The creative calling, when acute, makes people want to push their limits, explore new frontiers, and break barriers and walls with their ideas to supplant them with. And Sharath Chandrappa knew it was his turn when his hobby of making pictures and editing videos gradually began to charm his creative instincts to the point of being restless and coming up with new ideas.
Managing a corporate job and photography as a hobby, six years ago, was demanding extra focus, and time wasn’t always encouraging in the beginning. But Sharath gratefully remembers how his way of making images was slowly appreciated by people, and how he started to get more photography assignments over time.
When he had a handful of projects, he started to treat his hobby as a profession, and his art form needed expensive camera equipment, which is where Toehold entered the scene. And for over three years now, Sharath has been hiring cameras, lenses and other equipment from Toehold, enabling himself to scale great heights.
Sharath Chandrappa Photography is a one-man army. He says: “I don’t like to rely on anyone else but myself. I have captured more than 30 weddings so far, and have done numerous pre-wedding photo shoots in and around Bengaluru, and by far, I haven’t disappointed my clients and myself in terms of meeting deadlines, quality and aesthetics.”
The inherent spontaneity that a wedding offers for a photographer with an observant eye is a quality about the genre that amazes Sharath the most. He says, “There is so much happening everywhere at the same time and one has to be alert and smart and artistic in narrowing down thousands of amazing moments to a few hundreds to form a storyline. Choice is something that becomes so important, because you prioritise a moment over another and the end result better justify your choice.”
He adds that he likes that challenge about wedding photography. Also, unlike wildlife photography where one has to be strongly visible in the crowd, wedding photography, although saturated as one might argue, still has room for breaking the monotony.”
Sharath wants to venture out into fashion and travel photography in the near future. Two months ago, he decided to take up photography as his fulltime profession. He looks forward to various assignments that will take him to different places.
When asked about where he draws inspiration from, to keep going so strongly, Sharath tells us that he has self-learned everything that his work reflects. “YouTube and Google have been my best teachers, although I have had a few mentors helping me infrequently. I have hired equipment not only for photography assignments but also to practice my own methods of making photographs. When some equipment steals my heart for its technical beauty, I end up buying it. And I also get inspired by many people in the field, but I try to imbue the rawness of work and shape it up to a final product with my own ideas, and it’s that personal touch that I constantly want to improvise on. Perspectives need to be refreshing when you need to tell the same story over and over again, so that one’s art doesn’t come across as stagnant. This is precisely why I don’t give much importance to my work being featured in magazines and newspapers as it highlights the artful state of mind at that point in time, although it’s motivating to be recognised,” asserts Sharath.
Sharath wants to invest time smartly as he works alone and looks forward to taking up different types of assignments, especially weddings from different ethnic backgrounds. He also wants to travel extensively so that the very beauty of the world the way it is allows him to envision newer ways of storytelling through his pictures.
Want to travel to Kabini?
We would love to be the ones to take you to Kabini. Check out our Kabini travel offers and get in touch with us to plan your next trip!
Long way to go Sharya! Cheers.
Nice work