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‘Photo’ meaning light and ‘graph’ meaning writing, photography can be easily defined as writing with light. The fact most taken for granted about it is that — photography is EVERYWHERE! When someone switches on a TV, there’s photography in it. When someone reads a book, there’s photograph on the cover. When someone is tempted to eat a chocolate, its mostly because there’s an equally tempting picture on the wrapper. If one goes for a walk in a park, there’s a hoarding with a photograph on it. Its obvious that people like seeing pictures.

The attempt to invent a camera started more than 400 years ago. Camera Obscura (Obscura-Dark, Camera-Room) was designed as early as 1519 in the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Unfortunately, there is no precise date known for this genius invention since no one knows when a pin hole camera was invented. The actual journey of photography began with them. The evolution of photography dates back to 1820’s when Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a French inventor, fixed an image on a plate. Inventions have been made before that, but they were successful only in recording. Joseph was the first to “fix” an image and came to be known as the Father of Photography. Later, his son Niepce Jr. and Lois Jacques Mande Daguerre, a French artist, continued Joseph’s experiments after he expired and finalized what is now called the Daguerreotype process and sold the patent to the French Academy of Sciences, which, on August 19th 1839 made the invention public. This day is now famous as the  ’World Photography Day’.

The discovery of camera however, was not enough. It used to take at least 8 hours to photograph a single image. So, in 1884 George Eastman Kodak took photography a step further by introducing ‘roll film’. This reduced the time of processing an image and made photography portable and ready to be carried anywhere. This was a milestone in the history of photography. Later, several attempts were made by people at color photography till James Clarke Maxwell, a Scot, made the first colored photograph. This concept was further developed which later resulted in simplified processing of the film.

Initially, photographs were made on metal plates, then came the glass plates, then the films and now “its the time to digi-co” ! While the world is going the digital way, nobody wants a “tech-lag”! The reason why digital photography reigns over traditional film photography is that its cost effective, the cost of film and its processing being nullified. Secondly, one can click as many pictures as one wants till his/her battery and memory stick gives up. Last but not the least, there’s always an opportunity to see what one has just clicked which felicitates the rectification of errors, if any. However, most digital cameras do not produce the quality of film. People tend to overlook the issue with the added advantages a digital camera has. Ever since the emergence of digital photography, editing photos or rather manipulating them has become a lot easier. Now the acne on one’s skin can vanish in a matter of seconds to get a super glamorous look, while having a party time in Bahamas but actually being shot by a studio wala! All this can be done by using countless photo editing softwares like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom and many more.

It takes a great deal of time to master the art called ‘photography’. But in the end, all the hard work pays off with some really amazing results. There is a lot of scope to perform. In photography, the more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed. “The more pictures you take, the better are the chances of a ‘best one’ churning out of those,” says Vivek Durgam, a graphic design student. The network photography has in the visual media is so vast that one can see it almost everywhere! Depending on the subject and the purpose of the photograph, photography can be classified into genres like photo journalism, advertising, wildlife, fashion, landscape, underwater, micro and macro photography to name a few. There are also fields in photography which do not use a single photograph but a series of photographs, namely videography and cinematography. But they belong to the family of photography. “Photography as a career option is a great choice and an exciting one,” says Vijigeesh Manadlaparthy, a photography student from JNA&FAU. “Photography is not about how good you shoot, its about how good you see,” he adds.

Setting up a professional photography studio would require a room 14 to 18 feet long and half as wide as it is long to allow the necessary gap of 12 ft between the camera, the background and the equipment. Make sure walls are painted white and have a matte finish and the ceiling is high for high camera angles and soft lighting . The equipments mostly comprise of soft boxes of various kinds,  octa (a huge octagonal soft box), strip soft boxes which might be used for full length pictures, a silver and a gold reflector, a flash light, cutters (black cards) to cut the light off the subjects when needed, a spike to connect all the strobes to and a finally a camera with huge tele lens. VIOLA!! The studio is now set up and ready for use!

Profession for some and hobby for others, photography has been the first love of many. “I always wanted to get involved in a serious hobby and photography was my best option as I was interested in nature, people and the simple things around us. I wanted to capture all those daily happenings and the common things we see everyday,” says Siddharth Dasari, a final year B.Arch student from JNA&FAU. There are several people out there who love photography but are not formally trained in it and yet do a good job out of it. “Joining photography clubs like H.P.C (Hyderabad Photography Club), sharing pictures on blogs and getting opinions about them, browsing through the photos of other people and reading books on photography is all i did to get around in the beginning,” he continues.

Photographing photographers. Credit: Whacked out Brain

Photography in India has come a long way. There is a tremendous change in the perception of photographers. The Gen-X photographers believe that photography today is no longer restricted to clicking picture perfect photographs with exotic backgrounds in a studio. “Photography today is about capturing beauty and fact at the same time. It takes quality, mood and concept into account,” says Madhavan Acharya, a final year photography student from JNA&FAU. It is only in the recent times that learning photography is considered as “formal education” and a full time career option. There’s a general misconception that photography is all about clicking random pictures and getting the best one by “fluke”, then things should certainly go into reconsideration. There are several technical principles to be followed while clicking an image like the rule of thirds, the golden section rule and the diagonal rule. So when a picture looks good, one can now imagine the Herculean effort behind it.

Apart from serving multiple purposes in the visual media in multiple ways, photography plays an important role in other ‘off-beat’ professions too. Photography is a great help to those who are in a field like sculpture, painting, animation, graphic design to name a few.Here photographs are generally used for taking reference. For instance, a camera comes in handy when a model is not too patient to pose for an artist. “I take reference to the pictures i take for colors, shadows, texture or the dynamics of a particular object,” says Vivek. “I tend to click as many pictures as I can as I need them reference while designing 3D spaces, 3D objects, people, their facial expressions etc.” he continues.

A camera can mean a a lot different things to a lot of different people. “A camera I think is one’s conscience. You talk to your camera (conscience) before you decide to photograph something. You develop a kind of mental bond with it and include it in almost every part of your imagination, imagining what a scene would look like when seen through the camera,” says Vijigeesh. “A camera is nothing but our eye. We cant see things in top angle or low angle or slow motion; but a camera can. That’s the beauty of a camera. Its not just the memories but also a visual language by colors, lines, shapes and textures,” concludes Madhavan.