PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER
Jatenipat Ketpradit is the 2022 winner of the International Portrait Photographer of the Year Awards.
I’m a professional photographer and have been into photography for 10 years. I’m also CEO of an interior design company in Thailand.
I really enjoy histories and stories of legend. I was lucky enough to travel to Mongolia to live with the nomadic people there and I was impressed by their cultures, personalities and traditional costumes. Seeing my pictures appear in my real life was better than reading books or watching a documentary.
What I get from the journey, apart from the photographs, is friendship. I love to communicate with interesting people and I enjoy my subjects’ story. Before a shoot I spend time talking with them, some even become close friends.
For some tribes, the portraits I take are the first photographs of themselves they have seen – they are very meaningful to them. I usually bring a Polaroid camera too and give them a print. They are always impressed and if I have the opportunity to see them again, I’ll give them a print of the portrait.
Sometimes my photographs can have a good outcome. For example, many of the Eagle Hunter Tribe stopped being hunters and went to work in the city. When I had my photographs of them published in international media, a lot of travelers went to shoot them. Now their village has income and more and more they started coming back to continue living as hunters.
IPPOTY is a top-quality international photo contest. I just enter two or three competitions in a year to improve my portfolio and challenge myself. I'm looking forward to judging the 2023 awards.
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