Category: Adventures

There’s no denying that climate change is one of the preeminent topics of our day, one of the biggest challenges the current generations have to face, one of the most hotly debated topics on the public stage that has the very very very very real potential of several affecting our lives and the way we approach the future of our species and the future of the planet as a whole. So when the leaders of our world get together to discuss solutions and formulate strategies for tackling this topic, everyone listens. The problem is, no one ever expects anything to come of it. Politics as usual.

But COP21 seems to be different. No doubt you’ve seen the countless hashtags go zipping through your Twitter streams, but for those of you that don’t know, COP stands for Conference of the Parties, which is short for the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Essentially, it is an event in which every member nation of the United Nations, just under 200, gets together to come to a unanimous agreement on what their share needs to be in helping climate change from spiraling out of control.

For this iteration of the ‘event’, all eyes were on Paris. No one really expected much, as most just saw it as an extension of what happened in Copenhagen 6 years ago, when talks fell apart and an extremely lukewarm agreement was cobbled together, but something is different. And even Nobel Peace prize author and climate scientist Dr. Steven Running couldn’t help but feel and express a bit of hope. As he puts it, “For the titans of industry to say we know this is real and we want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, is huge, and did not occur in Copenhagen in 2009 when negotiations really unraveled. Those are all preliminaries to the Paris conference that have been dramatically different than I’ve ever heard before.”

And considering the outcome out of Paris, he seemed to be spot on! The unprecedented results of COP21 far exceeded what everyone expected, and left a sense of hope and positivity as to the commitments the entire world has made to finally accept the science as fact and move forward to mitigate what we can in curbing climate change. It was remarkable.

For a bit of background, Dr. Steven Running was the chapter lead author for the 4th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a report that won a Nobel Prize, sharing the stage with Al Gore in 2007. He’s also the current Regents Professor on Forest Ecology at the University of Montana, and his findings, science, and studies are all a major part of the discussions in Paris. Basically, he knows a thing or two about the topic…

So when the World Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon asked me to be involved by documenting through video and photographs a day full of events that involved Dr. Running, co-sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and The Pinchot Institute For Conservation, I was simultaneously excited and humbled at the opportunity, because, well, as most of you know the forces of nature are a topic I hold very dear to me. 

The day began with several interviews from the attendees before heading to a private luncheon and think tank discussion with representatives from industries and organizations that are all, one way or another, major players in the climate change space. We had representatives from the Sustainable Northwest, The Climate Trust, The City of Portland, The Society of American Foresters, The Nature Conservancy, The Pinchot Institute, and the University of Portland, among others. Following the luncheon, we conducted several more interviews before heading into the public lecture by Dr.Steven Running, which was given to an almost packed house. It says a lot when people head out to a scientific lecture in the midst of the wettest week in Oregon’s history…

To be surrounded by some of the nation’s preeminent minds surrounding the topic was a thrill and an honor, and to hear a tide switch towards a more positive and hopeful outlook and attitude on combating climate change was perhaps one of the most exciting parts of the experience. It’s just very encouraging to see that a paradigm is shifting in a positive direction in the general attitude towards climate change and sustainability, and overall, it feels so good to be doing work in an arena that means so much to me, for despite all the labor, it doesn’t seem like work at all, and results like the ones we saw the past couple days are what make it all worth it.

Well done humanoids! We gone done did a good thing in Paris 

Here’s a recap of the day’s events. All images and videos shot on the Samsung NX1.

For more mores, find me at:
instagram: @wasimofnazareth 
ello: @wasimofnazareth 
google+: +WasimMuklashy

If you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to me. You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT!

