My life and Photography
Photography has been my passion for just about a year, and until 2 months ago, I was shooting with my phone’s camera or borrowing friends camera every now and then. So until I owned my own camera, I was only capturing moments and things I found interesting and appealing, without considering techniques of photography. However, in this short period of time of owning my own full frame canon 6d, I have thrived to take better image shot after shot. And today, I stand at a stage where capturing the moment is necessary as much as the artistic photographic techniques. From composition to clarity, from alignment to allurement, I consider most elements of art and photography when I’m taking my shots now.
What made me change from an amateur cell-phone shooter to a keen enthusiast on the long road to becoming a professional is the beauty of each moment. Photography is not my hobby, but my lifestyle’s most throbbing, most alive example. I’d like to expand on what I’m trying to say here. I’ve been pursuing the path of meditation since I was 18, and only few years ago after 10 extreme days of Vipassana meditation, I actually came in touch with the notion of spirituality, that is, to live each moment. To live each moment, one needs the awareness of each moment, awareness of each pulsating sense within one’s body and mind. In meditation, I sit down, relax, breathe and then become aware of these moments, each and every moment that forms the present time continuum. My life’s philosophy must have clicked when I started clicking photographs a year ago with a Nikon d3000 camera, as a part of a 10 day short photography course. I won’t say that I had an epiphany when I took photos, but I did know in my heart that this is something I can do all my life and not get bored of it, like sitting for 10 hours each day in the meditation hall and still enjoying that pulse of every moment.
I learn from my own photographs as much as I learn from other professionals who are out there helping students like me through youtube. Learning is a never-ending process, and I personally believe that a person dies not the day he stops breathing but the day he stops learning. I’m currently studying graphic design and advertising, however I see myself as a professional photographer in years to come. I don’t think my soul will be satisfied with a desk job now that it has found a friend to roam around the world with. However, learning about the elements and principles of design has been very helpful in my road to becoming a better photographer each day.
Besides photography, I am passionate about a lot of other things. I love playing my own music in my guitar and jamming up for hours with my friends. Also, I like painting whenever I can but I’m still like a kid on the canvas, expressing abstractly. Both painting and music is therapeutic to me, it takes me in a very elated state of mind, where I am grounded in the moment. Also, I’ve been in and out of poetry, and currently haven’t written anything as I think my energies are being diverted towards other creative avenues such as photography, music, and art. Also, I like to ride out and about places on my motorcycle, just to get out of the hustle and bustle of my city, Kathmandu.
This scholarship is not only an opportunity to be mentored by a National Geographic’s photographer, but also an opportunity to explore my own boundaries within the frame. When I say boundaries, I mean, the ability to convey a story that is readable to viewers around the world, and for such a frame, one needs the mentoring and guidance from a photographer who himself tells his story of the place and its people in each frame. I think Greenland’s travel experience will help me capture images that can create awareness among people about the global warming phenomenon to some extent. Also, I hope to use this experience with Jason Edwards, by going for own tours around Nepal, and its majestic Himalayas to creatively, yet simplistically tell the story of the place, its people, heritages, culture and nature.
All in all, I’m just an eye with a camera, thriving for a sharp, clear and captivating shot. Some of these shots satisfy, and some of these shot I take don’t satisfy me and those that don’t make me wander what I could’ve done right to get image the way I wanted. I also, haven’t found my perfect shot yet, and this is a nagging little feeble thing in my head, as there is this gap I want fulfilled, and this gap, on the contrary, is my motivator to take a better shot than the shot before.
