Western Australia

Flashing myself (pun intended) in the Nambung National Park at dusk in Western Australia.  

​Australia is too big of a country/continent to be limited to one blog post.

As I mentioned last week, Bill Frakes and I spent 3 weeks down under working on an advertising campaign for the then soon-to-be-released Nikon D3s.

Three weeks seems like a long time, but when you consider the size and breadth of Australia it wasn't very long at all.

We raced from shoot to shoot. From Tasmania we went to Melbourne.

Sam, an Australian swimmer we met in a very cold pool on a very cold morning.  

​We spent a cold morning in a cold pool with an Olympic swimmer, an afternoon with a basketball player and a sunrise floating above the Yarra Valley in hot air balloons.

Testing the SB-900s for the basketball shot with Mr. Blue, one of our Japanese art directors.

A picture Bill took of the hot air balloon I was in with Gen, Mr. Blue and an Australian balloon pilot.  

To complete our task - 52 camera functions in 20 days - we had to make multiple images a day. There was no rest, but I was 23 and in Australia. I couldn't have been more excited.

After Melbourne we spent another couple nights in Sydney - one with a boxer and one with an opera singer - and then took off for Western Australia.

Sydney opera singer in front of the Sydney Opera House.  

Before we left Sydney we asked some locals how long the flight was and what the time difference would be. No one seemed to know.  Answers ranged from 2 to 4 hours - for the flight and the time change (it's a two hour time change and a 5 hour flight, for the record). It seemed so odd to me that no one knew how far away a city in their country was. It made where we were going seem incredibly far away.

In fairness, where we were going was incredibly far away. We flew into Perth - one of Australia's major cities - but got in a rental car and drove another four hours north through the Swan Valley wine country to Cervantes, Western Australia.

Cervantes isn't much. From what I could tell it had a Best Western Motel, and restaurant (inside the Best Western Motel which was surprisingly good) and a gas station. We were set to be in Cervantes for three nights, one of our longest stays of the three week trip.

Our reason for being in the town had little to do with the town itself, it had to do with its proximity to the Nambung National Park. Inside the national park are the Pinnacles, a series of cone-like limestone formations in the desert. There's no consensus as to how the Pinnacles came to be, but everyone agrees they are amazing to see.

We got in just before sunset and quickly checked in to our motel (the only motel) before heading into the desert to scout. We had three dancers from the Perth Ballet meeting us there the next day and wanted to see where the best spots to have them dance would be.

I remember driving into the park as the sun began to sink behind the Indian Ocean. The Pinnacles aren't visible at first. For the first 10 minutes in the park all you see is low brush and dust. Then - just as when you drive into the mountains - formations slowly begin to appear above the horizon.

The sight is otherworldly. You feel as if you've been suddenly transported to Mars.

The dancers arrived the next day. I don't remember their names but I remember how lovely they each were to work with. It was shockingly cold in the desert and they danced barefoot in dresses and tutus across the rocky terrain. They were excited to be there and never once complained, though I know they must have been cold. I was cold and I had on jeans, boots and a jacket.

Standing in as a human light stand on a sand dune with the Pinnacles in the background.  

On our first night in the park with the dancers, we worked past sun down.

Dancers in the desert.  

Sunsets in the desert seem to last longer. I don't know why. I just know that light seemed to hang on the horizon longer than it does in a city, on a beach or above a mountain range.

After the sun set we took advantage of the dusk ombré. We had a generator, a dedo light and hundreds of Pinnacles silhouetted on the horizon. We put the dancers three across - each on a pinnacle - and when the light hit them they "came alive," moving their arms and legs fluidly in the warm light for a video clip.

A still frame of the dancers at dusk, light from a dedo sstreamingg past them.  

Bill sat about 50 feet away from us with a 70-200mm f/2.8 and D3s on a Manfrotto tripod. I stood parallel to the dancers with the light. In between takes the dancers would all run to me to absorb some warmth from the generator and light as Bill tried to yell instructions to us. After one take we couldn't hear what he was saying and he was clearly tired of yelling, so - much to the dancers' chagrin - I turned the generator off. When I looked up I saw two massive forms behind him that weren't there before.

The sight caught me off guard, sending a quick shock of fear down my spine. Then, I realized that our commotion had attracted two curious kangaroos. I told Bill to be quiet and turn around. The five of us watched as the kangaroos checked us out for a few moments before hopping off into the dusk. I felt as though we were witnessing time begin.