So I figured I’d wait until after the Black/Cyber/Weekend/Monday/Friday shopping psychotica died down a bit before posting this one. If you’re still looking for unique gifts for those unique peeps in your life, check out my stores on Fine Art America and Crated. You can get art prints, canvas prints, duvets, pillowcases, phone cases, greeting cards, all of it! And if you use the code “SVEJPJ” at FineArtAmerica, you can get 15% off through December 13 ,which is the cut-off date to ensure you get your orders in time for the holidays. And if Crated is your preferred means, use coupon code CRATED25 for $25 off any order of $100 or more, or CRATED10 for $10 off any order of $50. Below are a few samples of my goodies…

Also, if you use Amazon, I encourage you to please use this link: http://amzn.to/1R0ntNA

I’m an affiliate, so it costs you nothing, there’s no change at all to your shopping experience, but it’ll help me earn a few extra bucks to buy YOU a gift! Or me some electricity and tacos. Because nothing spells holidays like tacos.

Black Friday. Oh Black Friday. On that bi-polar day in which hundreds of millions are nonsensically encouraged to brutally duke it out for deals just mere minutes after expressing gratitude for what we already have, we decided to get as far away from the madness as we could…as far as our gas tank would take us…to the middle of the Mojave Desert! 

The family decided we’d spend our Thanksgiving weekend in Palm Desert, just outside Palm Springs, and at the encouragement of REI’s OptOutside campaign, I was somehow able to convince the entire family to spend Black Friday in Joshua Tree National Park. This brought about two surprises – one, it didn’t take too much arm-twisting, and two, Joshua Tree was completely packed – an absolutely beautiful thing to see on a day in which it’s borderline treason not to trample your neighbor for 50 bucks off an HDTV.

The weather was perfect, the company was great, and the surroundings were spectacular. Here are a few images from our Thanksgiving weekend in the desert.

Images were shot on a combination of Samsung NX1, Samsung NX500, and a Samsung Galaxy Note 5.

For more blahs and mehs and things:
instagram: @wasimofnazareth 
ello: @wasimofnazareth 
google+: +WasimMuklashy

If you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to me. You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT!

If I had to map out a perfect photography-centric week, it would not have turned out as well as the week that I just finished. It was overwhelming, encouraging, exciting, inspiring, nerve-racking and glorious all at the same time. I’m not sure how I’ll convey it here, but I’ll give it my best shot.

In a nutshell, as many of you may already know, I somehow fell into the good fortune of being a Samsung Camera Imagelogger, essentially a brand ambassador for Samsung cameras. Well, last week, Amazon’s DPReview.com, the comprehensive gear review site, hosted their first PIX event, an “Interactive Photography Expo & Conference” in Seattle, and Samsung asked me to be amongst one of the several Imageloggers to give a presentation there. While the ‘not-used-to-public-speaking’ part of me put a knot of nerves in my stomach, the ‘oh-my-god-this-is-an-amazing-opportunity-hell-yes’ part of me easily won out.

We arrived on Monday and got to meet many of the faces that until now, I’ve really only known through online avatars. Some of them I’ve had a chance to meet before, but some of them, this marked our first time face to face, and I was crazy humbled to be amongst this company. Along with the wonderful Samsung PR and technical team that has kept us oh-so-happy with incredibly innovative new product after product, I found myself surrounded by inspiring photographers from all walks of life and subjects, including The Candid Frame‘s host and creator Ibarionex Perello, street photography extraordinaire “Street Zen’s” Rinzi Ruiz, Reuters & Getty news photographer Jonathan Alcorn, insane landscape and astrophotographer Matt Kumasaka, prolific celebrity photographer Brian Ach, world’s greatest kid photographer Laura Winslow, and social change advocate and photographer C.C. Chapman. We had dinner at the waterfront Aqua, where we snapped some sunset pictures, and wined and dined the rest of the night away.

The next day was the first day of the PIX conference, and it was filled with one must-see presentation after another. It was crazy. It started off with Reuters snapper Jonathan Alcorn’s presentation “The Evolution of News Photography,” and ended with Cristina Mittermeir’s tear-jerking keynote presentation, “Waters Edge.” In between, we had everything from NASA photographer Robert Hurt’s “Revealing a Hidden Universe,” to Instagram star Matthew Kumasaka’s “Taking Instagram to the Next Level,” street photographer extraordinaire Rinzi Ruiz explaining “How To Use The Sun As A Single Source of Light,” to Joe McNally’s “How to Get the Right Lighting When Shooting Any Group of People.” I even found myself sitting on a panel with the incredibly inspiring International League of Conservation Photographers founder Cristina Mittermeier and one of a kind NASA’s photographer Robert Hurt entitled “Photography and the Environment.” How and why!?? Complete fluke…but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone that! YOLO!

