Dont let Social Media decide what you create

[Music]

i’m a millennial

and a photographer born in 96 i remember

summer vacations for me

meant a chance to be using one of these

yes

that was the modern era of film

photography when you only had 36 shots

per role

and each role would then cost you around

40 to 50 rupees and to develop each role

and to get your pictures printed would

be around

60 to 70. the final destination for

these printed pictures

would then be the preserved albums that

got from cupboards to reminiscence on

occasions with extended family

or at the most at schools for some kind

of competition

cut to today photography and videography

has become

much much more accessible along with

modern production techniques

and equipment being widely available

all of this has given a lot of artists

just like me

the opportunity to explore our

creativity

everything now is automated and happens

at the press of a button

you can see the results of your efforts

immediately and as soon as you see the

end result it is either put up as a

story

a post a video or as a real on one of

the social media platforms

which is then closely followed by the

anxiety or the excitement

inducing anticipation about how many

people on the other side of the screen

liked it

shared it or commented on it i’m sure a

lot of people watching this talk

including me

are guilty of telling our friends when a

photo upload kardi usually comment

and that is exactly why i want to talk

to you all about a very important topic

what really is the true validation of an

artist’s art

before moving ahead let me put all my

cards on table today i do have a good

follower account

a good follower number on instagram and

a good subscriber count

but that is not where i started through

back to the time when i used to visit my

grandfather’s house in cold and rustic

nashik

the first place i would run into would

be his dark room

yes he was a photographer in the times

when to be a photographer you had to be

a master

of chemicals timings and a lot of other

things

just like knowing f-stops and shutter

speeds by heart

you know what there was no auto mode in

the cameras at that time

i always admired the time and effort

that he used to put into making

every single photograph and that is

where my love for photography

actually bloomed i used to shoot with

anything and everything that i found

maybe a friend’s camera or something

else on my mobile phone

i started trying to see things

differently through my lens

i did have an instagram account back

then and i wouldn’t deny

i do feel extremely uh validated i used

to feel extremely violated at that time

looking at the likes or reactions that

the photos would receive

but only when my following substantially

increased i realized something very

unusual

and that is extremely uh contrary to

the general perception that is not it’s

not necessary

for your audience to always love what

you’re doing

the harsh truth is the photos or any art

that an

artist loves creating may not always

be appreciated on the social media

here’s an example

a random photo of me uh just you know

like standing there gets around 40

or 44 000 likes and it actually took

zero effort to make

but a photograph on which i’ve spent a

lot of time i’ve

actually thought a lot about shutter

speeds and apertures and

uh how can i uh edit it really well i’ve

spent a lot of time on it

it just gets around 10 or 11. now i’m

sure you’ll argue that that’s still a

pretty

good number but as a matter of fact it’s

lower than the average amount of

likes that my regular photographs get

and considerably lower than the selfie

so let’s retrospective it should i

as an artist have stopped creating high

effort art and switched

to create the kind of content that got

me more validation of the internet

internet validation can be pretty

misleading and is one of the things that

i’ve learned

throughout my career as an artist let’s

go back a little in time

i’m sure many of you have seen this

painting and many of you must recognize

the artist too

yes vincent van gaal do you know how

much it is

valued currently at one billion dollars

many of his paintings have similarly

high values and one might wonder that a

person who created such exotic

such expensive artworks must have led a

very

luxurious life but that is not true

i would suggest you actually go and read

a little bit about van gogh and

how he spent his life because a lot of

his paintings

became famous right after his death

similarly

this is vivian meyer who is an american

street photographer

and who worked as a nanny for 40 years

and during this time she shot over 150

000 photographs and trust me it is a lot

considering that era of photography her

work was also discovered after her death

and it was exhibited

all around the world okay wait now what

i’m trying to say

is that uh it’s not that you would have

to wait till the end of your life

to have your artworks published it is

not the case but

i just want to tell you that these

people and many others create art

not just to receive recognition

validation or some kind of reward

they did it because they loved it a

selfless

and pure love that you pour your heart

