A childhood hobby started with an aim and shoot Kodak Bunny 126 format camera . There was hardly any choice available in those days (Year 1956) to buy any camera off the shelf. This was a point and shoot camera with not much to play around to control the exposures except a shutter button, it was still fun shooting friends in the boarding school and the mountains, clouds and other activities in Mussoorie. In a boarding school with no day scholars there were many extra curricular activities to keep us busy even on Sundays and holidays. Participation and involvement was a must in one or more activity A photographic club was started by an English language teacher who was a very dedicated advanced amateur using a Leica. Students who had a camera had to join it. It was a very nice experience. We learned to process black and white films in a tray again with no developing tanks available. Enlargers were very expensive so we learnt to make contact sheets using ordinary household milky bulb adequately controlled to give an even spread of light on a sheet of glass pane that was used to press strips of negative film and the sheet of light sensitive paper. These were just magical moments, a life time experience. This was one activity that made us forget the stress of various school activities that started with all students were hounded out of their warm beds around 4:30 AM and finishing the day back into the bed around 10:00 PM.

The passion of photography became more intense as the smell of the hypo got settled in my fingers. This made me read more about photography. The photography club closed as the teacher moved out to join a better job. I kept my interest alive by shooting pictures and photo coloring of black and white prints. I still have my first photo color coated booklet. A good camera was difficult to buy in those days. I got a Russian reflex camera (Zorki) through a relation working in the oil fields of Assam. This camera had more functions than the Kodak Bunny. There was another 120 format twin lens camera, alas it had a repaired film back lid repaired using a metal sheet. The light did stream into it as such it could not be used much. For me it was a great switch-over from clicking picture mode to creative picture making mode.

I restarted film processing and making contact sheets as I learnt during that very short period in the school. But as luck would have it I left for Germany, where the best of the equipment was available. While working and learning the language for better prospects, I started saving money to buy me a good camera. I did not want to buy me a reflex camera as it had limitations of additional focal lengths. I looked around for Single Lens Reflex Camera. My first SLR camera the newly launched model of Yashica - Electro X. I slowly started creating a kit with each saving I bought lenses and other accessories. On a special offer at a departmental I bought a small darkroom kit that included a small enlarger, film processing tank and trays for processing prints. I spent my savings on photography books, magazines, films, B&W printing paper and processing chemicals. I used to gift away prints, besides keeping some for me, to people and friends that I shot. The feedback from them worked as a tonic. I had in my kit bag besides the standard lens a 35mm wide, 135 mm, tele lens, 200 mm tele lens, close up lens, close up tubes, right angle view attachment, portable flash and a tripod. These I had them in a beautiful leather camera bag that hung around my shoulder as a companion. Always ready to shoot. Celle being a small town, I got recognised easily and stood out.

I did a lot of street photography, portraits, functions / happenings in the city and flowers. Color films I had to get developed and printed from outside, while BW I developed and printed on my small enlarger. A small portfolio thus got developed in a short time.

A small advertisement in the local newspaper changed it all for better. On the basis of the small portfolio I was hired by an advertising photographer, Mr. Detlev van Eupen in Celle, Germany. The biggest benefit I had working all the years for him was that he sent me to various short courses and workshops on various aspects of photography. Perhaps it was his assessment of my dedication to photography and his assured feeling that I would stay to give back to his company what I learnt in all those forums of exposure. To be frank there was no cause for me to leave his company as I was getting what I had desired most - to be able to learn more all the time. There was studio work and both B&W and color darkroom work. Large enlargements for exhibitions, in darkroom multi exposed print albums as catalogs for marketing products like lamps, brass items, school and office furniture, fashion, etc. It was great for me as I was his only co-worker and that kept me fully involved in all activities of his photography business as with more helping hands the work gets divided.

We had lots of clients from biscuit companies to heavy industries. For larger part of the year we shot pictures for color wrappers of the biscuit companies - XOX and Trüller. The work was very precise as each and every product element had to be rightly placed in the picture composition as per the layout. It was all shot on 8x10", 5x7" and 9x12 cm formats. The biggest format was used for offset printing of wrappers and hoardings, the smaller formats for print publicity and color prints for distribution. It was a feast all the time round the year with the fresh out of oven confectionery tasted well in advance of the season it was meant to be marketed.

Besides this we had clients from the lamp, highly polished brass, fashion garments, furniture, television, flute and ready made house industries. Another exacting work was for Vetco. They made various instruments for the drilling industry like the oil fields. We use to receive segments of pipes that came to them from the oil fields and other areas of drilling. We documented the wear tear by correctly recording the colors, scratches and other marks of damage, etc on the sections of oil drilling pipes for scientific study and evaluation.

I do feel that the acute sense of both artificial and available lighting developed while handling such kind of exact work on a regular basis.

I was permitted to freelance for reportage work in my free time. On the basis of my street photography portfolio and other photographic work, I got listed on the panel of the local newspaper - Cellesche Zeitung as a freelance photographer. I believe it was the only local newspaper of the city. Local news was to be covered on a daily basis. Since I was available only in the evenings, quite a lot of assignments were assigned to me. I was called on a regular basis to cover many prestigious assignments for the newspaper to be published as front page pictures like the visit of Mr. Willy Brandt, Mr. Helmut Kohl and other city functions.

At the fag end of 1977 I returned to India unscheduled to give attention to my family business interests. I continued to keep myself busy with photography taking time out of the family business to pick up assignments for various industries. I picked whatever work that came to me as I had the confidence of doing justice to all kinds of photography jobs. The work that I never ever picked up in India was wedding photography as I noticed that the photographers were never treated decently nor got the respect as professionals.