neil ta

“Photography is Photography, a Photo is a Photo”: Interview with Neil Ta

I just had a recent chat with my manager and good friend Neil Ta. Neil is a professional photographer based in Toronto (shoots wedding and commercial work), and his passion is photography. He has dabbled in many different genres of photography, including “urbex” (urban exploration), “rooftopping” (getting to really high places), documentary photography (he is working on a long-term project on “Alexandra Park“, a public-housing complex for low-income families which is being gentrified for expensive condos), and street photography.

In this video interview, we delve deep into lots of different topics. Neil shares how he first got into photography, why he decided to quit his job and travel the world for 6 months+, how we met, not being pigeon-holed in photography, his love (and hate) relationship with film, and why he is currently shooting on a Hasselblad Xpan.

Podcast:

You can listen to the audio podcast below:

Read more to see the topics we covered in the interview, and lots of inspirational links:

Removing Myself from My Own Photos: What I Learned While Editing and Sequencing My “Harmonious China” Project

Eric: This is a guest article by Neil Ta, my homie and babysitter. In this article he shares his new project, “Harmonious China” and his thoughts about the editing process.

Neil: My good friend and International Street Photographer, Eric Kim, first introduced me to the idea of letting photos marinate. The concept is really simple. When we take photos, there is an emotional attachment or bond that reminds us how amazing we felt when we took the image. Photographers who select and post their photos immediately are often times at a disadvantage because they let their emotions at the time of taking the photograph get in the way of their better judgement. To combat this, Eric has recommended to photographers to let their images marinate. As time passes and we revisit our images, we lose that emotional bond that had initially formed and we’re better able to objectively look at our images without biases.

So why the long-winded introduction to my new project, Harmonious China? Taking Eric’s advice, I recently decided to look at my archive of images that I shot in China back in April 2011. I hadn’t looked at these images in a very long time and secretly I was hoping that (by some act of god) I was able to pull something out of there that I had previously missed.

When I began to review the images, so much time had passed that they were fresh to my eyes, Surprisingly, I was able to pull out a number of images that fit into a centralized idea. Because I let the images marinate for so long, there were a number of shots that I forgot I took or had no immediate recollection of where it was taken.

4 Lessons I’ve Learned from the Magnum Photos Toronto Workshop

Eric’s Note: This article is written by Neil Ta, my manager and good friend who recently attended a Magnum Photos workshop in Toronto. The project he worked on for the week was “Meat Locker.” Below is his write-up of the experience and the lessons he’s personally learned. You can see upcoming Magnum workshops and events here.

Neil: I recently had the opportunity to attend a Magnum Photos workshop in Toronto as part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, which is one of the largest of its kind in the world. For the last six years, Contact has invited members of Magnum to run workshops focusing on photojournalism, documentary storytelling, and street photography.

This year’s line-up of instructors included Magnum Associate Moises Saman and Magnum Nominee Zoe Strauss. Moises is most well-known for the work he’s done in Afghanistan and Iraq and his focus more recently has been in documenting the Arab Spring. Zoe’s extensive work is more regionally focused in the community where she was born and raised – Philadelphia.

I ultimately chose to go with Moises over Zoe because I felt his work was a lot different than my own and I hoped he’d be there to guide me through a more photojournalistic project over the week.