lightroom.

Canon Digital Rebel, single RAW image processed in Lightroom

The Switch

The biggest change in my photography happened at the end of 2014 when, after shooting with a Canon DSLR for 10 years, I switched to Sony mirrorless. It was quite an adjustment. After shooting for so long with one brand, I had become extremely comfortable with it. During the switch, I had to learn how to work with something very different (more details on that topic here: 5 Lessons Learned Switching from DSLR to Mirrorless for Travel Photography).
But, I did not expect that the brand switch would dramatically change my editing. I was wrong.
After I returned from my first photography trip to Hawaii and California, where I put my new equipment through the test of real life scenarios of travel photography, I had 3000 brand new photos shot with the Sony a6000.
When I started to edit the new photos, I could see some differences. In general, the images were much cleaner and sharper with a higher amount of detail. These changes did not surprise me because the a6000 has a new generation sensor with a higher pixel count, and in combination with quality lenses from Sony and Zeiss, it could easily resolve a staggering amount of detail.
What surprised me was how the images behaved when I started to edit them. I could immediately see that the images were more responsive, meaning that I could push them much further, with more aggressive editing, and that I could recover more shadows and highlights from a single RAW image. I realized that I could process some images without using HDR techniques, which was not possible before.
This is when I started to look around trying to find the reason for the different behaviour. I found my answers on the DoX Mark website when I compared camera sensors. The dynamic range of the Sony a6000 sensor is wider by almost 2 stops (11.5EV vs 13.2EV) or 14%.

The difference is probably not a big deal if you are a wedding or street photographer but, for someone like me who specializes in travel and landscape HDR photography, this was a game changer. I saw the opportunity to streamline and optimize my digital techniques once again.
Now, six months later, below is my new modified digital photography workflow.

Single RAW Preset Based Lightroom Processing – 50%

A major shift toward the single RAW Lightroom editing made me realize that it could be the perfect opportunity to optimize my workflow in order to save time on processing. I organized my Lightroom presets into four collections: Landscapes and HDR, Cross Processing, People and B&W. Now, I start the process of editing by applying different presets to the image trying to find the right look. When I find the one I like the best, I tweak it with standard Lightroom and Photoshop editing tools.

Sony A6000, Sony 10-18mm lens, Lightroom Preset Based Processing

HDR Processing in Photoshop HDR Pro and Lightroom – 20%

With Adobe introducing Merge to HDR in Lightroom 6, I find myself using it more and more but I still use Photoshop HDR Pro.

Sony A6000, Zeiss 16-70mm lens, Lightroom 6 HDR Processed

HDR Processing in Photomatix – 20%

Cleaner digital files allow me to push the images even further in Photomatix.

Luminosity Blending in Photoshop – 10%

Nothing has changed here.

The switch from Canon DSLR to Sony mirrorless had unexpected consequences that drastically changed the way I edit my photos. In the end, the change was very positive, it allowed me to save time on processing and editing photos. Also, the extended dynamic range of the new sensor resulted in me taking fewer photos. I do not have to take five or seven bracketed shots anymore; in most cases, three brackets are all that is needed.
Have you made the switch? Have you noticed any changes in your processing workflow? Share with us your thoughts in the comments below.

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Marriage Proposal

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How to Choose a DSLR Camera

By: Darren Rowse 

DSLR Cameras are increasingly becoming a type of camera that is in the reach of the average photographer as prices fall and as manufacturers develop more user friendly models.
I’ve previously discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages of moving from a point and shoot to DSLR but in this post would like to explore how to choose a DSLR.
In doing so I’ll cover:
1. 9 Reasons to Upgrade to a DSLR Camera
2. 8 Factors to Consider when Choosing a DSLR
3. My DSLR Camera Recommendations (also check out this post on the Top DSLR Models As voted by our Readers)
Firstly, a quick recap on some of the reasons why you might want to upgrade to a DSLR.

