May 2008 Profile: Lek Brothers Website: www.lekbrothers.com

By Nina Khachatourian

Ray Lek and Peter Lek probably have the busiest website in Dallas on Monday mornings. Why? Because everyone is hitting up their site to see who did what, when and with whom.

What started out as a hobby has turned into something the Cambodian brothers take pretty seriously these days. Cambodia, in case you didn't know is, "...east of Thailand, west of Vietnam, south of Laos and where Anjolina Jolie steals children," according to Ray. The Leks have recently upgraded their camera equipment and their website; and they are often invited by local promoters to shoot specific events. You can pretty much find them hitting up night clubs, festivals and other various events in Dallas and its surrounding cities every Friday and Saturday night. Despite their busy schedules, these self proclaimed Nikon whores let me take a quick peek through the lens to see what life looks like from their point of view.

Before your weekends got full of taking pictures, what were you doing?

Ray: A whole lot of movie watching. Before the picture taking, we went to local film festivals like Asian Film Festival Dallas and the Deep Ellum Film Festival. We also tried to catch a live band here and there.

Peter: I would just go skating with friends and watch a lot of movies. Mainly movies that no one's ever heard of.

What other hobbies/interests do you have?

Ray: I love movies and music too. I love Star Wars and I have a deep love for foreign films and yes, I consider UK/Canadian movies to be foreign. Maybe one day I can get a script written and sold. I also have a pension for useless fact books.

Peter: I like to make music when I'm alone. I always had a bad habit of playing with musical instruments just to make a sound. I also enjoy film. At some point I will make the move from photography to motion pictures.

What part of Dallas do you live in?

Ray: We live off of Maple Avenue near the hospitals (Parkland, Children's Hospital etc). I guess they call it the "Medical District". We live near medical students, a gay community and a large Hispanic community. In fact, I think our neighbor is a gay Hispanic medical student. We love everybody.

What sparked your interest in photography?

Ray: I majored in journalism in college and took a semester of film photography as an elective. This was in the early 90s. I've always had in interest in it but what sparked it recently is the emergence of digital photography. We also have an older brother, Paul, who you could say does it professionally, he freelances as a sports photographer in California, shooting mainly boxing and other fighting events in Las Vegas. I guess photography runs in the family. In 2003 we were using a compact 35 mm film camera and would scan the pics after processing then it went to a point and click digital camera to mid sized digitals to what we use now, DSLRs. Digital photography is self gratifying. I mean, you get to see the product within seconds of shooting the picture. Am I being too Asian for getting excited about something like that?

Peter: At first, we would email pictures out of parties we went to but I had an idea of putting it up on a website for everybody to see and with the help of our friends Jeff Young and Kyle Wenda, they gave a spot on a shared web server of theirs. That's how LekBrothes.com was born. I took some film/media classes and started messing around with the camera equipment we had there.

You guys are out every weekend and I'm sure Monday mornings probably spark a ton of hits on your website. How do you feel about that?

Ray: I try to get the pictures up as soon as possible. We've gotten busier and asked to come out to so many things that sometimes they don't show up until Tuesday. I spend time cleaning up, cropping and removing anything incriminating before. As many good shots we get, there are quite a few bad shots, especially after a few drinks. I can't tell you how many photos of eyeballs and foreheads come out. I think everybody is vain and wants to see what they look like. There's also a few who live vicariously through our site. We've been branching out to other events as well. We'll go to anywhere we're invited to. We're involved with the small mod/rocker scene in Dallas as well. And we hope to photograph more bands in the future.