Journey To A Beautiful Life
so
till 2012 i was not having a phone with
me
of 2012 was the year when i got my first
second-hand smartphone samsung galaxy y
and the when i entered into this college
i explored the college so
this college is situated in a jungle
it’s a very old college
and we used to go from our hostel to our
to our classes
uh through those small small parts and
the life
the kind of loneliness is a very
negative word but
we used to go to our classrooms and the
life used to witness there
gave me so much creative ability to see
the world to explore myself
to explore my inner heart that i
actually realized
that this was the place where i wanted
to be during all these years maybe this
was the place which was making me
independent
so these are the photographs which i
started clicking through
samsung uh galaxy y from my first
smartphone
there was there was not any agenda in my
mind that i want to become a good
photographer
that i want to click photographs these
are the normal
like what you see in your daily life
these are the daily live photographs
the the photograph at the top is of the
new delhi railway station when i was
coming from
delhi to ranchi the below two
photographs are from ranchi where you’re
actually walking
up through a city or through the roads
of your college and you’re seeing
the the everyday life so these these
photographs are
from that place now i completed my
post-graduation during during my post
graduation in the year 2013
a friend of mine suggested me that
gursham when you
click photographs you upload them on
facebook why don’t you use instagram
so i told him that i’ve tried i’ve tried
it
once or twice but it’s quite complicated
to me
i don’t understand its interface so he
pushed me
he made me understand what instagram is
about the people about the community
that you get like-minded people over
there you see other people’s photographs
you got to learn a lot from them so i
finally came
to instagram and i started uploading
photographs over there
so like every other person every second
third person must have heard about old
delhi its culture
its people its everyday life i started
exploring old delhi
during my saturdays and sundays and i
was completely blown away
by the culture that place had completely
blown away
and that was the thing streets which i
was looking for all these years
so i i kind of understood my taste of
clicking photographs
and the kind of creativity i belong to
was clicking streets people culture
everyday life
so like basically these are the things
which happened on their own
i was not going i was not running after
them but these things
happened on their own one day i was
going through instagram and itc
group of hotels they conducted a
competition
in which they asked to upload a
photograph
and in return the price would be there
was this luxury instantly they were
conducting
so i uploaded one of my photographs and
the other day the manager called me
congratulating me that
you have been selected as uh one of the
guests
to attend this luxury insta meet and
what we were supposed to do
was to click photographs of that event
and whosoever
uh wins that event would get a two-night
stay in one of their hotels across india
so i did that
and i got the best instagram coverage
and in return
i not only got a two nights stay which i
later on
uh converted into a lunch for my family
because they were coming from london
so the manager he he kind of
gave me a proposal to come
with them to go with them to jodhpur so
in jodhpur
rajasthan international folk festival
happens every year in the month of
november or december i guess
so they asked me to to
kind of capture the whole event
rajasthan international folk festival
through my photographs and they were
supposed to feature those photographs
on their website so this was the first
thing when i realized
that the thing which i’m doing for my
passion is actually
giving me something in return which i’m
actually enjoying it right
till now i have not left my job i was
not giving any extra efforts i was not
giving any extra time
i was just doing it during my weekends
and
it actually gave me an assignment with
such a prestigious
such a wonderful company itc group of
hotels
later on same like social social media
is something
which gives you a lot in return while
scrolling one day
there was this competition through the
national geographic channel
in which they were supposed to select 20
people across india
who would become a part of a walk
in which 20 people from different genres
would come together
and explore a place these people would
decide
so this national geographic channel they
asked me to put my instagram handle
on their facebook page i did that
and the day i was leaving early from my
office
i saw this notification in my mobile
phone saying that
the national geographic channel
commented on your post
so i thought that maybe these these
people are stupid it must be a spam
comment or something
when i went to their page it was the
official national geographic channels
page
and i was actually selected as one of
the 20 people
to to become a part to become a part of
them
so like with these things uh
when these things came into the picture
of my life
i decided that i won’t waste my
saturdays and sundays
or like partying around or doing this
and that
i thought that maybe i can i can
channelize my saturdays and sundays
in a very productive way because i love
traveling to different places that was
the thing for me
i started exploring different places
which could be covered overnight you
know
if i if i leave on a friday late night i
can come back on a monday morning so the
places
were like agra pushkar banaras there are
a number of places in rajasthan
in which where which you can actually
travel there on a friday night and you
can come
on a monday morning so i made this so
this was an agenda for me
this was a driving force for me that i
do not have to leave this thing from my
from my life and i would take this thing
a bit further then this was this
photograph
a left left corner was featured in times
of india
and one of their competitions so like i
used to
research a lot what kind of competitions
are there uh
what kind of chances are there in which
i can get visible
and these these things are not basically
i’m not
boasting about my achievements but still
they they kind of
motivate me a lot to to go a bit more
further
and explore more and more options
then one day uh i was coming back from
my office
and i got a call from a cnn
international
uh paying interest in india
and they selected a bunch of people
maybe around five or six of them
and they wanted to they wanted to
portray
india as a cultural place and they
wanted to draft an article in which they
can tell about india’s culture
through some photographs and our
experiences as travellers
so they they told me that it’s not final
we are not finalizing you yet
but we want to learn something about
banaras because there was a place i used
to visit every year
and they asked me some questions about
banaras about
what we call paan about
the ganga the holy ganga and
so they they kind they finally featured
uh on this article with the highlight
scene
india through the eyes and lenses of
instagram users
and my kind of verbal
note was drafted here along with some
photographs
from three different places the
above above ones are from banaras and
along with rajasthan in calcutta
then as i’ve already mentioned my dream
about apple