Reasons to Upgrade to a DSLR Camera

1. Image Quality – Due to the larger size of image sensors in DSLRs which allows for larger pixel sizes – DSLRs are generally able to be used at a faster ISO which will lead to faster shutter speeds and less grain (ie shoot at 1600 ISO on most DSLRs will have less noise than shooting at 1600 on a Point and Shoot). DSLRs also have built in noise-reduction when genearating JPG images which also helps cut down on noise.
2. Adaptability – DSLR’s ability to change lenses opens up a world of possibilities for photographers. While my point and shoot has a nice little 3x Optical Zoom (and many these days have longer ones) my DSLR can be fitted with many high quality lenses ranging from wide angle to super long focal lengths depending upon what I’m photographing (and of course my budget). Add to this a large range of other accessories (flashes, filters etc) and a DSLR can be adapted to many different situations. It should be noted that when it comes to lenses that the diversity in quality of lenses is great. Image quality is impacted greatly by the quality of the lens you use.
3. Speed – DSLR’s are generally pretty fast pieces of machinery when it comes to things like start up, focusing and shutter lag.
4. Optical Viewfinder – due to the reflex mirror DSLR’s are very much a what you see is what you get operation.
5. Large ISO range – this varies between cameras but generally DSLRs offer a wide array of ISO settings which lends itself to their flexibility in shooting in different conditions.
6. Manual Controls – while many point and shoots come with the ability to shoot in manual mode, a DSLR is designed in such a way that it is assumed that the photographer using it will want to control their own settings. While they do come with good auto modes the manual controls are generally built in in such a way that they are at the photographers finger tips as they are shooting.
7. Retaining Value – some argue that a DSLR will hold it’s value longer than a point and shoot. There is probably some truth in this. DSLR models do not get updated quite as often as point and shoot models (which can be updated twice a year at times). The other factor in favor of DSLRs is that the lenses you buy for them are compatible with other camera bodies if you do choose to upgrade later on (as long as you stay with your brand). This means your investment in lenses is not a waste over the years.
8. Depth of Field – one of the things I love about my DSLR is the versatility that it gives me in many areas, especially depth of field. I guess this is really an extension of it’s manual controls and ability to use a variety of lenses but a DSLR can give you depth of field that puts everything from forground to background in focus through to nice blurry backgrounds.
9. Quality Optics – I hesitate to add this point as there is a large degree of difference in quality between DSLR lenses but in general the lenses that you’ll find on a DSLR are superior to a point and shoot camera. DSLR lenses are larger (more glass can add to the quality) and many of them have many hours of time put into their manufacture (especially when you get into higher end lenses). I strongly advice DSLR buyers to buy the best quality lenses that they can afford. It it’s the difference between a high end lens on a medium range camera or a medium range lens on a high end camera I’d go for quality lenses every time as they add so much to photos.

Before I tackle how to buy a DSLR keep in mind that DSLRs are not for everyone. I’ve written more on the down sides of DSLRs in a post previously which you might find helpful in deciding whether you should stick with a point and shoot or upgrade.
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How to Decide Which DSLR Camera is for You?

So how do you decide which DSLR to buy? There are an increasing array of them on the market so you have a real choice ahead of you.
Here are a few factors to consider when looking for a DSLR:

1. Price – a good place to start when thinking about buying a DSLR is obviously price. DSLRs price range in price from some quite affordable deals at the lower end to extremely high prices at the professional end. Set yourself a budget for your purchase early on but make sure that you keep in mind that you’ll need to consider other costs of owning one including:

• Lenses (some deals offer ‘kit lenses’ but you should consider upgrading – see below for more on this)
• Batteries (all models will come with one but if you are travelling you might need a spare)
• Memory Cards (some models come with one but most are inadequate in terms of size. Even if you’re lucky enough to have one included you’ll probably want to upgrade to at least a 1 gigabyte card).
• Camera Bag (some dealers will throw one in – but once again don’t expect a high quality ‘free’ bag. Your DSLR is something worth protecting – invest in a good bag)
• Filters (at the least you’ll want to get a UV filter for each lens you purchase – but you might also want to consider other types down the track also).
• Extended Warrantees (there’s a variety of opinions on whether they’re good or not – but they’re worth considering)

