Piercing the mundane
In the artist’s eyes, nothing is ordinary. Evidence of this is in his photographs. Sometimes we need to be shown an alternate version of reality in order to see through the monochrome layers, peeling off the dull mask of familiarity and to behold the world fresh and new every day..
Connection and separation
There is an intangible yet completely palpable boundary between reality and imagination. And somewhere within that gap is a beautiful confusion that reveals our innermost thoughts, raises our most frightening questions, and dares us to venture into a world where anything is possible..
Just shoot
Stop overthinking and just shoot. Fear and apprehension have no place in the mind of the artist who aspires to create anything at all. Sometimes the beauty emerges from beautiful accidents along a rocky climb. Do not be afraid to make mistakes, nor be too anxious to attain perfection – for mistakes are part of […]
Acrobat training
Even the most premeditated shots happen by accident; every photograph, no matter how controlled the environment, comes as a surprise. You can never know when the shooting stars come, and when they do, where they happen to land in your photograph. The trick is to be constantly watching, anticipating, camera at the ready, waiting within […]
Familiarity breeds neglect
Familiarity breeds neglect. A thing of beauty seen too often loses its magnificence and inherent magnetism because the eyes eventually learn to let the commonplace go unnoticed. But why so many people still take pictures of the goings-on of the sun in the sky is evidence enough that, when something has beauty etched in its […]
Of objects and destinies
It is a real experience to take things out of nature, choose things out of reality and arrange them according the puzzle in our minds. Beauty reveals itself in photographs when it cannot do so in the humdrum of daily life. It takes the fresh, discerning eyes of the artist to find wonder in the […]
Not Where but How
Everything we need to discover is right under our noses, waiting for us to notice. And most of the time it’s not a question of where we look, but how we look at things. Our perception reality, based largely on the perspective we choose to see it, determines the mirror we present the world to […]
An empty canvas
The artist’s mind is constantly at work – even when he’s staring into space, enjoying his morning coffee, or sound asleep and barely conscious at all. An empty canvas is full of possibility, purpose and potential, heavy with meaning long before ink or colour even touches the surface. And we who behold the finished product can only […]
Who can find beauty?
Beautiful things don’t come by accident. They are a result of constant searching and often ridiculously hard work, even emerging as a by-product of pain and grief and hopelessness. The eyes that find beauty are those whose spirit has been bent to recognise it – regardless of whether it’s locked in a tower or hiding […]
Go and find out
Every picture comes as a surprise, no matter how much effort you put in calculation. Regardless of the beauty you behold in front of you, any rendition will have a separate beauty of its own. It is in this journey of witnessing and discovery that the artist develops an interesting acquaintance and eventual friendship with […]
You need the negatives
It’s the blend of light and dark of high and low, of shade and spark that make pictures, that make memories, that make life. Often we think it is in the effort to escape the grips of pain that we explore and enjoy and create. But what we don’t often realise is that it is […]
Centuries in the making
Photographs are not only portable sheets of colour but pieces of time stolen from the constantly running sands, snatched from a river that never stops flowing. Yet pictures are not random fossils of memory frozen by some cosmic accident; they are the silent musings of the artist’s mind, slowly waiting to find expression in the separate […]
Do you know where to look?
Our eyes are a filter of the conscious and unconscious yearnings and ideals we pick up as we walk through the vast wilderness that is life. Whatever captivates us belongs to the realm of the familiar – whether we’re aware of it or not. In one way or another, we are all looking for a […]
Two eyes
There is a fine balance between sight and emotion in photography. Leave one out and you’ll have a one-eyed monster. It is in that simultaneous seeing and feeling where the photographer bears witness to the yearnings of the earth which, he then realises, are but the yearnings of his own soul..
Art and nature
Creativity is a basic human need. It not only provides an medium for expression, it also connects us with that infinite, indescribable being to whom we credit our existence. Photography is not a mere distraction to pass the time; it is the experience of witnessing, with great intensity and rapid succession, every moment contained in […]
Confronting reality
One of the most exciting things about photography is that, more often than not, you are likely to get caught unawares. Unlike other forms of art where great deliberation, thought and caution is brought into the slow process of creation, photography presents to you a finished product that whispers as though it were a vast revelation of the […]
A reason to everything
If no one is able to notice remarkable things, how will anyone know they exist? The glow of the sun, the flight of a bird, the thriving greenery – these ordinary things are only ordinary because they belong to the realm of the familiar. However, whether or not something is commonplace has nothing to do […]
Clumsy beginnings
A quiet void exists between talent and taste, one that grows only larger and lonelier when an artist compares his first photograph with that of another’s hundredth snapshot. Beginnings are often clumsy; but Art thrives even – and sometimes because of – disorder. Everyone has to take off from somewhere. Discover where and how your journey […]
A life of its own
There is a time for noise, a time for silence; a time for work, a time for relaxation; a time for diversion and a time for attention. Art is the resulting product of the delicate balance between discipline and imagination. Find the proportion with which you can best express yourself and your work will unavoidably […]
Two sides
There are two sides to a good photograph: the visible and the invisible. As to which of those two ultimately beckons the artist to poise his camera and click on the shutter, we may never know. Unlike the sides of a coin, pictures don’t need flipping. Their dimensions overlap and fade into each other in […]
A piece of the universe
There are different kinds of magic. Oftentimes we don’t recognise the ones that are right under our noses, the ones we carry every day, the ones that come in the form of a camera. It doesn’t matter if you get a turtle instead of a rabbit from out of your hat; what matters is that […]
The head, the eye and the heart
The minute you spot that moment worth capturing is the minute you behold what you know and feel is real – as if, in cosmic terms, all the planets were aligned. It only takes a fraction of a second for everything to happen all at once and the gravity of the moment culminates as it […]
The story of your life
The habits you build shape the person you become. Your photography is ultimately a record of the changes these habits create. Exhibit the visual anthology of your work and you look into the story of your life..
What do you play with?
Subconsciously, we are drawn again and again to the things we love, those that matter to us, even those that haunt our long-forgotten memories. And we may not notice it for a while but eventually we begin to see a tenuous thread of familiarity connecting every snapshot and every photograph we create. What does your […]
