Henry Mang, a professional photographer

Hello,

This time I am sharing you an interview of a wonderful and lively person I met on orkut.com , he is an nature lover, heritage lover, photographer and above all a kind hearted good person, let me introduce you to Henry Mang.

Zazo: Henry, his full name is Henry Mang is a professional photographer having more than 20 years of experience in his field. Henry is also a nature and wildlife lover, he is the owner of 2 reputed and active communities on orkut with the name "National Geographic Society" and "WHC World Heritage Convention" Henry also owns a website which is a show case of Henry's amazing and artistic work

I am very much thankful of Henry to accept my invitation for interview on Orkut's Hall of fame.

Welcome Henry!

Henry: Thank you for the invitation.

Zazo: Henry can you please tell us more about yourself? your country, family etc?

Henry: I'm form Tallinn, capital of Estonia. Lived here most of my life. My hobby, passion and profession is photography and it has been for many years now.
All other extracurricular activities have also disclosed with help of photography.

Zazo: How is your communities "National Geographic Society" and "WHC World Heritage Convention" are going on?, how much they play a part in your passion and interests?

Henry: They do and a lot, especially World Heritage.
I'm very concerned about the sites in UNESCO Heritage list and i hope to play also some small role in heritage preservation.

It makes me really sad to see how some people or groups of people cant avoid the destruction or ruin of many beautiful buildings and cities. I'm bit sad that i could not see the old city of Hatra before the war and the ancient drill hall in Quebec, which burned down few days ago.

During the war in April 2003 the Mosul Museum was looted. A larger than life-size statue of the king of Hatra, Sanatruq II (c.100 BC) has been stolen, amongst other things, and many objects smashed. And the libraries in Baghdad were burned down. The disaster was far worse, and happened far faster, than we ever imagined.

What becomes to National Geographic, then this is something that drives me away from the sadness that the ruin of heritage makes. And its really lovely to see, that so many people share the same thoughts and values. The Community really speaks up here and that is really good feeling.

Zazo: Tell us something about your homepage henrymang.com, how often do you visit countries and places for your projects and to prepare a portfolios? any experience you want to share related to this?
Any achievements or most successful project till now?

Henry: Well the site tries to give sort of balanced overview of my work and passion over two decades. But trying to be friendly to visitors and avoiding the botheration, i try to keep there a limited images in portfolio. I'm asking the visitors not to view the site as some complete and final project, it has been build and designed over several years and this will be continued in the future also. Some details will be added, some will be removed.

My work has brought me to some nice places, my passion for the nature and heritage a bit more. Most of my work keeps me still here in Estonia. Due to the reason that the personal exploration needs more time and financial support, those opportunities don't come so often as i wanted, but the more anxious i'll be waiting for the new trip. As we have saying here 'years are not brothers' - depending on many figures, there would be around 2-4 journeys to some nice locations per year. I would always prefer my vacation to some old or ancient cities and buildings sites and try to avoid those tourist Mecca.

Sometimes your work gets you to cities that are quite far away from beautiful scenery to find something nice to your soul and if it comes together with cold season, then you just need to relax other ways. I just came from OMC Hair World Championships of Beauty few weeks ago, which was held in Chicago. Three days of very nice but still exhausting work was crowned with beautiful sounds from local blues stars in suburbs. So every now and then you need to feed your pleasure, that needs to come along business, other ways.

Zazo: Henry, since when you are on orkut and how was your experience being here?

Henry: My first login to orkut was 3 years ago, in February. I guess i had few dozens invitations in my email inbox already and many friends tried to convince me directly behind computer also. When i understood, that this is not another strange impersonal dating site, but something more serious and friendly, i thought to give it a try.

Those were the days when you saw at your profile that you were connected to 600 000 people, i haven't seen the feature anymore, but i guess it's nowadays several millions more.

Few days later after searching tying communities to join, i designed small logo and created one called National Geographic Society

From personal experience i can say that orkut has been build up as very user-friendly community site and it really connects people, and every new feature that orkut and google group generates, seems to be good and needful for end users. I just hope that there will be bit less ill-intentioned hacking and more personal probity, both in community and personal level.

Zazo: Your community National Geographic Society has more than 15000 members and its really an active community, how you manage to keep updating? What are the other resources and information your community gives? Any plans to develop it out of orkut?

Henry: The community came really alive when there was close to 150-200 members, before that i was more concerned myself - adding new topics and trying to bring people closer to conversations, with forum news and polls. After those numbers grow, the community had already its own life cycle, i just had to view that all conversations are clean and all intruding spam will be deleted fast enough not to disturb members.

And the more numbers grow the more interested topics arise and no matter your position in the online community, there are many very good and open minded people talking about everything related to NG, cultures and wildlife. But as i don't have the possibility to reach online every day from some distant places, we have in community some nice people to help to manage the daily routine. This is the moment when i can say something good for our moderator Shayoni, she is really made for this position or perhaps is this position made for her. There is no topic she cant pervade, if there is an issue, she gets right to the point; if someone is confused - she will clear the air. If you would like to have a really great interview here, you should keep those words in mind.

The question about getting it out of this nice online culture is very good one. National Geographic Society community consist of people, that are deeply interested about outside world and have found a great outside society source to be well-informed about the topics close to their heart. This community here is more like natural sustainability of peoples needs to belong to bigger well-respected groups or organizations that has advisory opinion about those special topics. Social communities have held many meetings and conferences for centuries, mostly to protect something. If this little community finds someday a real output to organize or create something important to society of humankind, i would be more than happy to support it in any way possible.

Zazo: How you see the future in profession of photography? How much change and competition you noticed since you started photography?, any tips you would like to share for those who want to get successful in this field as a professional photographer?

Henry: The profession is great if you love it, but its not an easy one. There is a competition and on some field its higher than on the other. For instance the area of advertising and fashion photography is believably the toughest one what becomes to competition. Wedding photography also, there you compete mostly only with higher top of photographers. Nature photography and other artwork is different story, you do what you do when you want it and you have your own signature. If people or customers can recognize your work, it will probably pay off someday.

Of course there has been a change in the competition in those years, older photographers are mostly stuck in their style or just gone and many younger generations have been succeeded already. Customers taste is another big factor, that you always need to consider. So yes, there are changes and you need to find your way to manage there and make it work for you. Besides that you just stay in your style and make it better in your own way day by day. There will be ups and downs, but stay in your style that you love. It will pay off someday, trust me.

Zazo: Lastly, Where do you see yourself in coming 5 yrs?

Henry: Just five? Most likely in the same shoes - continue my own style and technique and hopefully my clients are happy and more clients is always the best that can happen to you in this profession.

As I do mostly weddings, I see that in five years i do this work mostly abroad. Because of the big difference in seasons here, there is really a off-season for wedding photography. So its kind a good thing too, leaves more time to work abroad. And i will have more time off also to do some more distant destinations for my personal projects. It really is one of the best things in photography that business goes mostly with pleasure, if your mind is in right place and you do it because you love it.

I believe you will see some exhibitions and few workshops coming up in near future, so keep an eye on the homepage and check back soon to National Geographic and World Heritage communities, you find plenty of news and happenings there.

Zazo: Henry thank you very much for this fantastic interview, It was a pleasure talking to you.

Henry: Thank you very much Zazo for an interview

Henry's website: www.henrymang.com
Pictures used in this article is the property of www.henrymang.com