2. What will You use it For? – when you head into a camera store to purchase any type of question the first thing most sales people will ask you what type of photography you want to do. It is well worth asking yourself this question up front as it will help you think through the type of features and accessories you’ll need.
Will this be a general purpose camera for recording ‘life’? Are you wanting to travel with the camera? Is it for sports photography? Macro Photography? Low Light Photography? Make a realistic list of the type of photography you will use it for (note I said ‘realistic’ – it’s easy to dream of all kinds of things you’ll photograph – but in reality most of us only do half what we think we will).
3. Size – DSLRs are all more sizeable than compact point and shoot cameras but there is a fair bit of variation in size between them also. Some photographers don’t mind carrying around weighty gear but if you’re going to use it for on the go photography (travel, bushwalking etc) then small and light models can be very handy.
4. Previous Gear – the attractive thing about DSLRs is that in many cases they are compatible with some of the gear you might already have.

• This is particularly the case for lenses. The chances are that if you have a film SLR that your lenses might well be compatible with a DSLR made by the same manufacturer. Don’t assume that all lenses will be compatible (particularly older gear) but it’s well worth asking the question as it could save you considerable money.
• If you have a point and shoot camera you might also want to look at the type of memory card that it takes as some models of DSLRs could also be compatible with them. This probably won’t be a major consideration as memory cards are considerably cheaper than they used to be but it could be a factor to consider.

5. Resolution – ‘how many megapixels does it have’ is a question that is often one of the first to be asked about a new camera. While I think ‘megapixels’ are sometimes over emphasised (more is not always best) it is a question to consider as DSLRs come with a wide range of megapixel ratings. Megapixels come into play as you consider how you’ll use your images. If you’re looking to print enlargements then more can be good – if you’re just going to print in small sizes or use them for e-mailing friends then it’s not so crucial.
6. Sensor Size – Another related question to consider is how big the image sensor is. The term ‘crop factor’ comes up when you talk about image sensor size – I’ll upack this further in a future article as it’s perhaps a little complicated for the scope of this one. In general a larger sensor has some advantages over a smaller one (although there are costs too). But I’ll unpack this in a future post (stay tuned).
7. Future Upgrades – will you be in a position to upgrade your camera again in the foreseeable future? While entry level DSLRs are attractively priced they tend to date more quickly than higher end models and you run the risk of growing out of them as your expertise grows and you thirst for more professional features. Ask yourself some questions about your current level of expertise in photography and whether you’re the type of person who learns how to master something and then wants to go to a higher model that gives you more control and features. It’s a difficult question but you might find it’s worthwhile to pay a little more in the short term for a model that you can grow into.
8. Other Features
Most DSLRs have a large array of features that will probably overwhelm and confuse you at first as you compare them with one another. All have basic features like the ability to use aperture and shutter priority, auto or manual focus etc but there’s also a lot of variation in what is or isn’t offered. Here are some of the more common features that you might want to consider:

