Rammy Narula (Charnnarong)

WORKSHOP! JUNE & AUGUST schedules are confirmed. Live online via Zoom. With schedules that work for Asia, Europe, UAE, US time zones Have you been reading my posts the last year or so? Would you like to learn more about how to think about your work, establish a direction and build a voice? Low commitment. 4 sessions. Assignments that allow both making new work, and looking back at old work. Join a community of over a hundred photographers that have worked with me in the last couple of years, where I also offer meetings and free classes few times a year. You don’t have to be a street photographer to benefit from this. All you need to know is how to use a camera, or have been doing it a while but would like some more directions. I also include a 1:1 complimentary session for a deeper dive after the workshop. DM to sign up.

I haven’t been feeling very well these past few days. Hit by flu and sleep has been difficult. Usually when I can’t sleep very well I will start to look at my pictures and in this sort of state I see my own pictures differently. I get a bit more emotional, and sentimental. Yesterday I shared a short set of my wife and son and I was quite surprised by the number of responses I got about it. Among them a message from a long time friend who wondered if there was more to this than I was giving my own work credit for. When my grandmother passed away in October 2024 I sequenced a set of my photos to pay her respects. In the set of photographs I pulled to create the sequence there were photographs I didn’t use as part of the sequence. Included were the photos I shared yesterday of my wife and son. You see, my grandmother really wanted me to have a kid. I was 30+ years old, getting a divorce, about to start my life over and I didn’t have children at the time. I’d keep laughing it off. Couple of years later I found my wife, and did have a kid. And my grandmother waited for it. My son was born years before she passed away but you could see how determined she was. I’m sitting here at 4am now wondering if there’s maybe a bit more to this story that I can tell. I might add it to the list of projects to pursue in a more elaborate way.

Favorite 9 of 2025 so far. A year in review. This was a year where I threw my hat fully into teaching mode, the first time in 14 years since starting photography. Admittedly, even though I had done some teaching before, there was always some reluctance and resistance toward reaching out. I wanted to make sure that if I were to teach, I would do it in a way that really helped the people I worked with. I also didn’t want to impose my brand of photography because we are all unique. The question I had was: how do I communicate and support this for the people who want to work with me? I believe, to an extent, I’ve found that path. It’s not a success formula that shows quick results. I don’t know any photographer whose style and vision were developed in a short amount of time. So my method inherently requires a lot of trust from photographers. And I’m more than proud to say I believe I received that trust. I also want to say I earned it. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I put so much into something (except in trying to be a good father). I love what I do, and I want to do it well. I think it needs to be said that I am grateful to the people who have chosen to work with me, and to those who’ve told their friends to work with me. I’ve gained a lot of confidence through that. And hopefully 2026 is a year I get to keep building on it. 🥂

For a long time I’ve been quite addicted to a game called Block Blast on my iPhone. I love it. It reminds me of Tetris, which I was obsessed with as a kid. But Block Blast takes away the rushed element. There’s no timer. I can listen to a podcast while playing, so it’s much more forgiving. Though both games provide a similar rush: high scores, beating personal bests, the chase. With both games I noticed a strange nervousness creeping in every time I got close to beating my high scores. It was as though breaking records was going to give me something that was missing. And I had to have it. Silly as it sounds, as I sat with that nervousness, I realized it was actually fear. Fear of not succeeding. My worth had somehow become dependent on the numbers. I could see how desperately I wanted it, and how frustrated I’d become when I failed. So I tried something. I tried to let go. I told myself the high score was just an illusion I’d fooled myself into believing mattered. Perhaps unsurprisingly… a few days later I broke a million, and almost immediately stopped feeling like playing. The game suddenly lost its value. It had only ever been there to satisfy a need. Once that need was gone, it lost its pull. Shocking. I recognized this feeling from photography. From Instagram. From chasing likes and engagement and follower counts. I chased those things for a long time. They meant something to me. But at some point I felt disillusioned. What was the point? What does a metric give me other than a temporary high? I wasn’t connecting with people properly anymore. Everyone was just a number. Like adding a collectible to a jar that has no top and no filling limit. The chase had nothing to do with photography. Photography and people were always the point. The engagement numbers promised this feeling of enough, but they never delivered. 💚

