Storms over Beirut
Lightning doesn't wait. These frames are built from hours on a balcony, watching the sky over the city, timing shutter to strike.
“A storm gives you one true frame in a thousand attempts — the rest is patience.”Hady Semaan
Chasing the sky, reading the stone.
Hady Semaan photographs Lebanon in two registers: the restless sky over Beirut during storm season, and the quiet permanence of the Roman ruins at Baalbek. Both demand the same thing — waiting for the moment the light does something it won't do twice.
His storm work is built on long exposures aimed at the horizon for hours at a time, trading comfort for the chance at a single frame where the whole sky lights up over the city. The Baalbek series takes the opposite approach: still, deliberate compositions that let two thousand years of stone and shadow do the talking.
Based in Lebanon, shooting what's close to home and returning to it, season after season.
Beirut
Storm SeriesBaalbek
Roman RuinsLebanon
Home BaseBaalbek — ancient light
Corinthian columns against a hard blue sky. Two thousand years of stone, still standing, still catching the light differently every hour.