It was the first time I saw a kangaroo in the wild - I soon discovered they were all over the national park - and a moment I will never forget  

Check back next week for the third and final Australia installment.

Finding Down Under

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A test portrait in front of the Sydney Opera House in July of 2009.

This month started well for me - on vacation.

I have spent a lot of summer months over the last decade a lot of places doing everything but vacationing.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been enjoying myself. Much of what I do for “work” I also consider to be pleasure. My vocation and avocation are frequently in alignment.

One of my favorite non-vacation summer trips was in July 2009 when Bill and I went to the mythical surfing paradise of my childhood dreams - Australia. We were set to be there for three weeks, traveling north, south, east and west - all over down under - for an advertising campaign for the soon-to-be-released Nikon D3s.

We had 20 days to portray 52 camera functions, including video function, which - at the time - was still new to flagship DSLR cameras.

Australia was a place I had always wanted to visit but never imagined I actually would. It’s hard to get to a place so far away. Still, I grew up watching the Tasmanian Devil on Cartoon Network, Crocodile Dundee in the theater and countless Australian surfing videos on the couch with my brother. Everything about Australia seemed cooler than it did at home. It was a place where summer was winter and north was south; like a bizzaro world with big waves and warm sun.

I remember flying over Sydney Harbor the first time. It is a truly beautiful city from the sky. White boats and blue water; green trees and yellow beaches. Sydney itself, however, was not the Australia I imagined.

Sydney is a big city. A very nice city, but similar to many other big cities around the world. Even though sunrise at Bondi Beach was everything I hoped it would be - cold and beautiful - it wasn’t the Australia of my childhood dreams.

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The pre-dawn glow at Bondi Beach.

We had a day and half in Sydney to meet with our Japanese counterparts from the advertising agency, Gen and Toshiaki (who went by Mr. Blue), and learn the camera we would spend the next several weeks demonstrating.

The first frame I took with the Nikon D3s is still one of my favorites. It’s a simple image, but most of my favorites are - the Sydney Opera House framed by three seagulls and a ferry boat.

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My first frame with the Nikon D3s of Sydney Harbor.

After walking off the jet-lag that a 24 hour travel day brings, we boarded a 5am flight to Hobart, Tasmania, where our Australian adventure began. If there is one thing I've learned in my travels, it's that if you want to see a country, go to the country.

I knew very little about Tasmania before getting on the flight. I knew it was an island; I knew it was the southern most point in the eastern hemisphere; I knew it was the home of the Tasmanian Devil (though not the one I was thinking of).

If I thought flying into Sydney was beautiful, I was in for a treat. We began our descent into Hobart just as the sun began to rise. I woke up as the plane began to shake, moving from one dream to another. Outside my window was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Thick fog hovered over an arctic blue water. Green mountaintops peeked above the clouds, kissing golden rays of sun. I felt like Peter Pan flying into Neverland.

When we landed we were met by David Callow, an old friend of Bill’s who was helping with production.

We quickly loaded up a couple vans and hit the road. Our destination was Queenstown, a small mining town four hours northwest of Hobart, with an Australian Rules football team we were set to photograph.

It didn’t take long to get out of Hobart. It’s the biggest city in Tasmania but has a population of less than 50,000 people. From there it was all forest and country. We passed through various small towns, but mostly it was just us and the landscape.

As the sun set, a dark figure darted in front of our van.

“Did you see that,” Callow asked excitedly? “That was a Tasmanian Devil!”

Turns out the Tasmanian Devil is a real creature. Unfortunately the real animal looks nothing like a walking dog who runs in tornado form - as the cartoon would have you believe. The true-to-life Tasmanian Devil instead looks like a cross between a miniature black lab and an opossum (which felt anticlimactic).

We got to Queenstown in time to photograph their evening practice. The timing worked well since capturing low-light situations was one of our top priorities for the shoot.

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Me at evening practice. Intellectually I knew that July in Australia would be winter, but below freezing temperatures were still a shock.

The Nikon D3s was one of the first cameras to truly break the barriers of low light image capture. It could reproduce sharp, color accurate images at 12,800 ISO. Cameras today - like the Nikon D5 - can do that and more, but in 2009 that number was mind blowing in the photography world.

I still remember Bill’s laugh when he took his first few frames, then looked at the back of the camera to see well-rendered, sharp images. The camera could almost see better in the dark than we could.

