JEDDAH: A week-long photographic workshop concluded this week with the aim to save the heritage of Jeddah for the historical information, documentation and records for the coming generations.

The Society of Architectural Heritage Protection of Jeddah organized a free workshop at the headquarter sof the society to train photographers on how to take best photographs under the supervision of artist and photographer Tagreed Wazna and supervisor of the association Abeer Al Sharif.

Al Sharif Ahmed Al-Hijary, one of the founders of the Society of Architectural Heritage Protection of Jeddah and organizer of the program told Arab news that the workshop was a part of the activities of the society. “This week we organized this workshop only for advanced photographers, where they took three courses by famous and highly qualified trainer photographers Sultan Mandili on light management, studio photography and portrait photography and by Essam Kabli on street life photography,” said Al-Hijary.

He also said that street life photography is particularly valuable for photographers to learn because many of the Saudi photographers take pictures of still objects, but don’t know the right techniques of taking pictures of moving objects, or live photography.

Al-Hijary also said it’s valuable for all of our members of the society to be excellent photographers because the number of old classical houses in Jeddah is exceedingly limited and actually by time one by one they are vanishing.

“With this type of workshop we want to give the capability to the photographers to take excellent shots of those houses and heritage places, to keep documentation of historical Jeddah before they vanish from the face of the earth. We want to save our heritage for our coming generations,” he said. “We want the photographers to go down town and take pictures of the heritage area, as recently one of the old houses was demolished, so we are afraid one day we will not have any records or any documentation for our heritage. We want to save history, so “in the future” if anyone wants to rebuild we have recorded evidence how the structure and architecture of the house looked like.”

The society took initiatives for the documentation of the heritage of Jeddah with the aim to issue a full book on the old Jeddah and heritage as how the old houses of Jeddah looked, through pictures.

“We are doing an educational part of historical buildings in Jeddah; we want to tell people how life was beautiful, the techniques and architecture of the old houses to know how it was,” he said.

Jeddah is the only city that has old houses left whereby in Makkah and Madina the old houses have been demolished to give way to modern buildings,” he added.

The main course of the workshop was portrait course given by Mandili. The Heritage protection society is planning to conduct courses for beginners in the coming new-year. The doors of the association of the heritage society are open for everyone who loves Jeddah. “It was a great experience, we learn a lot and hope in future also Mandili and Kabli will continue their support for learning, so we can serve better out country and nation,” said Ali A. Al-Khormi one of the trainee of the workshop.