Family chaos gives photographer her best creative ideas
Meet Khushboo Soni
Hi I’m Khushboo Soni I live in Nagpur, India. Apart from being a wife and a mum, I’m someone who has an uncontrollable and consistent itch to tell stories. I studied accessory design at design school Nift New Delhi and got my first DSLR when I was in college. Even though I was blown away by the kind of pictures I could take with it it was a short-lived fling. After weeks of photographing the streets of New Delhi bathed in gold morning light I moved on. My camera lay in my attic, forgotten.
It wasn’t until I had my son many years later that I revisited photography but this time combined with another powerful tool I had acquired in college - Photoshop. With each picture I clicked, my short-lived fling developed into a full-blown and intense love affair (the kind that keeps you up all at night, sitting in front of a computer screen).
My best ideas come from chaos
When I was younger, I romanticised the idea of going to a cafe and ordering a nice coffee and savouring it while enjoying soft soulful music; that’s how you get your best ideas I would tell myself. But things are pretty different in reality - at least in my opinion. My best ideas come from chaos. They come from things that happen in my day-to-day life like stepping on a piece of Lego and spilling my coffee or missing my son after I’ve left him for less than a minute although I’ve been complaining about not having any alone time for an entire week.
I have a journal to write down ideas but most of the time I make a note in my phone. Sometimes I make rough sketches (ones you would laugh at) to understand how I can best portray my idea.
I'm inspired to preserve snippets of my son's childhood
I feel like for years I’ve been trying to find that one thing that I can pour my heart into. It had to be worthy, it had to be uplifting and at the same time it had to be liberating. I think I ve found all of that in photography and I have my two-year-old boy to thank for that. All I’ve wanted to do is to preserve snippets of his childhood in the amber of time so that I may revisit them when he is older and no longer fits in my arms. I think seeing them maybe the closest I will ever get to reliving his childhood. That is what keeps me going.
My top three tips for creating an image infused with love
- Create images that tell a story, ones that stir feelings of love, of longing, pictures that are joyful, powerful, even soulful.
- Share pictures of people or things or even places you love - things that demand revisiting or evoke something you have experienced. Try snapping candid shots while you sing your favourite song to your loved ones.
- Share moments that you could live a thousand times over, ones that make you want to stop time itself.
The tools of the trade
A very important thing for me while clicking a picture is a clean canvas. I choose plain walls while shooting indoors or a shallow depth of field when outdoors. Sometimes when I’m in the frame too I use a tripod and sync my phone to the camera using the Nikon SnapBridge app to focus and set the frame. If it doesn’t need Photoshop, I transfer it directly to my phone and take it into Lightroom. My favourite adjustment in Lightroom is the HSL sliders. I use these a lot to play around with colours.
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One of my most favourite images
A few days after the birth of my son, I was exhausted mentally and physically. All I wanted to do was take a break, go to the mall, spend a day outdoors with some friends. I wanted a day all to myself, so was looking forward to going back to my mom’s place in Delhi.
Once I was back home, I fixed a date with my friends and left my son in the very experienced hands of my mother to spend an evening with old friends. Let me tell you, I called up my mom a million times until I was back home. It was then that I realised that I was bound to this boy by invisible threads and couldn’t stop thinking about him. I had fallen in love once again.
I chose to create things that tell our story as a family. That tells people more about our life and our dynamic relationships with each other.
All images in this blog are by Kushboo Soni. You can follow her creative journey at @mother.of.reinvention on Instagram.
