The reach · 2008–2026

2.4 billion times, someone has looked at the Maldives through my lens.

Most of them have never heard my name. That was always the point.

In 2008 I picked up my first professional camera, standing next to Shaheed and Saud. There was no plan beyond wanting to photograph this country properly. Eighteen years later the photographs have travelled further than I ever have — into travel brochures in cities I have never visited, school projects, airline campaigns, a student’s first portfolio, somebody’s idea of a honeymoon.

I never wanted my work locked inside a portfolio where only clients could see it. I wanted it out in the world, working. Helping the world picture the Maldives, and helping the Maldives tell its own story at a standard nobody has to apologise for.

The number nobody can edit.

2.4B
views
on Pexels alone
11.4M
downloads
taken away and used
#18
all time
of every contributor
2.4K
photographs
in the public library

These are not my figures. They are on a page that Pexels controls and anyone can open — which is the only kind of number worth quoting. See the profile yourself.

Eighteen years, drawn as one line.

The Pexels all-time statistics panel for Asad Photo Maldives: 2.4 billion views, 11.4 million downloads, 108.6 thousand likes, 19 thousand followers, with a graph climbing from 2017 to a peak in 2022.
The climb starts around 2017 and peaks past 42 million views a month in 2022. The dips are the quiet years — the ones where I was building Binga instead of uploading.

Eight photographs. 756 million views.

A single frame of a reef from above has been seen 140.6 million times and downloaded 644,000 times. The eight below have been downloaded 4.1 million times between them. Every one of those downloads is somebody making something — a page, a poster, a pitch, a plan.

Pexels per-upload statistics showing eight Maldives photographs with view and download counts, the highest at 140.6 million views.
Per-upload statistics, sorted by views. Public on the same profile.

Open Canva. Search “Maldives.”

This is the part that still stops me. Type one word into the design tool that millions of people use every day, and a great many of the photographs looking back at you are mine — the sandbank at first light, the swing under the palms, the couple walking into a sunset I waited two hours for.

Canva photo search results for Maldives, with a wedding photograph on the beach at sunset credited on screen to Asad Photo Maldives.
There is my name, on the result itself — top left of the first frame. A couple I photographed walking into the water at sunset, now sitting in a design tool, waiting for somebody in another country to build something with it.
A grid of Maldives photographs in Canva: sandbanks, lagoons, palm silhouettes, a wedding table and couples at sunset.
Sandbanks, lagoons, silhouettes — eighteen years of mornings.
More Maldives photographs in Canva: reefs, overwater villas, palm trees and couples on the beach at sunset.
Reefs, villas, couples. The same islands, a thousand uses.
Canva template search results for Maldives: travel presentations, social posts and brochures designed around Maldives photography.
And then the templates — presentations, brochures, travel posts built by designers all over the world, around photographs of these islands. This is what reach actually looks like: not a follower count, but somebody in another country building their work on top of yours.

The half I kept quiet.

For years my public portfolio showed one side of this: honeymoons, couples, love stories. I will never stop doing that work. But it was never the whole picture.

  • Institutions

    Events and global initiatives for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Red Crescent, the Government of Maldives and the Government of India.

  • People

    People stories with three Maldivian presidents — three administrations, three chapters of this country, through the same lens.

  • Hospitality

    Campaigns for Banyan Tree, One&Only, COMO, Conrad, IHG and InterContinental, Cocoon Collection, Cozy Hotels and Arena Hotels Maldives.

  • Spaces

    Architecture and interiors since the beginning. In 2009 at Huvafen Fushi I photographed the world’s first underwater spa and the only underground wine cellar in the Maldives. I was experimenting. It became a thread through everything after.

Nobody does 2.4 billion alone.

A photograph looks like one person’s work. It almost never is. Every frame in that library has somebody standing just outside it.

Shaheed and Saud
who were standing beside me in 2008, the day the first professional camera came out of the box. None of this starts without that afternoon.
Naahil and Maaid
who run the studio at Grand Park Kodhipparu, and who hold the camera on the mornings I cannot be in two places.
Every couple and every family
who handed me the most important hour of their life and trusted me not to waste it. You are the reason there is a library at all.
The resorts and the island teams
the concierges, the boat crews, the villa hosts and the GMs who moved a schedule so the light would be right.
The institutions
the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Red Crescent and the Government of Maldives, for letting a photographer into rooms where the country was being decided.
My family
who lived with the sunrises, the missed dinners, and eighteen years of a man who could not stop looking at the sky.

Announcing

My first exhibition.

Eighteen years of this work has lived on screens. Almost none of it has been printed, framed, or put in a room where you can stand in front of it and take your time.

So that is what comes next: the story of the Maldives as I have watched it change through a viewfinder since 2008. The islands, the water, the work, the people, and a country that transformed while I was busy photographing it. Some of these frames have never been published anywhere.

Dates and venue will be announced soon. I want that room full of Maldivians.

Tell me you want to be there

What I want next.

I am less interested in what I have done than in what it makes possible. I want to help more brands and institutions here tell their stories to the world at a standard that needs no allowance made for it. The Maldives does not need to import its storytellers. We already have them.

More about me · The portfolio · Licensing · The public library

Tell me the dates and the island.

A session, a campaign, a private stay or a conference — send the dates, the island and what you need. I come back within six hours with options and hold the date for five days.

Enquire

I reply personally — 07:00–22:00 Maldives time.