Documentary films

Real people,
real places.

I’ve shot documentaries as a freelance Director of Photography in Washington, DC since 2015, for HBO, Netflix, the BBC, CNN Films, The Wall Street Journal, AARP Studios and Quanta Magazine, as well as independent filmmakers.

Most of the work is character-led: a nurse who cares for homeless patients, a World War II paratrooper telling his story, a scientist explaining an idea on camera for the first time. Interviews are usually at the centre of it, so I light and frame them with the same care as the observational scenes around them. See how I set up interviews.

I shoot on two Panasonic Varicam LTs and a DJI Ronin 4D with Angenieux zooms, all owned and brought to the shoot in my production van. In Washington that means federal buildings, the Capitol and agency offices as well as homes, labs and studios. I also travel, for example to Guatemala and Tanzania for Project Concern International.

I studied TV, radio and cinema at Marmara University in Istanbul and hold an MA in Film and Video from American University. For a look at a real shoot day, read One Day, Five Locations: Filming Science at Carnegie for Quanta Magazine.

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