Project 365
It took me a while but I have decided to start a “365 project”.
I’ll be taking a photo a day for 365 days, using my Iphone camera now, and Instagram to share the photos around.
For now I’m sharing them on Facebook, on Twitter and on my Tumblr blog.
Project 365
So stay tuned, and give me your opinions and suggestions about the project 
[Timelapse] The arms of the ocean – Final
All done at last!
This is my very first attempt to make a timelapse, I used about a 1150 photos.
These photos were shot in a Beach village near Tetouan – Morocco, using a Canon EOS 450D.
Music: Sea of tranquility by John Stanford johnstanfordmusic.com/
Thank you very much.
All your comments and critiques are welcome.
Enjoy!
[Timelapse] The arms of the ocean – Trailer
It’s been a while now, I’ve been working on a timelapse but not the video kind of it.
This one is made out of about 1150 photos, all shot in a beach village near Tetouan – Morocco, using a Canon EOS 450D.
Check out the trailer of my very first timelapse (I probably should stop calling it that! a fast stop-motion might be more correct! Anyways…)
Wild wild zoo
Hello guys!
I went to the zoo a few weeks ago, and was back with a collection of pictures and a lot of fun!!
Here are some, check them out!
wild wild zoo
Click the Photo above for a better view of each photo!
A new collection from the zoo – Rabat, Morocco
Enjoy!
2011 in review – Thank you everyone!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 30 trips to carry that many people.
Best of 2011 – A summary
My very first year as a photographer, and it was an amazing one – I must say!
I hope 2012 will bring better creations and inspiration..
Here is a series of the best photos I shot this year:
Moulin rouge
Tour Eiffel
PadLove
For a faithful
Stairway to the unknown
Fragile things
Survival
The road
Ocean blue
A sunrise from the north
The moon
Happy new year everyone 
HDR again!
After “my very first HDR experiments”, I thought it’d be logical to make a post for the new versions of these same photos and compare the progress – Although I have already published a whole HDR collection: “The road”..
So here are the new versions of those photos:
Stairway to the unknown
The memorial
The restaurant
And a bonus!!
Long journey
It’s all about people
I heard a really great photographer saying once that photography is not only about keeping your own memories and family souvenirs.. photography is about people.. The other people.
Though I’m no portrait photographer, I love portraits, especially those representing people from different places, different cultures, faces of pure strangers.. Strangers you feel related to, strangers whose stories are written in their eyes and on their lips.. Strangers you feel close to your heart, just because they are humans..
Survival
Some people strike you with the way they look at things, deep sad faces.. still intelligent and alert..
Then beyond their old age, or their old clothes, beyond the dirt and the confusion, you see great people, people who weren’t given the opportunity to prove themselves, special souls fighting to survive and facing a tricky life with wide smiles and thankful hearts.
A portrait of innocence
…Then a sweet little boy watches you from the distance as you point your camera here and there, and flinches with a wide smile when he realizes that the lens is pointed towards him..
He runs away to hide behind his mother, but his eyes never quit watching you, and an innocent smile of triumph floods your heart with joy..
Purification
And it takes only one look at the horizon.. the far, far horizon… to know and to feel faith invading your soul and your heart.. deep inside..
and you catch yourself inhaling the pure air and taking in as much purity as you can, for it may take a while before you ever get another chance to clean up your interior…
That’s where you feel absolute freedom, infinite connection with yourself and with the world around you, and the more you let it take you in, the more every second and every tick of the clock becomes yours… Time becomes meaningless.
Purification
A sunrise from the north
It was a cold morning, or maybe it felt cold because I had to leave my bed and hurry to get the tripod and the camera set to capture the sun emerging from the ocean… Or so it looked as it slowly made its appearance…
Place: Tamernawt – Morocco
A sunrise from the north
btw, I’ve been preparing a little something lately.. a timelapse actually. It will be a first experiment!
So stay tuned!
First contest win
One of my Photos “The road” – from the road collection below – has won the Fanajeen photo contest.
I’m really excited and waiting for the opening to see one of my photos hanging on the wall of a coffee shop.
