Women Street Photographers with Gulnara Samoilova

12/20/19 • 35 min

Today’s guest is Gulnara Samoilova. She’s an accomplished street photographer, founder and, curator of the Women Street Photographers Instagram feed. She is also an award-winning Associated Press photojournalist most notably for her photographs taken during the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11.

Her work is part of major collections at venues like the Museum of the City of New York, The New York Public Library, New York Historical Society, The Akron Museum, 9/11 Memorial Museum, and Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Her photographs can also be found in several prominent private collections like Elton John and Steven Kasher. Plus her work has been exhibited in numerous one-person and group shows around the world. Impressive.

Gulnara will be the featured photographer in the March 2020 issue of Street Photography Magazine where we’ll learn more about her personal work.

But today she tells us about her passion to promote the work of other women street photographers. She does this by curating the Women Street Photographers Instagram feed and managing the traveling exhibition of their work. All of which keeps her very busy.

Links from the Show

A Selection of Gulnara’s Photos

September 11, 2011 Terrorists Attacks. © Gulnara Samoilova

Gulnara will be the featured photographer in the March 2020 issue of Street Photography Magazine where we’ll learn more about her personal work.

Links from the Show

A Selection of Gulnara’s Photos

September 11, 2011 Terrorists Attacks. © Gulnara Samoilova

Previous Episode

Street Photo Tip with Michael Kowalczyk

In this episode, our guest is Michael Kowalczyk, a photographer I met last year at the Miami Street Photography Festival, where I was honored to be asked to do a portfolio review with him. Michael is a multimedia specialist at the University of Konstanz in Germany. He’s also a prolific street photographer.

Since we met last year, Michael has leveraged his skills as a multimedia expert and photographer to create the unique website streetphototip.com, an excellent resource for the street photography community. On the website, Michael gives detailed explanations about many award-winning street photographs and maintains a list of street photography competitions going on worldwide. What’s more, he’s doing all of this on his own time and on his own dime.

I was particularly impressed with an article Michael wrote about the making of one of his own photos titled “Medellin Mirror”. He goes into great detail about how he spotted an interesting photo opportunity of a man carrying a large mirror through the busy streets of Medellin, Columbia and how he worked the scene as the man moved through the crowd. The article contains several of the shots from the series plus his final selection both before and after post processing. It’s a very powerful learning experience.

To learn more about Michael and get some pro tips from him, click the audio player below to listen to our interview. And make sure you take some time to explore the pages of Street Photo Tip – you’ll find all the links you need just below the audio player.

Podcast Links

A selection of Michael’s street photos

Next Episode

Shooting with Film – Andrew Walmsley

Today’s guest is Andy Walmsley.

He is a resident of the UK, an IT professional in the telephone systems industry, a street photographer and huge film enthusiast. He’s also the host of the Photography Insights podcast.

Andy began his photographic journey not long ago doing street photography with a digital camera. But as a very curious guy he began to explore the world of film...and he became hooked. To say that he is enthusiastic about film and photography in general is a vast understatement.

He has been on a journey ever since and in the process he created the Phlogger blog followed soon after by his podcast Photography Insights, which can be found on his blog and just about any podcast directory available, most notably iTunes.

Andy’s enthusiasm and curiosity is infectious, just listen to his podcast and you will see for yourself. He’s not afraid to reach out to anyone in the photo world which is how we first met two years ago. When he decided to start his photography podcast he reached out to me for advice. We’ve been in touch ever since.