One of the highlights, at least for me, was getting explore and experience Project Beyond and Samsung’s VR Gear virtual reality headset. It’s hard not to imagine the hold that Virtual Reality (VR) is going to have on the public in the next couple of years, especially as Fortune estimates it to be a $150 billion industry by 2020, so to be able to experience what we’re in store for was quite mind-blowing. Once you experience it, you can’t help but begin to ruminate on all of it’s incredible potential, from education, to medical help in the field, to news reporting, to real estate tours, to quick virtual escapes from our everyday reality, to mental health and PTSD treatments, to trainings. I can’t think of a single aspect of society that can’t find a way to benefit from this technology. Sure, there may be some dark uses, but, with the inherent good in people, as more and more of the world’s population gets connected, I feel that will far outweigh the negatives as the younger more empathetic generations begin to get their hands on and develop this technology. 

That evening, we had the DPReview.com party and Awards show, in which the Samsung team was incredibly humbled and excited to receive 3 of the coveted awards:

1. Best High End Crop Sensor Interchangeable Lens Camera (Samsung NX1)
2. Best Lens for Crop Sensor (Samsung 16-50 f2 – f2.8 S)
3. Innovation Award (Samsung NX1)

So if you’re looking for a new camera and haven’t checked out those NX systems …can’t think of any reasons not to anymore…yes, accept the reality, Samsung is now a formidable contender in the camera market! 

The next day was absolutely no different. It started off with the Samsung Ditch The DSLR, where Samsung gave away free NX500 cameras in exchange for old DSLRs to a line that had begun to form around the building at 8pm the night before. From there we jumped into social change photographer C.C. Chapman’s Inspirational “Using Photography to Drive Change,” street photography guru and The Candid Frame host Ibarionex Perello’s “How to Approach Strangers and Take Their Pictures,” Laura Winslow showing us her methods of “Taking Photos of Children” (seriously…she’s unparalleled…watch how she handles a complete stranger on stage at about the 25:34 mark), a conversation with amateur photographer and latest Samsung Imagelogger Devin Allen, the viral sensation who’s iconic Baltimore Freddy Gray protest pictures landed 2 TIME Magazine covers, adventure and humanitarian photographer Colby Brown teaching us “How To Tell Compelling Stories Through Photography” and The Celeb Snapper Brian Ach’s inspirationally compelling “Stories Of Getting The Right Shot.”

This was also the day of my presentation, “What Photography Did for Me: Getting Out of my Comfort Zone to Focus on the Moment,” which, despite the nerves, all in all, I think went off pretty well.

I got to close out the day by leading a photowalk with fellow Samsung Imagelogger Laura Winslow. We had a group of about 8 or 9 walkers and led them through some creative techniques to get unique vacation photos in the grounds surrounding the Space Needle. After the conference was over, a group of us headed out for a final supper, and then as things began to wind down, the first rain of our 3 days in Seattle began to fall. A couple of us, Rinzi Ruiz and Jonathan Alcorn, felt it was only appropriate to bust out an impromptu photo session in the wet Washington streets. Figured what better way to end a photography conference than to take a bunch of pictures?

I feel so absolutely grateful to have been a part of this thing and cannot give enough respect to the DPReview.com crew that made it happen, made us all feel so welcome and comfortable, and who’s hard work and effort helped guide us through 3 wonderful days of photography psychotica. There’s nothing like finding yourself in the fortunate opportunity to rub elbows with and completely geek out about photography with some of the top and most inspiring names in the industry, many of whom are part of the very reason I got into this to begin with. So thank you Samsung! Thank you DPReview! Thank you PIX! Thank you Seattle!

