If you are ready to fight…
My first hotel shoot was in 1975 for ITC Chola, which was being launched as the first ITC hotel, then called Chola Sheraton. Everything I did was well-received and praised.
Then came the ice skating rink…. I shot several visuals, but the 400 ISO film on my cumbersome, small-apertured Hasselblad could hardly capture the speed of the skaters.
My first failure was a total disaster, and I received a stinker from the marketing department. They praised the effort elsewhere, but the critical one, where they wanted to promote the cold skating rink in hot Madras (at that time), was an abysmal failure.
That was the first time I learned to let go of ego as an artist, and the humanist in me grew. I realized later, with every young student who had similar experiences, how important it was to push them to never give up.
I vowed that day that, though I never had a mentor and had no one to show me how hospitality photography should be done, I would learn from literature – but I would never, ever give up.
If today, 50 years later, I am still working in the hospitality field, it is because of that vow. I found a method to get the visuals I needed with a lot of help from the Big Boss above. Today, I shoot all over the world.
From Him, I learned that “if you are ready to fight with faith, He will have to intervene and will never give up on you.” Quite simply, I would say, “In His miracles, I found His existence!” So cool
