In Conversation: Saidul Choudhury
23.07.20 — Words by Saidul Choudhury. Introduced by & in conversation with Jaheed Hussain.
We had a conversation with Manchester-based photographer, Saidul Choudhury, someone we’ve worked with in the past — most recently, documenting Manchester’s Black Lives Matter protest on the 6th of June. We had a chat about his creative practice, latest inspirations and love of lively subjects within his shoots.
Introduce yourself, what do you do?
Hello, I’m Saidul Choudhury. I’m a creative individual based in Manchester. I’m a graduate in graphic design, however I have switched my passion towards photography.
Why did you take up photography?
While I was studying, I took up a part time job working for a photography company, Events Photo Team. Before I took up this job, I had no interest or knowledge in photography and working there peaked my interest. During my studies, I started to become more interested in creating images, which encouraged me to research more into photography.
Are there any photographers that inspire your work?
My photography practice started from watching videos on YouTube. One YouTuber I was interested in particular, was Mike. After checking out his channel, I really enjoyed watching his street photography, POV vlogs. Since then, I realised that I like compositions that give off bright colours. Anywhere from the streets, shops, buildings, signs etc. Watching these videos and posts allowed me to learn something new. His videos inspired me because he taught me to take risks, such as taking unusual photos that may not make any sense at first, but I always put my own creativity within the idea to experiment.
Taking pictures of cars is my strongest suit in photography. For me, it’s more of the visual designs and details that makes me drawn to a particular car. I spend time learning about the car from a design perspective and the engineering side, while looking at the finer details visually and how unique the model is. Sometimes being knowledgeable in the automotive side, allows me to understand a car better. It also allows me to decide what location or type of photo would be suitable to maximise my creativity.
These are people I am most inspired by, and get ideas from for the type of photography style I like.
Mike (@northborders): He has a lot of knowledge about car photography as he used to work for Porsche Doncaster, in Australia. Every now and then he would get a car from Porsche and would explain how he goes around shooting the car, with creativity in mind
Khyzyl Saleem (@The_kyza): I follow him because he is a crazy car concept artist and I really like the tones, lighting he uses in his posts. Although this is not something that I do, I appreciate his artwork and can spark an idea when looking at it, from a photographers point of view.
Liam (@7th.era): He loves street photography and most images are experimentation of blue and orange colours, to create contrast. He usually shoots anything but he has a good eye for leading lines in a composition.
19tones: He is a portrait photographer from Moscow. He uses really cool, contrasting tone with writings in his images and really experiments with long exposure shots.
@peter.tri: Not a photographer, but a Melbourne-based food store owner. I follow him because he’s straight to the point and says things how it is. No bullshitting. I love that and use this to motivate myself.
The lightsaber photoshoot is super cool, why did you decide to take it in that direction?
Being a Star Wars fan, anything that has the theme going on, interests me. After seeing one of the images from Liam, of his friend holding a lightsaber inside a tunnel, it gave a superhero look to the photo. Since then I was in a search to buy a lightsaber, and a similar tunnel. I wanted to capture a photo that’s symmetrical but still has a lot of energy, created by the source of light. As for my photos, I do like contrasting colours and this is done in editing stages. I normally work with blue and orange colours, unless there’s another naturally. This shoot was very exciting for me as I got to use my props and also it was very challenging too. I had to play around with a lot of camera settings, as well as telling my friend how to pose when, I have never worked with a model before. At the end, out of 30 images I was only happy with 3 of them. This shows that you should always take multiple shots with different settings because you never know what will be good or bad.
Posting this image was quite difficult for me actually. I was worried that this might not fit, with the rest of the stuff that I post. But this negativity led me to think; what do I really want to post? Am I worried that it’s not going to get many likes? No. Do I care what people think? No. Do I want to post the stuff that I want to post? Yes. Will I inspire or will some people appreciate my creativity? Yes. After going through this process I realised that I enjoyed taking this shoot. Hence, why I decided to post it. I posted 3 images from this shoot and they got really positive comments. One of my images, featured in Photography Battles.
Is there anything you’ve got planned in the future?
At the moment, I’m trying to grow my account and do more car photography to build my network. I’m waiting on everything to open up completely in the city, as it will allow me to do more street photography as the city comes lively again. But right now, I am putting more time in learning car photography. Also, looking for anyone who’s in a similar field to me, so we can work together, generate ideas, and have fun during shoots. Currently, I’m working with an illustrator, Urooj Ahmed, an amazing illustrator from Newcastle. We teamed up together to bring photography and illustration together. In the future, I’m investing in a higher resolution camera, then I will be able to print some of my work as I’m a big fan of textures. I want to look at different printing processes such as risograph printing and on canvas.
Where can we see more of your work?
At this moment in time, all my work is shown in my Instagram page.
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Image credits: Saidul Choudhury
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