Few weeks back, one of the popular camera brands approached me to write about my Photography Journey, but their terms didn’t work for me. While I didn’t work with this brand for the post, I always loved to share my journey offline with like minded folks. Here I thought of sharing it in form of blog-post.
In my childhood, I used my dad’s Rolleiflex camera which used to click Black & White photographs. Clicking one photograph used to be a prize of some good work done by me. My parents wanted to ensure that I don’t waste lot of films and treat this as a special opportunity to look down into the camera like a bollywood star and create something special. It was a very exciting time, when you wait to finish a camera-roll, take it to a lab which would send the roll to main city for processing & printing. It used to be a process of 3 months – from buying a camera roll, click, give back to studio and receive prints. Another interesting thing I remember was colored versions of Black & white photographs. I remember the trend wherein studios started adding subtle colors to black & white frames. Like adding red to lips, pink to skin etc.
As I moved to high school, we got our first color camera (analog). I heavily used it during our family trips to temples, family functions, school ceremonies etc. This one was heavily used, as cost had reduced a lot. It was 1998. Till 2001, I used this Kodak camera for clicking. Most of the my pocket money used to go in prints. I used to earn lot of money through various competitions and that money was also dedicated to rolls and printing.
In 2001, I moved to college for my B.Tech. This Kodak camera was with me, but I started seeing color issues. It had got some scratches on front lens and hence various distortions. So far, I was clicking people at various events and trips. With new friends, I started exploring places around my native place and beauty of Himalayas inspired me to start clicking landscapes. One of my close friend had recently got an Olympus camera (analog). His brother brought this camera from Dubai and I used it the most :). I used to keep this camera with me all the time. This camera was much better than the cameras I had used earlier. This was a very encouraging moment to click more and get better. Frankly speaking, I had not clue of compositions and all the technical jargons of photography. I used to click place and flaunt those prints in front of my family and friends.
After my graduation, I move to Delhi and after an year I joined Adobe. And I was fortunate to join Digital Imaging group of the company. As a part of DI group, I had access to some of the brilliant Digital Cameras and DSLRs by companies like Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony, Pentax etc. I joined Adobe in 2006. There were few Photography enthusiasts in my team, who were very serious about Photography. I started following one of the colleagues, Mohit Gupta. I used to disturb him multiple times. His great photography inspired me to learn photography techniques and understand the camera controls in better way. I remember my first question to Mohit - ‘How do click photograph of an object with everything else blurred.’ He smiled, took the camera, did some settings and handed back the camera to me. He asked me to focus on the object and click. More closer you go, better blur you would get and so on. I created reasonably good photographs and now I was curious to know what he changed in the camera.
Gradually I opted for a Photography course to understand camera basics and fundamentals of Digital Photography. This was the biggest turning point for me, when I started appreciating the power of SLR cameras, lenses & importance to compositions, colors, textures and elements in a frame. This took significant time to learn and explore different aspects of Photography.
After 2007, I started spending significant time during the weekends with my camera. At that time I was working on Adobe Photoshop Elements product. I used to organize my photographs in Organizer and process them in Adobe Camera Raw dialog of Editor in PSE. Gradually I migrated to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Did ACE in Lightroom (Adobe Certified Expert). Now I am huge fan of Lightroom and have been coaching/helping people through group workshops or 1:1 discussions. I love meeting passionate photographers and share my knowledge about organizing & post processing photographs. This is a great opportunity to meet accomplished photographers and learn from them. During last 8 years, I got multiple opportunities to interact with accomplished photographers of different genres.
At around 2008, Ghumakkar.com inspired me to start my own Photography Blog to share photo essays from different trips, events or learning/practice sessions. This Blog played a significant role in getting good feedback (positive and negative), which helped me exploring different aspects of Photograph. This blog has become main reason for planning trips and exploring new places, cultures and architecture with my Travellingcamera.
When I owned my first smart-phone (Thanks to Adobe for lovely gift), things started changing dramatically. Now I had freedom to click things on the go. There were lesser moments of regret that I am not carrying a camera. Phone camera changed the way I started clicking photographs, especially when travelling. There are lot of #MobileGIRI posts on this blog which share posts with photographs clicked with mobile camera.
And this journey continues... All followers and viewers of this blog know about what I have been clicking for past few years, except some of the shoots which can't be shared on web.
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