ramimaki

My relationship with photography

I picked up my first camera in secondary school, but didn't start shooting professionally until I was in twenties. I am 28 years old, so I've been shooting since 7 or 8 delightful years.

I first began shooting when I was living in Damascus. I went for an institute for advertising and had a huge passion for photography. When I was in the institute I was told that you couldn't make a living with photography and that I should do something safer, so I focused on advertising instead.

A few years later, I established a company for web designing, and therefore left my central hobby to take care of business, it was a very profitable and fruitful period in my life, and I made a lot of connections and started working on my portfolio on weekends and evenings. Recently, I felt really drawn to Old Damascus suburbs, so I spent most of my time wondering through its old and historically artistic alleys.

To be honest, it's been always my passion and dream to study Photography professionally…and maybe will in the near future.

I aim at promoting myself to the target places I want to work for. Marketing is probably something we should do more of, but it always seems to fall to the bottom of the list, that's why I've created this page, and my next step would be creating my own website for professional photography.

And since Video appears to be a growing part of the photo industry, I've studied a relevant aspect (Video & Sound editing), and I found moving into shooting motion was a pretty easy transition that came naturally for me. I've always wanted to shoot motion, but was waiting for my target camera (HD Camera for professional documentary) to be available at a reasonable price.

In 10 years I imagine being even more selective about which sceneries that I shoot. And what really helped me approaching my ultimate goal was being a designer myself.

My advice and what has worked for me is to make your work more personal The more personal your work is, the more unique it will be and the more it will stand out. This requires some soul searching and exploration. I truly believe in following your passion and your own inner voice and getting comfortable in the unknown. A wonderful creative consultant I worked with, Antoun Mezzawi, often says that as artists we are paid to grapple around in the unknown darkness and bring something beautiful back into reality.

That impacted me on a deep level and always stayed with me. As an artist, I think it's important to give yourself permission to not know what you are doing. Yes, learn the technical things, but after that, make a practice of surrendering and seeing what comes through you. I think that is when we create our best work.

I really believe that having time to explore yourself and your creativity is crucial to finding your own style in photography, and standing out.