As I get older, if one thing has made me clear, I have started to believe that having a clear and open mind makes a huge difference in both physical and mental well-being. I recently read that time flies by when we start growing old compared to when we were children because – when we are children, anything that we see around us is new, and we consume that, and we eventually take time to do that. But as we grow old, we are not just seeing what is happening around us; we are also consumed inside this vicious circle of social media content, be it tweets, reels, shorts, audio bytes, etc. We are not pausing for anything that we see, hear, or feel; we are just moving ahead, which makes the time feel very short/less. Our attention span has reduced a lot, all thanks to the short-form content, and this, in turn, means that our minds have become susceptible & impatient to quality information.
What I experienced in my own approach to photography kind of relates to it. A lack of patience to slow down or learn or even an open mind will never lead to quality thoughts, and that will never translate to good images. During our good old days of photography, things were never like this. We had no smartphones, we had no Twitter and Instagram status to update our lives about, and we had no WhatsApp to catch up with every other group of people around us. It was all about us, the mindset, the vision of what we want to achieve with a photo and everything around that. Most importantly we were open to experimenting and learning from it.
Over the last several months or even beyond a year, the ability to take good photos was reduced to pulling out the phone from the pocket, firing a few quick shots and letting the computational algorithm or AI do all the heavy lifting and quickly move on to the next thing in life that day. The year-end break/vacation that happened recently was a sincere effort from my end to force myself not to get distracted with the thought of what I am missing out by not checking the Slack messages or emails and convince myself that I need this break, and I need this off time – and most importantly give time for myself. And the conscious effort that was made was to keep the phone aside while spending time taking/making photographs. This lack of distraction also meant that my mindset was back to being the earlier self of calm and putting that effort into thinking about what I wanted to photograph, how I wanted to photograph, and what type of frame or composition would make “ME” happy (than). Another equipment variable that helped me here and for sure for others is having fixed equipment rather than multiple cameras, lenses, and accessories. It forces you to patiently think about what you can do with what you have rather than just convincing yourself to move ahead because you don’t have the necessary equipment.
The image set here is an example of such an attempt. The sample frame on top of this post is what I started with, and the more I spent looking at the scene in front of me, the triptych frame formed by the two pillars and the two walls, the more I was flooded with ideas. At first, it was to have someone walk in between the three frames, and later, it was an effort to look for people who would complement the images that I have already taken. As time progressed, I became cautious about the colour of the subject in the frame. There was even a time when sub-consciously I was thinking of the philosophical side of things in the frame, which is a movement from closed doors to open doors – and hence the final image in which everything fell into one place – OPEN CONVERSATIONS. The colour of the saree worn by the lady, the dynamism in the image, and, most importantly, the direction in which the subject was moving when related to the philosophical aspect I mentioned made it my favourite image from the series.
All these were possible only because I was far more patient, calm, and composed during this outing, which I realised I didn’t use to be in some of the instances where I used to take pictures in the recent past. So, a costly lesson learnt for me is that to hone your craft, you should never let go of the key ingredients which are expected to be an essential part of the craft-making process itself.
Hope everyone had a good start to the year 2025 and, most importantly, had that one essential break which enabled you to go and hit that reset button, which will reshape you for a better year ahead.
Stay Happy, Stay Healthy.