I (Taylor) really enjoyed my trip with Aid Sudan to a few of their locations. I went to soak up as much photography knowledge from Austin Mann as I could. He’s available for large projects (mostly international) if you need a good photographer.

We first went to Aweil where they were installing a radio tower. It’s the largest tower in that state of Sudan. It’s probably the tallest of anything in the entire state. They hope to be broadcasting soon. Aweil is the center of the Dinka tribe, the largest tribe in all of Africa. It has a very heavy Catholic influence. Even the Christian churches we attended had many people wearing the Catholic prayer beads. The second half of the trip took us to Nasir, this time the head of the Nuer tribe, the second largest tribe in Sudan. Aid Sudan was researching locations to build schools and clinics for areas where there are none.

Enjoy the pics below and click any of them to see the whole set. I didn’t take many photos as I was there to shoot video for Aid Sudan and learn from the photos Austin was taking. But I managed to take a few….

This is a girl who was going through an exorcism in the middle of the church service. We had a long time of intense prayer, singing and thrusting of bodies on the dirt floor. It was an intense experience for me. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve never felt so much pain, grief, fear, joy, glory and so much more all at the same time.

Austin snapping a photo of a small child.

I think this was an Arab, probably from Darfur. Darfur was to our North just 30km away. The Arabs in general are very good business men. They carry a good bit of the weight when it comes to developing the economy.

Shooting video with the new Canon 5D Mk II. It does HD video. The thing one the top of the camera is part of the wireless lav kit. We also shot with a shotgun mic on top of the SLR. Looked really strange, but might become more common.

This is a tukul, the traditional home used all over Sudan. They look a little different depending on the part of the country you’re in. The most striking difference in Nasir was the black and white painting on either side of the door. This was not on every home, but not unusual. I am curious to know if there are meanings behind the paintings. This shot was done at night with a new technique I learned from Austin. We call it ‘painting.’ We do a long exposure and then ‘paint’ the intended object with a flashlight so as to only expose that one object in the frame of the photo. Austin did some really awesome pics of the Samaritan’s Purse DC-3 (flown by AIMAIR) at night.