Mastercraftsman
The masters of the craft share their insights and photographs
is an avid traveller and an amateur photographer. Inspired by his father at an early age, he had been a keen student of photography since his school days. Having travelled across the country – from the mountains of Ladakh and Spiti to the jungles of Madhya Pradesh with his parents – he also developed an insatiable appetite for travel. After getting his irst camera in 2010, and then moving to Germany for studies, his passion for travel and photography only increased. Having photographed and travelled around 37 countries till date, he continues living in Germany with his wife and daughter. Along with his profession, Avishek also runs a YouTube channel and a
January 2021 www.thewanderingchubbies.com www.youtube.com/c/ TheWanderingChubbies www.instagram.com/ thewanderingchubbies www.facebook.com/avshkptr
Avishek Patra
What inspired you to get into landscape photography? How did your journey start?
Travel and photography have always been around me since my childhood. My father is a passionate photographer and for years, I have seen him practising his art. Add to that my parents’ love for the mountains, which meant that every summer we would go trekking in the Himalayas. While the idea of travel and exploring new places really caught my fantasy as a child, I never really took up photography seriously till about a couple of years back.
I moved to Germany for my studies in 2010. It was around the same time I got my first D-SLR. Moving to Europe gave me the opportunity to travel, and by the end of 2017, I had travelled across 30 countries. In 2018, when I embarked upon a project to document my travels, I realised that my photographic work was really average compared to the renowned travel photographers. To figure out how to improve, I started frequenting websites like 500px and following the work of travel-photographers like Thomas Heaton, Brendan van Son and Max Rive. This is when I really started working on my photography – unlearning and then relearning the entire process from scratch.
By the end of 2018, I had explored several cities around the world and felt the need to experience the beauty of nature – something that was a minor part of my travels till then. Over the next couple of years, I explored the German and Swiss Alps, the Italian Dolomites and a couple of Spanish and Italian islands. And today, although I love capturing the grand cityscapes, the architecture and the people of a place, landscape photography holds a special place in my heart.
What drives your choice of subject matter?
Travel plays a huge role in my photography and as a travel photographer I photograph places – the grand vistas, the details in architecture or nature and the daily life of the place. In principle, my
travel ideas are motivated by the vision of exploring something new. With that as my guiding philosophy, I absolutely do not restrict my choice of subject matter.
Initially after moving to Germany, I primarily travelled across the European, American and Asian cities, and the architectures and the grand vistas of these cities were my go-to subjects. Since the last two years, my interest in capturing the landscapes around the world has grown immensely. Till now, my focus mainly has been the Alpine region of Europe and I love capturing the mountains, lakes and waterfalls in this region. Currently, due to the pandemic, I can only travel around locally and I am mainly focussing on two subgenres of landscape photography: astro and forest. The newness of any subject matter drives me to travel to and photograph new places, thereby nourishing my appetite for both travel and photography.
What, according to you, is the difference between a good image and an iconic image?
The art of photography is very subjective, isn’t it? So, there can be no one answer for this question. From my personal stand point on travel photography, I feel those images are iconic that make me feel eager, even anxious to get up and travel to that place. That is the strength of an iconic image, the one that makes me restless (in a good way of course).
For me, such iconic images can come from any place – stunning images from a park next door can make me as anxious to go out and shoot, as an image from the Lofoten islands in Norway. For example, in your last issue, you printed an image of Nohkalikai Falls by Himadri Bhuyan. I have seen hundreds of images of the place – at sunset, in moody conditions, and so on. But never did any other image (and mind you, I have seen several really good images of the place) make me eager to go to Nohkalikai. So, for me, Nohkalikai Falls by Himadri Bhuyan would be such an iconic image.
Where do you find your creative inspiration? Any photographer whose work has deeply influenced you?
Creatively, I am driven by the motivation to capture and present a place in a previously unseen form. Of course, when travelling, I do take compositional cues and inspirations from images by other photographers, but I am always on the lookout for new compositions and visuals at different locations. In the summer of 2020, I visited Zaanse Schans, a very popular touristic destination near Amsterdam for the first time. And while the place has been shot hundreds of times, I wanted to create something new, something previously unseen at this location. I could not achieve that in one visit but the zeal to create something new