Aparna John

When Barnamala, Founder of Delta Lives organisation first asked me to conduct a photography workshop at Sundarbans I got very excited to get an opportunity to give back to the community. I went through all my two years of NID , but still some thing felt missing. I sat with my thoughts for a day , I went back to the days I volunteered in Govt. Blind school of Trivandrum on every Thursdays after school hours. I tried to bring back what I learned from the kids , it was never to impose your view of world to them but to know how they see the world before you begin. There were photographs of goats, cats ,leaves , trees and their friends giggling around. I decided to not use my made-up PPT and started discussing the photographs they took with composition rules, congratulated kids for some of their best pictures and asked their opinion on my pictures. We started with 5 phones, 23 children and slowly switched to demonstration to use dslr. A beautiful evening happened successfully with the translators, Sumitra Mandal and Debasis helping with Bangla and kids being patient with my Hindi.