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Evening practice with the team and our first test of the 12,800 ISO on the Nikon D3s.

We spent several days in Queenstown. We shot practice and the surrounding area. But our true purpose was their Saturday game against another small-town team.

Part of what made Queenstown appealing to us was the fact that they played Aussie Rules Football - a game with no helmets or pads - on a gravel pitch. No grass; not even dirt. Gravel.

We interviewed a few of the players during warmups, asking what it felt like to get tackled on rocks.

“It softens the other team up nicely,” one told me with a wink.

“That’s a bloody oath,” another yelled in emphatic agreement!

The game was hard to follow at first. If you’re used to watching American football - or gridiron, as they call it in Australia - Aussie Rules seems incredibly chaotic and disjointed. There will be bodies smashing into each other, followed by high kicks and a spurt of action, then more bodies smashing into each other. It’s a brutal game to watch on grass, much more so on gravel.

As seems to be my modus operandi in most of the places we visit, I was quickly befriended by a few of the town children. As I was shooting video, trying desperately to follow a game I didn’t understand, three blonde-haired boys walked up to me, each with a different colored lolli pop.

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My Australian buddies, trying (poorly) to pose for a photo.

“What are you doing,” the oldest asked, in an adorable Australian accent?

“I’m trying to make a video of your football team,” I answered.

The boys sat next to me, on me, and leaned over my shoulder to look at the camera, giggling all the while, drooling sticky saliva on my shoulder.

“Would you like a lolli,” the youngest asked from my side, handing up his half eaten lolli pop.

“Maybe later,” I told him.

Just then there was an audible hit on the pitch in front of us. One of the Queenstown players had collided with an opposing player, skidding several feet across the pitch. The Queenstown player came up quickly with the ball, kicking it on to loud cheers from the crowd. The opposing player got up slowly, half of his face raw with blood and dirt, clearly dazed.

“You’re just a bunch of [insert highly inappropriate expletive],” yelled the third boy who was maybe 5 years old.

I burst out laughing from the shock of such an adult word coming out of such a cherubim face, but that’s the kind of town Queenstown was. It certainly wasn’t a town full of [insert highly inappropriate expletive].

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My reaction to the unexpected comment.

After the game we packed back into our vans and out of Queenstown. We were set to be in Melbourne the next morning.

Halfway back to Hobart, Callow and Bill stopped the vans. There was no moon that night, and we were driving through a national forest. The closest town was an hour in any direction. When I looked up I saw the clearest Milky Way I have still ever seen, shining bright under an impossibly dark sky.

I don’t know much about constellations. In the northern night sky I can find the Big Dipper and the Northern Star, and that’s about the extent of my knowledge. But looking up into the night sky of the southern hemisphere made me feel lost, like I was on another planet. I was directionless.

As the five of us stood shivering on a cold Tasmanian winter night, Callow pointed out the Southern Cross, the smallest but most easily visible of the southern constellations. From there, our journey continued with a little more direction than it began.

Please Leave a Message After the Beep

This morning's hot air balloon ride in La Rioja.

On vacation in Spain...

Summer Vacation

My view today. 

Annual summer vacation commences today. Check back next week to find out where.  

The End of June

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Taking pictures of the women's 10,000m final at the 2008 USATF Olympic Trials.

The end of June always means two things for me: my birthday (June 26) and the USA Track and Field (USATF) Championships.

My first track and field event was my last warm-up before the Olympics in Beijing - the 2008 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.

Before leaving, Bill gave me several (repetitive) run-downs of what to expect in Eugene - who I would meet, where we would eat, everything Nike, and who the track stars were that we would photograph.

I learned about Tom Boyd and Chris Pietch, fellow photographers and friends; Cheryl Treworgy, a former world record holder in the women’s marathon turned professional photographer, and the mother of the fastest of the USA’s female distant runners; Beppe and Gianni’s and Oregon Electric Station, two restaurants we frequented; the full history of Oregon track and Hayward Field, and a long list of the track athletes we would watch compete.

By the time I arrived in Eugene I knew all the history and who the players were. All I had to do was take pictures and prove - one more time - that I could make the remotes work and work well.

I was more than a little nervous before we took off to Eugene. I knew it was my last chance to hone my skills before the Olympics and I wanted to do a good job.

Once we got to Eugene, my anxiety began to melt away. All the people I had heard about were incredibly kind, the track was beautiful and the weather was perfect.

