Growing with the Children as a Photographer

2 years and some 2000 photographs later, I assess myself sometime to ask if I had grown as a photographer. I believe I had. Slowly but steadily. There have been three entities irreplaceable in this journey of mine so far viz. me, my crop-sensored camera and the children in tribal villages of Odisha, India.

A child carries his younger sister on his back to his home.

They are not the easiest to befriend, often shy, often afraid and often too conscious. It is the small 2.5’’ display on the back of my camera that often made it easier. I click anything around, often they are not as good a photograph as one would put up on Instagram. I show it to them and I hear giggles, I show some more and they ask me to click them as well. It is a strategy that I had developed and has worked out for me for most of the times.

A child sits by the porch of his house as the morning sun kisses his faces.

When it comes to taking photographs of elders, I can just ask if I can take a photograph of them. 90% of the times, the answer is yes and then it all comes down to framing and giving a perspective to the photograph to make it yours.

With kid, I have often felt it to be very different. When I started I’d even ask the kids the same question. The result was of them fleeing away. Some stayed back but their smiles would have left with the earlier ones.

Pose for the camera with a hint of shyness

Photographing children is in some ways very similar to landscape photography. Patience is the key. It is not a run and gun type of photography.

If we go back to us being a kid, even I took my fair bit of time getting acquainted with any new guest in my home, let alone someone with a black box dangling from the neck and looking at you as his subjects.

Empathy in the recipe.

In for Hide & Seek (Portrait of a child as he was counting on white playing hide and seek with his friends)

It is the elements of the childhood that I always look for when photographing children. And you will best understand it when you become a part of them. You become a part of their conversation, their games and their jokes. Once the ice is broken and they feel you are one of their own, the poses comes in ways you never expected in the first place.

A child peeps through the roots of a tree and poses for the camera

There are certain elements that I always look for when I am around children, playfulness and innocent reactions.

For me it is all about feeling something and the press to the shutter comes as a reaction.

A boy poses for the camera as his friend hides his face in shyness

As a photographer I never feel more intrigued than being around these children and doing what I love to, telling the story behind every pair of eyes.

Every child looks at me the in a different way, their voices sound different and their reactions are different.

Two boys back-lit by the sun as they were playing by the roadside of their village.

These different reactions have often put me in positions where I had to come up with something unique and innovative solution, to get closer to my subject and to come out with a photograph I love. So many shots I had to delete every time I reviewed the images on the bigger screen. Perhaps it is the reduced number of those photographs that I used to delete after every shoot that has made me believe that I have grown as a photographer with these children that I click.

A boy makes a teasing face for the camera.

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