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My First Photography Award

I remember the moment with perfect clarity—I was travelling back from Chennai to Bengaluru by train after winding up my postgraduate studies at Loyola College Autonomous Chennai. The phone rang and on the other end was Hari, a classmate of mine. He called me to tell me that I had come first in a city photography competition in Chennai. Hearing it while travelling with the empty feeling after saying goodbye to a campus and a group of friends who had become your family, made me choke on my words. I had thrown myself into everything possible—art competitions, exhibitions, filmmaking, photography, and more—some saw results, others made me evolve. 
Hari told me the words of the jury during the award ceremony about my photograph, “neither the waves, nor the dog, nor the light were in the control of the photographer; but the image is in the right composition and in the right given natural lighting. He was there at the right time at the right place.” Yes, I realise tide and time wait for none; you capture them now, or never.

award winning photograph

This is a photograph taken at the Marina Beach Chennai, the second longest beach in the world. These are days before the smart phones becoming popular (2008). Having a camera was a luxury, this is an image taken in a borrowed camera. Today as I am re-editing this post in 2025, I still cant spend so much on a camera and lens of my own, but that has not stopped me. The camera and lens I use are given to me by some generous well-wishers and friends—may be, this is synergy in action. 
I was told there was a caption writing competition on the photographs exhibited; and someone had written under my photograph, "guarding the coast'. The memory of Tsunami was still very fresh in the minds of people who lived on the coast of Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu. I guess that emotional memory also made people notice my photograph. 
What stays with me isn't the recognition itself, but how it changed my relationship with photography. I walk differently now; looking up more often, noticing how shadow and light play on cityscapes and landscapes I once hurried past without a second glance. The award didn't make me a photographer—the early mornings, the patience, the thousands of deleted images did that. But it gave me permission to call myself one, not just in conversations with others, but in the quiet moments when I doubt why I continue to wake before dawn, camera in hand, keep walking into late afternoons, and again in the evening. I repeat it in the next day, and I can repeat it every single day of the year.
Biographical notes

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