There are few environments I have been in more lovely than Oregon in late June. Nights are crisp and a little chilly, but the days are sunny and warm - perfect weather to be in for consecutive 10 hour days.

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Carrying remotes back to our staging area after the Steeplechase, hence the trash bags which are the easiest and cheapest way to keep cameras dry during tracks wettest event.

On top of that Bill right away gave me a lot of freedom to create. There are always multiple events going on during track and field competitions. There are heats on the track while a final in javelin is happening in the field and long jump is starting up along the edges. One person can’t cover everything. It was the first event where I got to really make images, and I found - to my surprise - that I wasn’t bad at it.

The first night on the track was the first time I remember taking a picture and thinking, “that’s pretty good.” It was the women’s 10,000m final under the lights of Hayward Field.

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Shalane Flanagan (Cheryl Twerorgy's daughter), Kara Goucher and Amy Begley finished 1, 2, and 3 in the women's 10,000m in Eugene.

As the event wore on, my confidence grew. I wired remotes without help and without trouble, I took pictures that I actually liked and had an all-around successful event.

There is one image in particular I remember making. It’s of AG Krueger, a hammer thrower, and it was during one of the first days in Eugene.

The sun was setting, and Bill was busy with finals on the track. He called me over to where he was sitting in front of the finish line and handed me a Nikon D3 with a 14-24mm on a plate with a PocketWizard in the hot shoe.

“The hammer final is about to start,” he told me. “You need to go to the cage, set this up and fire it. I don’t have time.”

I remember walking to the hammer cage as the Oregon sun flooded the stadium with orange light. My hands were shaking just slightly as I set the camera inside the mesh protection and tried my best to line it up and focus it. I had never been solely responsible for the success of an image before, and I was nervous.

That night after we downloaded all of our images from the day, Bill sat down to edit the takes down before sending them to Sports Illustrated. I wasn't sure what he'd think of my hammer picture. The light made it so I had to silhouette the athletes, and - since I was still new at making images - I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

When he opened the folder with my images in it he quickly exclaimed, “Nice job, Laura Heald!”

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AG Krueger in the hammer cage in Eugene, Oregon.

It was the moment I knew I was ready for Beijing.

A Favorite Place

Me in Toadstool Geological Park in 2014. 

People always ask me if I have discovered any "favorite places" in my decade of travel.  

As I have traversed the globe, a few places stand out among the rest. One of those places is a little known park tucked into the northwest corner of Nebraska - Toadstool Geological Park in the Oglala National Grasslands.  

Toadstool is a series of otherworldly limestone formations in the badlands of America.  

I first came out to Toadstool in the summer of 2014 as part of our initial production on the Nebraska Project. Christine Casey and Dan Edwards were along to assist and to see what life on the road looked like. Our first few hours at the park were a mixed bag.

We arrived to soft clouds and blue skies and quickly set up a Cinevate motion controlled timelapse at the first formation we found. Then, for a reason I can't remember, Bill and Christine left with the minivan - likely to download a card or charge a battery at the guest ranch house we were staying at a couple miles away. 

Not long after they left the wind picked up and the sky turned from friendly to angry, throwing sand and rain at Dan and I before we could process the change in weather.

About 20 minutes later Bill and Christine returned to find Dan and me soaking wet and fuming mad. Clearly, we got past it and production continued. Toadstool was featured heavily in our “Nebraska Skies” video.

From a distance, the park looks like miniature mountains that somehow ended up in the plains of Nebraska. The short gravel path that leads from the parking lot to the formations is underwhelming; the sandstone ahead looks flat, the grass brittle. Then a corner turns, and the mushroom-like formations created over centuries of wind, rain and ice decay rise ahead.

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Toadstool Park, taken this morning under a blue sky.

It's a path and a sight I am now familiar with, but three years ago I felt as though I'd stepped off a space ship and onto another planet.

This weekend the Nebraska Project crew will be camping in Toadstool, working in the surrounding area by day and capturing time-lapse by night.

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My home for the next couple days.

It's a peaceful place to sleep - 50 degrees in the dead of night in the middle of June. The only sounds are a lonely coal train and distant coyotes, joined by the ever present mix of whippoorwills and prairie finches, a gentle breeze constantly blowing.

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A toadstool formation lit by the half-moon light, a shooting star in the distance. One of 700 frames from last night's time-lapse.

The rest of the world feels far away.

