I have the feeling that I’ve always been into photography. My both mother and father were trained as photographer when they were younger, and my grand-father still have an impressive camera collection. I remember the old Nikon that used my parents to take pictures of me and my brother, and the unused development equipment that were stored in my basement.
I had my first own Nikon when I was something like 14. My father taught me the basis of photography, but I wasn’t really comfortable with silver-based photography. I really started to be into photography when I bought my first DSLR, Nikon D40, when I was 22. At this time, I were working in an air transport company, and I was able to take the liberty to travel abroad when I had free time.
I went in few countries in Europe, and brought back thousand of photographies. I couldn’t help taking pictures of everything new I were discovering ! I had to keep a memory. At the begining, I took lot of pictures but didn’t really care about the composition of my frame. Then I became to pay more attention to details, angles, people, light, that made up my pictures.
One day, as I was in Dublin, taking pictures with a new telephoto lense Sigma 55-200 that I just bought, there were a crash between a bus and a tramway. I ran to take pictures, I felt that I was in the right place at the right moment. But as the crowd was taking pictures of the accident with their mobile phones, I was more interested in taking pictures of the crowd. I think that this day, I understood that what I wanted to take pictures of was just real life.
After that, I couldn’t be more into photography. And I couldn’t imagine my life working in an air transport company either, so I resigned from my job and got into Arfis.école, a movie school, last year in Lyon, France (the city I always lived in), as I were 24. This school tought me a lot. How making a good picture.
What should be in the frame, and how it should be. It also gave me several prime examples. I feel pretty close to what do Raymond Depardon, Federico Fellini, or Alejandro Inarritu. Even if they are directors, not photographer, I feel close to how they make their pictures, how they transcribe again the reality. I try to do the same.
Of course, I am curious. I tried lot of techniques to edit my pictures, giving them a vintage effect with filters, or dramatic effect with HDR. I make black and white as well as colored pictures. I try to diversify as much as possible. But now I would like to be more « serious ». I now work with a Nikon D90, I have few lenses, but I would like to edit as less as possible my pictures, I would like to test silver-based photography again, and me and my friends are looking for places to make exhibitions.
I am only 25, I still feel young, curious. I still have time to improve again and again, and to walk through the world. To bring back more and more pictures of life.
Links:
Website : http://www.charlessayer.com
Flickr : http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlinow/
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/charlessayerphotographies
Twitter : https://twitter.com/Carlinow_
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