Beautiful Together: Nikon Photographer Tamara Lackey in Ethiopia

One of the more impactful experiences we had on our last trip to Ethiopia was spending a couple of rather meaningful days in Korah. While there, I had the opportunity to photograph a remarkable number of the people we met and the experiences we had. I shot everything with one set of gear: the Nikon D810 camera and the Nikkor 24-70 2.8 lens.

I found that simple setup to be remarkably versatile, as we moved in and out of quite a few challenging imaging situations. The shoots in the village of Korah took place in some rather extreme shooting conditions, too. It rained for much of the time we visited, and there was deep cloud cover for much of the time. Many of the images were photographed inside a mud-built structure, with no power or electricity. So quite a few of these photographs were shot at 10,000 ISO, as this wasn’t a situation where I could use flash, or any other additional light, without disrupting the natural flow of events. The gear combination worked enormously well, given these conditions.

While in Korah, we were fortunate enough to be able to see the whole village, all the way around and through, and we spent time inside more than a couple of makeshift homes, being greeted with extraordinarily warm hospitality. We met orphans without family homes and lepers without limbs – or, rather, we met beautiful human beings who just have had a much harder go at this life than most. We also saw what it meant for a community to care for each other, despite having so little themselves.

One of the main things we wanted to do in Korah was have a firsthand experience of the orphan feeding program that was founded by Korah native Cherenet Gullene, called Life to Live for Korah. And after spending time with them, and experiencing their entire process from start to finish, we definitely knew that Beautiful Together was going to partner with them to help as much as we could.

Korah, Ethiopia was originally built as a leper colony and has now grown more than 120,000 people, nearly all living in extreme poverty. The actual name “Korah” means cursed. There is more illness, sickness and lack in this village than one sees in most impoverished communities – yet, there is an incredible spirit, sweetness and energy running through the people. That doesn’t mean to say there isn’t suffering, difficulty, hunger. There is. The pain just seems to co-exist with the gratitude in a way that really stays with you.

In an attempt to share what is being done to feed these orphans in Korah, I made this 3-minute video with Animoto. When my friends at Animoto saw it, they jumped in to help. They are offering not only a 20% discount (use promo code “TOGETHER”) for a full year subscription to their amazing video creation service, but they also said they would contribute 20% of ALL new sales for anyone using this code up until November 10th, with every single one of those dollars going directly towards this orphan feeding program.

Please take a few minutes to see what this true grassroots program is all about – and go get your own Animoto subscription, for less, here: http://animoto.com/photography

You can also support this program, directly, at BeautifulTogether.org