• Burst Mode – the ability to shoot a burst of images quickly by just holding down the shutter release – great for sports and action photography. DSLRs vary both in the number of frames that they can shoot per second as well as how many images they can shoot in a single burst.
• Maximum Shutter Speed – most DSLRs will have a decent range of speeds available to you but some will have some pretty impressive top speeds which will be very useful if you’re into sports or action photography.
• ISO Ratings – Similarly, most DSLRs will offer a good range of ISO settings but some take it to the next level which is useful in low light photography.
• LCD Size – It’s amazing how much difference half an inch can make when viewing images on your cameras LCD. I noticed this recently when testing a camera with a 2.5 inch screen after using my own 1.8 inch one. While it might not change the way you shoot photos (people tend to use viewfinders at this level to frame shots) it certainly can be nice to view your shots on a larger screen.
• Anti Shake – in the past few weeks a range of new DSLRs have been announced by manufacturers in the lead up to the Christmas rush. One of the features that is featuring more and more in them is anti shake technology. While it’s been common to get ‘image stabilisation’ technology in lenses the idea of it being built into camera bodies is something that is attractive.
• Dust Protection – another feature that has started appearing in the latest round of cameras is image sensor dust protection (and in some cases self cleaning for image sensors) – something that will help alleviate a lot of frustration that many DSLR photographers have. To this point this is a feature that is mainly on lower end DSLRs but it’s bound to appear on new professional models also.
• Connectivity – Getting photos out of your DSLR and into a computer or printer generally happens these days via USB but some people like FireWire and/or Wireless.
• Semi-Auto Modes – As with point and shoot cameras – many DSLRs (especially lower end ones) come with an array of shooting modes. These generally include ‘portrait’, ‘sports’, ‘night’ etc. If you rely upon these modes on your point and shoot you may well use them on your DSLR too. Higher end DSLRs often don’t have them.
• Flash – Generally professional grade DSLRs don’t offer built in flash and just have a hotshoe while entry level DSLRs include a built in flash.

Which DSLR camera is right for you?

At the time of writing this post there are a large range of DSLRs currently on the market (with a fresh batch of them set to be announced in the new year).
I’m a Canon user so my recommendations will reflect this below. Here are three that you might like to consider.
Canon EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XTi) – I had the opportunity to play with this camera last week for a day and while I was a little skeptical at first as it’s fairly much an entry level DSLR I came away from testing it quite impressed. It has a 10.1 megapixel sensor, 2.5 inch LCD and all the features you’ll need to switch into manual (and semi manual) modes.
It is a camera with a lighter feel than the 30D (below) which will leave some feeling as though it might be a little light on – however this adds to it’s portability.
This is a good camera if you’re a little nervous about stepping out of point and shoot land and want something that is easy to use. Compare prices on the Canon EOS 400D from around the web.
Canon EOS 30D – if there’s one DSLR that I’ve recommended more than any other it is the 30D. I’ve owned it’s predecessor for a few years now (the 20D) and have loved it but the 30D has a few nice extra features that make it worth the upgrade.
The 30D is has an 8.2 megapixel sensor and nice large 2.5 inch LCD as well as an array of other features that give you plenty of opportunity to explore your photographic ability (as well as a good Auto mode for when you hand it over to a digital camera novice). This is a more serious camera than the 400D (it’s more solid in your hands too) but it is very user friendly also.
It is positioned nicely between the entry level and Professional models going around and produces wonderful images. Compare prices on the Canon EOS 30D from around the web.
Canon EOS 5D – this camera will be out of reach of most of us (although I’m saving up) but I wanted to include it as it’s the best camera I’ve had the privilege of testing so far (in fact I’ve had it for the last 3 weeks and I just don’t want to send it back).
The 5D is not at the very top of the Canon DSLR range but it is not cheap and is aimed at the higher end amateur digital photographer who knows what they are doing. It doesn’t have a built in flash and there are no semi-auto modes on the dial (at this level you wouldn’t need them). It has a 12.8MP full frame sensor, 2.5 inch LCD, weighty magnesium body and a list of features longer than my arm.
This camera has great reviews from around the web and is high on my own personal wish list. Compare prices on the Canon EOS 5D from around the web.
Of course there are more options than just Canon DSLRs.
While I’ve not extensively tested them I have friends with the Nikon D200 and the Nikon D70s who are more than satisfied with their cameras also. Nikon’s DSLRs get highly recommended in reviews around the web and you’ll not go wrong in going with them either.
Feel free to add your own recommendations below in comments. As I say – I’m a Canon guy and am pretty much won over by the quality of camera that they make (their image sensors go beyond what I’ve seen in other cameras) however there are many more great DSLRs out there (particularly from Nikon) and I’d love to include the recommendations of others – simply leave a comment below with your own recommendation and I’ll include some of them in the main post as an update over the next day or two.
Update: A few readers have asked me for recommendations for DSLR lenses via email after reading this post. You might like to start with some introductory posts that I’ve written on the topic at:

• An Introduction to Types of DSLR Lenses
• Prime vs Zoom Lenses

Top 20 DSLR Models among Our Readers
If you found this post helpful you might also like to subscribe to our free weekly Digital Photography Tips Newsletter.

