The Photo I Am Most Proud Of: Brendan Ó Sé

Each week I will be asking a mobile photographer to choose the one image of theirs that they are most proud of. It does not have to be their best, or the one that has received the most recognition, just the one image that they are more emotionally connected with than any other.

This week’s artist is Brendan Ó Sé.

As well as great images, what I also love about great photographers are the titles they give to their work and the development of a series that focuses on a theme. This week’s artist excels at all of these.

I actually came across the work of Brendan Ó Sé through his DSLR work. A Master of motion and blur, his titles, such as “Two half-truths colliding in coincidence” would just floor me, along with the talent on show. If you get time, check it out, as it’s a fantastic stream.

Looking further into his work, I discovered his mobile images and his ability with an iPhone to capture moments that a large format camera would miss; whether he is taking a flight and talking to the air stewardess before take off, sitting on a train, or exploring the streets of Tokyo, he puts us right there with him as a companion rather than a viewer and that is not an easy thing to pull off.

The biggest praise I can give him is that his mobile work reminds me of my favourite photographer, Daido Moriyama. The ability to point the phone to document life and those amazing moments we find ourselves in, to show through his images, the way things truly are.

The Photo I Am Most Proud Of: Brendan Ó Sé

To choose a favourite iPhone photograph is not easy; I find what my favourite is can change from day to day. Some days a blur photograph of a figure in motion will do it for me; other days it may be a shot of my two children at play.

To decide for this I trawled through my flickr stream and I kept coming back to the same one; passengers boarding a plane with the sun flare diagonally splitting the frame.

Why? Because it represents all I love about photography. It has the sense of adventure, the stepping into the new, into the unknown, the quest to see, to dream, and to learn, and most of all it represents the pursuit of fun. It heralds a beginning, a chance to once again become anonymous in a new and exciting place; a chance to put myself in the centre of action, and the chance to try to see what can be seen and how to see it.

I come from a small city. I love street photography, but I am not that comfortable doing it in my hometown. I guess I do not have that feeling of anonymity I get when I am in foreign places.

Modern travel is magical. In a short few hours, you can leave your life behind and immerse yourself in what you have imagined prior to arrival and what you are now experiencing. As a photographer you want to document it, you want proof, and you want to create it in your own fashion.

An excited anticipation as you climb those steps up to the plane. What will you see? What memories will you make? What images await?

This pursuit of fun…

Connect with Brendan Ó Sé

Flickr (iphone) | Flickr (DSLR) | Photographic Punctuation | Twitter | Instagram