Looking back at the days of adolescence I can say that in every aspect I wanted to be like my father, and I still try hard to this day. Be it his love for nature or his compassion for other human beings, his affinity to the outdoors or his voracity for books of all sorts, his humbleness or his sincerity at work I wanted to acquire each and every trait of his while growing up and I have no idea how successful I have been at that. But I am sure that Baba must be a happy man to see me pursue a few hobbies that he also had a liking for but could not do so due to vagaries of circumstances. Photography is one such hobbies which I inherited from him. Baba was a photography enthusiast since his college days. He had a very crude and basic Fujica 35mm format camera which exposed 72 frames per meter of film. More interestingly he used to develop his films himself as photography was a prohibitively costly affair back then due to cost of media and photo developing charges. Some of the photographs taken and developed by him still adorn our old family albums. It is from him I learnt the basics of photography. The first camera Baba purchased for me was a Kodak KB10 35mm fixed focus camera which was as basic as a camera can be. From the beginning I had strong inclination towards nature photography and tried to capture landscapes with my Kodak KB10. If I saw an appealing landscape all that I had to was to point and shoot. Except for the composition of the frame I had very little to control. Then I was handed a Russian 35 mm Zenit SLR camera with a 18-55 mm lens. Now this was the first camera that allowed me to experiment with the settings like shutter speed. aperture etc. Admittedly I have spoilt countless length of films while experimenting with the camera.
I am yet to graduate to a DSLR as per the need of the hour. For now I am happy clicking with my point-and-shoots. I find photography to be a very satisfying and pleasure giving form of art. Showing your perspective of things to the world through a camera is really a gratifying experience.
