Photography – A World Not Known To Many

The Startup:What is there in taking a photograph? It’s just a click. This is what I heard from many people while I asked them to tell me what they thought about photography. I had a small discussion, a mere question and answer forum, with my colleagues about photography and its related interests. I was stuck by the variations in the answers I got from them.The series of questions I asked them were:1. What is photography?2. What is a photograph?3. Who is a photographer?4. What is a camera?5. What do you see in a photograph?6. What do you feel when you see a photograph?After getting different kinds of answers from them, I wanted to write something about photography from a professional’s point of view. First I will give you a gist of the conversations I had with my colleagues.The Conversation:”Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”- Alfred StieglitzIt started just like this.I went to Hema, a colleague who is interested in learning photography, and asked the first question, “What is photography from your point of view?”. She, without hesitating, said “It’s an expression”. After a pause I asked her what a photograph is and told her to think from the mind and not from the heart. I still don’t understand why I said like that. Then, she suddenly stared at me and said, “It’s just an art or an image of your thought”. Thinking of what could have been a perfect answer from her, I just rushed through the other questions and came to the final one. I asked her “What do you feel while seeing a snapped moment in a picture?”. With a cute little smile peeping out of her lips, she said, “The same expression”. It surprised me since it was the same answer as the first one and it sounded like looping. But I was stunned by the answer for the question, “Who is a photographer?” The answer she said was that “Photographers see something beautiful in every small thing.”This Q&A went on with some of my colleagues and everyone had different points of thoughts. But the answers given by Kannan, who had a scientific bent of mind, filled my eyes with tears of pride. For the question “What is a camera?”, the answer was, “If photographers are physics, then camera is gravity”. After listening to the reply I was quite puzzled, since I am weak in Science. I asked, “Why?”. Scientist (Kannan, I call him like this), with a smile said, “There is no physics without gravity, like that, there is no photography without camera”. The way he compared science and photography was simply astonishing.The Pro’s Thought:”A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.”- Ansel AdamsFor me, photography is a he(art), which shows the naked world in an unusual way. I didn’t start seeing things in a different light after learning photography. Rather, explorations gave me an insight to this beautiful world.My photography career didn’t just start as a whim. It started after seeing a single historical photo, which made me realize what photography is and who photographers are. It’s a photo taken during the Vietnam War, in which a small girl runs nude to escape the explosions. That photo made me cry and think. It didn’t just show the incident, but also narrated the pain, suffering and lot more.Each and every photo has its own emotions. Some may be silent, some happy, some sad and it goes on. It depends on its own creator’s sight.If you ask me the same array of questions I asked my colleagues, I would probably say1. What is Photography?It’s not just a word or a technique. It’s a sentence of natural beauty, a creation of incredible sights and a life of extraordinary scenes.2. What is a Photograph?It’s a view of incredibility, which not everyone can see. It’s an unbelievable world.3. Who is a photographer?In a single word, creationist. God of photographs.4. What is a camera?I would compare a camera with the third eye of Lord Shiva (God portrayed in the Hindu mythology), which is used to see scenes beyond the ordinary. The camera is every photographer’s inner eye.5. What do you see in a photograph?Its beauty and emotions. As a pro, I see its specifications too.6. What do you feel when seeing a photograph?While seeing a photograph, I virtually go to the scene where it was captured, and try to understand the photographer’s feelings and emotions when he/she shot that picture.The Climax:”Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”- Marc RiboudPhotography is not just a profession! It’s an act of your heart. Kushel, my colleague surprisingly said, “Photography is worth knowing (learning)”. All photographs have life in it. Learn to see them with motion and action, with love and care, with fondness and feelings. I see them like how they are depicted in the Harry Potter movies. Those photographs have the live action of the pictured situation, and portray emotions like sadness, anger, happiness, love and more.My colleague, Sai said, “The camera is a Time Machine”. Is it so? Yes, I think it is. A camera can stop time and can lend a hand to hold the moment. It captures every single pixel of your precious moment and saves it. Poets write with a pen, but photographers write through a camera.Ansel Adams once said, “Sometimes I arrive just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter.” Photographers not just document the world, but also create their own world.We, photographers are the professional observers of this hard-to-believe world. We create a world and live in that beautiful world. We can show anything through a photograph – a write-up, a painting and even a life.