out while making that one photograph

that one painting

or that one video that you are currently

working on and that is the only thing

that matters

and unfortunately so so many artists

fail to realize

that in this modern day era of social

media

okay now many people know that i am also

a vlogger and i create vlogs showing my

life in new york city

which means talking to thousands of

people through my camera

but one thing i’m pretty sure most of

you don’t know

is that i’m a big time introvert yes i

am

and talking to the camera is easy for me

because i’m not actually interacting

with someone but if you ask me to

actually go and talk to someone about

something i would probably be the last

person to do so

but let me tell you a story when i made

the most of what i

am and combined with what i love doing

that is photographing

to create something that made a

difference on march 12th when the

governor of new york

andrew cuomo declared a state of

emergency and schools and offices were

shut down

this matter there was going to be almost

no people on the street

which means zero possibilities of

interaction with anyone

i decided to document this historic

event when one of the world’s

busiest cities was going to be shut down

i went on the streets and shot

as much as i could and came home

i sat down and i was just thinking that

the only shot that i didn’t get

was of time square being completely

empty

now if you think time square is called

the melting pot of the world

wherein thousands and probably hundreds

of thousands of people

visit it on a daily and weekly basis

that time square was going to be empty

and i couldn’t sleep that night because

i didn’t have that one shot

so what i did was i just called the cab

i spent 80 dollars on the cab

uh riding from my apartment in brooklyn

to times square

i went there and i got that one shot i

did not do this because

uh someone asked me to i did not do this

because i was getting paid or

i knew that my followers would like the

shots i did it because i wanted to

i heard that voice from within and in

the end

you know it appeared to be on the cover

page of the story that was published in

national geographic traveler india

magazine

sounds of silence they called it uh and

which it was also number one on the list

of the most rich stories of 2020

but hey it’s not every time that your

work will get appreciated online or even

get published

let me tell you another story in january

2019 i decided to go on an expedition to

ladakh

in the winters with my father i’m sure

you must have seen how

beautiful it looks in the summers but

it’s a completely different wonderland

when you actually see it in winters i

wanted to photograph this for the

love that i had for radak and how much i

enjoyed photography in these extreme

conditions basically challenging myself

i shot a lot over there the temperatures

were as low as minus 33 degree celsius

i stayed all night long taking time

lapses making photographs taking long

exposures

but you know what none of these got

published or

nor did they go even viral on social

media is despite of them having a very

unique factor to it

but that didn’t definitely stop me from

photographing the same is the case with

my vlogs

the reason that i started vlogging and

it is probably one of the first times

i’m actually disclosing it to someone

is because i wanted my mother to see me

when i’m 8

000 miles away from her the subscriber

and view con normally doesn’t matter to

me as much as long as i know

that my two subscribers that is my mom

and my dad are seeing me on their tv at

least two to three times a week

getting updates from me and their love

is what keeps me going

pushing me to make vlogs even after

working almost five days a week

so it is important that we sit down and

we talk to ourselves

what is the purpose of creating art and

every time

the answer should always and always be

your love for that art we are all

amateurs

we all do it for love trust me the

satisfaction that you will get

after creating something that you wanted

something that you created with

all your heart can never be compared

to the satisfaction or even like getting

a million likes

okay so long story short let’s answer

the main question

what is the right validation for your

art as it is something that feels

very important especially when you are

new to this field

and the answer is it is only how you

feel about your art and not about

how a few random people on the internet

feel about it

only you can decide how good your art is

how good your content

is if you go on social media you’re

always going to find someone who’s doing

something amazing something nice

that will make you compare yourself to

that other person

please don’t let that happen as your art

will always be unique to yourself and

can not be compared to anyone else

art in itself is something that is very

pure

and there can be actually no real

competition when it comes to art

so validation of the people on the other

end of the viewer spectrum should not

always be the basis

of word for an artist and only the end

of an

artist is more important because art is

so

pure and subjective