WallMag: An introduction about yourself.
Initially, when I started writing this, I wanted to call myself a photographer but then I realized that I’m actually more of a storyteller. About me, I happened to grow up in a lot of places because of my family and had the privilege of visiting and experiencing several cultures in India. This made me insanely curious about the multitude of sceneries that I was seeing all around me. This made me start pursuing science as a career and eventually took me to the United States of America. What I love about photography is, it tells a story. Every photo you take, every moment you capture, every feeling you experience while capturing that one amazing moment… it all tells a story. I’m looking to be a full-time researcher and I want to “connect the dots” as Steve Jobs would call it, and incorporate photography as a form of art into it. A picture is to me what the Mona Lisa was to Leonardo Da Vinci. I just hope I can convey the emotion as well as he did in his time one day and that’s what drives me from my core.
WallMag: Tell us where it all began. How did you become a photographer?
Now, this is a moment I would never forget. I had a friend in my college who took amazing pictures and we’d often exchange art which looked really cool and collect art. It was in 2015, I think, when I started trying to take a good picture. Because, in all honesty, I just thought it would look cool back then! I had absolutely no idea about photography back then. I just wanted to take a good picture. But then a year and half later, I remember getting a Nikon D3200, which I still use, as a birthday gift and I had never been more excited to use it! At first, I saw a camera as a device for just capturing a picture. Then I realized it’s a device for capturing a moment. Then, after what seems to be three years, I have come to realize somewhere along the line that it’s truly a device through which you create art and tell a story. I don’t know an exact procedure of “how” I became a photographer, but I do know the “why” and it was because I set out to tell a story. Because stories captivate the soul more than anything else. Anyone who can tell a story with a clicked picture, is a photographer. I’m not a photographer, I’m just a guy who uses my camera to tell a story.
WallMag: How did you discover your style of photography? How would you describe your style?
More often than not, I see myself intrigued by a jaw-dropping landscape, or an astonishing sunset pattern, or something as simple as a pigeon sitting on a perch or a person riding a bicycle. I think although I was mainly concentrated on landscapes and wildlife, mainly because of my hiking addiction, my recent love for street photography is something I cannot ignore. I think my style of photography is something that I would consider worth conveys a story on its own. Or maybe it simply makes me mesmerized that I lose the flow of time.
WallMag: Who and/or what influences your work and why?
There’s an old adage I remember, it goes “Logic and reasoning can take you from point A to B. Imagination takes you anywhere.” I believe this also applies to photography. People often ask me why I carry my camera around everywhere even though I’ve been to that place a hundred times and my answer is always the same. This world influences my work. This world, this lively, amazing world of ours always has moments worth capturing. And my inspiration for my work has always been art and other people’s photography, which helps me see new perspectives. It’s amazing, really.
WallMag: Is there a photographer or artist who you admire or think they are killing right now?
This may be the hardest question of all to be honest. There are so many good photographers but there have been, and even currently are many great photographers in the world. Be it someone like Stephen Wilkes who loves capturing day-night captures, or Steve McCurry’s amazing portraits, or Babak Tafreshi’s amazing universe photography, or Max Rive’s amazing snowy photographs or Paul Nicklen’s stunning underwater photography or Jimmy Chin’s awe-dropping action shots. It’s like picking one favourite genre of music. It’s hard, everything is so unique.
WallMag: Tell us through your photography process. How do you complete your work from start to finish?
Awareness is the key for me. Being aware of what is happening around myself is the first and most important step of photography. Then, I look for the possible compositions of shooting that picture, given that I have time. If I don’t have time, I just use auto-focus and shoot the picture with my current settings. I shoot in RAW, so that we have more data in hand just in case and RAW mode also works better at night. However, if I shoot in JPEG, I make the settings manual as to how the data is captured. Very rarely, however, I shoot in shutter priority or aperture priority modes. My main concern is to bring out the colours as I pictured them to be in editing. I mainly use Photoshop and Lightroom for this.
WallMag: What do you do when you are not photographing?
When I am not photographing, I usually like to read books, research about neural networks, automations and robotics, play the keyboard and play chess.
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