Two names. One studio. A standard set in 1980 — and held ever since.
Mr. Basil
Founder · President
In loving memory · 1957 — ∞
“A photograph is a small voice telling a true story. Tell it honestly.”
Mr. Basil founded the studio in 1980 with a single 35mm camera, a borrowed enlarger, and a quiet conviction that a wedding photograph should outlive the wedding day. He believed every frame was a record — of light, of love, of a family on the most important evening of its life.
Over four decades he shaped generations of photographers in Dubai. His prints hung in homes across the UAE; his name became shorthand among brides and brands for work that took its time and got the light right.
His hands left the camera before his eye ever did. The studio he started carries his name, his frames, and the standard he set: never publish a photograph you wouldn't hang in your own home.
CARRYING IT FORWARD
Two people now hold the studio he built — and the rule he left behind.
Co-founder · Production Manager
The cameras changed. The promise didn't.
Sohail learned photography the way his father learned it — slowly, in the dark, one print at a time. He now runs the studio's production end-to-end: from the first WhatsApp message to the final delivered gallery. Every shoot the studio takes on, Sohail either directs or signs off on.
TWENTY-THREE YEARS · ONE THREAD
1980
Mr. Basil opens a small darkroom studio in Dubai. Bridal portraits, family sittings, the occasional editorial commission.
2008
The studio retires its enlargers and adopts full-frame digital. Mr. Basil insists every photographer hand-edit every frame — a rule that still holds.
2015
Sohail Basil joins the studio full-time after years of assisting his father. The first joint signature appears on a print.
2017
Mr. Basil passes. The studio carries his name and his rule: never publish a frame you wouldn't hang in your own home.
Today
Two names. One studio. The same standard — held by the hands he taught and the hands he never met.
“My father taught me that a wedding photograph isn't taken for the people in the room — it's taken for the people who'll see it forty years from now. We're still working to that brief.”