Photography is nothing but an art of telling stories

posted at Facebook

The day you go in raptures having shot a picture and reduced it to a photograph or snapshot ,,, you lost it and this art of photo shooting is further denigrated at camera clubs ,,

For me and thanks to the doyens who took me under their care and though they were great masters of photography ,, they let me interpret photography the way I wanted I first thought of photography akin to poetry I humbly wrote picture poetry I still cant write a poem without a picture .

Blogging made me shoot drivel and drivel was what I call my enchantment as a blogger .

Luckily the blogger within me died a stroke ..OD

As a reborn photographer I became a story teller I need words as the people who see my images are not part of my culture or my surroundings .

I shot for myself but I shot to woo the intenet I shot for Flickr Twitter 4 frames and finally FB though I am uncomfortable uploading pictures here but I can write summarize poeticize that I am unable to do at Flickr or Twitter ,.. I have a grave on the Internet too it is Blogspot ,,, RIP

I sometimes share my stuff there .. sometimes .

Ok now back to my hair raising story ..I am mad about street barbers having documented their art finger skill for many years ..I shoot religious tonsure Akika Mundan..all relaed to shaving the scalp.

Here at Makanpur the mothers bring their child get him her shaved and a few strands of hair are placed at the foot of the Tomb as appreciation for the Saints blessings the birth of a normal child maybe birth of a boy ,, lots of reasons .

I wont go into it even adults shave their head having found the right mate got a good job...so I shot these barbers on the banks of the Ganges I shot them at the various Kumbhs I shot them on my street Lal Mitti Bandra Reclamation they became the protagonist of my barber storyboard .

The largest number of barbers on a single day countless bald heads I shoot at Banganga Pitru Paksha Mumbai.

I shot my granddaughters akika mundan.

I just love street barbers and mind you this is not an obsession or a fetish it is storytelling ...

I first used to shoot stills but now it is more videos it gives a dimension and continuity to my barber stories .

13 .5 million views because ordinary people see my videos I gave the people I shoot on the streets an International platform my You Tube channel I would not upload my videos on Facebook sheer waste and worst on Twitter live .

So go out take a camera stop shooting fucked pictures shoot some mind blowing stories fuck stay a million light years from Camera Clubs they will never let you become a storyteller stories dont hang on camera salon walls only pictures that all look the same from one camera club brochure to another ,,

Break rules become a better photographer ..
Fuck the old pompous one foot in the grave Renaissance clones .zombies ..

These are my personal views as a product of a camera club...I gave it up before it could give up on me .

Photography Must Educate Must Have A Purpose Or Else It Is Meaningless

photography shooting pictures
as pictures makes no sense
palming of rubbish posing as
art is sheer nonsense ,, pictures
must talk reveal heal not simply
created by heads all dense ,,
pictures must tell stories ,,
create suspense alluring
intense ,,  otherwise not
'worth two pence showing
off with glitzy cameras those
fancy lens a stupid press card
pictorial pretense those hallowed
heads of camera club photographers
pompous pedantic sitting on a fence
one picture similar to another picture
same light same ambiance same
sequence ,, when will you grow up
when will you change  do say
something in your defense ,,

I saw a photo judging in my camera club and though I am no more into salon or competitive photography the entries were horrendous , and I felt sorry for one of my dear friend a curator of a prestigious art gallery made to suffer this ignominy of finding a good print among all badly shot created prints ,, and if you live in a jar of a camera club .. without widening your horizon .. mind you Facebook does not widen your knowledge of photography snapshots dont take you anywhere but into the dark ages ,, my benchmark for good photography as photography has always been Flickr ,, also depends on who you are following and those who are following you ..


I am a camera club product I have nothing against camera clubs but horrendous display of bad art work.. I mean is this how you want progeny to remember you ..the same guy gets the first prize is this photography ,, are you helpless to give birth to new innovative photographers ,, you cant change ,, you were never capable of changing .. to change you must change from within,,


You must create without copying ,, and come out of the closet living with dead masters is not going to give soul or poetry to your photography ,, for once become your own master .


With malice to none .

