Obsessions & Fascinations

Photography Projects: Arpita Maheswari Singh

This month’s blog takes us into the wonderful world of India. More specifically, to a little village next to the Mahanadi River, called Athmallik. This magical village is the source of inspiration and encouragement for Arpita to document the mesmerizing world around her.

Arpita´s home town is surrounded by hills, deep forests, and water. “I have been surrounded and inspired by this since my childhood.” The green of the forest, the blue of the sky, and the clouds have always attracted her. 

“I spend my free time watching nature.“

Her photography journey began when she was a 13-year-old girl and started to take pictures of the flowers in her backyard. For Arpita, flowers are the most beautiful creation from God and it’s the subject in nature that attracts her the most to capture. From beautiful, subtle close-ups with raindrops to a field of flowers in the distance. 

Looking at Arpita´s pictures I feel drawn into her images and the emotion she so genuinely puts in. You almost smell the flowers, feel the sun shining on your face and feel the wind blowing.

“In day to day life, while I am moving along the road, roaming in the forest area and watching the movement of the water in the rivulet, it’s the situation that encourages me to capture all of it.”

Besides beautiful flowers, she also has a beautiful rural way of photographing the world of the streets in Athmallik and around. 

Life in the slum areas, the street food markets, and the roadsides are also part of Arpita’s palette when diving into her pictures. Raw and honest are the worlds popping in my head. I really get an image of the life there. 

Arpita’s father is a journalist. And when she was a young girl and found the pictures that her dad made in the past, she always had a lot of questions to ask him. Questions about composition, lighting, angles.

“He inspires me every time”

During a journey she took one day through a hill area close to her home, she wanted to take pictures of the scenic beauty of nature around her. Here she used the guidance from her dad and put her learning into practice. 

Arpita is learning more and more about photography, day after day. Experimenting and spontaneously allowing the moments to click that button and capture the beauty of her home country. She always tries to search for creativity in her images and composes the background before capturing it.

“Angle and background must be understood.”

Now, for all the curious, inspired and motivated photographers out there, this is the number one advice from Arpita : 

“Photography is a feeling; you cannot learn it from just someone, you have to learn it from everything and everyone around you.”

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