Exlusive interview with Tariq Zaidi

After winning All About Photo Awards 2018, I had the privilege to talk with Tariq Zaidi.
You can discover the full interview: HERE



All About Photo: First of all, congratulations for being All About Photo's 2018 Photographer of the Year! Could you tell us what was the determining factor in submitting your work for this specific contest?

Tariq Zaidi:Thank you. I am extremely humbled and very honored to have been awarded All About Photo's 2018 Photographer of the Year. Thank you, AAP and the Jury panel for recognizing my work.

The work I submitted was half from my recent 2017 reportage work from Brazil, Congo and North Korea – together with other images from travels before which may be considered more as travel photography – hoping to provide the Jury with a balanced overview of my work.

AAP: In 2014 you gave up a senior corporate position to become a full time photographer. What triggered this decision?

Tariq Zaidi:After almost 20 years in business/corporate world - I was so tired of the corporate environment, it was just killing me and I felt like I was going to die if I kept doing this, I need to live, do what I love and give it a shot.

A friend of mine who is a professional photographer, who is very successful said to me 'Do you know how hard it is to become a professional photographer? Because just in London alone there are something like 22,000 photographers who are trying to make a living, you are just not going to make it, it's just so hard. Before you quit your job make sure you have enough money to somehow survive for the next three to five years because you are not going to get anywhere for at least 5 years and that's if you are damm good & lucky'. You know what, I just said 'perfect' I love that challenge and I'm going to go for it irrespective of what you say. I set myself targets and financial budgets, like I can only spend this much this year as I need to buy a computer, I need to buy software, I need to buy a camera, it all costs a lot of upfront money. I knew I needed to sell my photographs so at least I'm not losing money. The last thing I wanted to do is lose a job I can probably never go back to and get into debt. I wanted to make it a successful business and my idea of success was not losing money for the next five years.

I was very lucky, I had a tremendous amount of success for a beginner in my first year. I was involved in multiple assignments, I was lucky enough at that time to be teaching, people were buying my photographs, I was getting published and things just flew! Even though my target for year one was not too loose money, I actually made some money, enough to try another year and then another and well, here we are now".