Before the recent launch of Xiaomi Note 3, I was commissioned by Xiaomi to use the phone-camera and create a collection of colourful images. Here is the set of images created during my assignment. Do have a look at the them below, and scroll down to read-on about my thoughts on photography with a mobile-phone.
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Until now, I hadn’t taken mobile-phone photography seriously. My slightly older smartphone did not have a very powerful camera. Although I kept reading about how much better the phone-cameras are becoming, I wasn’t too sure. Using the Xiaomi Note 3 helped me change my opinion about smart-phone cameras. Today’s phone-cameras can easily create good quality images, which could once be made only with a decent quality dedicated digital camera.
Snap Stories is a monthly column I write for a travel magazine. ‘Photographing Yangon’s Circular Railway’ was published in January 2014.
I boarded Yangon’s circular railway with a lot of ideas and anticipations circling in my head. One of my self-imposed assignment in Myanmar, when I bought a ticket to Yangon was to photograph the everyday Burmese life. From preliminary research, I realized that one of the best places to see it unfold was the suburban train that touched through the markets and villages around Yangon. There is usually a bustling economic activity in a system that connects an urban center with its surroundings, and I expected it to manifest in front of me inside the circular train.
At Yangon’s Central station, where the train start’s its loop, the nearly empty train contained commuters heading to nearby stations and vendors hopping in and out selling savouries, fruits and betel leaves. We chugged through relatively unpopulated sections of Yangon that alternated between greenery, industrial areas and semi-urban populations.
I first visited Ladakh in 2008 and spent two months exploring the region from corner to corner. Later on, although I was keen to spend my travelling time exploring newer regions in the Himalayas, circumstances took me back to Ladakh again in different seasons for different reasons. Visits to Ladakh have always had unpredictable results, despite my familiarity with the place. There are times when I was awed, surprised and bowled over. And then there were times when monotony took over, when fatigue dominated and patience ran out. But running out of patience is a sin in the mountains. So you endure, you return and you see new things and go back with an increased respect for the mountain and its people.
I have just completed uploading my collection of 101 images from Ladakh, created over nearly as many days I spent gallivanting in this mountain country. That’s an average of one image per day! Click on the image below to view the full library.