Excited and honored to have my work exhibited in large print at this year’s Eyes on Main Street 12th Edition! To be among 100 prints included in this massive outdoor exhibition is very exciting! Thank you the team of @eyesonmainstreetinc and @jeromedeperlinghi for the invitation and for organizing this massive event and exhibition!

Let's welcome Rammy Narula to our judging team!

What if I’m doing the wrong thing? [essay alert] When I started street photography it was a genre that was hugely famous for being undervalued by anyone who doesn’t practice it. From people not understanding what it is, to people judging it as being a “lesser than” type of photography for various reasons. Low investment. Low conceptual vision. Not to mention not being a camera brand’s best friend due to its simple one camera one lens perspective. And a host of photographers in the genre who constantly remind each other that cameras don’t make photographers, pushing us away from commercial endorsements. So naturally I don’t find it surprising that I found myself being drawn to it early. 🙂 You see the question of whether “I’m doing the wrong thing” seems perfect for someone who does street photography. Because of all the doubts and the high difficulty for getting recognized. Topped by Instagram ever changing algorithm that clearly prefers everything else over still images, popular tropes over individuality, and you have the perfect mix of challenges for someone struggling to do the “right” thing. How do you make it work in a world most people don’t seem to care about, and even think is potentially a mistake? But something keeps me doing it. Something pulls me. The deep connection I feel toward the work. Work that is created with honesty and authenticity. The work I get to create. The ability to be truly as me as I would like even when I’m simply borrowing my compositional sense from someone who made it famous. For the same reason that it might be the wrong thing to do, it might also be exactly why it’s the right thing to do. Because if I can do something that is judged a mistake, or undervalued, and still find something right and valuable in it, then I’m practically invincible.

Boy is 9 today. Time be flying as they say.

2026 #x100vi @fujifilmxthailand #xphotographerth

Family 2026

This time in 2024 I decided to launch Seeing Different. A series of workshops I had begun designing back in 2020. I scribbled a lot of notes on how the workshops would come together but never quite launched it until years later. I wasn’t quite sure it would be well received. My ideas, as I’ve often been told, can be quite different to traditional ways of thinking. Well 2 years later and I’m grateful I’m still here doing this. I’ve had amazing support from friends and people who work with me, who’ve really encouraged me to keep going. People who’ve continued to work with me beyond the workshops. I’ve enjoyed it immensely, eventhough I’ve had a couple of burnouts already and learning to manage my health. I’m adding more ways to support photographers in the next year. You are all why I do this. Stay tuned. 💚

This quote above is a journey in itself. Not something I understood early on, and for a long time felt resistance toward. I wanted my pictures to be appreciated and understood by everyone. I wanted it to be loved by everyone. And when that didn’t happen it felt quite upsetting. With reflections I’ve come to understand that even I don’t like everything and that’s ok. It’s always been my character to try and understand everyone, but I don’t like everything even if I can understand it. And when I applied that to my own work there was a sense of liberation that came with it. I free myself, and others, from having to completely understand and be on the same page about everything. It’s not required to still have a good relationship. I continue to learn to appreciate when the work connects, and when it doesn’t connect. Of course I still hope it does, but I realize now it’s not realistic, and it doesn’t have to be that way for it to still be valuable. 💚 ——— I haven’t been writing much. I believe something in my process is shifting. I got quite sick a month ago and it’s just been one thing after another the last 6 weeks. One can get quite disillusioned with that. A month away from being 46, I believe it’s a kind of wake up call for managing my health better. So that’s what I’ve been doing more of: rest.