Shutter Happy

A riot of colours and moods inform the frames in Poras Chaudhary’s exhibition of photographs titled Colorful India,currently going on at the Alliance Francaise. The self-taught photographer,who first held the camera in 2005,has not stopped clicking ever since,travelling the length and breath of the country to capture moments for eternity. What began as a hobby is now a passion for Chaudhary,who is involved in his family business but does serious photography as well. “I hope to take it up full-time as a professional. My last project was a promotion for a rock band and many of my pictures on the web for sale,” says the 24-year-old,taking you around his 38 compositions. From Leh to Kurukshetra,Kumbh Mela in Haridwar to Pushkar Mela in Rajasthan,Chaudhary captures the panorama of rural India and its people,focusing especially on their traditional costumes. “You don’t need formal training as there is nothing theoretical in photography. Patience,humility and a way to reach out to people is what I’ve learnt during the course of my travel photography,” he adds.

For many,photography is a catharsis,a way to move out of the mundane and into the creative mode without much ado and with minimum training. With digital cameras and technology,photography has become accessible and affordable to many. It is an art that can be practiced at any time and place,says Rupesh Chugh,an amateur photographer,who discovered his talent when his travel photographs were used for a magazine cover. “I do freelance work,apart from web designing,” says the 28-year-old Chugh.

Navdeep Sandhu’s first exhibition Aleph is a chronology of self-portraits. “I’m an expressive and spontaneous person and I have given my emotions a visual form through these 33 photographs,” she says. Sandhu plays with light and shade to create mysterious and enigmatic images,mostly black and white. “This is a medium to express the human face and its feelings,” she says,adding that it took her more than a year to put her first solo show together. Sandhu works as a full-time educationist and theatre person and is planning to venture into fashion photography.

Gagan Chandoke,a city-based architect and painter,carries her Canon everywhere she goes. She put up her works in the recent May Fair,a platform for amateur artists. For her,photography is a way of seeing things differently,turning the abstract into simple. “A mundane subject can be turned around in a brilliant way with the click of a button,” she says. She has also put her pictures on the Red Bubble Site to garner work and hopes that one day she will be a full-time photographer. Prashant,who teaches English,has a keen eye for observation,precisely why he did not feel the need to get into the technical details of photography,“I click whatever I find interesting,store these pictures and use them for work,exhibitions and promotions,” he says.