It was stories that first made me fall in love with pictures…
Growing up in remote Army outposts, mealtimes and bedtimes were negotiated over stories. My grandmother's stories of small town Tirunelveli and the thrill of wearing a frock for the first time in her life at age 11, my mother's wistful memories of the monsoons in Trivandrum and of my father's tenure in Durbuk, guarding a frozen mountain range for 3 years and playing ice hockey at 13,500 feet to fight off the silence. Those were the pictures I first saw. The solemn pre marriage portrait made in a studio in 1945, the pinafore wearing college girl in two plaits with French books in her hand and the Artillery soldier sitting on a tank with two of his friends and smiling at me from across time; Sparingly shot and carefully preserved in hard bound albums, dated, captioned and some inscribed at the back, but every one of them - a key to another time and place.
I picked a college program only because it offered photography as a major and first learnt to make pictures on manual cameras in dark rooms with film rolls and negatives. Limited frames per roll and SLR cameras taught me shoot tight and get it right without counting on the benefits of post processing, something I bring to my work even now. After a decade long adventure in design, I came back my first love, full time.
Leit motif
Having shot a range of subjects from products to people, places and spaces; shooting with the aim of capturing the very essence of a subject is a consistent thread spanning my work. The combination of an unguarded moment, lighting that unexpectedly elevates an image and intricate details in an everyday scene are what make an unforgettable picture for me; making weddings ideal hunting grounds. Honest images combined with great composition and an eye for detail are what I believe create a lasting memory of one of the most important days in peoples' lives.
What I do
At a wedding, I aim to make a set of images that are a rich and honest visual narrative of that day. Details like what the sky looked like on the morning of your wedding or who came in through the doors first, I believe, help create a compelling narrative, rich in detail. Capturing the moments between the pictures and documenting the nuances of the relationships between the couple, their friends and families is central to the images I make. With every wedding I shoot, I hope to make pictures that remind the people in them, of how they felt when they see it years later. Getting to know people and being able to seamlessly blend in lets me unobtrusively capture the excitement and the energy characteristic of a wedding.
Based out of Bangalore, Chennai and Goa, I work out of multiple locations.