This short trip to Batu Pahat with a full day spent at
@thesanren ’s last day of their 2026 workshop has very much altered my brain chemistry. What could have simply been a creative session turned out to be everything and more. I felt so much love between the whole cohort albeit having only spent 1/4 of the time with them.
Beyond the beautiful images produced under SANREN’s guidance, there are so much generosity and humility that transcend past this craft we call photography.
Photography for me started as a very technical thing and through the years I’ve been learning to unlearn the skills and hone in on the storytelling. Every visual reference I see I would break it down and figure out the “formula” to achieve it. But with SANREN’s work, I couldn’t seem to crack the code on how they do it.
As I spend the last hour walking around Batu Pahat before leaving for home, I bumped into the participants still enthusiastically photographing the streets after the end of 4 intensive days of workshop. And at that moment it clicked. SANREN’s essence is the relentless ability to extract stories out of the ordinary.
It’s easy to shoot beautiful visuals with beautiful subjects. But distilling beauty from the seemingly ordinary, and telling stories that feel genuine, layered, and deeply human, is anything but.
Seeing so many beautiful images coming out of a small town in this short few days by people so enthusiastically distilling their own versions of the stories, perfectly showed how the place shaped its people, and how SANREN stands out with their vision, craft, and humanness.
And it’s this exact humanness that brought so many people together to this year’s workshop - to which I’m incredibly FOMO of cos I couldn’t make time to take part as a participant! I will make it for the next year’s edition!!!
Such an honour to be part of the speaking panel and extremely thankful for the safe space to be vulnerable sharing about AI in a roomful of creatives and artists. Thank you
@ericnah_ for your constant support and encouragement!
Congrats on the 10 years
@thesanren @sanrenrayson and team, more to come!
