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I have always chosen an unconventional road. I am not doing the glamorous photography. I am specialised into a male PRE-dominating field i.e. automobile and industrial photography.
Many people we meet during our work have a perception that being a woman how would I be able to work for long hours. I believe, gender doesn’t ever matter or make us weak at our work. If you are focused, you will be able to do justice with the work overcoming all the odds.
I remember an incident. Once I was at super hero motor car factory for a project. A safety guy came to us and asked who the photographer was, as there were no guys leading on the spot. When someone said it’s me, he gave a weird look saying how would I climb chimney or the highest point as the shoot was planned at a factory, to take the aerial shot. This girl is just 5’2” and how would she be able to climb the monkey ladder which is 50 ft high. Even wind and other elements would not be favourable there at height.
I convinced and assured him that I knew my job and would take care of security and precautions. I completed my shoot and came back. My work proved him wrong. He felt sorry for his overwhelming reaction. People in India still think women are weak but I have overcome these issues now. In my industry, I have to meet mostly the men.
When did you pick up your first camera? And did it quickly become a serious vocation for you?
I was interested in sketching and painting since my childhood and had always wanted to pursue a career in an Advertising industry. I loved the communication part of that. After 10th I joined the 5 years course in Commercial Art. In my 3rd year, the syllabus had photography as an elective subject.
This is somewhere around 18 years back, when I was 16. I always wanted to earn some pocket money. I contacted Indian Express for a freelance project. Every year they published Ganesha magazine just before Ganpati. The lady in charge asked me to make some ganesha sketches and told me that they would like it, they would use the same for the magazine. I accepted and approached her with my sketches. Though she was was not satisfied with the work but she was impressed with my drive of completing work in time. She asked if I had a camera. I did not had DSLR camera, but a basic one. She had asked me to go to Lalbagh and click pictures of ganesha to use it as reference for sketches that would be my original work.
I did not had much technical knowledge of the photography, nor had my classes begun at that time. I knew a bit about the camera, what I had learnt from my seniors. I captured few ganesha pics in Lalbagh and after that I had to give her the roll so that she could develop it and contact the concerned person. She told that she would get back to me in a week. Weeks passed; but there was no response from her. She disappeared for next two weeks. I consoled myself that she might have not liked my work. I couldn’t follow up her.
When I lost all hopes, she called me and told that she had developed it and showed to the Indian Express CEO. He liked those pictures so much that they had decided to cancel the illustration for ganesha magazine for that particular year. They launched the photography ganesha magazine- featuring only my pictures. For the first time I was featured in a magazine with the credits given for the photographs that I chad licked. I received my first cheque, Rs. 7500/-. It was the first time someone said that I have an eye for photography and should pursue it commercially.
As a female photographer, what are the greatest challenges you face?
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