The Third Eye

I began photography when I was 17 and my Dad gifted me an expensive Casio Digital Camera for college. Prior to owning a digital camera, I had only clicked pictures through a 35 mm Kodak camera. My father never refused me the access to his camera and even printed the pictures I had clicked which sometimes were blurred, or in tilted angles which we can say, bad quality pictures. He would sit me down and explain me the techniques of holding the camera, looking through the lens and at the subject, arranging a frame and such details.

After I got the Digital camera, I made a great use out of it. Wherever and whenever I travelled, my camera would be packed first. It gave me a great sense of freedom of storytelling as I captured numerous images and almost became the official family photographer. Both my great grandmothers were alive till 2007 when I clicked many of their pictures. Unfortunately, my grandpa died in April 2005, and it always made me sad that I could not click his pictures or capture him on video. Now he stays only in our memories and the few other Kodak photographs that turn bad after a few years because the ink vaporizes after some time. My only great regret is that I did not have a digital camera to capture all moments with my grandpa, something that tugs my heart very often. 

I have had the digital camera now for eleven years and it is still in fine working condition and is my proud little belonging from a time I embraced architecture and this living world as an adult. I have always believed in documenting the crude more than the beautiful because all of us seem to identify the beauty but the raw and untouched essence of everyday life is sadly missed by many of us. My Dad always told me to see the simple things first and embrace simplicity because that is really who we are: basic and unrefined when we begin.

It's wonderful how much photography can enhance our perspectives and thinking about the living world. It is very important to give precedence to the natural state of seeing than always making the big dive towards capturing something in a lens. The moments we spend experiencing a sight through our senses is rarely ever restructured again in our life hence, seeing through the eyes is more important than the haste of clicking through the perceived third eye.

Posting my very first photograph captured on the Casio digital camera dated 28th December, 2005. This was clicked at the entrance of Adalaj step-well of drinking water built for travellers and pilgrims in the 13th century by Queen Rudabai, near Ahmedabad in Gujarat which I toured during my very first architecture study trip in college.