On their first night in the country, Symmes and Murphy took a taxi from Beirut to Damascus and landed themselves in a tea house in the Old City just before dark. At the tables around them, men dressed in Arab headwear sipped tea and played cards.

"I saw this one man, and he looked very intent on what he was doing. I thought I'd sneak a couple of pictures before he actually realized what was going on," Murphy says. "The other guys in the background were aware of the camera and smiling, but this one man was too busy with his cards to notice me."

The image he captured, featured on pages 84-85 of the February 2006 issue of Outside, gives the appearance of a private gathering, an exclusive look into the lives of Syrians at play.

For Murphy, traveling with a camera often gives him access to places and experiences normally closed off to the average tourist. It also gives him a mission.

"You don't quite know what's going on with Syria," says Murphy. "This was something we just came across in a mosque in Damascus, absolutely stunning place, a touristy kind of site. Suddenly, they put all these cars in front, so you couldn’t get near it. All these obviously influential powerful people were wandering into this event. I hung around for about ten minutes, then I got the hell out of there. There were no other photographers there. I was obviously up to something. Afterward, I looked at the frames and I could see the military guys checking me out."

"By the very nature of being a journalist, you behave differently with a camera," he says. "You're always persistent of more. You've got to come back with some kind of story."

But, at a time when journalists are often targeted in Middle Eastern countries—a Lebanese reporter was badly injured by a car bomb in Beirut the day after Symmes and Murphy left the country—the photographer knew the moments he had to remain inconspicuous.

Murphy's ability to capture the essence of the people and places they encountered is evident in his rich, in-the-moment photographs—the revealing images from late-night street corners and early morning fortresses. But he'll be the first to admit that taking pictures is much easier than conversing with those they met along the way.

"I didn't learn any Arabic," he confesses. "I'm kind of idiotic when it comes to languages."