Saudi photographer Iman Al-Dabbagh started her photography career when she was studying graphic design. She had a camera and started experimenting with it for school art projects.
“I started taking the camera with me everywhere to photograph my daily life, my food, and family, because I was into journaling but lazy about writing,” she said. “I then created an online photo journal in which I noticed how my work evolved over time. Three years later, people started asking me if I could shoot their events. That was the start of my professional journey,” she added.
It’s been six years now since Al-Dabbagh started her photography career, but in those years she evolved and improved a lot. “I use the word ‘professional’ when I speak of the time people started hiring me, not when I felt like a professional. I began to feel more confident with my work two years after starting to get hired regularly by acquaintances and community members,” she said, confessing that she still has a lot to learn.
Al-Dabbagh’s personal and documentary work focuses on people in their environment. “I’m interested in social issues that address national or ethnic identities, displacement and refugee stories, women’s rights, gender inequality, and societal development through time,” she said.
“My other, client-based work includes NGOs, weddings, community events, children, food, interiors, street and travel photography, and also movie stills,” she added.
Al-Dabbagh never went to photography school, but as a graphic design student she took elective photography classes. “I also took a couple of classes a few years after graduating, when I was getting into photography professionally, to strengthen my skill and knowledge. It was more effective for me to continue experimenting on my own and reading tutorials online. I see myself as a self-taught photographer,” she said.
When asked to take us through her workflow, Al-Dabbagh said it always depends on how big the assignment is and how fast the client needs the photos. “Typically, it starts with corresponding through e-mail or phone, followed by meeting the clients to know them and what they want,” she said. “Then there’s shooting time, which varies. If it’s a wedding, it could be up to 12 hours; if it’s an editorial for a magazine, it’s an hour or two. Then there’s the editing and tedious office work time that takes about double the time of actual shooting, and it includes uploading photos, backing up, editing down, and choosing the best images, post-processing, saving the new edits, and backing them up again. Ultimately, I mail the final result to the client. On occasions and if the option is available, I also make prints for the clients,” she added.
Al-Dabbagh explained the pros and cons to photography from her point of view. “Pros: I can work anywhere in the world, and I can send my work to clients wherever they are. I also like not always being stuck to a desk or office,” she said. “The cons are carrying heavy gear, buying expensive equipment, and worrying about having secure and multiple backups of all my work at all times,” she added.
Before showing the picture to viewers, Al-Dabbagh does rounds of edits herself. She then shows the work to others professionals and non-professionals for fresh eyes to see what her eyes saw many times, and finally she comes back to herself for some ‘last-minute instincts’. “I know the photo is really good when I can emotionally react and relate to it, and when it is technically exposed well, and not boring from a compositional point of view,” she said. “I’d like viewers to really see the people I photograph, to empathize with those they relate to and try to care about stories of those they don’t relate to – or to see what I see; something they didn’t see before. As for the work I do for families, my only hope is that in 10 or 50 years, when they look at old photos, they will have big smiles on their faces,” she added.
Photoshop is quite important to Al-Dabbagh. She is one of those who were already immersed in image editing software before getting into photography. “I used to rely on it more than I should have – ‘I’ll fix this later in Photoshop’ – but after becoming a lecturer in photography, I started focusing more on how to get it right the first time and minimize the editing later, because that is what I teach my students. However, a little bit of color adjustment and contrast does go a long way,” she said. “Lately, I’ve been using actions as a Photoshop tool, because they make the editing process go faster. I have an action that is set up for resizing for printing and another for web. I haven’t been using Photoshop as much as before, though. I have moved to a light room for big photo shoots,” she added.
Al-Dabbagh avoids cropping, unless she is doing a theme of square photos or there’s an ugly branch sticking out of someone’s head. “I tell my students that if they need to crop, they must use the “shift” button, because it is important to maintain proportion, especially when they are presenting a series of images together – unless there’s a justifiable, creative reason for it,” she said. “I don’t like seeing irregular sizes, and I can tell that when someone crops too much and the result is a non-standardized size, they are no photographers,” she added.
When asked what she would have done differently during her photographic career, Al-Dabbagh said she would have made sure to write contracts even for friends and acquaintances. “When I first started, one client who was also an acquaintance managed to disappear without paying me. If they ever read this, they know who they are, and they should be ashamed,” she said.
Al-Dabbagh has been working on a photo essay about women in Saudi Arabia for a couple of years now, and it is still a work in progress because she is currently not based in Saudi full time. She would like to depend on photography alone for a consistent income in the future. At the moment, she is also teaching.
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