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Canon Explorers of Light – Q&A with Photographer Roberto Valenzuela

By: Caz Nowaczyk

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 Roberto Valenzuela. He shares his experiences and gives tips to upcoming photographers.

Photographer Roberto Valenzuela

How did you get into photography?

My full-time career as a photographer began in March 2006. I had been married for a little over a year, and I decided to take some time off from teaching high school to attend the annual Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) convention held in Las Vegas, Nevada. 
This convention was the yearly gathering of more than 15,000 wedding and portrait photographers from every corner of the world. 
The most exciting part was that some of the world’s top wedding photographers would be there, including the famous Canon Explorer of Light photographers, who are a group of elite photographers carefully chosen by Canon USA as the best photographers in the world in their respective fields. I was in heaven! 
During WPPI, I realized that my passion for photography was just too strong to ignore. I felt an inexplicable calling to photography. 
A very scary thought went through my head for the first time. The thought that I may want to follow my heart and perhaps leave my high school teaching career that I loved and worked so hard to get to dedicate myself to photography full time. Oh boy! I was in trouble. 
How do I tell my wife? The woman I had just married and who relied on my humble income as a teacher to live and provide health insurance. 
The thought of leaving a job I adored, and that provided me with a steady paycheck, scared the heck out of me. 

The trip to WPPI changed my life. It was just an overload of brain stimuli. 
I loved everything about photography – the cameras, lenses, lighting, software, the technical side, the artistic side, and – my favorite – the business side. It had it all!
I knew my wife Kim would be receiving her Master’s degree in Engineering in May, and she had landed a great engineering job upon graduation. Kim having her own income, definitely helped to solidify my decision to leave teaching and pursue a career as a full-time professional photographer. 
That was probably the hardest decision I have ever made. It felt as if I was jumping into a dark hole without knowing how deep the fall would be. 
That following week, I made an appointment with the principal of the school to tell her that I would not be continuing after that school year. I hugged her and thanked her for the amazing opportunity she had given me. But I had to pursue this new profession, or I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Before I left her office, she asked me if I was sure, and with a heavy heart, I said, “Yes, yes, I am.” 
After that school year was over, my full-time photography journey began. 

What was your first camera setup?

The first camera I bought was the Canon 20D, and the 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 IS in 2006. 
I didn’t have much money, so I put it all on one lens. I had to learn to work with this lens on every portrait and every wedding I shot. 
It was especially difficult working with a floating aperture like this indoors, but that’s the only lens I had, so I figured it out. 
Actually, it was that experience to only work with one lens that taught me a very valuable lesson – mastering the gear you have is something most people don’t really do.
For example, we all know what a 50mm f/1.2 lens is, but we don’t really know the ins and outs of that lens. How does it behave in the middle, or in the corners of the frame? What apertures provide the best sharpness for that lens? How does taking a portrait with a 50mm lens look at close proximity? Also, how does it differ from photographing a portrait with that lens at further distances?
I actually quite enjoyed knowing everything there is to know about one lens. Then I used that same mentality with all of my other lenses, cameras, and flashes I purchased in the future. 

What camera gear do you use now and why?

