Journalism is supposed to be learnt in the trenches — by roughing it out through on-ground exposure rather than through theory. Harsha Vadlamani had completed a journalism course but was unlearning and re-learning when he was part of a team commissioned to document the general elections of 2014 for a collaborative project between the news portal Scroll and Instagram. “A news photographer/videographer is typically expected to focus on the stage when a dignitary delivers an address; I had the liberty to turn away and focus on people attending the event and other aspects unfolding on the sidelines,” he recalls.
Travelling to different venues for election reportage opened up endless possibilities. Instagram was gathering momentum in the country. For this assignment, Harsha was primarily shooting with his mobile phone. “On certain days we’d be exhausted and confused about which photograph should be uploaded. We’d throw in a few selections in our common What’sApp group and some other photographer would choose and also help with editing captions. On ground, we functioned as reporters-editors rolled into one,” he recalls.
Harsha Vadlamani
Harsha Vadlamani is an independent photojournalist whose work gets featured in several well known publications. But photo journalism wasn’t his first career choice. An engineering graduate, he worked with a leading software company for two years. The going was good but he felt he wasn’t cut out for a desk job that got monotonous. “I didn’t want to regret years later,” he says.
His interest in photography began while working at the software firm in Pune. With his first salary he bought a Sony Ericsson phone with a 2MB camera and photographed everything that caught his eye — nature to candid images of his friends. “I would travel during weekends and liked meeting people and listening to their stories. This, combined with photography, seemed like the right thing for me,” he says.
Where are the rains?
He took up a journalism course in 2011-12 and after the 2014 elections, Harsha was also part of a team that chased the monsoon for an assignment. Only, that year the monsoon played truant. “We got sunburnt instead of capturing rain-drenched landscapes,” he laughs. During that trip, he observed that some of his companions were also engineers. “We were all doing everything but engineering,” he quips.
Harsha has worked on diverse projects — a study of junior artists residing in Krishna Nagar, Hyderabad; Narmada Valley Project and displacement; Marathwada drought and other issues.
A blackbuck sprints across the road near Belewadi Phata in Beed, Maharashtra. Farmers say the drying up of watering holes in the jungles has led to an increase in sightings of wild animals on their farms. April 30, 2016.
Photo journalism is more than just capturing moments. It calls for extensive reading that helps one understand perspectives, researching on the places one visits and spending time with people in the region. “I walk around the area, talk to people and break the ice. When I’m asking them for access into their area, they need to feel comfortable. I try and pick up a few words of the local language,” he explains.
Among the many memorable moments, Harsha recalls photographing a communist party gathering in Shah Ali Banda, Hyderabad, “It was a small gathering and they were looking for a raised platform from which the leader could speak. They found a crate of colas, upturned it and used it as a stage. It was fun to notice how someone was standing on the colas, a symbol of capitalism.”
We ask him if the career shift met with approval in his family and he smiles, “My dad had no objection when I told him I can’t be a software engineer any more. Much later he confided that he had wanted to do something else and not be a banker. He wanted me to be happy with what I do.”
To know more about Harsha Vadlamani’s work, check http://sriharsha.in or @harshavadlamani on Instagram.
(This column features people who dared to give up lucrative career to pursue their dream)