Biggest Little Fan

Having a chat with Emorie, my biggest little fan.

Some days on the road are just fun. Yesterday was one of those days.  

I'm back in Nebraska this week working on the latest edition to the Nebraska Project (story coming soon) and have had the pleasure of meeting my newest best friend. 

Her name is Emorie Sayge Bearinger, she'll be 5 in August, and she thinks I hung the moon. I don't know what I did to deserve her adoration, but I'll take it regardless. 

She stuck to me like glue yesterday - helping me "run the camera" when we interviewed her various family members, and finding herself next to me every time I sat down. 

The always smiling Emorie, taken on a Nikon D5 with a 300mm f/4.  

I took a seat right before for lunch and she immediately crawled up next to me.  

"Do you know why I'm sitting next to you," she asked me? 

"No," I answered. "Why?" 

"Because I like you," she told me, her blue eyes smiling up at me.  

"That's good," I told her, "because I like you, too." 

Her mom texted me last night right before I sat down to write this week's blog to tell me that Emorie was walking around the house with her plastic stethoscope ear buds in her ears (I had head phones in all day to listen to audio levels during interviews) pretending to be asking interview questions AND answering them herself, all while lugging the family DSLR around to take pictures and video. 

Emorie's mom sent this picture of her "interviewing" her dad, Jarod, with her stethoscope and her mom's DSLR.  

It's nice to feel loved, especially by such a lovely little girl. 

Frontier Days

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Cheyenne Frontier Days. This was clearly day one of my cowgirl adventure since the clothes appear fairly clean.

It's summer; that time of year where children run free in the streets and the only sport on TV is baseball.

For me, summer is rodeo season. Rodeo isn't something a lot of the country is familiar with. Everyone knows what one is, but few have had the pleasure of attending one. For many, rodeos are a relic of the past. They represent an agrarian lifestyle that is all but dead in much of the USA.

That's not the case for middle America. Rodeo is alive and very well in ranch states like Texas, Nebraska and Wyoming (among others).

The first rodeo I attended was the granddaddy of 'em all - Cheyenne Frontier Days in Cheyenne, WY. Cheyenne is as big as it gets in the rodeo circuit; the Super Bowl for real life cowboys (not the ones who wear blue and white on Sundays in the fall).

It was 2008 and I was a year into working with Bill Frakes. By that point we were doing more and more multimedia productions and fewer and fewer pure still shoots. My first year on the job had one giant steep learning curve, but I liked the creative freedom of multimedia production. I was part of the process and that felt good.

I had one problem for Cheyenne. To photograph the rodeo, photographers have to dress in full cowboy clothing. That means a cowboy hat and a cowboy shirt tucked into blue jeans held up by a leather belt. I needed a new wardrobe. To fix the problem, we had to build in time for shopping in Cheyenne before the rodeo began.

Our assignment was to create a photo gallery and multimedia for Sports Illustrated for Kids. For each day of the rodeo, Bill and I split up with different cameras and lenses and took as many photos combined as we could. 

I walked around the grand stands at least a dozen times a day. I went back in the “locker room” area where cowboys waited for their events to start. I went in the chutes as bull and bronc riders took off, thrown side to side by large and angry animals.

If I wasn't taking pictures I was walking around with a microphone and recorder, stopping to talk to as many cowboys as possible. This was - and still is - my favorite part of the multimedia process. I've always been more interested in the story than the single photograph. Interviewing random strangers in different parts of the country (or world) gives me a glimpse into the culture and people that a photograph alone does not.

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In audio mode at Cheyenne.

The folks in Cheyenne were all friendly and more than a little amused by my clear outsider status. I never did - and still haven't - bought cowboy boots. My tennis shoes gave me away as a clear foreigner.

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Making friends in the middle west with a fanny pack and tennis shoes.

By the end of the event we had a multimedia for the web, a leading off for the magazine and extremely dusty clothes - I had one outfit for three days. 

I've since been to several more rodeos - all in Nebraska - and my outsider status lessens every time. I now own more than one cowboy shirt - three, to be exact - and they feel more comfortable on my skin every time I wear them. I still don't wear cowboy boots - they just don't feel right on my Florida feet - but most people are willing to look past that faux pas and answer my questions anyway.

Shadows

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A wall of light In Eugene, OR, July 5, 2008.

“There is no off position on my visual switch.”

