INSHALLAH-LA-LAND:UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

People often ask me "What was it like living in the UAE?" or "Man, is Dubai like Vegas in the Middle East?" Sorry, but it's not like Vegas and living there was filled with innumerable idiosyncrasies, too many to mention. 

To be honest, I will never be able to articulate in words what my experience was like. My friends who still live there and who have lived there can understand why. 

That said, during my last two months in the Emirates I shot a personal essay. I was aiming at building both a keepsake of memories and an inquisitive documentation that worked to define some aspects of  the UAE. The following images are a few from this project recently posted on my website in The Emirates gallery. 

The essay Inshallah-la-land is a personal look at the mundane, daily absurdities, expatriate isolation, the unseen imperfections and other oddities that reflect the personality and branding of the Emirates. 

WORKFLOW: Al Harma

WORKFLOW is a ongoing blog post that will convey my experiences while on assignment. These thoughts might range from the impression a subject has left to explanations about the conceptual approach in the visual reporting. Enjoy. 

Assignment: Covering an assault training session in Al Harma, located in the Western Region of the UAE, between members of the United Arab Marines and the Royal Marine Commandos. 

This particular day required I start early. I needed to be three hours west by 830 am. This meant leaving from Abu Dhabi at 5 am-ish in order to arrive in Al Harma on time to meet with my contact. Upon arrival we were asked to wait. 

No problem I just went back to watching the road where grains of sand mimicked a swirled sky. It ended up being a good patch of welcomed downtime for the writer and I.  We were both a little blurry eyed from either the early assignment or the jolts of caffeine now in our systems. We ended up talking about the story line and other random thoughts while I indulged in my disgusting habit, smoking way too many cigarettes, again. 

Eventually the officer returned and escorted us to where the training session was taking place. As any good public affair officer does - he briefed us along the way. All the while our cargo of four or five military SUVS zoomed deeper into this nothingness of dunes and dunes and more dunes. 

Popp, ppppPOP, booom, BBoooM! 

So the sounds of artillery greeted us. I jumped out and assessed the area. 

Click... click, click, click...

I fired away

It was a near miss. The drill was over in a matter of minutes.