A while back, I wrote a blog post about depression and the stigma that surrounds it in the UAE (and lots of Arab countries). I’ve been thinking about it a lot especially because I haven’t exactly been doing so well. I was debating whether or not I should talk about this, for the same reasons I mentioned…
I cannot believe I’ve neglected my blog for an entire month; my life’s been kinda hectic. I was in Germany for about two weeks, and a day after I got back I got a really bad cold for almost a week. But now I’m back! And I just finished a new image that I’m super excited…
I always have a bunch of ideas written down for pictures that I want to do, but there are days when I feel like I desperately need to go shoot something and all my ideas either need too much preparation or I’m just not excited about them. I stopped doing spontaneous shoots a long time…
It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to share this image. This is probably the one I’m most excited about because I’ve dreamed of it for ages. It’s one of the ideas I have in my book that I kept putting off, I’m not sure why. I never got less excited about the idea, I…
I began dreaming or sinking, most nights they meant the same thing. Every now and then, I come across songs that make me tremble. I’m a music fanatic. I find solace in music and I find inspiration in music and I think it’s one of the most beautiful things ever. Sometimes it’s the lyrics, sometimes…
I mentioned in my last blog post that I did a couple of shoots with my friend Natalia. After we shot some portraits, we started doing more conceptual work. We got to create an image that I dreamed about for a long time, inspired by a music video I saw when I was around 12 or…
Read more On shooting Natalia: Seven Days A Week of Truth and Fantasy
Last Friday, I did the biggest shoot I’ve ever done. I worked with a model called Natalia Wiechowski and a makeup artist called Heba El Kaissy Abd and we shot from 12PM till 7PM. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Here’s the backstory: During GPP2015, Natalia was one of the models for the workshops and she was photographed…
I promise this isn’t new age hippie talk XD Just bear with me. Lemme start from the beginning: The last two weeks have been.. odd, to say the least. Almost every single shoot I’ve done this month failed. This is one of the times where I have a bunch of ideas that I want to try…
Read more On why I’m starting to believe in The Law of Attraction
During the Restart The Art exhibition a couple of weeks ago, I got to chat with the lovely Fiona Hepher, who’s a part of The Sameness Project team (if you guys are interested in seeing pictures from the exhibition, check out my Facebook page). I decided to ask her if she’d be interested in modeling…
Sometimes it feels like there are two sides of us, constantly at war. One wants to be saved and is fighting for freedom and release, and one wants to stay down, and drag everything with it. Because it’s easy, because it’s safe, because the pain is familiar. Because it’s constant. That dark, self-deprecating, self-loathing side…
Amani AlShaali 