Mouhamed Moustapha was among the many visitors who admired the vintage cars on display at The Hindu Chennai-Pondy Heritage car rally, organised by the Department of Tourism and the Madras Heritage Motoring Club, held in February this year.
As he bent forward to look at the interiors of a particular car, he saw the reflection of people on the car’s window. It was his Eureka moment. The amateur photographer spent around an hour getting the frame right and clicked away.
“I wanted to take a photograph illustrating the people in multiple layers,” he says.
The black-and-white photograph, titled ‘People Mirror’ beat more than 80,000 photographs to be crowned the Nat Geo Moment 2014 in May.
The annual all-India competition, organised by the National Geographic television channel, was judged by American photojournalist Ami Vitale on the parameters of vision, composition, communication and freshness.
The photograph captures human expressions at their best.
“Each aspect of life can be turned into art, if you just take the time to open your mind! I am a strong believer that the best pictures are captured candidly, and that each person on this earth is beautiful,” says Moustapha, who currently works in a BPO in Chennai, and is home in Puducherry on weekends.
His weapons are a Canon 6D and Samyang lens. For his efforts, he has won the chance to work on a National Geographic assignment as a photo blogger.
Moustapha has earlier won awards at competitions organised by the Puducherry Tourism.
He is also one of the organising members of a Flickr-based group, the Pondicherry photography club, which holds photo walks every weekend to different places in and around Puducherry.
The 100-member group plans to hold an exhibition of their walks in August.
“Working with photography has taught me to view the world in a completely different way,” adds Moustapha.
