Instagram • Featured Instagrammer: Meet Serdar (@trashhand)

Featured Instagrammer: Meet Serdar (@trashhand)

This is a weekly series designed to highlight people sharing fascinating photos on Instagram. Every week, we’ll introduce you to a new person who uses Instagram to share a unique perspective on the world. This week, we’d like to introduce you to Serdar (@trashhand), an Instagrammer based in Chicago who’s just as comfortable shooting between skyscrapers as he is venturing out of the city to capture the rural scenes just outside of Chicago’s urban center.

Hey Serdar! First question: how’d you come up with your username?

trashhand came from the name of a font my girlfriend @swopes had found online while doing a design. The name just sounded perfect to me. I always felt like my style was going to be dark and grungy so it just seemed to fit.

How long have you been interested in photography? has Instagram changed your photography in any way?

I’ve been interested in photography for about 6 years but only as a hobby (a hobby that I rarely practiced). I only pulled my camera out if I was going on trip somewhere out of the country. Thanks to IG, I’m in a creative mindset all day. Wherever I go, you can bet I’m looking around to see if there is something I can take a photo of.

How’d you find out and get involved in Instagram?

I heard about Instagram through some friends of mine on Twitter. All I knew was that it was a great way to share photos to your other social networking accounts. I got bored one day and finally checked out the Popular page and the list of suggested users (Profile > Find friends > Suggested Users). After that, I started searching for the best users out there and studied their work. And with @swopes being a graphic designer, she was just as excited to get involved as I was. So that fueled the IG fire even more.

Your stream of photos captures both the urban and the rural so well. You live in Chicago but take a lot of trips outside the city. Would you share a little about where you go and how you decide where to go next?

I would say we make about 2 trips per week out of the city. There are a bunch of little forest preserves that are only about 30 minutes away. Once every two weeks, we make a trip somewhere about 2 hours away to shoot. We go back and forth on who picks the next location.

Do you notice any major differences in the way you shoot when you’re in the city vs. out in the country?

I shoot a lot quicker in the city compared to the country. In the country, I’ll stand there and walk around till I get the angle right. While in the city, I attempt the shot once and move on.

We’re about to take a look at some of your photos. Aside from Instagram, what apps do you use to give your photos their unique look?

My main editing apps that I use for Instagram are Snapseed, Photoforge2, and Cross Process. For a camera, the standard Camera app does the job for me.

6 Photos, 6 Stories

This was taken less than an hour outside of Chicago at a forest preserve called Pulaski Woods. From what I remember, what caught my eye here was that this was the only flower that I saw in the entire area. What I really love about this photo is the editing done to it. I used Snapseed and Cross Process, and then layered it with the Rise filter. Gives it a real vintage vibe.

I decided to make a trip towards Apple River Canyon to take some photos and while driving through Stockton, IL, it unexpectedly started snowing. I saw this on the other side of the road, pulled over, and got out of the car to take the shot. I wanted the colors and feel of this photo to make you feel like you were actually there.

I was standing in the middle of the road at the end of Lake St. in downtown Chicago facing west when I took this. What caught my attention here was the balance between the dark buildings up close mixed with the light shining on the more colorful ones behind. It brings out a great sense of depth in the photo.

This is a photo of my girlfriend and great IG inspiration of mine @swopes walking behind me from one of our hikes. It was taken about an hour outside of Chicago at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. This photo came out exactly the way I wanted it to. I love when that happens.

This is one of those lucky shots to me. I walked past this building at first, double backed to take the photo and saw this man walking up. I decided to wait for him to walk into frame, took the shot and I walked away. What I enjoy about this photo is the intensity of the architecture, the man’s presence, and overall symmetry of the shot.

I took this at Great Falls Park in Maryland only 15 minutes from the house I grew up in. I never knew it was there until this past Thanksgiving so I was excited to find it. I posted several photos from the falls and this was my favorite of the series.