I can’t say that I have been interested in photography for ‘as long as I can remember’. But my curiosity and passion for that has increased over time and while I am by no means a good photographer, I am an enthusiastic one for sure! I look for moments that inspire me or take me by surprise and I try to make sure that I capture those as well as I can. I like taking photos and I aspire to taking good ones and silly ones to look back on years into the future -be it from travels or from everyday life, be it staged or some that I just happened to stumble upon.

    My interest towards photography started a few years ago with Facebook. At that time, it was the new craze and like many, I was quite hooked to it. And the thing that I started noticing was how people were posting pictures of almost everything- from big moments like weddings and births, to travels and simple everyday occurrences. I would always go  through all posts related to photographs and what struck me soon was that, in addition to seeing their world through their eyes, I had, unknowingly, started noticing what made for a good photograph. I used those photos to learn from and get a sense of what might or might not make for a good one. I started with the composition first. I am still learning about it.

    We did not have a good camera at that point in time so my tool was the cellphone. And I would just click any subject that I thought could make for a good photo and that’s how I began ‘training my eye’ to the basics of photography (something that is a work in progress). I would click the same subject multiple times and later figure out how each was different in spite of being almost identical. And with time I was able to take some photos which came out OK. Nothing spectacular but also not disappointing.

    A few years back, prior to our vacation in Florida, we got a DSLR and I had a proper tool to start learning (not that I have done much of that either). It is not a very simple thing to know and use (other than the perpetual ‘auto mode’ that you can set it to) and for a not very patient person, it was not that easy for me to use! After some initial attempts, I thought that the camera was a let down…maybe we should have gotten a different one:( I was quick enough to realize though that it was obviously not the camera that had let me down, it was just the opposite! I had to be more patient and learn the ropes slowly. I have learned a bit about what I am capable of and am yet to figure out everything that the camera is capable of. My struggle with figuring out concepts and settings is a real one and frustrating at times, but I am holding on and hoping to get better with every opportunity that presents itself:)

    I have been thinking for sometime now of joining some sort of an online photography class and while I am not sure how that would work out, I am curious to give it a shot. Inspiration is all around us, we just need to recognize it and let the moment do the magic. There are amazing blogs on photography (photos on which, other than being incredibly amazing, also make me want to delete every picture I have ever taken!) that I just gaze at and hope to, one day, take a photo that would be, maybe, one hundredth of the original one!

   We have all heard the saying a thousand times that ‘every picture tells a story’ and it couldn’t be more true. We capture fleeting moments through our photos, moments that happen around us. One of the things that I have always loved doing and still do, is to look at family albums. Black and white and later colored pictures that adorn those pages have captured moments that tell so many different stories and transport me back to a time when my grandparents were young, my parents were growing up, and it helps me connect moments to stories that I have only heard of. In this day and age not many people make photo albums, probably, but I have a strange affinity for them. I still put photos in albums and I hope one day the future generation stumbles upon those and a smile spreads across their face the same way mine does.

    I read somewhere ‘beauty and art are everywhere’ and we can use our phones or cameras to help preserve those moments. I think most of us take photos to capture moments that matter to us and when we look back at them we reminiscence…we get to relive the joy and savor that bygone moment for a tad bit longer.