Dear peeps of my Insta family, I want to thank you all or
loving all my photos from Greece and Croatia. Here are some answers to the FAQs
and comments.
 |
| Split, Croatia |
Our history with photography
Faizaan and I started developing love for photography in
2011 when we bought our first camera and started experimenting with it at home,
with Minha and on our trips. It is something that one develops skill for slowly
and we still have a LONG LONG way to go. No editing software or camera can just
do it FOR YOU. You have to take out time to acquire the skill and hone it. Everything
that I have learnt about it is through Faizaan, at least 90% of it. The rest of
the 10% has been learnt by andherey mein
teer chalaaing and it somehow working. Faizaan learnt what he knows through
YouTube tutorials, photography magazines, some experimentation and then finally
a 3 month diploma at Indus Valley in Karachi. Between 2013 and 2016 we took our
hobby one step higher by starting professional wedding photography and making a
little name for ourselves in Lahore. Whatever we earned, we spent it on
building on our equipment, which included a variety of lenses, lights, stands,
diffusers, cameras, remote shutter releasers etc. While we were still gaining
clientele and shuhrat, Switzerland happened,
and we moved. And with that our time as wedding photographers ended.
 |
| Lake Bled, Slovenia |
What it entails
Photography is an art as well as a passion. When we moved,
we didn’t own a car to help us carry our equipment around AND Bano was also added
to the equation with her stroller and winter gear. So, we started doing or
photos with our mobile phones and ditched the equipment we owned. Over the past
year we realized that this hobby has less to do with lenses and cameras and
more with what your eye can catch and understand. This serves our ourpose of
making memories well and being on the cover of Nation Geographic is anyway not
an aim.
A lot goes behind this hobby – understanding how to compose
a frame, lighting, how to use the tools while post processing, using your phone
or your camera, the lenses and diffusers properly and so on. Buying an expensive
camera or editing software does not guarantee good pictures, just like having
all the ingredients in your kitchen does not guarantee good biryani. Yaani, aik button dabaein aur aik shahkaar nikal kea aye, aisa nahin
hota. You need lot of patience too - such as waiting for hours for the sun
to be in a certain position, clicking the camera several times with the same
muse to get the preferred result; waiting for the passerby to exit your frame; waking
up early to catch the golden hours OR the time when everyone else is sleeping; waiting
for the birds to fly for more drama in a sea or mosque photo etc. Most
definitely, it’s not a hobby meant for the impatient.
 |
| Ljubljana, Slovenia |
What it means to us
Our pictures are a means of translating our memories into
something that will last forever. We are not aiming to make money out of this
so most of the time we are happy with just using our phones for most of the
work. Thanks to better technology, phones offer cameras good enough to take
family photos to make mementos or to even take shots for my blog.
We enjoy taking pictures and then expressing our feelings,
experiences and interpretations of situations through their colours and compositions. Faizaan
and I may be taking photos at the same place or of the same thing but our end
results differ, because we, as people, differ in our thinking and what we take
away from life. It is also something we like doing together and bonding over
it. It’s perhaps the one thing we look forward to doing together when the girls
go off to college Inshallah.
 |
| Budapest, Hungary |
Where you can start from
For your pictures to attract appreciation, you do not have
to be travelling to different countries. You can start at home, and even stay
at home, i.e. Pakistan, to create masterpieces. We have done great pictures at
our (not so great) apartment in Karachi and at the neighborhood park….or Kund
Malir Beach and Hingol Natonal Park in Balochistan, in Bahalwalpur, around the
Old City of Lahore, and in the Saddar area of Karachi. We have yet to explore the
North, but you could take your camera there! Affordable, accessible and very
beautiful. Don’t wait to travel abroad to start taking pictures. Start now.
Start at home.
 |
| Dubrovnik, Croatia |
What should your take away NOT be from my pictures
This one’s for all the girls who message me saying they
wished their husbands were interested in taking nice pictures of them. By no
means does this passion of ours create any #couplegoals or #husbandgoals. This
is just something we have found for ourselves to do together. This doesn’t have
to be the thing YOU do together with your husband or hound him to take your
pictures if he doesn’t like photography. You can do something else together
which you both enjoy. The point is to spend time together doing something that
you bond over. Look for what that thing can be for you. It could be playing a
sport, or reading the same book and then talking about it, going to the gym
together or even cooking. And if you prefer, sitting on your couch and watching
movies together. Adding chai and nimco to that is also an option. Taking
good pictures together is not the beginning and end of this world, especially
if one partner is tanging on the sooli while
the other is trying to be Mona Lisa. Social
media se pressure kam lein aur entertainment zyada.
 |
| Santorini, Greece |
Samajh aaein saari
baatein?
Aa gaein?
Good. And good bye.
Some information:
Our camera – NIKON D650
Lens used on this trip: 50mm
My phone since the last 6 weeks: Huawei Mate 10 Lite
Editing software and the app we use: Lightroom and Snapseed.
