Photography is born out of science & engineering, but the driving force behind it has always been art. One century and many inventions later it is now an art, technology as well as an industry.
The world without photography would be like a house with no windows, a book with empty pages, communication without spoken languages, etc. The word ‘imagine’ would dominate our day-to-day activity so much that all we do is dream and the visual object that came to be known as ‘photograph’ will never see the day.
I got the chance to talk to a group of talented advertising & graphic students last week at the First Media Group’s IMAGO Advertising School. They were kind enough to give me 45 minutes of their time to listen to what I have to say and later stretched me another 15 minutes for a worthy Q&A session.
The general presumption of photography to an outsider in this country is that it’s glamorous and dreamy, it is a surreal thing to do to earn a living for, especially in a place where photography is barely considered as a real-job-an-honest-man-does.
People here also associate photography with the glamourous world of nudity, fashion & girls, it’s always fun to see the look in their eyes when questions were answered and listened to with a lot enthusiasm. It’s great to be heard.
If you think photography is not a career, wake up and smell the coffee! if you think photography is all about you & the vision, shame on you! It’s all about teamwork, communication, human interaction and a lot of patience! You only see the glamour and girls ini chic-lit novels & America’s Next Top Model, what goes on behind the curtain is so much more than the skin & make-ups.
Interesting to jump ship & start a photography career?
PS. Special thanks goes to my pal Andre, a talented art director/designer who now teaches in IMAGO. Check out his brilliant work here.