You can now catch all the speeches and presentations, not only from the Samsung Imageloggers I mentioned above, ALL of which just nailed it up there, but also indulge in presentations from people like “THE” Joe McNally, ‘The Godfather of Photography’ Rick Sammon, Aaron Huey, Benjamin Van Wong, and so SO many more. Just click on this link to check out the list.

After the conference was done, I wasn’t through with the Pacific Northwest. I decided to take the Amtrak down to Portland for a couple of meetings and to visit some friends. I got into town around 2pm, picked up a rental car, and headed right over the river to the offices of new photography startup PICR. I first heard of them through an online teaser that said something along the lines of “90% of Photographers Are Underpaid” and I was immediately curious, so when I did some research and found out they were based in Portland area, I contacted them to see if I could stop by. Andrea, their copywriter and editor responded enthusiastically and invited me in. They were extremely accommodating, showed me around, and gave me a breakdown and quick demo of the platform and their plans. Essentially, if you’re a photographer, they’re an online platform that will do all the marketing and advertising for you, connecting you with clients looking for your type of work. Kind of like an Airbnb for photography in a way. I’ve seen a few models like this, but this one seemed like the most stable and viable solution. If you’re a photographer and want to give ’em a shot, click here to sign up. Can’t hurt right? 

After meeting with PICR, I headed to my host’s home. If you follow along with this blog, you may remember Wendy Mitchell, the Director of Stewardship at the World Forestry Center who gave me a tour of Portland’s famous Japanese Gardens over the summer. We’ve kept in close contact regarding possibly working with the World Forestry Center, so she invited me to stay with her and her wonderful husband. That evening we had dinner with their strategic communications consultant to discuss an event they’re hosting on December 9, the “United Nations Climate Change Report,” a dinner and ceremony hosted by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr. Steven Running, the Lead Author for the 4th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and the Pinchot Institute and will be attended by almost 50 high-level names in the environmental, climate change, and conservation space, on a date that coincides with the World Climate Change Conference in Paris. If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, be there!

Over the next couple of days, I had a couple more meet and greets set up. The first was with Sockeye Creative, the top creative production house in the Portland area. They’re responsible for several marketing and advertising campaigns for clients such as Adidas, The Nature Conservancy, Keen, Travel Portland and many more. After that, I met with a friend and colleague I hadn’t seen in a while, Matt Hanrahan of KingSize-USA, about some possible collaborations as well. I took the last few hours of light I had left in the Pacific Northwest to grab a few shots of the leaves as they began to turn for the fall, which I’ve already shared in the previous post, but here they are again in a small slideshow. If you haven’t guessed by now…yeah, I’m pretty smitten with the Pacific Northwest…kind of exploring the idea of making a go of it up there…

So all in all, that last week was an extremely exciting, enjoyable, and productive week on so many fronts, the results of which, I have a feeling, will extend well into the next year. Meeting so many people and hatching ideas in common interest areas is always an exciting prospect, and the idea of bringing many of these ideas into fruition have me incredibly invigorated for the months and year to come. 

I must say, this photography journey over the past several years has been an absolute joy. You never know where life is going to take you and what the cosmos decide to hand you, but it has become more and more apparent that if you’re open to it, and you choose to embrace that unknown, by definition, its basically guaranteed to surprise you in ways that you never could have imagined. This past week was filled with several of those surprises, all of which have me feeling extremely blessed and thankful. 

Below is a gallery of images shot over the course of that week. You’ll see some from Seattle, some from the PIX2015 conference, and some from the Portland leg of the trip. Click on any one and that’ll open up a lightbox where you can scroll through them.

Thanks so much for reading and following along. For more of the crazies and the fun funs, find me at:
instagram: @wasimofnazareth 
ello: @wasimofnazareth 
google+: +WasimMuklashy

If you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to me. You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT!

Ok, so this is a bit strange, as I’m not usually the one with the lens pointed at me, but when Samsung asked if I’d like to speak at DPReview and Amazon‘s inaugural PIX2015, a live-streamed photography conference, expo, and interactive photography playground, I couldn’t say no! It takes place in Seattle at the Seattle Center, home of the Space Needle, and I’ll be there on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 6 and 7.

