Those curious eyes, that furtive glance!

Long winding roads, a turbaned old man, his arms wrapped around himself and a cheerful grey-haired woman passing a casual smile at the camera, all of these and more are the tales that lay unravelled within the frames in the Gorilla Photography Club’s first annual exhibition, at the India Habitat Centre, during the weekend.

 As you go through the series of pictures clicked by a diverse groups of amateur and professional photographers, there will be moments of heightened ecstasy, disappointment or curiosity but there’s no way that you would walk out without exclaiming the title of the show, ‘What a Shot!’

It would be wrong to say that the exhibition was any different from the many that Delhiites are treated to every now and then, but there were of course a few pictures that would seize the attention at once. The exhibition-cum-competition announced Anish Chakraborty’s  frame as the first prize winner. Speaking to Anish who hails from Kolkata, Metrolife enquired about the story behind his pictures. The amateur photography enthusiast who studies engineering in Kolkata explains, “My first picture, the one with a wide view of a zigzag road was clicked on a cloudy day when I was travelling to Zuluk in east Sikkim. It was a relaxing view, the calmness and peacefulness of the shot brings it across.” 

Talking about the second picture that captured the view of a branched out tree in a monochromatic frame, Anish says, “These pictures describe my feelings through nature. Whatever I feel in my mind, I try and visualise it through the environment.”There’s a dash of suspicion and drama to a picture of a woman, almost stealthily stepping out of a train. The first runner-up Archana Thakur explains, “I am school teacher. It was a trip that I took my students to and, at the strike of six in the morning I saw this woman wandering around.

 She was keeping a low profile, something that the picture entails. It was later that I found out that she had no reservation!” We can safely change the famous expression to ‘a picture holds a thousand tales’ with a word of encouragement to go and find one of your own! 

The wiry white beard of Nadeem Riaz’s portrait of an old man was nothing short of spectacular, as his eyes darted at the camera, eliciting curiosity. If only we could reach Nadeem for the story behind the picture as well!