Hahhahahahaa! More of these, please.
Thank you so much Seema! I hope I can continue surprising you...
Kashif Ali, you have impressed yet again! Your words are captivating, but...
You are much too kind Ganga. Thank you :)
This is superb Kashif! Love the text and the pictures.
Hello there! Welcome to my website. My name is Kashif and in my non professional life, I’m a photographer and an occasional writer.
What interests me is an ever evolving list. A 4 year hiatus (~ 2018 to 2022) from photography and writing had me questioning why I was photographing whatever it was I was photographing. What did it all “mean”. Existential crisis and what not.
Going off social media really helped but that was a little later along in the journey. What got me back into photography was actually an app – iNaturalist [my observations].
Introduced to it by a dear friend who insisted that I document the flora and fauna around me, iNaturalist reminded me what it was that I loved about capturing the world around me – it was for me. It brought me joy. There was no pressure to get likes, to be appreciated or even “praised” for the images I was capturing. It was just the process of discovery and learning that made it worthwhile again.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when I realised that the act of spotting and photographing birds brought me great joy. A new “interest”, so to speak.
Birding – All work related travel, whether local or international, is now an excuse to research and zero in on bird sanctuaries/hotspots. A couple of days of work, followed by a couple of days of birding.
You’re probably thinking it, so i’ll just say it – I get to kill two birds with one stone.
Travelogues – there will be a few of those here since my professional life offers me the incredible privilege of traveling with a camera, sometimes 2. So, if I’m in a place where birding isn’t possible for whatever reason, I whip out the film cameras and have an earnest go at city and landscape photography.
Prints – I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up a Prints section on the website. However, given that my backlog of unedited/unlooked at/mostly loved photographs goes back all the way to 2009, I think it will be a fair while before I can seriously think about offering prints.
Prints at the moment are largely confined to my walls and a few friends who are brave and supportive enough to feature them on theirs.
If this website is anything, it is a journal, chronicling my travels, experiences and interests. It is to remind myself that creating things for the joy of creation alone, is the reward. Whether it’s a hastily put together travelogue, poems that take months to refine and still fall short, or just photographs that hold immense value for no one else but me – to create is the “goal”. The meaning.
What comes of it, if anything, is not my business.
Thank you for stopping by and while I’m not on social media, you can always reach out to me using the ‘Get in Touch’ page.
– Kashif.