I Used To Once Hate Guys Shooting On Their Mobile Phones

Earlier I used a Blackberry , though I did take a few street shots with it I was never happy , using a phone as a camera .
For me the Camera was God , his cosmic eye that made me see the world without blinkers without bias without opinionated gibberish .

But carrying the camera everywhere got tiring , and having shot more than 300000 images I started getting bored , I have two cameras I have hardly used the Canon 7D that was a gift , I use the Canon 60D that was a gift from a friend to Marziya my grand daughter .

Recently my eldest son presented me the Motorola G and I liked it , he synced it with Flickr so I got all my shots saved on the camera and at Flickr too  only hitch I had to make them public before they could be seen by anyone else ,,I shoot shit , literally without composition , without aesthetics , the little aesthetics you see is in the processing tool I use Aviary within Flickr to make my color images black and white , simple and as I type with one finger of a permanently damaged hand easy too.

This year I hardly shot any subject of importance , I have not been a very happy soul for personal reasons ,,and of late I let Nerjis Asif Shakir shoot the religious events around Bandra .

She is an avid learner , remembers everything , hates me when I try to assist her .she knows how to hold the camera the first lesson of photography, anyone can click a picture but when a child takes a picture I fervently believe it is God doing the needful call me crazy I wont hold it against you and  now you know why I will never ever allow my grand kids to joina camera club and get brainwashed into shooting the same shit everyone churns out , the same fucked lighting , the same fucked emotionless pictures , see a camera club salon and you know what I am saying , there is no effort to change and never will be with old farts calling the shots , fresh blood will never be infused stupid rules color wheel and what not..

I miss the roll era , but than I am happy shooting on the digital , I am not a fine art photographer actually I am not a photographer at all I just hold the camera and let it shoot what it wants to shoot with a little help from my clicking finger .
And the analogue camera guy who has just moved to cyberspace is so scared that someone will steal his pictures the huge ugly watermarks on pictures even a cow would hesitate to piddle on.. and this is not conceit but reality ..and I hope a few of my friends take this in the right spirit .

Analogue photographers hate to be called bloggers , it is an insult to their integrity and their bold faced attitude , and analogue photographers barring a few those with  dog like string of degrees against their names have a might attitude .. and than I wonder happily that I was lucky to fly the cuckoos nest , my camera club introduced me to a world and once I came on the net I left it behind completely I was baptized by Biz Stone and others as a Blogger ,, a photoblogger ,and they took me a step ahead of photography , I could add my thoughts as corollary to my picture and without my cyber adventures at Buzznet Blogspot , Webshots Fothing Xanga I would have never reached the safe shores of Flickr ,

Everyone I knew used Flickr as a photo gallery I used it to blog , all my blogs originate at Flickr but some of late originate at Facebook.
I dont wont ever use Wordpress ..

I have several blogs on Blogspot , I gave up my Hijra blog domain and site too ,all this now exists at Flickr as my private blogs .

My grand daughters both Marziya Shakir and Nerjis have their Flickr handles , Twitter handles Blogspots and Facebook too , I deactivated their Facebook accounts till they come of age.

So I now use the Motorola G to shoot my restless street angst while my grand daughters use the DSLR .

And last but not the least I now reblog most of my posts from Flickr to Tumblr I think Tumblr will be the next big thing one day ,,Ms  Marissa Mayer has a Golden Touch ,,A billion dollar touch if I may say so ,,

And if you love poetry , think as a poet mind you street photography becomes easy the camera becomes a timeless magic wand.

About Camera Clubs Rolls And Spools

I wrote a comment on my friend Biradars Facebook Post ,, Biradar helped me shoot the Beauty of Belgaum and Doodh Sagar ..

Dear Biradar

 you look cool ..open a photography school ,,,for those at camera clubs that shoot pictures like fools.. logon ki ankhon main dalte hain dhool teaching outdated rules , to their camera no difference between a horse donkey or a mule ..ye kaise karenge kabool..shooting sunsets , dying phool..no photogenic love only paisa vasool..

shitting images as in diarrhea  non stop stools ,