And it’s the first time I win a contest! :3
Summer haze
I remember when it was summer,
I remember the laze and the soft pouring rain,
I remember the pink flower,
I remember the daisies chain,
I remember that breeze like a feather,
against my dry skin, soothing the pain,
And when I leaned against the wooden fence
and when I felt the sun kiss my cheek
And when I breathed the scent of grilled grass
and when I watched the bees playing hide and seek.
I remember when it was summer, I remember the ocean blue,
I remember The laughs I had, I remember the smiles I drew,
I remember the road trips, I remember the colors of the rainbow,
I remember the summer haze, I remember that it was “yellow”…
© Fatima-Zahrae
Summer haze
Click the Photo above for a better view of each photograph!
A new collection from my summer trip
Enjoy!
The road
Through the valley.. It was just a line..
A detail..
Just a shade of white on a sea of colors.
For the voyage to begin.. And it was all a matter of time..
Click the Photo above for a better view of each photograph!
A new collection from Morocco
Enjoy!
10 months old photographer
It’s been almost a year now since I bought my DSLR camera and started playing photographer!
Ten wonderful months full of excitement and lessons, I must say that I have learnt a lot, it took me one small step forward to achieving this dream I’ve always nourished and drawn in my mind.
Up to now, everything I know about photography is self-taught, and since I’m experimenting a lot of techniques here and there, I still don’t have a specific or a defined style.
But I do know very well what I want my photography to be like in the future. I just think that I still have a lot more to learn and to experience to deliver a much professional and unique work.
I went through the hundreds and hundreds of photos I have taken so far, noticing the details and rethinking the editing. Reconsidering what I once decided to be a final version of this picture or this one. And it occurred to me that I still have a lot of good pictures I didn’t publish, nor even edited.
And that’s what I sat my mind to be doing for the next couple of months; before I start over and before I decide on what my style would be or what should be changed, I will simply go over the old pictures, re-edit them and reorganize them and create a first collection..
For a Faithful
“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” – Ira glass
These words inspired me a lot and I think these are exactly what every beginner needs to hear, to keep doing what they love and to pursuit their goals. Thank you all for your support
My very first HDR experiments
HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It is a post-processing method of taking either one image or a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single aperture and shutter speed.
Follow the roses
I’ve tried two techniques to create my HDR photos, The first one by taking 3 shots of the same scene with three levels of exposure then merge them using photoshop. And the second method based on a single RAW file from which I generate the 3 exposures and then merge them with Photoshop.
Now the thing is, I still can’t reach the results I was expecting.
I used Photoshop CS3 to generate these photos, but according to some tutorials, Photomatix generates better results.
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- Follow the roses
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- The memorial
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- The restaurant
So these are my first trials, and I hope the next ones will turn out better
Enjoy!
[Italia] Dolce Far Niente.. Or Idled
Dolce Far Niente! or sweet Idleness.
I read this phrase some time ago in a book, and watched how sweet it could be in the movie interpretation.. Not that I loved the book anyway, which was sort of boring really, but that’s a whole other story!
So I started daydreaming about this Italy where people are drowning into pleasure.. And that’s how I packed and went to discover my Italian dream..
My Italian dream
It was A trip through time where I drifted in this time machine back to renaissance days..
Time machine
From the land of fashion, and love, of masked balls and Gothic churches..
Behind that smile
From the country of pleasures..
The pleasure of idleness!
A collection from my trip to Italy.
Canon EOS 450D
Enjoy!
[Italia] Dolce Far Niente, a set on Flickr.
[Paris.. Je t'aime] Nemo.. Found
..And it was my quest, or so I felt, to journey around and stare at the fish through this hard glass.
And it had character!
What are you staring at?!
I was just trying to find that orange clown fish!! But Dory didn’t help! :p
Dory
So I took all the pictures and followed all the paths, faced the pirates and the sharks!
Shark
To finally find Nemo!!! 
Nemo... Found
Through the hard glass, a journey under water!
Enjoy!
Aquarium de Paris
Trocadero, Paris
Aquarium, a set on Flickr.
[Paris.. Je t'aime] Disneyland.. Or bewitched
Once upon a sunny Saturday I jumped on a train, and it took me from the land of ghosts to the land of magic!
