Big World Picture: Photographer's highlight #23 Anas Saiyid

Originally from Pakistan, Anas Saiyed has now spent most of his life in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After staying in Toronto, where Anas gained his degree in Business Economics from York University, he then returned to Jeddah 7 years later. It is these last 2 years back in Jeddah where Anas developed his new hobby of street photography.

Anas’s introduction to the world of street photography came when he was asked, by a friend, to tag along to shoot an older part of the town. His first photos were caught using her Iphone and later he went on to purchase a Olympus EP3 of the same friend and now uses this camera.

Anas took his photographs for the love of capturing the scene, the purpose to be just for his to see, but after his friend pointed out his that he had a talent, for which I whole heartedly agree, for taking photos and that he should share his work with others and so introduced his to the world of the photographic social network of Instagram.

Anas's Instgram username is asaiyid.

From being on Instagram Anas has found all sorts of fantastic photographers, some of them are professionals who have been making photographs for many years. This is partly the reason I joined Instagram as this enables me to gain criticism on my work, enabling me to improve on my skills and ideas. Anas gained a lot of positive feedback and this gave him the push to get out there and shoot more. On Instagram Anas joined in street photography challenges, where members would be given a set time frame to submit their works by use of Hash-tags ( # ), eg. #streetbw and then judges that founded the groups would select 4 or 5 finalists for other members to then vote on. Anas has won 2 of these contests. There is no prize other than the acknowledgment of your work and the great feeling that comes with having your work appreciated by others.

Anas says, “The reason why I prefer doing street photography is because it allows me to be random. You just have to go out and shoot. For me it could be anything, an interesting looking character or a building. You never know what you’re going to see out there and what you would be able to capture. It’s all about seizing the opportunity to take the picture you want. Sometimes you have to be discreet about it and sometimes you just have to go ask.”

Over the year Anas has travelled the world and captured the many places such as London, Toronto and Malaysia.

Anas can be found on the Jeddah Photo Club website