For actor Randeep Hooda , photography has been a passion for years. It’s an excuse to head to the jungles which he loves to the core.
On World Photography Day today, which falls ahead of his 50th birthday, the actor sums it up, “I am more comfortable behind a still camera than I am in front of a still camera.”
There, I saw my first tiger Chota Munna and I got great pictures in my first 2-3 outings, and then I was hooked. The actor, who won the Best Debut Director at the National Film Awards for his film Swatantrya Veer Savarkar , confesses that his passion helped him on both personal and professional fronts. “The camera helped me a lot in my direction. The compositions which I experimented with my still camera helped me a lot in framing the film shots. “So with my sense of framing and his expertise, I was able to capture my movie well. Most actors when they become directors, they’re directing other things and not the frames. When I became a director, I already knew that I had experimented with a lot of frames. And, it all started with a still camera. That just happened at about 9pm and at 6am I was at Nagpur airport with a couple of friends, and that’s how it all began. Then, the camera became a very big excuse to be in the jungle.
From how to bring attention to a certain part of the frame and how to make an aesthetic frame, all that made my choices a bit easier,” he says but credits his director of photography Arvind Krishna as well. “So, we interacted on Instagram messages and he said, well why don’t you come to Nagpur and we’ll go to Kanha National Park (Madhya Pradesh), and I’ll show you how to use it. He then started documenting his trips and clicks as “every frame has a story to tell”. The actor says that with a mobile in every hand, “photography has become more democratic.”
