First journal in 6 monhts!

More like "Recommended YEARLY allowance of Awesomeness".

Anyway, here's some photographic brilliance from you guys and things inspiring me these days.

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Hello everyone.

A very quick note to say Hi and to let you know that you can follow me on Twitter emrerende twitter.com/#!/emrerende and Like my photography page on facebook right here www.facebook.com/pages/EMRE-RE…

Add me/Follow me and let's connect

Here's what's giving me inspiration these days:  

Mature Content

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First Journal in 6 months...

Here's a good dose of goodness from  you guys:

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Seeking inspiration these days and these are helping quite a bit.

Where did people go? I feel like there are less and less (ironically while knowing there are more and more) people on DA. Did we migrate somewhere? Did I miss a meeting?

Something We Like interviewed me. Here it is: www.somethingwelike.com/inspir…

So much has happened in the last 6 months.

My portrait book project turned into a completely different book project. It's now a book about the Indian Ocean. I think over time Peter Marlow convinced me that there wasn't much to a book with 100 faces. Thank you all for all your comments to my previous journal on this matter. Currently writing the foreword to the book. Going very slow indeed.

I spent a month in Malaysia, working and traveling to Northern Thailand and Java from there. Then spent a month in the US, working in Washington DC (saw Obama with my own eyes!) and traveling and am now back in Doha... 40 degrees... doing overnight shifts... living like a zombie.

I've started missing analog so much that I recently "invested" in a  Diana lomography camera. Don't like the results. Maybe I should have gone for a Holga. Anyway, loading and rolling medium format film did a lot of good to my soul.  

Finally, as always, here are some photos from me, old and new.

        

Hi everyone,

So I have just finished a photography course organized by Magnum photos. 5 days of intensive photography with Peter Marlow of Magnum fame.

We shot projects that we pitched ourselves on the first day and exhibited them on the last day, working with Marlow along the way.

During that course, I showed my previous work to the Magnum guys and especially the portrait book that I am working on using Blurb which will include shots like these:




"These are not portraits" said Marlow. "These are faces. And they are a bit too accidental if you ask me" he said.

"How do you mean" I said. "Well you've just come across these people on the street and stuck a camera in their faces."

"exactly, that's the whole point" I said. "There isn't much value to that" he replied. "look at Steve McCurry, he finds his subjects and then puts them in backgrounds and light environments he feels comfortable in"…

I always thought that McCurry's shots, amazing and inspiring as they may be, felt a bit too staged and I got my confirmation right there.

Coming from a Magnum photographer, all this got me thinking… Is there really no value in trying to bring people's emotions and personalities through their eyes and faces?

Is there only value in portraits like the ones below where the surrounding, background, framing tell a bit more about the person what they do etc?



I read again McCurry's chapter in the Magnum Stories book where he says "There's got to be purpose to the portrait at another level - You have to say something or reveal something about the person. Recording a face isn't enough".

Why not?

Magnum was founded as a rebellion against the establishment because Capa, Cartier Bresson were angry not to be able to own their negatives.

Interesting how they have become the establishment over 50 years.

I really need your honest views and opinions on this. I am at a critical stage where I am putting my/your favorite portraits/faces in a book that I am planning on publishing through Blurb. Is there no point for such a book? What do you think of "Accidental Faces" for a title?

Photographic brilliance in various forms...

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...and my personal favorites from my gallery...

     


Do you ever get the feeling that your work will be completely forgotten once you are yourself gone? I do fear I must say that all those years of hardwork would have achieved nothing at the end. Gone. Folders and folders of negatives rotting in some relatives' basement, thousands of digital files in some broken hard drive.

I am quite confused these days... I really miss film. Yet I have absolutely no access to it here and no ways of developing it. I miss black and white even more... tried shooting some recently with the 5dmark II. Not satisfying at all...

I am in a dark place... Photographically that is. I've completely stopped taking pictures on a daily basis as I used to and instead go completely shutter insane in the periods I'm away from here. Keep repeating yourself: It's just a phase...