Some of the Most Powerful Pictures Ever Taken

The power of a picture can be changing. It can change perceptions. It can alter ideas. It can even ignite movements. Some pictures will even bring you to tears.

I recently stumbled on a post online that had a selection of 40 pictures deemed as some of the post powerful photographs ever taken. By the end of the scrolling through those 40 images and reading the captions, I was amazed.

This is a picture of three sisters, posing for the same picture, years apart.

This is Harold Whittles, hearing for the first time ever in his life.

This is a photograph by Marc Riboud, showing young pacifist Jane Rose Kasmir planting a flower on the bayonets of one of the Pentagon guards during an anti-Vietnam war protest.

These three pictures are but a fraction of a series of equally haunting images that you can check out at this link.

The Facebook Camera App: My Impressions

Seeing as I have a US iTunes account, which I dearly cherish, I got to download the Facebook Camera app, currently exclusive for iPhone, before its availability on other stores. So I tested it for a whole day on my iPhone 4S and these are my initial impressions.

It’s pretty fast. Once you launch the app, it takes you immediately to a news feed version for Facebook’s photos. You can see pictures that your friends uploaded and comment on them. This is where the pictures you take will go as well. You can swipe among the pictures your friends were tagged in. Loading the pictures is much faster than the regular Facebook app, which I think is horrible at handling pictures.

Facebook Camera is streamlined enough to post pictures on your Facebook timeline without much effort. Once you take the picture, you’ll get many filters to choose from before sharing your work. Those filters are a total of 14 (apart from normal). You access them by tapping on a brush button similar to that in Apple’s iPhoto app. They are similar to the filters you get in instagram but are named differently, obviously. You can upload pictures in batches, faster than with the regular Facebook app, and in higher resolution.

Once you’ve chosen the filter of choice, you click on the button to post. Now you’re back to familiar territory, similar to the Facebook app for iOS. However, you can actually save a post draft here in case you decided you wanted to save sharing the picture for later. That’s something I hope they add for the regular Facebook app.

Once you share the picture and it uploads, it’ll appear on your timeline as posted from “Facebook Camera.”

Overall, I think it’s an interesting app. I really like the icon, actually. But it’s not quite a home-run. Will it overtake instagram? I doubt that’s Facebook’s intention but they’re not betting right if they think it will. While it has its advantages, such as saving the original picture in your camera roll immediately after taking it, it has its drawbacks as well. For instance, it doesn’t save the modified picture in your camera roll, unlike Instagram.

Instagram has become so ingrained with users that uprooting it will take much more than an app which shares exclusively on Facebook and using it means flooding un-wanting users with pictures of things you find interesting but they have no interest in.

At the end of the day, where Facebook Camera falls short is in it not being a photo-exclusive platform. It comes with the baggage that is “Facebook.” Bonafide photography applications, such as Instagram and Camera+, cater to those who have a hobby for photography. They created an environment where those users can stretch their wings with exotic shots that they wouldn’t necessarily want to share with their Facebook friends.

Facebook Camera caters to the Facebook crowds whose pictures are less interesting than the Instagram crowd. But they are much, much more numerous. For once, however, Facebook has created a mobile app that is actually good. Hopefully that’s a sign of what’s to come for the regular Facebook app.

Brace yourselves, everyone, the Facebook Camera posters are coming.

Spring in Lebanon: Batroun City

Batroun is probably my favorite city in Lebanon. Sure, I’m biased. But I cannot get over the charm that this little place has. Every time I go for a walk around its old streets, I cannot but be fascinated by how breathtaking they are and how long they’ve been there.

The churches, the houses, the streets, the beaches… all of these combine to make Batroun one of my favorite places in Lebanon.

Then again, the moment I set foot in this city, I remember my school, my best friends, my first crush. I remember how we used to go to Royal Pizza after every exam and have the most awesome food a person can have. I remember going to a beach named Blue-Bay at the time with friends. I remember running around the city on our various scholastic excursions. I remember going with my mom every single Saturday to run errands around its souks. I remember hating to wake up every morning to go to Batroun and I also remember how much I missed that when it didn’t happen anymore. I remember going clubbing for the first time in Batroun. I remember going to my first pub in Batroun.

I remember going for the first time to see Batroun’s Phoenician wall. I remember always wondering why this gorgeous city never got what it deserves.

I remember the great, great people I’ve met inside the walls and under the atmosphere of this city. They are the friends who lasted through it all.

This post is my tribute to all the Batrounis who read this blog, who don’t read this blog and whom I love. Thank you for making our city one of the best places ever and thank you for the time of my life that I’ve spent there.

This is where we started our walk

St. Stephan Church

Batroun's mina

St. Georges Church

Saydet el Ba7er Church

The Phoenician Wall

This is where Ramy Ayash shot "El Nays el Ray2a" video clip

Ma23ad el Mir

Ba7sa beach

Pictures brought to you by @SemAgnes and @ElieFares

Skipper, Batroun's coolest pub

Sawary Resort - this is where we have a chalet

Formerly Blue-Bay, now Zoo beach.

Batroun's Mosque. You can see the Cross of the Sainte Famille school in the background.

A marine research facility that never finished getting constructed (and probably never will)

Batroun is famous for being a sailors' city

My school!

The playground for the young ones

My school's church - it closed for renovation in 2006. This was the first time in 6 years that I visited.

New ceiling, new windows, new walls and even a new priest - Pere Charles is back....

Remember playing this?

Where we used to hang out during breaks

And what better way to end it than with Batroun’s very own sunset….

There Goes My Heart… Home

We all know how it feels to be home… you’re too comfortable being there, you’re yourself there… But you know what feels even better than being home? Going home after a long absence.

I belong in Batroun. I am from the North and my heart will always go there. Driving around my hometown, Ebrine, in the Batroun Caza, I snapped these pictures.

When I wake up and open the blinds, this is the first thing I see:

And if I feel like going to sightsee, I don’t need to wander off a lot… these are a few scenes that await me after a few minutes of walking.
And whenever I feel like I want to be alone, I can simply drive down to a very old church, dating back to the 1400s. This is St. Charbel (the Lebanese saint took his name).

My hometown also harbors the mother Convent for Sainte Famille. We all know people who have been to their schools and there are two streets, one in Tripoli and one in Beirut, named after my hometown because they have Sainte Famille convents on them.

And if I feel like visiting my grandma, I pass by a canopy of trees and beautiful olive tree fields…

And if you ever feel hungry, Royal’s Pizza in Batroun offers the best pizza in Lebanon. And trust me, I have tried many, many pizzas. Nothing will ever come close.