Fashion Photographer Yaseera Moosa Interview

Yaseera Moosa is a Brisbane based wedding & portrait photographer.

How long have you been in the Field of Photography?

I started taking photos around five years ago.

What initially interested you into photography?

I’ve always wanted to make art, but I’ve never been very good at traditional mediums. I have dabbled in painting and music and crocheting and just about every other creative endeavor you can imagine, and I have been hopeless at all of them. Photography was this window that finally allowed me to create some tangible, visual evidence of how I perceive things.

What would you say is more important Good Knowledge/Good Equipment?

Knowledge, undoubtedly. Some of my favourite photographs have been shot on disposable film and iPhones. Good composition and subject matter is infinitely more powerful than pretty bokeh and sharpness.

Which photographer do you look up to and why?

This is a really difficult thing to answer, because I’m so involved in so many different genres from so many different time periods. I think the most powerful thing any photograph can achieve is to grant viewers a perspective that challenges their perceptions, and Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York epitomises that. I admire him so much for his vision and compassion and ability to encompass the human condition.

What genre of photography are you most interested in?

I love photojournalism, and that comes in so many forms. It’s a mother holding her child’s dead body in a warzone, it’s lovers holding hands in the street, it’s the way a city looked fifty years ago, it’s anything that is contextual and tells a story. Those are the kinds of photos I love most to look at and dream of creating.

Would you say photography is a hard line of work to get into?

It’s difficult to say because I don’t work as a Photographer full-time. I’m studying Architecture at University and I do Photography in between. I think there’s a big market for wedding and commercial Photographers, but most other genres aren’t quite as easy to break into.

If you could work alongside any one photographer who would it be?

There are so many photographers that I’d love to meet and talk to. It would b an absolute dream to learn from someone like Steve McCurry. What goal are you working towards within your photography and when Will you know you have reached it? I don’t have a goal that will ever make me feel like “This is it. I’ve succeeded.” The greatest reward I get for my photography is the process of doing it. It makes me immensely happy. I would love to someday work for a publication and take photographs that affect people but if that doesn’t happen I wouldn’t consider it a failure. My daily goal is just to notice the world a little more and preserve something interesting in it. It sounds simple but it is immensely difficult.

Do you find it hard to turn down a day planned with your family at the last moment because of a job put towards you?

I generally only take on photography jobs if I have the time and the assignment is something that I expect to enjoy or learn from, so when I have to pass up a day of sleeping in or being social, it’s usually worthwhile.