That fairytale
..It hit me some time before that, when I held the red shiny ticket in the palm of my hand and had this little girl’s sparkling eyes, for I knew it was gonna be a great journey, especially to try out my new shiny toy (a cute Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens :3)!
And play, I did!
It was like you entered a world, where all the dolls and the drawings come to life and start jumping and dancing around you! and you become the doll in the land of the happy and the bewildered!
There, I found myself in wonderland, I was bewitched and these are glimpses of my journey!
More to come so stay tuned!
Camera: Canon EOS 450D
Enjoy
[Paris.. Je t'aime] Reflected
I was roaming around in the city of glass and concrete, searching in between the cracks, where all that’s up is down and all that is left is right..
Cracked
..Looking closer where ancient scripts of peace and love rest, and wandering around aimlessly hopping every red shoe I see is from the land of Oz!
Reflected
The red shoe
..following the shadows beyond the silver lake, and I wonder what is real and what is not?
Lake buildings
Enjoy!
“Reflection” collection from Paris.
More to come, so stay tuned
Camera: Canon EOS 450D
[Paris.. Je t'aime] Resurrected
“Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I’d never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn’t know what. Maybe it was something I’d forgotten or something I’ve been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive. That was the moment I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me” – Paris je t’aime
Eiffel tower
And I’m just an amateur photographer.. Delicately struggling to capture as much beauty as I can in my little black magic box..
Grande arche
Les champs Elysées
Stairs
Just a little girl beholding, with delighted wide open eyes, humanity in a different part of the world..
And I felt frozen in time as the waves of people swiftly pass me by.. only the faces seemed sad and strangely worn out.. In gray Paris..
Still as cold as it was doing and as melancholic as people looked, I was feeling good..
Empty spaces
.. and I don’t know what it was exactly about Paris that made me feel that way, but this I know, I felt alive again.
And dead I have been for too long..
Gone
More to come so stay tuned!
Black and white collection from my trip to Paris.
Camera: Canon EOS 450D
Enjoy!
Railway to neverland.. Or derailed
I followed the rusty railway, dragging myself after the fading colors of a thousand lights.. And I’ve heard the whispers.. the chants of the unseen guards guiding my weak legs.. Unfathomable words, but I knew the meanings.. and I walked and I walked..
I’ve been walking through the same way, round and round but it seemed to lead to different places.. I derailed many times but it’s the same path.. along the rusty railway..
Railway to Neverland
In the old station.. A thousand people waited, a sea of little curious heads.. Silhouettes of strangers, of lost souls.
And I waited too.. On the bench.
The mumble of the crowds started to fade, still the chanting never stopped:
“Not far from the old oak tree,
Behold the gates to the lost city,
the railway through the shadows,
O stranger! Take a fancy to our tea party! “
So I screamed: “O! put me on a train.. Let me go find my hometown.. Show me the railway to neverland.”
.. and the blaring sound of silence pierced my ears.
The old Medina of Rabat.. Or Colored
I walked through the streets of the old Medina as if it was for the first time.
Red
A childish happiness washed all over me, and I was bewildered by all the colors and by the authenticity of the place.
Rainbow dishes
Enlighted
I roamed these streets before, dully dragging my feet through the crowds, absently passing by the stores, yet it never occurred to me I’ll be intimidated by the passengers eyes over me, or over my huge lens.. which I never thought were that huge until I witnessed them threatening the peace of those who thought I was taking them in pictures!
It’s a whole different experience, one that brings together the beautiful and the annoying, the ordinary and the unexpected.. One that has many faces, and it’s a hunt for that one photograph you feel worth capturing.
In my case, it’s a hunt for the picture I am quick enough to capture!! but that’s another story!
Twins
More photos On my Flickr gallery! Enjoy!
Rusted
Rust in peace
Trapped
..And if you’re trapped under the heavy weights and the rusty burdens of life, lift your chin up and look at the wide sky above you.. let the wind take just this free part you still have and spread your broken wings to the rain to wash away the dust and to caress your injured pride..
Trapped
Oh! fragile flower! oh! sweet little creature! you shall be freed…
Trapped
