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Making Anyone Look Beautiful
Sandra Rugina is an award-winning freelance photographer
from Romania trying to make it in Oulu.
As with many expats, it was love that brought Sandra
Rugina to Oulu. And now the Romanian – who has done
everything from weddings to fashion shoots in her home
country – is aiming to establish herself in the city as a
freelance photographer.
‘I first got interested in photography using my father’s
camera when I was child,’ says the twenty-eight year-old.
Gradually, Sandra developed a true passion for photography
and by 2005, using a digital camera of course, she had
registered on a photographers’ website called ‘DeviantArt’
and was even winning awards on it.
‘Something that makes you remember,’ lilts the
softly-spoken photographer when asked what she looks for in
a good photo. Sandra concentrates on ‘portraits. I like
portraits because people’s faces are so expressive.’ ‘Taking
a good nature picture,’ she insists, is far more about
‘being lucky.’
‘I look for the right moment,’ she tells me, ‘and often
it works like that. I know what I want my picture to look
like so it’s trying to create that.’
Sandra is originally from Timisoara which is close to the
Hungarian border and famous for being the place where the
overthrow of Communism in Romania began. In her home
country, Sandra worked for a web-design company taking
photos for their website such as ‘hotels or car lights.’ She
also photographed at various fashion shows and remembers one
occasion when the show was taking place in the garden of a
museum and some of the models decided to dress and undress
‘in the yard’ before they posed for the shoot.
‘I have a photo of my boyfriend and, in the reflection of
his sunglasses, you can see the ladies changing!’ laughs
Sandra. She has also had her photos published in various
local newspapers in Timisoara.
As a PhD student in Wireless Technology, Sandra had
expected to make some money through teaching at the
university, but as that hasn’t materialised she has turned
to photography. ‘I enjoy doing photography. I’d do it 24-7
if I could!’
So far, she has been the photographer at her
sister-in-law’s high-school graduation, at a Roma festival
in her home town and she currently has an exhibition of her
photographs of Oulu – ‘Colours of Finland’ - at Villa
Victor, the city’s immigrant centre in Heinäpää. As far as
establishing herself as a business is concerned she’s ‘still
working on it’ but she has plenty of ideas on how she’d
provide something ‘different’ in terms of Oulu photography.
‘Many of the photographs on display in Oulu are just
ordinary portraits,’ Sandra explains. ‘I like to take people
out into the nature to take the photographs!’ Sandra would
also make happier photographs. Referring to school
graduation photos she remarks, ‘They are eighteen, they are
young, they have nothing to worry about . . . so they can
smile.’
Sandra has also set up her own website, which is already
the sixth one to come up on ‘Google’ if you type in
‘photographer’ and ‘Oulu.’ The site contains links to
various photographs of Sandra’s, such as those on Google
Earth and the website Stock Photos, which is often drawn
upon by book publishers for illustrations. The website
contains Sandra’s portfolio which includes her commercial
photography at weddings as well as photographs of Romania,
northern Finland and a moving set of black and white photos
called ‘Ghetto Story,’ which was also her first exhibition.
‘At one of the weddings that I photographed in the
Romania the groom was a bit of a rebel,’ Sandra smiles. ‘He
had his hair up in spikes and he wanted everything to be
“different”!’ But, of course, Sandra took some conventional
photos, ‘so that the relatives would have something as
well.’
Sandra explains that she is happy to do weddings and is
convinced that, through photography, she can make pretty
much anybody ‘look beautiful’ or certainly ‘acceptable.’
‘At one wedding I did there was this lady and I focussed
on her eyelashes and the flowers so everything else was a
blur. She absolutely loved it!’
And speaking of weddings, Sandra has just got married in
a registry office in Finland but will be returning to
Romania for a traditional Roman Catholic blessing ceremony
so that all her friends and family can be there. And on that
day, she’ll be taking a day off from wedding photography.
Sandra’s website can be found at http://sandrarugina.eu/
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