A shot of magic

Her eyes quietly scan everything around her and within seconds, she mentally captures a picture. When the frame is set and the composition perfect, she takes out her camera, which never leaves her side, and a definitive click is heard. Her body eases up, waiting for the next story.

“When I look at something, a thought comes to my head — that this could make a great picture. Then I make a frame around it. If I get the feeling that it will make an amazing picture, I go for it,” says Meghna Menon, an upcoming photographer in the City. She compares photography to a narration, a form of storytelling, “It is like expressing parts of yourself through pictures.”

And this makes her confident when she says that not everyone can be a good photographer, even if they carry around a DSLR. “These days, it’s so easy to buy a DSLR and learn photography. And platforms like Instagram and Facebook make it even easier. But like any other art form, photography needs inherent talent. You can teach a person to use a camera but good photography is an art. Not everyone can see something special in even the most ordinary of objects and turn it into a good picture. There is some amount of the artist in the art,” she says.

What started out as a hobby nearly 10 years back has now grown into a passion for Meghna. She doesn’t see herself doing anything else. “I tried other hobbies but nothing stuck. Growing up, I’d carry a camera with me everywhere and shoot anything. After Pre-University, I wasn’t interested in anything else so I joined a visual media course in St Joseph’s College.”

In her final year of college, she explains that photography is something she can relate to. It is also something that keeps her mind running. “I have this theory — photography is the closest thing to a time machine. Pictures are the only way we can go back to a certain time period because those moments and experiences are frozen in time.” Meghna calls a camera “the best invention so far”, adding, “It is as close to magic as we can ever get.”

Light plays a huge role when she’s composing a picture. Fascinated by different kinds of lights, she mentions that a single source of light can give so much character to a photograph. “That itself is a huge incentive to take photographs.”