Amit Sahoo is just an 18-year-old who discovered that he liked photography just one and half years back. Nothing much has changed since then. He still holds his first digital camera — a Kodak c613. He still wants to prove the camera does not matter. “But in the year I got tagged as an amateur photographer, I learnt a lot about photography, which is still like a drop in the ocean,” says Amit, as he adds as an afterthought: ”I also learnt about cameras, which incidentally made the optics chapter in my physics syllabus easier.” And he is still waiting for a DSLR to step into the next level of photography.
Let’s hear the rest of it in Amit’s own words.
20th Feb. 2011, I can still remember it as clearly as yesterday. I was chatting with my friend Swaroop at around 10:30 pm, who had ignited my initial interest in photography.
That time, we were visiting various photography pages on Facebook. I was amazed at the photographs and also the 900+, 1,000+ “likes” the pages seemed to generate. We were talking if these people were really popular to get so many hits.
Suddenly I wrote in the chat box: “Hey, let’s create our own pages.”
Swaroop: “Are you serious?”
Me: “Yup, I am.”
Swaroop: “Are we ready for it?”
Me: “Let’s give it a shot.”
First part was the toughest — naming our pages. We didn’t want to name our pages on our own names. Amit Sahoo’s Photography Page? Naaaah!
Finally, after lots of thoughts and talks, Lens & Light was born. (Swaroop had decided to call his page Megapixel.)
Within a few minutes, the page was created, launched, published. Now came the time for uploading pictures. We started with a few, in the meantime clicked a lot, upload the bests and some even amazed the masters of this field.
The journey from 1+ like to 1,400+ likes was long but our interest and our love for doing it helped us to thread along easily.
As Amit completes his first year as an amateur photographer even as he struggles with his final year school load, Howzzit takes a look at some of his choicest clicks. We prefer to call them “choicest” and not his “best”, since we, at Howzzit, have always been eager to pick up his best ones and share with our readers! So here we go.
Damselfly (not to be confused with a dragonfly) is common in Kolkata, especially during the spring, given number of ponds and other such water bodies in and around it. But this one is special. It is one of my finest macros.
The Asian Pied Starling or the Pied Mynah. I captured this usual guest puffing up its feathers on my terrace on a chilly winter morning.
When God played with the colors on his canvas…
Forget the air-conditioners, this is still the surest way to beat the heat for Kolkata's millions.
Ei akashe aamar mukti alloy aalo… The famous Rabindrasangeet, translated loosely means My deliverance is in the lighted firmament. The young boy, free and resilient against the grey-blue sky of the City of Joy is nothing but Tagore's song personified.
A Walk towards light. I caught this solitary boy on the beaches of Puri last year. The setting sun formed the perfect background.
Tobacco kills? Don’t tell him that. Done to death a hundred times by the travails of life, he would rather have the little peace and puff away on the grand old meaning of life.
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched; they must be felt with the heart, so said Helen Keller. Love and books, should we say?
Time ticks and life fades away. As Mumbai survived yet another attack on its bruised and battered self on the July 13, 2011, dead bodies, torn limbs lay on the road along with what The Telegraph called "the incredible sight of diamonds lying on the road". Angry and troubled in faraway Kolkata, this is how I could capture it.
More than one Bengalis, a pleasant day, a low wall to rest your backside… what else do you need for that perfect adda?
