matamai's photostream

I'm passionate about photography. I work in Mumbai for a living. Have studied art and design but wish to be a travel photographer or a painter. Flickr has some awesome talent floating in every corner. And that's fantastic. I enjoy Flickr and have found both inspiration and encouragement from being a member. That being said, I find the ritual of awarding a bit exhausting. While it helps find new talent, its hard for me to have any regular conversation with visitors/ contacts. It would be nice to have contacts who also kept in touch. If you like something you see, do leave a comment , not necessarily awards. Its so much nicer to be friends than just a flickr that passed by!

I started photography when I was in my late teens. My first camera was a 35mm Yashica rangefinder twin lens reflex. It was my dad's hand me down. I learnt the basics of DOF and metering on it. I've never been comfortable with a flash and remain wary of it. As a student I always wanted to own a Leica and progressively yearned for a Nikon. Both the cameras were impossible to buy as the prices were exorbitant then. Then a friend presented me with a Minolta, also a rangefinder. I loved film because of the suspense. You just had to wait to see if your readings and compositions worked and the thrill of seeing the first contact sheets is unmatched to the instant view on present day cameras. When I got married I was lucky to receive a Pentax film SLR from my father in law. A wish fulfilled, the happiness was not to last though. I was heartbroken when I found my camera missing from its case one unfortunate day. I believe somebody stole it. Time passed. Life was getting digital and my first digital camera of any consequence was a Kodak. Now I use a Nikon D60 with a Sigma OS 18-125mm lens and hope to buy a macro and a telephoto to complete my basic sets. If I could afford primes I would go for them. The only problem being that you need to carry a separate suitcase with just the camera paraphernelia. This can be a problem when traveling on location as a soloist.

As a student, I used to process all my black n white Illford films in the college lab and make silver bromide prints. This was an equally thrilling experience in the darkroom. I could spend hours just watching the images appear in the ghostly red light with enlargers and negative trays to fit on them. Now I use photoshop d to do most of my post processing. I work on the mac with my nikon raw images and prefer not to invest much time retouching.

Have a great day and thanks for the visit!

Please don't use my images without my explicit permission.