Why you must always evolve.

A bit of personal history.

I started my photography journey doing black-and-white photography with a film camera. One difference between the film world and the digital world is the final ‘look.’ While images shot on film can be perfect in their own way, digital perfection does not translate to film. I acknowledge this is a strange statement, but I am prepared to defend it.

While I often moan about digital perfection, I worry more about the constant temptation to fall into the comfort trap, where I stick to one genre and editing style.

The Comfort Crisis that will threaten us.

Evolution is vital for our growth; we will fall into a zone of comfort. There is a book out there called “The Comfort Crisis” by Michael Easter. The book explores the author’s personal journey from a lazy bum to someone who seems to love adventure. He pushed himself to explore physically challenging adventures.

I have only listened to the audiobook and later bought a hardcover copy. I will read the book because I have the impression he only wrote about physically stressful situations. If so, I consider the book incomplete because the real challenge lies within our minds.

Depending on what genre of photography you specialize in, photography may or may not be as physically challenging as camping out in a frozen terrain for over a month. Even if your genre is physically comfortable, the challenge to push yourself or to grow must remain constant.

How my approach to street photography changed over the years.

I always like to discuss my evolving approach to street photography. When I started out in street photography, I focused on people’s poverty and misery, believing I was capturing authentic and truthful images. Years later, someone gently suggested I had been engaging in ‘poverty porn.’ The person did not explicitly use the expression ‘poverty porn,’ but the message struck home. Here, the stimulus for change was external. If there had been no prompt, I might have continued in that pattern, freezing my ‘artistic path’ and becoming stuck.

I began focusing on close-up street portraits and tried to capture the dignity that is innate in every human being. I believe that my turn to humanism started then.

During and after COVID, I changed again. I had oodles of time during the pandemic, and tracked the progress first of pharma companies, and tech companies.’ I worked in the pharmaceutical and self-medication industry and knew that historically, pharma companies had no interest in vaccines, believing them to be cheap, low-profit-margin products. These same companies now saw a tremendous opportunity to profit from the pandemic and sell their vaccines at a massive profit. Surveillance has increased, thanks to the pandemic and the time we spend on social media. Around this time, I came to believe that all of us, including the upper-middle-class, exist on the margins. We have no real influence in the world. The difference is that the poor and the lower-middle-class know they are screwed, whereas the upper-middle-class and ‘low rich’ walk around with a self-satisfied smugness writ large on their faces.

We are becoming increasingly marginalized, and it is becoming easier than ever to manipulate us and to bamboozle us.

How has my perception changed the way I work? I increasingly try to place people at the edge of the frame and, sometimes, even to strip away their identities, reducing them to an abstraction. My changed direction draws its inspiration from the changing environment and my perception of how this change affects our place in society. Maybe it just took me many years to understand this change and to come to terms with it.

If your work must grow, then you must grow.

The point I’d like to make here is that if you wish your work to develop, then you must develop as an individual. If you remain static, your work will remain static. We seek comfort in our existing belief and value systems, and when this happens, our work suffers. Allow me to give an example. Many Indians allow the government to twist their thoughts, and many now express their hatred for India’s Muslim population, even as many of them seek employment in the Middle East. If, however, they consistently allow their prejudice to blind them, they will always portray Muslims in a poor light. You and your work will stagnate.

Another force drives me: boredom. I dislike being stuck in a rut and not experimenting. When I was in school, history bored me, and I considered it one of the world’s most useless subjects. It was when I moved to China in my forties that I started reading history books, and those books changed my perception of history’s importance. Later, when I returned to India, I continued reading history and took a course on the history of photography. This led to a project about the seven cities of Delhi. I simulated eight different eighteenth-century analog techniques–one per city. Digital simulations are not nearly as satisfying as actually practicing these techniques, but since I did not have access to the required facilities to practice these old techniques, digital simulations sufficed.

I researched Delhi’s history and the photographic shooting styles of the nineteenth century, and studied these old techniques. Unfortunately, because I did not have a Backblaze account, I lost all my photos when both my hard drive and backup drive failed.

A few future experiments

I started a project on Mughal (or Timurid) Delhi and abandoned it because my approach bored me. When I analyzed the work I had started, I realized I was falling into two or more traps. One, like many around me, I was reducing Delhi’s history to just the Mughal/Timurid dynasty. I could have gone back to the Delhi Sultanate and Lal Kot, which people know little about. Two: I was unhappy with the approach I had adopted. Digital simulations of old techniques were not good enough, and I did not wish to rely solely on the tools available in programs like Nik Analog Efex. I decided these tools can work with other approaches, but they can’t become the approach.

Tilt-Shift and Fisheye lenses

So I will now experiment with tilt-shift lenses and bought one from TTArtisan Pro. I experimented with a few lenses from Lensbaby, but decided they were gimmicky and disposed of the few that I bought. It is entirely possible I may buy a TT Artisan Pro 7.5 mm fisheye to create alternative images, especially in crowded areas.

Infrared Photography.

The next frontier I will bridge this year is infrared photography. I bought a Hoya IR filter last year, will study this technique, and then start during Delhi’s monsoons. I have always liked surreal stuff, and infrared photography seems right up my alley.

I want to save up and buy a camera specifically designed to shoot infrared.

Use your money constraints to push you to work hard. Learn from Iran.

Photography is expensive, so while I talk about growing, I wish to point out a key concern. Never take your eyes off your budget. The world of AI is changing work and society. The war in Iran is changing work and society. Not only will many people be out of a job, but everything is becoming more expensive. I wish this were not the case, and I wish sane people governed countries and corporations, but this is not the case.

Use what you have when you experiment. Money constraints can push you to work harder. Iran has lived under American sanctions for decades, and this constraint pushed it to develop an indigenous drone industry. Too much comfort can, and often will, hamper your development.

Live within your constraints. Work within your constraints. Don’t let your imagination or willingness to experiment become a constraint. Keep growing, or else you will die.

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