On Tuesday, I’m proud to be participating in a panel entitled “Photography and the Environment” at 12:15pm. On Wednesday, I’ll be presenting a talk “What Photography Did For Me: Getting Out Of My Comfort Zone To Focus On The Moment.” That one will take place at 1:15pm. Additionally, I’ll be co-leading a photowalk with Laura Winslow entitled “Family Photography In Fun Places” on Wednesday at 4:30pm. The cool thing is, even if you’re not there in person, everything will be live streamed right on their site, www.PIX2015.com. Isn’t the future neato? 

And believe you me, there are so many reasons to be at this thing or to log on and tune in. Along with a cadre of my ridiculously talented fellow Samsung Camera Imageloggers, including Jonathan Alcorn, Ibarionex Perello, Rinzi Ruiz, CC Chapman, Laura Winslow, Matthew Kumasaka, and closing speaker Brian Ach, be prepared to be schooled by industry powerhouses such as National Geographic’s Joe McNally, The Giving Lens and insanely talented adventure photographer Colby Brown, The Godfather of Photography Rick Sammon, Marine Biologist and Photographer Cristina Mittermeier,  and hyperrealism madman Benjamin Van Wong. 

Also, if you come on the morning of Wednesday, October 7th, with an old DSLR of yours, we’ll give you a brand new Samsung NX500 for free. Yup. It’s Ditch The DSLR day at PIX2015. Many of the pictures you’ve been seeing me post here and on my social channels the past couple of months have come from that sexy 4K shooting, 28 Megapixel mini-beast! 

How I find myself amongst this bunch I’ll never know, and I’ll never understand. It’s a crazy fluke folks, and a heck of an oversight, but hey, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t!! 

For more information about the thing, here’s the official page: www.PIX2015.com

If you’ve followed me or know anything about me for any amount of time, you know that my heart, head, soul, and passions lie in the outdoors and our natural world. So when car maker Subaru reached out to me regarding using one of my images for a joint campaign they were launching with the National Park Service to clean up the National Parks, you can imagine how my fast my mind was racing to process this information.

I short-circuited.

No joke.

For a few minutes as I tried to explain my excitement to my friend, my thoughts and words came out in a series of jumbled R2D2-ish blips and bleeps and eventually a vocal mind-fart meltdown.

But I quickly gathered myself. After all, we’re all professionals here!

As I looked deeper into the campaign and the initiative they were launching, I couldn’t think of a single thing that I’d more like to have my work aligned with than a cause like this.

Apparently Subaru has gone all-in on protecting our environment, and this couldn’t make me happier. At a time when carbon emissions as a whole and lower emissions vehicles have popped into the mainstream vein, the carmaker has become the country’s first zero-landfill automaker, which basically means that they reuse and recycle 100% of their waste from the production of their vehicles. Think about that for a second…that’s AMAZING!!! So for them to team up with the National Park Service and the National Parks Conservation Association in the Zero-Landfill initiative and dedicate themselves to removing all trash from our National treasures makes my heart sing.

Our natural world, coupled with photography, has literally been a soul-and-sanity-saving element in my life, which is better expressed in a very personal post I recently published on Ello, and there’s no place I feel more comfortable and in tune with myself than our open and wild spaces. It’s an indescribable feeling that puts everything in perspective, so I could not think of a cause or effort that is more closely aligned with the things I hold most dear – our environment, our National Parks and open spaces, the absolute necessity of their vitality and how closely that’s all related to our very own future and well-being as a species.

So to see my image of Yosemite as the backdrop to the initiative is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

For more information, here’s a trailer for the documentary regarding what Subaru and the National Park Service are doing, and to learn more (and see my image in action), log onto www.Subaru.com/Environment.

Most importantly, GO OUTSIDE!

And if you’re crackalackin’ for some more of my madness and musings, find me at:
instagram: @wasimofnazareth 
ello: @wasimofnazareth 
google+: +WasimMuklashy

If you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to me. You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT!