Featuring Shun Ahmed
© Photography by Shun Ahmed
Hi, my name is Shun Ahmed! My hometown is right here in Nashville, TN, and right now, I live in Memorial House. I am planning on majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Political Science and minoring in Communications.
What is your primary medium of art?
Right now, I take photography, videography, and film. I mainly do photography, though, for both business and creative purposes.
What spurred your interest in cameras?
When I was super, super young, my dad got me a camera. It was a $20 camera from the thrift shop. A Sony AX 6, I think, like the second oldest version of Sony. It was super old and completely broken, but my dad got it for me, because he knew I wanted to find a hobby. Plus, both my parents are refugees, and they didn’t go out much. They didn’t like me going out with people they didn’t really know. So, they brought that home for me when I was around 4 or 5 years old—you can’t expect parents to know exactly what a kid wants. I was so bewildered and happy. So then, I played around with it for a year and started reading up in the library about how a camera worked. Tried to fix it myself. I think I broke like half of the camera, so I can’t use the flash anymore, but I still got pictures out of it. They were super grainy, but I worked with it.
When I was in 5th grade, I got a fully clear picture to come out. It was of my little sister. It came out, and I completely fell in love with it. She smiled and said take a picture, and I looked at it and said, “Holy shit, this works!”. After that happened, I started trying more and more to take cool pictures. And then at the end of 5th grade, I was pushed into this poetry competition—I did spoken word for a while before this—and I won the first place prize which was an actual camera. From then on, I bloomed and did photography at concerts and weddings, networked a little bit and pushed myself for 2 years. And now, people ask me to take pictures for them.
You mentioned that the first clear picture was of your little sister. Who or what is your favorite subject to capture now?
Concerts. They produce the coolest lighting and the coolest pictures.
I love music. And watching someone perform, you can see how magical they turn when you take a picture. Plus, a lot of the concert lighting makes it seem like they have this different aura to them. One of my good friends Cameron, who is a musician, asked me to take pictures of his show. I took a picture of him singing his heart out and surrounded in blue lighting, It was the purest moment of he’s in his happy place. The next picture was of the audience, all of them looking at him in awe. You can’t capture more magical moments than this, because it’s someone doing what they love in front of everyone.
The first concert that I went to that had me actually fall in love with everything was Cursive the band, which has the weirdest group dynamic because it’s a bunch of 40-year-olds who look like failed gym school teachers. I remember getting a picture—on the grainy camera—of a lady with an electric violin flipping her hair. It came out perfectly. She was gleaming yellow; she was literally golden. And I was like, this is what I want to do.
Before you leave us: do you have any photographers or other content producers that you really love and would highly recommend checking out?
Bertie Gilbert – a filmmaker who works with contrast in lighting. I’ve fallen in love with every one of his short films, especially “Stomping Ground” and “Let It Be”.
KickThe Pj (PJ Liguori) – a YouTuber who creates fantastical ghosts and monsters and sci-fi ordeals.
Hunter Long – my friend here at Vanderbilt. He has a very good eye for what he does.
If you are a performing musician or just want spectacular photos of yourself or an event, hit Shun up!
Phone: (615) 674-7921
Email: [email protected]
Insta: @shunahmedphotography