Taking a walk through frames

Perfect clicks

The colours and moments that a camera captures always fascinated Kartik Kumar S. His father used a film strip camera to capture these moments. But he never understood how that mechanism worked. It was only during his engineering when he was gifted a digital camera by his father, that he started exploring more into the world of photography.

He says, “I wasn’t sure what photography was all about back then. My digital camera had a manual mode on which I started experimenting with. It was only in 2010 that I purchased my own DSLR camera. I started travelling across the country to take pictures.”
Being a full-time software engineer, Kartik patiently waits till the weekend to explore places around him.

“I am part of a few photography clubs in the city and I usually join them on photo walks. I love going to unexplored places in the city to find an interesting story to tell,” he explains.

He is also part of a few trekking groups organised in the city. He packs his bags to explore the jungles and remote areas of Karnataka. He returns home with mesmerising pictures that many of his friends don’t believe that places such as these exist in this state. He adds, “I feel great that I can show people that we don’t always have to go abroad to find such lush green pastures. We have plenty of those places in our own country.”

As part of his travel, Kartik has covered almost all the states in the country, except a few in the North East. He recently went to Ladakh where he was able to experiment with night photography. He says, “I usually do landscape and street photography. But the view in Ladakh was so beautiful that I had to try something else. It was amazing to see the Milky Way shining brightly in the night sky. I’m glad that I could capture that moment.”

But he also faces certain challenges during his adventurous trips. Recalling an incident in Tamil Nadu, he says, “I went there for the Dasara festival and it was very bright and colourful. While I was taking a picture of the Kali who was in full form, for a second, it felt like it was coming after me. As this was happening near the beach, I slipped and fell in the water. My camera was slightly damaged due to this incident.” Despite these struggles, he is happy to showcase his pictures to the world through his Instagram and Flickr accounts. He says, “I want to transport people to the place that I have captured as they look at it. These pictures are also brought to life as I speak to the local people living in the area before capturing them.”

Apart from capturing great pictures, he says that photography has helped him both personally and professionally. “I am an introvert and don’t easily talk to people. Thanks to my travel and love for photography, I have started challenging myself and make an attempt to talk to strangers,” he smiles.