This blog has been in the making for long (far too long for me to even remember!). The reasons (and excuses) being aplenty… loads of work, a lot of travel, laziness (in abundance), absence of inspiration, writer’s block, paucity of content to ensure continuity, laziness (think I mentioned it earlier) and several others. Putting all of it aside, I thought it would be best to just start. And taking the advice of many a prolific writers and bloggers, I’ve decided to take the plunge and start with something that is close to me and something that I really, really think about. So, here is the story of my tryst with photography.
As a kid I was fascinated with art, painting and colours to be precise, and as I grew older and started learning geometry especially constructions of complex shapes et al, this liking grew stronger, strong enough for me to enrol for extra after-school art classes that would prepare me for the elementary art exam that is conducted by the education department. And that is where it all started growing wrong!
As the classes started, I realised that art as I knew was very different than that being taught (which was as per the exam syllabus) you had sketching, shading, painting (using various media – pastels, water colour, oil paints), still life drawing, portraits and many others including geometric construction (which was just a tiny fraction of the whole thing)… and this was just the ‘elementary’ exam we are talking about… think about the intermediate and advanced levels!
So, after my eureka moment about art, the sessions became a formality and before I knew, it was exam time. Sure enough and not entirely unexpectedly, I flunked with flying ‘colours’ (I was told that the exam is so simple that such a phenomenon is almost unheard of!). But then I’ve got to confess, somewhere down the line I realised that I was bad at art, so in the best interest of family, society and self, I decided that it was time for me to hang my brushes. And with that, my fascination with art, all but died.
That was in the early 1990s. Almost a decade later, in August 2006 my dad bought a Canon EOS 400D DSLR while on his trip to Singapore, hoping to revive a hobby he used to practise during his younger days. This certainly wasn’t the first camera in the household; there were film cameras – Yashica point & shoot and a Canon EOS 300V, a relatively high-end Panasonic camcorder and now the 400D but till this point I had never had any kind of interest in using any of those cameras (except for occasions and events when I was asked to take a photo or two).
This was also the time I was pursuing my MBA from Institute of Management, Nirma University (IMNU), Ahmedabad, and as was the norm, I was requested to shoot some photos for a college function, for which I agreed after dad agreed to lend me the 400D. Pursuing an MBA, that too staying in a hostel has its advantages, besides everything it gives you a lot of free time! So here I was sitting with the camera (first time I was using an SLR camera and a digital one at that), learning and reading up on how to use it. The function happened, I shot, gave the photos, period. There were a couple of weeks before I would go home to return the camera, and that is when it all began (again!).
Having lapped up the instruction manual that came with the camera, I realised that an SLR camera offers us much more control over how our photos come out, interestingly this period also coincided with MICANVAS the annual cultural festival of Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad (MICA) and that the camera was with me, I thought it would be good to capture some memories at the fest. Capturing memories I did, but while doing that I wandered all over the campus and shot a lot of random and abstract photos, objects, people, action etc. After downloading all those images, one particular shot struck me as interesting and in a way demonstrating what photography can capture and depict.
The Door
Titled ‘The Door’, there is an interesting anecdote of how I came about shooting this picture. I was looking for the loo when I ventured into what seemed like one of the admin/education blocks of MICA, while there was a lot of light outside, the inside of this room was quite dark since this was the only source of light. What made it even more interesting was the colour and rawness of the brick building outside that was visible from within and the shadow that was cast on the floor. While I knew that I wanted to shoot this, I wasn’t sure how, having tried a few combinations and taking close to 25 shots, I eventually had one that came close to what I had visualised J
Suddenly, I was reliving my dream of becoming a painter (sort of) with an art form in front of me that was as beautiful and colourful as painting, but where I didn’t have to first conceptualise, think, sketch and colour on a blank canvas and then get to see the work of art, hoping it would turn out as thought of. Here you shoot what you see, when you see, compose a frame from among what is seen and perhaps edit the image if required, that’s it! So, while in no manner do I intend to demean or belittle photography, I define it as ‘art of the lazy man’; full of colours minus the gestation period and the mess!
And that was the how & why about photography and me, do check this space for some of my thoughts pertaining to photography and some modest attempts at it 🙂
The Tea Set 