I am a 28-year-old self-taught photographer who quit a promising career in chartered accountancy to follow my passion. Using the humongous web of social media to its fullest, i made it to the top, with 7 lakh Facebook followers and 12 lakh Instagram followers. Speaking about my journey, the ace travel photographer gets up, close and candid-
My dad always dreamt of me pursuing a career as an auditor, and hence i added audit in my name.
One can easily trace my career, one that is an inspiration to many.
The dawn of Audi Photography
I was a student when I started my Facebook page Audi Photography. My declining interest in the curriculum led me to follow my passion. The idea of capturing every moment was always at the back of my mind, and i finally quit my college to follow my instincts.
I’m a drop-out. It was the worst. I gave up. Studying just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t complete my Chartered Accountancy. The reason I gave up, though, was that when I was doing my articleship, I was the only one in my entire batch who could communicate, because of which I got to head my own team and I was interviewing chartered accountants to work under my team. Then I realised, if I finished my Chartered Accountancy and was being interviewed by a 20-year-old who knew nothing about what he was doing, I didn’t think it was a good thing to continue. That’s the story behind my dropping out.
My initial stint with the lens dates back to the time when i was 7 years old. After many experiments and trial sessions, i received a 5MP point and shoot camera as a gift.
My first picture was of my Mom and Sis
I’ve always been interested in photography. Ever since I was a kid, it’s always fascinated me. When I was too young to be trusted with a camera, I’d make my family or friends sit down, and sketch them on a piece of paper, then sketch out a little negative of it and put it in an envelope that said foto-flash on top, just like they did in the good old days.
Eventually, i started my first Facebook fan page under the banner Audi Photography on Oct 1st 2010, which has today evolved into a community of around 7.7 lakh photography enthusiasts.
Mixing the love for travelling into Photography
While most of us have grown up with faint memories of family trips to religious places, fairs, exhibitions, and picnics, all i remember is converting each of these memories into smaller memoirs. Growing up in a family that believed in a passport full of stamps, i began travelling at a very young age on a regular basis, which i religiously follows even today, so much so that, every 4 months, i deep dive into the nature to return with a handful of masterpieces.
Travel and landscape is what I shoot mostly. I think whatever we grow to become is strongly influenced by how we grew up. As a kid, we travelled a lot as a family, to different places. All along the way we also documented our many trips and the things we did. Which is where my love for travel and shooting comes from.
While most of my work has a fan base one would die for, my collections from the Himalayas, the Northeastern parts of India and Silhouettes are the most loved. Digging through my humongous collection, my most appreciated work is the video i made of Sikkim, Sikkim in Blur. Recently, i even went on a self-funded all India tour, spending 50 days on the road and covering 13,000 km.
Photography as a career
Following the mainstream professions is outdated these days, but when i started out, photography was a far-fetched option as a promising career. Dealing with societal pressure, i opted for it even though it didn’t promise me a huge bank balance, but today, my top clientele includes the country’s who’s who, with brands like Vodafone, Samsung and Toyota as my patrons.
I always charged low prices, but never did anything for free. I love social media. When I started out, I knew I loved taking pictures, but I didn't know what to do with them or how to get the word out there. Just when I was thinking about this, I stumbled across a new feature Facebook had released, Facebook pages. So I just started with that, as a way to tell people, ’Hey, this is what I'm doing now’. With time, my work has managed to build a community, and I'm thankful for that.
The negatives behind the life of a photographer
I started making decisions for myself at the age of 16. From working as a tele-caller for paying my own taxes and owning an office space, i can simply say i have seen the grass on both sides.
The life of a photographer is not a cake walk. It takes perseverance and determination to stick to a profile where party invites mean free photographs, where weddings mean gaining experience and no money.
This will probably echo with most working photographers/artists, a lot of the time, the biggest hurdle is getting the assignment at a mutually beneficial price-point. And after the project, getting the payments on time.
My experience and knowledge of photography was very limited when i started out, so in order to understand how to set up a base price, how photographers talk to their clients and deal with situations, i went in for being a model in few projects.
During one of his projects with the Discovery Channel in South Africa, my luggage were robbed. The stolen bag had gadgets, cameras and lenses worth lakhs, due to which i had to cancel all my upcoming projects, reimburse my clients and find a potential standby to fill my spot. It took almost a year for me to get back to my normal life, fighting the odds of losing something so valuable. It was one of the turning points of my life.
Soon after this, I travelled to Nepal on an assignment. I was so blown away by the hospitality and liveliness of the place that I was basking in the excitement up to next day, when I woke up to a broken roof, damaged walls and dead bodies. The country was hit by a massive earthquake, and that is when I realised how lucky I was.
Whatever you're doing with your work, stay true to what you want to do, that will be what sets you apart.