Life at Delhi University: The Photography Society

Being in a Photography/Visual Arts society is an enthralling and educating experience to say the least. Being in the company of people who know the skills of photography, and who are ready to teach and most importantly learn, has made me appreciate the beauty of insignificant things.

This is what my experience has been like being in The Darkroom, the visual arts society of Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies. (We proudly call ourselves a visual arts society because we teach, share and set forth the spirit of not only photography, but graphic designing and film-making as well)

1.) Photowalks to the best spots in and around Delhi

Our craving to capture architectural beauty drives us all around Delhi; from Humayun’s Tomb to Feroz Shah Kotla Fort to Hauz Khas. Sometimes the photowalks happen in crowded yet colourful places like Chandni Chowk which give us abundant human subjects to capture.

2.) Knowledge of DSLR, even when you don’t have one

When I joined my society, I didn’t even know what the full form of a DSLR was (many of us still don’t know, that’s a fact) but eventually we start learning how to operate a DSLR even when we don’t own one. Some of us even save up money to buy it. More than the intuitiveness, I guess it’s the fact that our non-photographer friends who force us to learn about DSLRs. Earlier when my friends used to ask me about DSLRs, I just used to tell them something out of Wikipedia.

3.) Keeping track of photography society pages on Facebook

An arduous task is to keep track of different competitions that come up on Facebook. Most of us have a competitions database but miserably fail to update it. Sometimes we just stalk a particular society’s facebook page until they post a competition.

4.) Sharing the cameras in competitions

When on-the-spot photography competitions happen (mostly during the fest season), we sometimes have just one camera and 4 participants. But, we somehow manage to submit every photo.