“Your photographs are not something you viewed or witnessed but are something that you felt”, that is something I speak from the experience I have gained till now as a photographer.
I, Siddhant, am an engineer turned photographer who found an early resonance with photography from the beginning of his engineering days. The turning point in life was a trek to Sar Pass (Himachal) that I went on in 2016 that made me feel that nature is way too beautiful to be expressed only through words. I took photographs during the trek to show people and fairly justified the beauty of the places, which I got to know from the appreciation of people on social media.
That was just the push I needed to indulge myself more into this passion and I began traveling to nearby places during weekends to encapsulate the beauty in my photographs. I started working for a promotional agency and managed to earn just enough to fund my travels. With a limited amount of funds in hand, I learned the art of budget traveling, which in turn helped me explore the core of the places which you usually do not get on guided tours.
The break-through photograph of me was the one I took at Amer fort (Jaipur) and gained me recognition and confidence to not cease rowing the boat. That photograph won me a number of photography competitions and then I knew there’s no turning back. I knew there was still a lot to learn and hence I continued engineering whilst I practiced photography in parallel that helped me brush my photography skills.
The life shifted gear when I was approached by TravelXP for their show on student travelers and I was one of the four people that were featured in the podcast. My parents were happy and proud and that’s all I needed to face any troubles I would encounter in this field. Recently I conducted a workshop in NIT Raipur on how to manage college with traveling and photography and to mentor students on a subject I was uncertain about a few years back was a delightful and proud moment for me.
It has been a beautiful journey till now. I enjoyed the struggles and failures and work to make myself a better photographer today than I was yesterday.
My work has been published in various platforms - NatGeoTravellerIndia, CNN, HistoryTV18, etc which keeps me motivated to never stop.
A photograph should portray the essence of a place, I feel and I make sure I indulge myself in the place and then create a photograph that is unique. I challenge myself to photograph the place in a way it hasn’t been before, you should do that do. Trust me, you’ll experience a new potential within.
There are millions of photographers out there, find out what makes you one of a kind and be the master of your own style. That’s my mantra.
What’s yours?
