A good gift for a kid can help nurture many talents in him. That is what happened with 15-year-old Arjunpreet Shahni, whose exhibition of photographs “India: In & Out” is on at Zaffiro café terrace till January 25. A Grade 10 student from GD Goenka World School, this amateur photographer was gifted a camera by his dad when he was seven years old. “I became interested in photography since then. I used to carry my camera to all the places and would capture the moments that I felt moved by. Soon, I had a collection of fabulous pictures,” he says.
While he has exhibited his work earlier in a group exhibition, going solo has given him a different high. “Especially after the good response that I got on the opening day of the exhibition,” he says, adding that he sold around 20 photos worth `90,000 on the first day itself. He now plans to exhibit his pictures in Lucknow, so he is all geared up. He says that he likes to do everything himself. “I am an independent teenager as far as managing is concerned. I like to organise everything from the place to the printing and framing of the photographs,” he says.
And it’s not only photography that interests him, even business studies intrigues him. “Without a doubt, business studies is the main subject that captures my interest,” he says adding that he wants to study Commerce after Class 10.
It’s nice to see a 15-year-old taking decisions on his own and not getting confused or even influenced by things happening in the outside world. Arjunpreet, who loves to capture emotions in his photographs and idolises veteran lensman Raghu Rai, is also very sure that he would never like to opt for fashion photography even though he knows that it will expose him to the glam-world. “From the age of seven, when I got my first camera, I cherished clicking emotions of the general public as I enjoy capturing small but memorable moments. Objects are also my favourites as they always make me think how could man or nature create something so beautiful,” he says.
The teenager, who has done a course from a photography school in the capital also thinks that doing courses doesn’t really help. “Skills can never be taught. Either you have it or you don’t. You can only brush them up, but can’t teach. I just take my camera and start walking on the streets, I spend seven to eight hours in a week clicking pictures and love to learn from my mistakes,” he says.