WHY PHOTOGRAPHY ?

I have been having this thought for a while.

I felt like , I need to make my stand on why I chose photography. 

It doesn't mean I'm criticising other fields.Nor I'm trying to justify my action, But explaining my vision.Covering the shifts on Creative Challenges.

These are the things that personally convinced me from not taking Cinematography ( gone dream) & Deciding to do Fine Art Photography or choosing photography in general.

I was in 3D Animation field for sometime. Chose 3D FX animation as speciality. Then served as a designer. I chose animation because it covered the technicality behind the camera.I was still in focus for cinematography then. The tricks that cannot be performed in real time. It had more life related things . I was able to understand many things in the actions of every character from lip sink , hand movement , walk cycle , muscle movement , hair , eye brow , eye , grass , trees , props , gravity , most importantly story boarding & layout ..literally we were creating every aspect of real world virtually. I was so excited to learn life through that. !! The explosions , dust , sparks , water movements , oceans , wind , tornado , sand , lasers & many effects trained & gave vision & clarity towards things that happen in split seconds. 

I became depressed unfortunately. Because I'm an artist not a trained code writer. In my times around 2006 the software had little feature which did not meet artist requirement to create believable reality ( the one you see in cartoons) . Not that I was incapable to do it but was not enjoying the real world itself.I was sitting infront of a computer all the time than experiencing the phenomona that I'm creating. Hence I quit my job in June 2008. I had little clarity then... I rested it for sometime... Tried 2D after 3.7 years since I was financially broke. Same factors took in but I was able to own a camera in this period to quench the taste of reality & virtuality in a right balance. Later due to other factors too .. I quit my job as a designer & started pursuing photography.

All these years I was trying to understand cinematography from outside & was prepping me. But I kind of gave up on that because the selection procedures for cinema were different , media was different , being a assistant or apprentice is like they literally they own you (in those times) . All the abuse or work or payment or whatever with less ethics.... kind of irked me. So I laid that dream to rest.

Now coming to my point,

In Cinematography / Videography if your video or moving picture is more than 10sec the actual person behind the camera or the so called cinematographer will become one of the technician's in the frame . Meaning If a motion picture or a video is over 10 sec there will be many factors coming into play Actor him / her self , Actors performances , costumes , Set , Outdoors situations , Audio , Music, Background score , secondary artist , Art , story , screen play , Direction , Editing , CG & many. In this Cinematographer has become a participant in covering the whole act.Cinematographer does not edit his movie photage ! Hence Everybody is responsible for the success.

Cinematographer , I personally believe can hold audiences only upto 10sec without any action happening in front of the frame . Be it nature ( insects ,Birds , animals , water , trees) etc or any other thing.

Moreover when you see a much appreciated movie for DOP or May be one of your favourite choice . I can imagine of seeing that movie for 100 times in my life time . That is one of the movie out of whole lot that is being made. My brain if asked what you can remember of that movie , one can only recollect a particular scene , song , or for some may be even a shot. If we push further one may remember those favourite scene / shot / song as set of pictures in his mind through familiar faces of actors / actresses / or through familiar things. Not as a moving picture or in some cases a GIF. If you don't believe try closing your eyes & try to remember your favourite movie / scene / song .Whatever you could recollect will be set of images / pictures at the best case a small gifs can be seen in mind imagery.

Hence Your mind can only keep track / recollect only set of images.!!! what you recollect is the associated experience with an image as a bookmark !!

If you take a cinema there are 24 images in a second. According to my belief a best cinematographer can hold audiences for ten seconds . Meaning 240 pictures in total per scene or Movie according to the script.

As a Fine Art Photographer , Where one can have a best of 50 -100 images in his life time & being recognized by audience world wide is quite rare.Any one can have thousands of pictures photographed but what goes in their final portfolio will be ln hundreds . It might be his personal best but over all acclaimed pictures will be minimum.Where as for a cinematographer Inspite of all retakes / deleted scenes every movie is his record Good or Bad.

If 10 sec / 240 images per movie is a challenge for a Cinematographer. Imagine the challenge that a photographer has ? ! Imagine the effort he takes to make one image .!! 

Cinematography was my gone dream , Photography is something I really enjoy now .Found a balance between life & virtuality. Colours if not used in the right form may not emote the picture properly ..Hence out of all topics / types of photography , I chose Fine Art photography , I shoot & present it as Monochrome Images & chose good old printing methods (i.e) Salt Printing / Platinum Palladium & Photogravure . Due to practical reasons in India I print digitally as of now. Hoping to sell prints made from contemporary methods in the future .

Thank you .