2013 Photography Scholarship

Children of the Blue City

India | Friday, July 5, 2013 | 5 photos

My name is Chaitanya, I am 32 & I live in London. I am deeply passionate about photography and there is nothing more rewarding and beautiful to me than a day spent capturing the world around me.
I have always had a love for travel and I realize now why this is – it was the catalyst for my passion for photography to express itself and I would travel to Hell for that 'one photograph', if I had to.

The fact that any creative field has hard work, long hours and often challenging conditions is not lost on me. I relish 3am mornings and 22-hour days, when photography is involved - It is hard work and the more you put into it, the more you get.

Today photography is a medium so easily accessible to all and that makes it all the more important for me as a photographer to try and show something new and unique to the viewer – this is the challenge I try to set myself every time I look through my viewfinder.

I haven’t had any formal or classroom training so far. Being on field and learning with a professional photographer like Jason Edwards with Greenland as my 'classroom', will be deeply rewarding and I cannot imagine a better first step towards a career in photography.

The City of Jodhpur in North-West India is often called the 'Blue City' because of its blue-coloured houses.
Like most of India there's a big population of young children in this city and their smiles and vibrant nature is what I have tried to capture in these images. Not all of them have privileged lives but all of them have dreams in their eyes and a smile on their faces. The country is still grappling with issues around the girl child and while a lot has been done, there's a lot more still to be done.

The positivity is infectious and one can't help falling in love with young India.