I truly enjoy the time when I’m out on the field with my camera and absolutely have no clue what I’m going to shoot. I have a general idea of possibilities based on the “scenes” all around me, but whatever catches my eyes I’ll explore it In hopes of going home with a frame that will cement the entire experience. Even if I don’t take a single shot I’ll go home happy, I’ve satisfied my curiosity, which is really the driving force behind it, I believe.
When some scenes or random patterns, out in the distance or right under my nose, stop me dead in my tracks, time slows down momentarily and I get absorbed by what I’m seeing through the lense.
All I know is that random scenes and patterns have always caught my attention as far back as I can remember – around 8th grade or so. But I think that fascination combined with a healthy dose of curiosity, is what makes up the good part of my drive and passion for photography.
If I remember correctly, experiencing the magic of music also started around the same age. But I’ll get into that story later in the Music Section of MultiMediaAra.
Growing Up
Thinking back, I believe my fascination with those scenes and patterns started when every summer my mom would take us kids on a full day train ride cross country. (click here to read the story). Here we spent three months with my maternal grandparents, whom I absolutely loved, and I have a lifetime of happy childhood memories with them. My dad to stay back and could only join us for few weeks, due to work.
Crossing the Kovkas mountain range (Iran) in early morning, as sun was just peeking through and splashing the moving landscape, I was literally hanging onto the pull-down window handle outside the cabin on the walkway. As the landscape in front of me moved like a giant movie screen, there would be small villages in the foothills of the various mountain ranges nestled in different colored rock formations. I was glued to the window for hours. The only time I would come into cabin was to eat, and that was after my mom pried me off the window.
The top edges of the mud and straw walls of homes in villages would catch the hues of early morning golden rays. Sometimes an entire village would light up with giant random shadow patterns “painted” on rock formations. Back then, I assumed everybody was seeing the same scenery in same shapes and colors as I was. But they became imprinted on me and now I realize their influence in how I uniquely see things.
But I was happy that I could try a dozen or so available windows on the walkway, until I would find the one that if I, literally, hung from both handles, the window rails were loose enough that my weight would pull it down and I could stick my head out. I balanced on my tip-toes for hours at a time, perched on the narrow heater cover below the windows on the floor.
Fast forward a few decades or so through my hi-tech career grind and sending my kids to college. Those “scenes” that I’ve subconsciously collected during my childhood summer vacation train rides, I believe are slowly surfacing from the dormant place in my mind and are becoming the underlying influence on what I see and photograph.
I tend to believe my attraction to photography may have started with those types of childhood experiences, without me knowing about it. And now that I have the chance to let those influences play out themselves in different shapes and forms, I long to get out and explore my surroundings in hopes of coming home filled with anticipation of what I may have captured.
To be absolutely honest, I would not mind if not a single person cares about a single photo I share or the music I write. I really don’t consider myself to be a photographer or a musician by any stretch of imagination. But what I know is this, the process of giving life to visions or sounds that pass through my mind, has given me a refuge that I enter and exit when I need to find peace, be myself, and live the life of my choiceing.
To sum it all up, it would be humbling to know if others also find few minutes of solace or happiness in their lives because of me, rather than just me.