Omar El Amroussy: Photographer of the Stars

As the art of photography continues to develop, young Egyptian photographers become eager to add more perspective to still pictures and turn them into true pieces of art. We sat down with one of those thriving, young photographers who are changing the landscape of photography, Omar El Amroussy. Among the first photographers in Egypt to present the concept of landscape photography, and well-known for photographing stars—actual stars in the sky, not actors and singers—23-year-old El Amroussy speaks about his passion for portraits, landscapes and his recent aspiration in filmmaking.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I am currently from college and I have been taking photographs for four years. My career in photography began when I first started pursuing street photography, taking photos on my cell phone camera. I began my professional photography work when I bought a professional DSLR camera and began to take photos while I am travelling. My travel journey began two years ago when I visited Saint Catherine, Siwa Oasis, Dahab, Nuweiba and Taba.

What inspires you as a photographer? How does it show in your work?
The idea of travelling alone far away with my camera is what inspires me the most. I feel great when I am sitting for days to get a very specific shot and I wait for hours to capture a good shot like the Milky Way passing across my lens.

Tell us more about your recent foray into filmmaking
My filmmaking journey began earlier when I started filming short movies, it wasn’t planned and I never studied it before but I had this vision about a movie playing in my head and I wanted to bring it to life, even if achieved with basic tools.
When you have a vision of a film you try many times until you get it right without excuses and inevitably you become a professional. I first started filming time lapses and then went to do stories, for example, portraying the routine of an individual’s daily live.

How has your work developed over the years?
I believe that the education process is infinite, I still have my first-captured photos on my Instagram account and no matter how much I developed I will still be proud of the first steps I took. Each stage of my work life I had a certain vision that I achieved and a step-by-step progress commenced. I learned by listening and observing both younger and older photographers on the scene.

What do you like the most about your work?
The best thing I like about my work is capturing photos of stars because it’s the thing that I am well known for as people who saw my work didn’t believe that these photos were taken in Egypt. Photographing the stars is untraditional and challenging.

Tell us more about your work, what process do you generally follow?
To take photos of the Milky Way you have to have a special lens to be able to capture the stars; you need to adjust your tripod and use a remote control to adjust your camera without manually touching your camera.
I travel anywhere with my camera, tripod and remote control. The camera doesn’t have to be full frame but it has to be professional; however even if you don’t have these tools you can also take photos on your phone that will develop once you put your heart in to it. I developed from the standard lens to an advanced lens of 24-70 mm that is capable of zooming. Most importantly, not giving up is essential to make this process work.

How do you see the art scene currently in Egypt?
There are artists who are really trying to develop and work hard while others have very strong tools and assistance yet don’t have any unique work or vision. There is nothing better than working extremely hard to see that hard work pay off. The [art] platform lacks a pure spirit that shows while performing the job and guarantees output. When I take photos when I am happy the output is much better than I could ever imagine than when I take photos when I am upset. Today’s Egyptian artistic platform needs to acquire pure spirit and patience.

Who are your favorite artists and why?
One of my favorite photographers is Hossam Atef also known as Hossam Antikka. I respect his personality, thoughts and photography because he started with very basic tools but photographed everything and has gone to a lot of places—this shows that photography is a hard field that requires a lot of hard work.

What are you future projects?
I plan to conduct some landscape projects as I travel to Luxor, Aswan, Marsa Alam and Gebal Elba, a natural reserve area located in Halayeb and Shalateen. My upcoming projects for portraits include drawing a painting on a model’s face that will glow under a certain type of lighting called black lighting.
I plan to film a promo video about pre-Ramadan life which will be launched these coming days, depicting details about the few weeks before the month of Ramadan, such as people selling lanterns. This will be an introductory video to a short film that I will shoot about life in the holy month.

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