— Bill Frakes, infinite times

I can’t count the times Bill has uttered those words either to me, during an interview or in a lecture. I am one of the few people who honestly knows how true those words are.

Over the last decade I have been more than an editor, collaborator and business partner, I have been a light test dummy. Anytime we are anywhere and Bill sees pretty light, he asks me to stand in it.

The conversation usually goes something like this:

Bill: The light on that wall/tree/spot/etc is incredible.
Me: Yeah, it’s pretty.
Bill: Go stand over there.
Me: (Silent eye roll)
Bill: Please. It will only take a minute.
Me: (Quietly put down everything I’m carrying, which is usually a lot, and walk toward the desired spot.)
Bill: Don’t act like you don’t love these pictures.

Then I go stand in whatever patch of light he’s referring to. He takes a frame or two or twenty and the conversation continues:

Bill: Move half a foot to your right.
Me: (Steps six inches right.)

He takes another couple frames and looks at the back of his camera.

Bill: Now move three inches to your left.
Me: (Shuffle left.)

Another couple frames and a peak at the images later:

Bill: Now come forward a little bit.

He stares me down, focused, as I move slowly forward. When I get where he wants me, he shouts a quick, “Stop.”

Once he has me in the light, he directs me to move my body position. He tells me to turn sideways or straight on (or both, somehow), look away but at him, move my chin down and eyes up, or something along those lines. This part takes the longest (probably because I am a poor excuse for a model). A long nose shadow - which my long nose produces - can ruin perfectly good light. If I don’t bend my body in seemingly unnatural ways, my shadow can take on unrecognizable forms.

This shuffle can go on for more than a few minutes. But as a result I have hundreds of images of myself all across the world in different patches of beautiful light.

A coffee shop in Palo Alto.

Peet's Coffee in Palo Alto. Our friend Curt Bianchi is hiding somewhere in the shadows.

A staircase in Zurich.

This was before we gave a presentation in Zurich and is more about the shadow in the floor than on me, but notice how I'm standing. I don't normally stand that way, but in the photo it is far more flattering than just standing straight on and staring at the camera.

A doorway in New Orleans.

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My one trip to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl in 2010.

A breezeway in Las Vegas.

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Bill took this while we were working on our NASCAR multimedia, which is why I'm wearing a fanny pack.

An early morning in the Atlanta airport.

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I'm sure I was thrilled to pose for this one in my half-sleep state.

A window in Perpignan.

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Between galleries at the Festival of the Photograph in Perpignan, France.

A wall in the Middle East.

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One of my favorites from this collection. Jerusalem in 2010.

An afternoon in our office in Jacksonville, FL.

You can do a lot with a well placed blind.

And there are many others. Although I don’t always act like it, I do appreciate the pictures. Mostly I appreciate the lessons. He won’t move from a spot until either the light is gone, he has the photo he wants, or both. His tenacity is incredible, and something I am slowly starting to emulate.

I used to think his insistence was unnecessary. Having dozens (or hundreds) of frames of essentially the same photo seemed insane to me. But as long as it may take to edit through the images, Bill always gets his frame.

As I have started shooting more for myself, I've noticed a tendency to do the same. Not to the extent he does, but I've learned that a nano second can make a massive difference. Between frames one and six of a 10 frame burst, a shoulder can slouch, wind can blow, hair can move, eyes can close. An extra frame (or 50) costs very little when the difference between good and great lays in the balance.

Persistence is perfection’s best friend.

Lebanon, Part 1

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In front of a mural in Beirut, my favorite city.

This week I have found myself thinking about a place that is frequently on my mind - Lebanon.

It’s a place few people I know have had the privilege of visiting, and even fewer understand.

Beirut from a balcony.

Beirut is, without question, my favorite city. When I tell people this they give me a confused and concerned look and ask, “Isn't it dangerous?”

My answer is simple - it is the kindest, safest and most generous place I have ever had the pleasure of visiting.

Lebanon has long been a place of interest for me. My Godfather, Uncle Michael, is half Lebanese and half Syrian. I grew up with the tastes of the Middle East, feasting weekly on kibbeh, tabouli, hummus, dolmas and lamb served every way imaginable.

I remember reading about Lebanon as a child. TIME Kids was delivered to my 2nd grade classroom every month and I would leaf through the images, many of them of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict and the 7-day war that killed hundreds and displaced thousands in 1993. In them I saw images of war and devastation among the incredible beauty of Lebanon. I kept those magazines in a cabinet in my mother’s kitchen for years, and would frequently sit by the sliding glass door that led to the backyard and go over and over the images.

