(Narrative form)

I still remember the first time I picked up a camera. It wasn’t anything fancy—just an old, hand-me-down point and shoot that my father had stopped using years ago. I was around twelve at the time, and the idea of photography fascinated me. I remember watching my father click through at family gatherings or vacations, freezing in that one moment;. The magic to me would be clicking the camera-one click and the world stands still, engraved into memory forever. It wasn’t until I held the camera in my hands that I understood what it meant to capture light.

I recall the first day I received that camera and how I walked about my whole neighborhood for hours. The first thing is just the leaves lying in the leaf pile in my yard to how the sun’s light would peak through branches, or even a crack in the pavement. I did not know anything about composition or lighting at that time. All I knew was that looking through that viewfinder connected me with a world in which I never experienced such.

Years passed, he gave me first DSLR when I turned seventeen. The camera was a Canon EOS650D. I spent days studying all the ins and outs in the manual-from learning about aperture to shutter speed and ISO. From having been about the action of pointing and clicking, photography had become now about controlling light, painting with it I felt, and one becomes almost an artist when acquiring a new tool kit.

My sojourn as a photographer has seen rather quite transformational experiences, and one of the most prominent ones was during a trip to the mountains. I had been saving for months just to take this trip in the hopes that it would capture landscapes I had only ever imagined from books or Instagram. I wanted to stand in front of nature’s grandeur and try to do justice to my camera.

I reached the mountain base early in the morning, right when the sun would have begun to peek through. It was softly painted in tones of blue to pink. The air was cool and crunchy. I walked on with my tripod, my heart pounding excitedly. This was it-the moment I had been waiting for.

The sun was low in the west, casting a golden glow on the mountains. They shivered from a snow that clung on the peaks and seemed to be some sort of an ethereal vision. Flicking at the shutter, I kept on taking frame after frame in a useless pursuit to immortalise such beauty. No matter how many pictures I took, the pain of standing there and being a mere speck in the vastness of nature could not be replicated.

Then I realized something very important about photography: it’s not just what you see; it is what you feel. The best photographs, I have come to learn, are not the ones that look the most aesthetically pleasing or technically sound. They are the ones that evoke emotion, that tell a story.

It changed the way I think about photography from that moment on. I stopped being too obsessed with it having to be perfect and more appreciated the experience instead. This is when I could go miles of just long walks holding my camera, rather than going in for a goal of taking pictures but really to be there. I found out that the more I stop looking for a perfect shot, the better my chances are of getting a perfect shot.

That evening, I wandered along through the mountains.This was not one of those nights when I was taking pictures. As I walked forward something caught my eye: i saw a happy couple talking to each other. I stood there for a minute, taking all this in, and then slowly raised my camera. I didn’t have much time; the light was fading fast. I adjusted my settings, took a deep breath, and clicked the shutter.

That photo ended up being one of my favorites. It wasn’t because it was technically perfect—I could point out a hundred things that could’ve been better. But every time I look at that picture, the feeling brings that moment back into my mind. I can almost feel the cooling air rushing in toward me and hear the far-off cute talk between them, As I watched the sky darken, I felt a sense of calm flow over me.

Photography has taught me in every way how to be far more than how to work a camera. It has taught me patience, observant attention to detail, and an appreciation for beauty in the commonplace. It has taught me to see things in a different way to notice how light falls on anything in focus, look for patterns in chaos, and stories from the smallest of details.

One of the most potent lessons I learned as a photographer is how photography is not about arriving at the final image, but rather about the journey taken-different places, people you meet, and experiences along the way. Some of the best photographs in my life aren’t necessarily from those grand adventures, nor particularly exotically shot; on the contrary, they are the quiet moments at home, where the window light hits just so or where a loved one is lost in thought and hasn’t even noticed the camera.

I once thought that to get great photographs, I needed to see places. But the more I mature as a photographer, the more I realize that beauty is all around us. It is found in the filterings of sun through the curtains or in the shadows of the drape of a tree across the park corner while sitting on a bench, or it can just be seen on the faces of people passing by on the street. Inspiration need not come from afar; just open your eyes and stay present.

Actually, for me, photography has grown way beyond being just a hobby. It’s sort of become a way of life. It’s now a way of living with the world. Also, it has taught me to be slow, to wait, and look for beauty in each detail. And though I yet have a lot to learn, it is gratitude at every step of the journey.

Sometimes, even to this day, I will be remembering that particular moment when I first picked up my father’s old camera. I certainly could not have known then how much photography would have had to define my life. And years later, I could not imagine one day without it. Every time I look at the lens, I remember why I fell in love with photography in the first place: it is not about capturing light; it’s about capturing life. And in that simple act, there’s a kind of magic that never fades away.