I was in my second grade when I first got my hands on a camera. It was a traditional analog camera with automatic setting. But at that time, it still looked totally fascinating and fanciful.
My first shot was a blank shot my dad let me have when the reel was just loaded. I shot at a bird in the sky hoping the lens would automatically zoom in to the bird I was concentrating on and give me one perfect shot of it. I was sad to see the film develop to a photo of the clear blue sky. My dad always held the impression that I was obviously just shooting the sky.
I've always been fond of photography since. My first failure should have discouranged me maybe. But I think it gave me a boost saying I should try harder; as others obviously learnt the tricks of great photography, and so should I.
By tenth grade, I was the family photographer, taking pictures of every family gatherings, festivities and social events. I was still just taking blind shots. Doing nothing much. But friends/family somehow always seemed to believe I had some professional training to back me up. It felt kind of good to hold it up.
Just as my teens were over, I had this digital camera. I had taken a small job that allowed me to save Rupees 4,000.00 that I used to buy a Mercury 3.1 Smart Cam. It came along with an SD card for 256MB storage (during early 2001 AD) and boy was it exciting to take random pictures and check it it'd come good. Bad ones got deleted, good ones stayed. I learnt a bit of photoshop from this photoshop tutorial video I had found in my school library.
I started shooting just about anything at first, then maybe started to bore myself off and started taking only few pictures. Things got a little dull with my camera.
And one fine June afternoon in 2003, I was in a village called Bhujel Gaun, deep in Nawalparasi, where I took a picture of this cute little girl. Boy! did I receive appreciation for that...
I got really fascinated. Its funny how you start getting hungry for praises once it starts coming your way. I wanted to go get a formal training on photography now.
But damn! I had no money to finance the course. When I convinced my dad to pay for it, the institution insisted that I bring my own SLR if I am to learn. Simple SLR from Cannon I inquired cost around 1 Lakh. So I just gave up the idea.
