I still remember how excited I was as a little kid, when my parents gave me their old film camera which had a few shots left so that I could shoot whatever I like. I had so many things to take pictures of, but there were only 3 or 4 shots left in the camera, and buying a new reel of film was out of the question as it was very expensive in those days. The feeling of responsibility, power, and sheer joy of being given an expensive camera to shoot pictures with stays with me even now when I hold my camera in my hands.
I was always fascinated by photography, and when I was young, my grandpa used to give me issues of National Geographic for me to read. The photos in them were stunning, and in every issue you could see something incredible which you had never seen in your life before. All of this was made possible by the expert photographers who dedicated their lives to shooting pictures in some of the harshest conditions imaginable.
For me, photography is a very humbling experience, the way I look at it, every single time I press the shutter release, I’m capturing a moment in time which is lost forever, in my camera. Whatever happened at that point in time, when I took the photo, will never happen again for the rest of everyone’s lives. It is a moment frozen in time, forever immortalized by film or a digital CCD. People sometimes say, look at this photo of when I was younger, what people don’t realize is every photo of theirs is from when they were younger. :-)
Every now and then I shoot some pictures of people who are barely interested in photography and express it implicitly, but once I shoot their photos, they become very anxious and curious to see how it turned out. If I delay giving them the photos by a day, they call me and do some small talk for while and nonchalantly ask when I’d be sending their photos to them. Everyone is curious to see how they look in photos. Even small kids, immediately come running to me to grab my camera and see how they look in the photo once I’ve shot them. Seeing the joy on their faces when they see a photo they like is one of the few things in life money can’t buy.
The one pet peeve that I have is this, whenever people see a picture they like, most of them ask me what camera I have and then say that the photo is the way it is because of that. This is a very wrong conception, the only thing that matters is the person behind the camera, and not the camera itself. The most famous shots in history have been shot by crappy cameras. Let me give you an analogy, if you’re invited over to another person’s house, and you eat food that you find particularly delicious, do you compliment them by saying this: “Your kitchen cooks very delicious dishes?” or this: “You cook delicious dishes?”
The hardest part is talking about photography when you’re limited by words as there are so many experiences to share, so many things to tell, so many things to show, explain, and describe and I could go on and on. When you’re a photographer, you tend to look at things differently. Like, when you’re driving, and you see a beautiful tree, or a beautiful road, you make a mental note to come back there someday and take some photos. You end up doing things you never thought of doing, and you end up going places you never thought that you’d be going to. You tend to appreciate the nuances, intricate details of nature, and of human creations.
Ever since I got my DSLR, I’ve made it a habit of uploading pictures to my gallery online whenever I shoot photos. The great part about this is that my photos are available to the world, and anyone can use my photos in any site, or any publication and some of the popular ones even compensate me generously for the use of my photos. Also, I can get details and statistics on how many people visit my webpage, and how or why they ended up there and what they liked the most.
It’s very strange and humbling experience to say the least. Let me give you a few examples, as to why there is a benefit in sharing your pictures online: One of my photos got published in an African Food Aid pamphlet which was being distributed to poor people in some of the harshest places in Africa. Another one of my photos got published in the Lonely Planet publication. And recently, one of my photos got published in the online version of the American Journal Of Nursing. I honestly feel that it’s not always about the money, it’s about the ways your photos get used too. Even right now, if you Google the term “mynameisharsha”, you get this: Results 1 - 10 of about 9,070 for mynameisharsha. (0.30 seconds). Out of the 9,070 results, at least 5000 of them would be of websites using my photos.
The one photo which greatly increased my presence on the internet, is a photo which I took of my mum’s family. I found a photo of them which had been taken 41 years ago, and I shot the another photo of them, each of them in the same positions and put them up side by side. I put this picture of them online and it became a minor sensation, the picture went viral and it was shared on a lot of forums and sites. At the time of this writing, the total views for that photo alone on my site is: 1,72,141.
If I think about it, I don’t think I’d have met those many people even in real life. As of now, I have around 174 friends on Facebook. That’s just 0.1% of the people who’ve seen my photos online, knowing that something that I made, is being seen by so many people, make me feel exhilarated and very humbled.
There are a few things which photography has taught me in the last one and a half years that I would like to share, they are the following:
Don't dream it, be it. Don't say "I'd love to" do this that or the other thing, just do it.
You'll regret the things you don't do more than the things you do.
Take every opportunity to travel. Broaden your horizons. See the world. Live now. Save what you can, but not at the expense of experiencing things.
Say yes often. If you don't have a real excuse for not going out, or not going on that hiking trip, just do it
Oh, and all my photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mynameisharsha/sets/
Or here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mynameisharsha
Monday, May 17, 2010
And so it begins....
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