Where My Eyes Learned to See
Chapter One – The First Frame
5 October 2014
There are photographs that become favourites. And then there are photographs that become beginnings.
This was mine. I was fourteen years old when my father’s transfer took our family from South India to Jammu & Kashmir. At that age, I didn’t understand what it meant to leave a place forever. I only knew I was leaving behind my friends, my school, the streets I had grown up on, and a childhood I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to. Perhaps my father understood my silence better than I did.
Before we boarded our flight, he placed a Sony Cyber-shot in my hands. It wasn’t an expensive gift. It wasn’t given with the dream of making me a photographer.
It was simply a father’s way of telling his son, “You’ll be okay.”
As the aircraft climbed into the sky, my eyes wandered through the cabin. The endless rows of seats, the soft cabin lights, strangers lost in their own journeys-everything suddenly felt worth looking at. I raised the camera and pressed the shutter.
That photograph still exists today.
Whenever I look at it, I don’t see composition. I don’t see perfect framing or beautiful light. I see a fourteen-year-old boy making a photograph without knowing what photography was. I had never heard of the Rule of Thirds. I didn’t know how light could shape emotion or how a frame could tell a story. I was simply seeing the world through a small lens for the very first time.
A that flight took us to Jammu & Kashmir. Everything was different. The language sounded unfamiliar. The mountains replaced the landscapes I had always known. The cold winter mornings, the snow-covered valleys, the people, the culture-everything felt beautiful, yet strangely distant.
I missed home. But every time I picked up that little Sony Cyber-shot, the loneliness became a little quieter. Instead of counting the days, I started collecting moments. Our family laughing in the snow. The silence of the mountains.
“The first snowfall I had ever witnessed...”
Smiles that would have faded with time, had the camera not held onto them. Looking back today, I realise something I never understood then.
My father didn’t just gift me a camera. He unknowingly gave my eyes a reason to wander. A reason to observe. A reason to remember. More than a decade has passed since those first photographs. The Sony Cyber-shot is gone. The cameras have changed. So have I.
But whenever someone asks me where my photography journey began, my mind doesn’t return to my best photograph. It returns to a frightened fourteen-year-old boy, carrying a tiny camera into an unfamiliar world… without knowing that every click was quietly teaching his eyes how to see.
This was my first frame. This was the beginning.
To be continued in Chapter Two…
Your journey from receiving your first camera at 14 to where you are today is truly inspiring Anna.
It shows what passion and dedication can achieve.
Wishing you continued success in your photography journey.
Awesome Sai Thejeshwar Rao.. Your narration pulled me in from the very first line—I genuinely felt immersed in your journey.
The way you expressed your experiences made every moment feel vivid and personal.
It didn’t feel like I was just reading; it felt like I was traveling alongside you.
Can’t wait to read the next chapter of your photography journey—keep writing and keep inspiring! Good luck..