it’s it’s still my dream it it has not
been fulfilled yet
my dream that maybe someday i’ll get
featured on their banner billboard
then uh i guess one and a half months
before
diwali i received an email from like
from the official apple people
california
uh saying that they want to portray
india’s
brightest festival called diwali and
they are considering
maybe maybe a bunch of maybe like around
10 people
in which the theme was light so they
wanted to define diwali through light
and they were seeking photographs for
the same so
i guess i was having around eight to
nine thousand photographs in my phone
and i gave them around 120 photographs
like all the photographs
which had kind of an a light element to
it
right so maybe after a week i got a call
from their singapore office saying that
their creative director from singapore
he wants to talk to me and he kind of
gave me a very honest feedback that guru
simran we really like your work from the
very first day
you have been uh participating in our
community briefs
so the kind of photographs you have sent
they do depict light but our main focus
is india’s brightest festival diwali
so this was the photographs which by
mistake i did not send them
i again searched my whole around roughly
around 9000 photographs
and after that it took around a month
for them to shortlist this and i guess
three days before diwali i got a mail
that finally your
photograph would be featured on apple
and on the day of diwali
so apple featured six photographers
from india and my photograph was one of
them so
[Music]
talking about the dream of getting
featured on a billboard that was kind of
40 percent complete
still it’s 60 percent left so i still
believe that there is a lot to
explore as a traveler as
a creative person as
like looking into photographs there’s a
lot to explore
now in today’s world solo traveling is a
very cliche
it’s a very cliche term people they pack
their bag they they click photographs
they quit their jobs and then they call
themselves as a solo traveler they call
themselves as wanderers
and they they kind of boast about it and
then
maybe after a month or two they they
seek different companies
should approach them give them
assignments so that they can earn
they ask help from their friends from
the parents that they want to travel
so i don’t understand this concept from
the very beginning
so so like this is my like the main
thing that i want to communicate today
is
that if you are doing a job if you’re
doing a monday to friday regular job
still you can pursue your passion still
you can pursue your passion
and solo traveling does not mean that
you have to quit your job
you have to quit your monday to friday
thing you have to go penniless and then
you are becoming a solo traveler solo
traveling
for me maybe it it means
a lot to me maybe i understand my heart
a lot better
which i don’t understand during my
monday to friday job
i don’t understand during my normal days
my normal life
going solo means you’re actually
learning a bit more about yourself where
you’re heading in your life
what you want to do what kind of dreams
you want to pursue
so for me solo travelling is is
something
very pure i would say so this photograph
is one of the trips i made in 2017 in
the month of june
to kerala so i always wanted to explore
kerala’s monsoon
so this photograph was one of them
so i met so what what comes with solo
travelling
i was going to this place called lep
then i met a guy through instagram he
he messaged me saying brother i want to
meet you i met him along with his friend
and there we decided to do a roller uh
to do a road trip
from lp to walmart it’s in tamil nadu
so these are some memories from there
then i also
got a chance to visit rashtrapati bhavan
this was the very first time
when rashtrapati bhavan allowed some
people
to document their place
through photographs so facebook india
along with instagram india
they kind of i guess selected around
seven people
oh and they asked us to document
rashford like
maybe through our vision and this
photograph was one of them
i purchased the gopro just to experiment
though that that this is not my cup of
tea this is not my cup of taste
and again these things are very
motivating when you
experiment when you give something
something you know kind of
you give certain kind of inputs to your
traveling
and this photograph from rajasthan
pushkar
it won a gopro worldwide award and
it was featured on gopro.com website
so like these these things motivate me a
lot to travel more and more and more
and pursue my passion and getting an
answer from these things is that
i’m not doing anything wrong i’m not
wasting my time here and there
so like this is one of the
those moments then this is one
photograph which got uh
featured by discovery channel in india
on their instagram page
uh from jama masjid old daily
of an evening
now a lot of people ask me maybe
uh obviously all of you will get a job
one day
and a question comes if we pursue our
passion
how how how it pays us right
so since the time uh around 2015 when i
got recreated
recruited into excel a lot of
companies approach people like me there
there are hundreds and thousands of
people in india
who call who tagged themselves as
influencers
as social media influencers so different
companies can contact you
for photographs right and in return they
pay you well
so these are some of the photographs
which i did for some brands
now like these are kind of my personal
suggestions
of understanding your style if someone
wants to become a photographer
he or she should understand their style
if someone wants to click photographs he
or she
should understand their style of work
their style of heart
their style of vision their style of
taste it’s not that if you want to
become a popular photographer
or you you go into wildlife though your
john ray street so
like that will be a huge blunder these
are
kind of some brands with whom i’ve
worked so far
these are some names one plus cairoli
asus so these kind of these people kind
of give me for example
a lot of phone companies over here they
give me phones to review their phone
through photographs
i upload them on my social media
channels they get a sufficient reach
and i get paid well this is how if you
talk about solo travelling expenses this
is how
i along with my day job which which
actually obviously pays me
i get to earn a bit a bit more through
these things this photograph was
featured by
the canon imaging asia
then through solo traveling you can
actually
not only visit just your own country you
can’t
just explore your own country you got to
visit different countries through
tourism boards so this is through
singapore tourism board
they take a kind of people who can click
photographs
who can tell stories through photographs
and so this is from singapore tourism
board
rest all is from visual supply company
that’s
the first application which got
introduced for an iphone
to edit their photographs and they have
a prestigious gallery
in which they curate photographs from
all over the world
and so a couple of photographs
are there which got featured over there
so to sum up uh what my
take for the new future is that i don’t
want to leave my job
even if you’re doing a day job even if
you’re doing a monday to friday job
you can actually continue your passion
you just have to channelize your free
time you just have to channelize your
creativity
and understand yourself better thank you