Meet Sammani Perera | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sammani Perera and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sammani, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
It is funny that you ask me this question because it is something I have been thinking about lately.

More than a work life balance, my struggle has always been to strike a work-work balance. I am a full-time educator at Elon University, NC. As a photographer, I am in the field only part-time. For the longest time, I struggled to find the balance between being an educator and photographer. Us educators, we always bring our work home because our work extends outside the teaching hours. We meet with students, grade assignments, prepare for classes, and before you know it, one semester ends and another begins. During school breaks, I still travelled and took photos, but I didn’t have the drive or the energy or the inspiration to post-process them and share them with the world.

Then, things changed a few months ago. I am now a full-time educator and photographer. I am still in the field only part-time, but I work on my art full-time—post-processing the photos, and maintaining my website and social media accounts. One of my favorite K-pop artists/actors uses the tagline “toegeunhae/퇴근해” in his vlogs. It translates to “get off work,” but it connotes spending happy and relaxed time at home after getting off work. Whenever I finish my classes for the day, my mind tells me, “toegeunhae.” Only to come home and start my second job. Being a full-time educator and photographer still feels kind of new. I am still struggling to strike a balance between my two professions. It is sometimes overwhelming, but I enjoy keeping myself busy.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My photography focuses on the color play around sunrises and sunsets, the beasts who with lasting patience share nature with us and put up with our cameras, and the way Native American and pioneer history often intersect with nature. I mostly photograph the landscape and wildlife of the US national parks, but I am also into lighthouses, particularly the ones in New England. I want to be good at astrophotography as well.

When I meet fellow photographers in the field and we talk about our roots, most of them say that they held a camera as early as they started walking because they had a parent who was a photographer or was interested in cameras. (I am only exaggerating a little here.) Most of them had grown up around cameras and had had an early start with photography. My story is quite different. Long story short, I became interested in photography while I was working on my Master’s thesis which was a collection of short stories. It was fiction writing that piqued my interest in photography.

Then, post-graduation, during a trip to the Olympic National Park, I realized I would like to become a photographer. I also realized that I had a lot to learn because I didn’t have a background in photography. I looked for any material that would help me learn photography. I watched a lot of YouTube and read a lot of websites. I practiced everything I learned whenever I could. I wanted to go back to school for an MFA in photography, applied for schools, got an offer from the California College of the Arts, and turned down the offer because I couldn’t afford it. I went back to consuming any piece of knowledge I could find online.

When I first started in 2017, I had a Canon Rebel T5 and two lenses that came with it. I couldn’t take a photo of the grizzly bear we saw in Yellowstone because I didn’t have a telephoto lens back then. I didn’t yet have that sixth sense a photographer is supposed to develop. I couldn’t foresee that a 2000-pound bison would jump over a fence in Grand Teton. I made a lot of mistakes in the field—shot in JPG, shot handheld, shot in Auto settings. Forgotten extra SD cards and batteries. With every little mistake, I learned a lesson. In a sense, that is how I earned my current camera, a Canon Mark IV. It doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes anymore. I feel it all falls into place with practice. If you keep at it for so long, it becomes almost a habit. I am slowly but steadily getting there.

I don’t have too many achievements to boast about apart from the fact that I learned everything about my art from scratch. And perhaps that my photo “Canvas” (included in the photos here) made me the “PhotoPiller of the Day” for August 17 this year. I am only starting. Give me a chance and I will make it big.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
In this moment of time, the Grand Canyon National Park. I was in the Grand Canyon for the first time this summer and I already want to go back. It was a two week-long camping trip and it proved to be the most difficult trip I have made so far. I only take photos during sunrises and sunsets with the exception of overcast days, so daytime dragged on forever. It was dry, and cold and sunny at the same time. Three days into the trip, I hated the Grand Canyon and wanted to fly back to North Carolina. Ten days into the trip, I loved the place and wanted to stay longer. Right after the trip, when I found out that I shot in JPG as opposed to RAW (here I thought I was past rookie mistakes), I began to hate the Grand Canyon again. When I started editing the photos two weeks after the trip, I fell in love with the place again. Can someone fall out of love and in love with the same location two times? It is such a mysterious place and I feel a strange attachment to it. Completely selfish, but it is where I want to take my friend. We will start somewhere in the Grand Canyon Village, and catch sunrises and sunsets and all other in-between moments from different overlooks.

And with this friend, if I can persuade them to stay longer, since we are already in Arizona, I’d go to a few slot canyons, the Horseshoe Bend, the Monument Valley, and The Wave. The possibilities are endless.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Since this is my first interview as a photographer, I’d like to dedicate my shoutout to what started me on this journey: the Olympic National Park. It was my first national parks experience with my first DSLR camera. It was early summer of 2017 and I still recall those shades of green. I realized then that I wanted to be a photographer of the US national parks.
I am also grateful to all the national parks I’ve visited since. They have been extremely patient with me and showed me their best selves.

Website: https://www.momentsbysammaniperera.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moments.by.sammaniperera/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Moments-by-Sammani-Perera/61550915514561/

Other: Email: momentsbysammani@gmail.com