Mine Kasapoglu: Istanbul Expressed
Turkish photographer Mine Kasapoglu delights in the revelatory moment. In her coverage of the Salt Lake City, Athens and Turin Olympic Games, she consistently snagged that impromptu gesture, spontaneous meeting or unscripted expression that distinguishes a Kasapoglu image.
A competitive athlete herself — Kasapoglu began ski racing at age three, made her country’s ski team at 15, and is the 2007 Turkish Snowboard Champion — she too has celebrated victories in the winner’s circle.
But when she’s working, Kasapoglu gets great shots behind the footlights. “The most exciting thing for me at Salt Lake,” she blurts with characteristic excitement, “was being backstage with the talent during the opening and closing ceremonies.” During the 2002 games she snapped on- and off-stage photos of headliners like Willie Nelson, Kiss, Moby, Gloria Estefan, Sting and Yo Yo Ma.
Turin Candids
In addition to being a freelancer, Kasapoglu is staff photographer at the Turkish alternative fashion magazine 2’debir. (The name translates literally as “one in two,” but colloquially it means “to keep doing something.” What this magazine aims to keep doing, says Kasapoglu, is to “stick its tongue out at the world.”)
Behind the scenes of the opening ceremonies at the 2006 Torino Olympics. © Mine Kasapoglu
When the magazine assigned Kasapoglu to photograph the 2006 Turin Olympics, she built an entire feature around her knack for candids. “I would photograph the athletes not at the medal ceremony,” she explains, “but at the moment they knew they had won. I like the photo to reflect the real experience, the surprise, before they’ve had a chance to compose their expressions.”
Hooked On A Demo
Kasapoglu first fell in love with photography in her college darkroom, and she still savors the tactile magic of film. But since she switched to digital three years ago, and then discovered Aperture on her 2’debir-sponsored trip to Turin, she’s hardly looked back. “I’m not some big computer whiz,” she confesses, “but after one demo I was hooked.”
Now she relies on Aperture for every shoot. “Aperture is so easy to learn and use,” says Kasapoglu. “Frankly, I don’t know what I was doing without it.” At the Turin games she used Aperture to edit and store all her digital images; she also scanned all her film images for archiving in Aperture.
Kasapoglu appreciates the ease of rating and organizing her images. “When I absolutely love an image I give it five stars,” she says. “You can instantly select your whole library and then filter out only the five-star images — it’s great to see the ‘best of the best’ all together.”
Tedium-Buster
Back in Istanbul after the Olympics, Kasapoglu found Aperture a virtual tedium-buster. She used to return from a shoot with 1,000 or more images on her flash drive, dreading the hours-long selection process. “It took forever,” she groans. “I’d often spend all night doing my selects.”
Now she finds it easy and even fun. “Aperture was exactly what I was looking for,” she says. “I can do all my work to perfection — and still get some sleep. Using Aperture cuts my selection time at least by half, if not more.”
Digital Darkroom
As Kasapoglu’s freelance assignments take her from Paris to Vienna to Dresden and back to Istanbul, her Mac notebook serves as her traveling darkroom. “Before Aperture” she recalls, “the thing I didn’t like about digital was that I didn’t have full control over my images. Then Aperture came to the rescue — it became the digital version of the darkroom I loved to spend time in.”
At home or on assignment, she found in Aperture improved versions of traditional photographic tools, like the light table, she felt nostalgic for. “In the old days,” she recounts, “you could hold the pictures in your hands, spread them out, try them in various combinations. That used to be one of my favorite pastimes — to have a big pile of photographs on the floor of my room and arrange them in different ways for a magazine layout or a website. Now I can do the same thing digitally, using the light table in Aperture.”
Being able to export images in any size is also a real timesaver. Before Aperture, it took hours to open each image and save it in the correct size. Now, to send 40 small JPEGs via email, it takes her just seconds to prep them in a single click. “All of a sudden,” she says, “the project is finished!”
