"Growing up in a British Bengali Hindu community, I was never really exposed to creative arts. They were generally frowned upon as unimportant. I ‘learnt’ that ‘respectable’ jobs were led only by doctors, engineers, and lawyers..."

I’m a huge fan of origin stories/prequels. I wish I could say something like, “when growing up, my parents played a big part by providing me a disposable camera for my primary school week-long trip to Cardfields and the rest was history…” But the truth is I hated every single photo I had taken on that disposable camera, I didn’t even bother printing any out and binned the whole camera! If I had to think of the first photo I took that was worth looking at, it was probably at university. I took a photo of my accommodation, in case there were any defects that I may be given blame for, which would in turn be taken out from my deposit. So, in short, my early encounters with photography had a more functional purpose!

the community bubble

Growing up in a British Bengali Hindu community, I was never really exposed to creative arts. They were generally frowned upon as unimportant. I ‘learnt’ that ‘respectable’ jobs were led only by doctors, engineers, and lawyers. So, I never really met anyone who was interested in photography that could act as a role model/mentor. A lot has changed in the community since I was growing up and I’m glad that my community has now incorporated these arts, and more and more children from a young age are learning to dance, act, sing and play musical instruments, which is fantastic! But for me, that good stuff came too late.

When i uncovered my passion

I was quite lucky to maintain very strong friendships after graduation, which meant I had a solid ‘crew’ to form a great support network with and with the added bonus of going on holiday, once or twice a year. My Dad wasn’t a fan of me going on holidays, mainly because of safety concerns but also he would say “there is plenty of time to explore the world with your future wife, when you get married!” Oh dear. Not a bad concept but very old-fashioned and who knows when/if that will happen...but that's another story.

On these holidays though, what I started to notice was that, whilst everyone else was taking the 'magic' selfie and 'squad' pics, I was focussed on subjects that everyone else was missing, taking a plethora of photos with my phone of essentially the same subject but changing the angle or focus slightly to get that perfect picture. I was generally complemented on my pictures, but all these photos, spanning 6 or 7 years, lay in my camera roll — lifeless. Only admired once or twice, and never really looked at again, ready to be deleted in the near future in order to free up space. You'll learn later why I am glad I kept them.

Importantly though, I think it was the combination of my 'quirk' whilst taking a picture and seeing something that everyone else around me missed, hinted to me a passion lying within me that is untapped and needs to be explored.

self-taught

During my studies, I never really made any ‘photography friends’ to turn to, to give me advice on how to explore photography. As I already mentioned earlier, the only people I knew were skilled at taking group photos and selfies. What I had learned from university, apart from my education, was that if you were the one taking the photo, you were usually the one excluded from the group photo, whether that’s on purpose — who knows? The only way I became better was through literally scrolling down my instagram ‘explore’ page or searching up places on Google and ‘mimicking’ what I saw from established photographers at locations I was familiar with. This process got me thinking: "maybe I can do this for real?"

A nice gesture

One very random day, I said to myself: “if I ever buy a camera I will start doing this ‘photography thing’ for real...” This was of course delayed for years, till my last birthday in December 2019 - my older brother went and bought me the Nikon D3500. He told me he did a lot of research to find this DSLR camera. But a quick search for DSLR on amazon revealed the first result as the Nikon D3500. On sale, and Amazon’s Choice. He could be telling the truth so let’s give him credit for his ‘painstaking’ research! Anyway, ultimately, if it wasn’t for his nice gesture, I wouldn’t have made the next step and taken my passion more seriously.

enter bdpixels: bringing lifeless photos to life

As I started taking more and more pictures with my Nikon D3500, I decided to create a new Instagram page @BDPixels.

Now that I have Instagram as a medium to edit and organise my photos into a portfolio-like manner, i've been able to bring those dormant photos, I mentioned earlier - sitting in my camera roll, to life; where they can also be appreciated by others. I relish the long thought process behind every caption and the time spent on it makes it all the worthwhile, when I hear the 3 magic words: “The caption bangs”. In layman’s terms, this means the caption complements the photo really well. Essentially the main reason — to paraphrase the Great Walter White: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. It made my photos feel alive.” (You must have watched Breaking Bad, right?)

I love travelling. I say travelling rather than vacationing as I see travelling as an adventure with a story to tell, rather than just a holiday. I think that's why I make it a point to add some background story with my pictures that I post, just to give it that personal touch and some nostalgia I have for that particular location.

perfectly adequate

An old friend once told me that I would regret taking photos with me as the focus of the picture, because when I look back at them in the future, I’ll see that I may be blocking the best parts of the photo and I may not like the way I looked in the pic. Or caught slippin’. In retrospect, this may have been an insult but it does make sense to me in a way now. I understand that most people take photos with themselves in the photo to show proof that they were there. That’s fine — to be fair, through my own research on instagram, I have seen that these photos tend to do better in terms of likes. I know I’m heavily critical of myself so if I didn’t look the part in the picture you know that photo wouldn’t see the light of day! As Saul Goodman once said “Perfection is the enemy of perfectly adequate…” (Common, you must know Better Call Saul!)

Set yourself a goal and stay focused

My initial goal with @BDPixels was to reach 1,000 Instagram followers, which did not look likely at first and when I first started my account it was difficult. It was difficult to get people to follow and to promote my account without me asking. If I’m being honest, I didn’t get much support for my first few weeks. I went through a phase where I applauded those who took their time to go onto my profile and liked the photos I imagine they genuinely liked. I rewarded them with a free shoutout on my instagram story. It wasn’t much of a good gesture by me, but more people followed suit which seemed to help maintain loyal followers. But those people who follow and unfollow deserve a ban. I’ve served a fair few instagram suspensions for lesser crimes which hindered my growth, I wasn’t aware that giving away too many likes within a period of time warranted a ban. I mean — is that so terrible? Nevertheless, S’all Good, Man.

The ban didn't deter me and, hey, I reached it! Who would’ve thought? 1,000 followers - not me. I guess that shows that I’m doing something right, right? So I hope this short piece has given you an idea about how I pursued my passion for photography later on in my adult life. This is just the beginning, there’s still so much to learn. In theory, I’m just a self-taught photographer without any training, but with a good eye for detail.