I enjoy learning about new, evolving technologies. I love my SLR cameras, and I still have them. I have the Canon 5D Mark IV, the Canon 1D X Mark II, and the Canon 5DS.
But as soon as Canon launched their mirrorless line with the introduction of the Canon EOS R, I embraced the technology. 
Although it is different than shooting with a regular dSLR, this camera opens opportunities that are simply impossible with a dSLR. For example, with the face-detection AF, I can take the camera away from my face and engage with clients face-to-face, and while the camera is tracking their face, I’m actually taking photos without the clients knowing. 
Also, the ability to use a 1-stop to 9-stop variable neutral density (ND) filter that sits inside the lens adapter is one of my favorite features. This saves me from having to buy multiple ND filters for all of my lenses. 
The ND variable filter also allows me to achieve a beautiful cinematic look outdoors by keeping my apertures wide open, such as f/2.0. Then I’m able to illuminate my subjects with the full capabilities of my flashes, and I can stay within the camera’s flash sync speed. This is amazing to me!
Regardless of how bright the light outdoors may be, I can drop the light as far as I want in seconds. Then add flash to my subjects with a color gel filter to do in-camera color grading.
How cool is that?
I am also quite excited about the new R EF lenses, especially the 28-70 f/2.0. These lenses are incredibly sharp and offer a great wide aperture. 
However, my favorite feature of these lenses is the ability to program the control ring to whatever you want to fit the kind of shoot you are doing. For example, I programmed my control ring to quickly change my ISO in rapidly changing lighting conditions. 

What area of photography do you specialize in and why did you move into that field?

My photography career began in Tucson, AZ.
In Tucson, there is not much of a fashion or beauty industry, but it is a very popular place to get married because of the beauty of the Sonoran Desert and Tucson’s famous sunsets. 
On top of that, I was getting married myself during that time. 
All of these factors led me to the world of wedding photography. And what a world it is!
I learned quickly that most important is what sets you apart from the hundreds of thousands of wedding photographers out there.
If I had to choose one aspect of my life that sets me apart from other wedding and portrait photographers, it would have to be my background as a classical guitarist. Being a classical guitarist forces you to develop a culture of great dedication to practice. 

In fact, in my 14 years as a photographer now, I have not missed a single month that I haven’t practiced something. Regardless of how busy I am, I always make time to practice 30 to 60 minutes a month.
This practice has come in very handy in the most difficult of times to create something truly special for my clients.
For example, the photo I took in Sarasota, Florida, during a hurricane. This photograph was taken late in the evening as the wedding came to an end at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. This photo has to be one of my all-time favorite wedding photographs in my career.
It had been raining all day and all night due to a hurricane passing by the area. To take advantage of the rain, I asked the Rolls Royce driver if he could park the car in front of the tree. I then asked my assistant to stand in front of the grid of the car with two Canon 600EXRT flash units. 
One flash unit was used to backlight the couple, and the second was pointed towards the car’s headlights. 
Illuminating the headlights would give the viewer the perception that this photograph was lit by the car’s lights. However, the car was not even on. When everything was set, I then asked the bride and groom to run out quickly. It took us a couple of tries to get it right, and maybe we got a little wet, but the photograph is magical, and it will last forever!
Without my relentless practice sessions with my flashes, I would have never been able to visualize this beautiful photo in the midst of a hurricane passing through the location of the wedding. 
I have a full production studio in Beverly Hills now. Although I still shoot a few weddings a year, my focus has switched to commercial fashion photography. 

Are you working on any exciting projects you’d like to share?

I am incredibly passionate about the benefits I have received from really taking the time to master all aspects of lighting and posing. The more you know about lighting and posing, the more fun you have as a photographer.
The art of photography just opens up to you in ways you never thought imaginable. The type of work you can produce with more knowledge is just incredible and addictive!
Because of this, I dreamed of creating the ultimate education platform for eager photographers wanting a concentrated level of the highest quality education in pure lighting knowledge. 
So, I’m in the process of designing a conference. More details to come.

If you could share any photography tips with our readers, what would they be?

I would say that photography has opened doors in my life that I have never thought possible. But it has come because of my training. 
My tip would be to never think you know something so well, that you don’t have to learn anymore. Keep your curiosity as big as that of a child. Learn how to pose so that people don’t look posed.
Also, learn how to light, so that the light communicates something to the viewer instead of using light simply to illuminate and create an exposure. 
Embrace education, learning, and the new technologies available to help you expand your capabilities and become an even better visual storyteller. 

See more of Roberto Valenzuela’s work here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roberto_photo YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/robertophotography Website: http://www.robertovalenzuela.com

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