2016 for me brought some mixed feelings. By far it has been the year which greatly brought my work to the forefront but also made me rue on the fact that I didn't take up as many projects as I had intended to I was fretting more on managing my finances while I work on my art. But the year has been great in terms of the recognition that it has brought me. I want to share all of that with you guys and a few of my personal favorite pictures .
One of the highest point for me this year was getting nominated for the EyeEm international photography awards in photojournalism (Click here to know more about it) . It was totally unreal so early in my photographic career. For a person like me who always questions himself and his craft, it was reassuring in a way to keep working at it. Here is the picture that got into the nomination.
This year I really got started into wedding photography and loved every bit of it. It wasn’t much of a challenge considering I already shoot a lot of street but lighting the scenarios is a new realm of world compared to that. This is the shot that really kickstarted that journey and gave me confidence to go about it. I am really proud of this one.
One of the most enjoyable projects was shooting for the Repertwahr theater and music fest. It was such a hedonic experience listening to the music of Parvaaz and Namit Das among others and meeting so many awesome artists. Here are some of the pictures taken during the music fest.
Wilson Kenneth on the bass with Namit Das and Anurag Shanker
Namit Das & Wilson Kenneth
Parvaaz, in sync.
While shooting and recording the interviews of all these artists I managed to start a personal project of shooting portraits of these artists, always short of time, we managed to click these portraits under 30 secs each.
The ever cute Kalki Koechlin.
Anurag Tewari & Mynah Marie.
Prateek Kuhad.
The goofy Jim Sarbh.
One of the most special events was getting my image exhibited at the prestigious International center of Photography New York.(Click here)
In conjunction to that School of visual arts, New York selected five winning images for Night photography as a human selection counterpart to the EyeEm's Virtual images selection algorithm, my image was one of those 5 photos selected by the SVA. (More details)
NIghtcrawler.
This is one of my favorite pictures, also it was taken just outside Sangeet Natak Academy where my theater journey began and kind of let me to this point in life.
This month EyeEm has come out with their year book and four of my different images are a part of it. You can view the e-version of their collection of images from 2016 here.Below are those four pictures from the collection.
One of the very enriching experiences was to travel the length and breadth of Haryana and Punjab understanding lives and and stories of the female athletes of these two states as a team member of a research project for the new television series named, Meri Durga' on Star plus. It got me close to people who are like minded with the same attitude towards sports and athletics.
Finishing off, I look back at the past 12 months and it makes me realise that these exprience have helped me a lot in understanding my craft and the industry much better than I knew before. It also gave me much more than I had expected so early in my career but it also made me realise that true contentment comes from generating new ideas, images and projects, the recognition, the appreciation makes it all worthwhile but the real motivation to do better has to come from within.