Every Landscape Tells A Story
July 16, 2020
We are all storytellers. Always have been. It exerts a power beyond the obvious; it creates a deep resonance. The two tools that I, personally, have used to tell my stories are photography and words. So, I thought why not put them together to describe the style of photography that defines me — Landscape Photography.
I started photography when I was 16-years old. I still remember the thoughts that went behind the first digital shot that I took. I saw this unreal hue of blue one evening and I wanted to freeze that moment so that I could transport back to it at a later point in time. Obviously, my photo wasn’t as magical as the thought in my head. Here, look at the image on the left. I mistook the emotion I felt while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph was good. But at the time, it made me happy and I felt the urge to click more. I photographed to find out what something will look like photographed.
I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, wandering around finding things. To me, it felt like a kind of performance, it still does. And the picture is a document of that performance.
We are all naturally seekers of wonders. We travel far to see the majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary mountains, great waterfalls, and galleries of art. And yet the world’s wonder is all around us; the wonder of setting suns, and evening stars, of the magic spring-time, the blossoming of the trees, the strange transformations of the moth, the falling of the waterfall.
Soon enough, I saved up and bought a camera, a Nikon D5200 with kit lens and I use the same camera to date. I shot and shot and shot, anything and everything. I felt that I had the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller.
Whenever I am out there, shooting, I feel that the shot has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. And seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph. That’s the reason I love shooting landscapes. I firmly believe that they affect the human psyche — the soul, the body and the innermost contemplations — like music. Every time you feel nature deeper you resonate better with her, finding new elements of balance and freedom.
Thanks to technological advancements, now everyone has a camera (in their phones) and too often I see people making quick stops, clicking pictures and moving to the next location. They just want an Instagrammable shot. They do not connect with the scene. It is a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. It is right there if you just close your eyes and breathe softly through your nose; you will hear the whispered message, for all landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper. ‘I am watching you — are you watching yourself in me?’ Most travelers hurry too much. The great thing is to try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open and not too much factual information. If you just get as still as a needle, you’ll be there, in the landscape. And this is the gift of a landscape photograph, the heart finds a place to stand.
Photography is a quiet and contemplative activity for me. I slow down and enjoy the beauty of nature. I seek to experience and reveal the mysterious, spiritual aspects of nature. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. It is an art of observation. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. Like these shots that I took recently. These are just gray rocky mountains located at Yana Caves, India but from my perspective, one of the structures looks like a deserted Disney castle.
They say your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. This was a peek into a chapter of my photography journey. It is my intention to present, through the medium of photography, intuitive observations of the natural world and I wish to keep on photographing all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of the place.
Remember, beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.
Keep Shooting, Keep Inspiring!
