New Delhi   

Exploring beauty through the camera

— Photo: Special Arrangement

Lyricist-poet Javed Akhtar at the exhibition.

New Delhi: From the morning stillness of Kashmir's picturesque Dal Lake to a night in Cambridge, beauty lies in the detail for young Khushi Mishra.

A corporate lawyer by profession, the nature enthusiast likes to capture Mother Earth in her various moods with her camera and has now put together her first solo exhibition of 28 photographs at India Habitat Centre here.

She says her romance with the camera started when she was just a child as her father, an avid photographer himself, encouraged her to take pictures. “We always had a camera lying around and I started clicking photographs from a very early age. So when I wanted to take a break professionally, that's what attracted me and I applied for a course at Light and Life academy in Ooty,” she says.

The 28-year-old photographer loves colours and most of her photographs are compositions of colours, shapes and angles. “You cannot be snobbish with pictures. I use black and white when I feel that I can spot the deepness and sharpness of angles, but I cannot photograph Delhi's Jantar Mantar in black because red is such a beautiful colour,” she quips.

However, Khushi decided to use black and white to portray the stillness of time at Jama Masjid. “I took that photograph last year early in the morning. Construction work was going on and there were not many people around. I had pigeons for company. The photo looks old because of the building. You feel like time stands still there,” she adds.

Sometimes it is pure chance to spot beauty. One of her favourite photographs is of feet decorated with anklets. “It was by pure chance that I spotted this picture. I was in the academy doing work with children when I spotted this four-year-old girl. I followed her. She was drinking water from a tap and instinctively lifted her dress to expose her beautiful anklets,” she adds.

Lyricist-poet Javed Akhtar, who inaugurated her four-day exhibition on Wednesday evening, praised her for having an eye for detail. “We all walk through life half-asleep and sometimes miss the most obvious objects of beauty. These photographs are beautiful because her eyes spotted them. Otherwise we pass through open and half-open doors everyday. It is the wonder of her eyes,” Akhtar said, adding that he was especially captivated by a photograph which depicts a chinar leaf afloat in a pool of water while others have sunk to the bottom. — PTI

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