One of the first non-fiction books I read as a teenager and truly loved was Thomas Friedman’s Beirut to Jerusalem. His depiction of the conflict seemed distant, but incredibly human.

During my first semester at the University of Florida I wrote a 15-page term paper on the Lebanese Civil War for an international relations class and spent weeks pouring over the geography, history and theology of the region.

I think Lebanon was the first place - whether I was aware of it or not - that made me want to be a journalist. It was a vision, a taste and a people I was intimately familiar with and endlessly curious about.

In a restaurant in Beirut.

I took my first trip to Lebanon in March of 2014 to work with the Khoury family who own and operate Eastwood Schools in Beirut. Bill and I had met Michel Khoury, the son of Eastwood’s founder Amine Khoury, at an education conference in Ireland the summer before. Michel was incredibly kind and charming, and we quickly fell in love with his story.

His father, Amine, had opened Eastwood’s original campus in the Kafarshima neighborhood of Beirut in 1973. Amine’s dream was to provide an equitable educational community for all learners. However, his country’s history made that dream difficult. In 1975 the Lebanese Civil War began, sending his dream into disarray. Through Eastwood’s history, Amine has had to rebuild his dream four times.

I remember that first trip very well. Bill and I had been on a long series of trips and assignments - we had just returned from our first sandhill crane migration in Grand Island, NE, and were set to go to Singapore as soon as we returned from Lebanon. On top of that, my personal life had taken more than one twist and turn that year.

At that point I was tired, and more than a little burned out. I had gotten to a point where I dreaded travel, and that’s a dark place to be. On the flight from Jacksonville to Beirut, I wrote in my journal:

“My anxiety before this trip was the worst ever. I didn’t want to go. At all…But it’s strange, as the miles between me and Beirut have dwindled over the last 14 hours, anxiety is slowly turning into excitement…This trip will change who I am, just like every trip, and that - I think - is a good thing.”

— Journal, March 23, 2017

Those words seem prescient now. My life began to change the moment we landed in Beirut.

Michel and his father, whom we had heard so much about, greeted us at the airport. We were hugged, kissed, fed and welcomed.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I discovered a home I hadn't expected. When I felt lost, Lebanon found me.

During our time in Beirut, we captured life on campus at the Eastwood schools. We talked to students whose lives were changed everyday at Eastwood, teachers who loved their jobs and parents who cried when they told us of the love their children received at school.

We met the extended Khoury family. We met Michel’s sister Joelle, his mother Queen, his uncle Edmond, and his cousins Gavin and Megan. Each one of them welcomed us as family. We were taken care of with a hospitality and grace that I had never - in all my travels - encountered. They brought us into their homes, fed us amazing food and shared intimate stories. We were never treated as people hired to do a job. We were treated like dear friends; long lost family.

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Michel and I are the steps of Eastwood.

There are a couple moments I remember most from that trip.

The first was our interviews with Queen and Amine. We wanted their voices to tell their history. We sat in their beautiful home, full of antiques and religious icons, as Amine told us his story.

It was clearly a story he was familiar with, but not one he was familiar with telling. The stress of that period of their lives was palpable. He said there were days where he was so depressed he could barely get out of bed. Meanwhile his wife and father went on cleaning the school grounds. Then, one day, his father pulled him aside, grabbed him by the shoulders and said, “Amine, stop it! We work in joy.”

Amine’s eyes were wet when he told the story, a broad smile across his face. His father’s words had clearly made an impact on him, and they were making one on me as well. To this day it is a line I recite to myself when the world feels heavy.

The second was the sad part. We were on campus with some students when Bill’s phone starting buzzing and ringing. Friends were writing, spreading the word that Anja Niedringhaus had been assassinated in Afghanistan. I remember Bill’s face when he read the news - a mix of anger, sadness and shock. One of his closest friends had just been brutally taken from the world.

A picture I took of Anja and Bill at the Bird's Nest during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

In the days that followed, the words “we work in joy” kept circling in my head. Anja’s death - and life - made those words incredibly real.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from tragedy, it’s that - as hard and sad as it is - it’s also joyous. Joyous to remember the life that was lived, and joyous to realize the life you have the ability to lead.

We work in joy. Like Anja. Like the Khoury's. We work in joy because life itself is joyous.