Shearlocks

I spent the winter break in Turkey and arrived to Columbia on Sunday, Jan. 20 at night and the initial deadline was the morning of Jan. 24. I had very little time to come up with a story idea. Meghan, my editor, was very kind to offer her help but it was still tough. Although it was later relieving to learn the deadline was moved to Monday, I was already done by the previous Wednesday night.

Gulden and Ihsan are very nice people, I’m glad to have met them. I think that’s the best part of doing a story; you meet new people. They had an interesting story about how Gulden got a visa to the US but that was already published in the Columbia Tribune 28 years ago. When they showed me the clips from the Tribune, it was a nice surprise to see that some of their photos were taken by David Rees!

I found out that how Gulden and Ihsan met was at least as interesting as the visa story, so I decided to have that as my arc. They were quite comfortable with the camera but since I did most of my shooting in the hair salon, I had to make sure none of the customers weredisturbed. Another point I’d like to touch upon is that I called Ihsan several times to check the facts while writing the captions. He was very nice but I think it’s better to make sure during the interview, you ask more than you think you’ll need.

- Sait Serkan Gurbuz