Asian Photography — November 2017

8 NOVEMBER 2017 http://www.asianphotographyindia.com

The Letter^

of the month

will receive^

1 Year

Subscription

(12 E-Issues)

Dear Editor,

Firstly, I must congratulate you and the team

for publishing this sort of a magazine month after

month and giving the delight to readers like us who

are very fond of photography. I read the October

2017 issue and the theme of one-day was really

interesting. I particularly loved the article about ‘My

Most Memorable Assignments’ by the photographers.

It was really interesting and I learnt a lot from those

words from the professionals.

I would like to ask you to keep up the good work

and look forward to reading the magazine every month.

Thanks,

Raghu Nath, Bangalore

Dear Raghu,

Thanks for appreciating the work from the team and the thoughts shared by the professionals on their

most memorable assignments. I am happy that you have learnt from the same and also, we at AP are

thankful to the photographers from the industry who are always more than willing to share their thoughts

with our readers.

We are looking at coming up with more interesting things like these in the future and we hope that our

readers enjoy the same.

Dear Sir,

I am a regular reader of the magazine and enjoy it a lot. I read the issue recently and found it very

interesting and also learnt a lot from it. The article on learning DSLR in a day was very good and I have

learnt a lot from it. Although I don’t have a DSLR now but I am planning to buy one soon. I am sure that this

knowledge will be very handy when I do.

I would love for this letter to be published in the magazine.

Rounak Shah, Ahmedabad

Dear Rounak,

It is great to see the passion that you have for photography and we also hope that you get your very

own DSLR soon and shoot many pictures with it. You can also keep an eye out for our Artistique contest in

the future which gives the readers an opportunity to win a lot of goodies if they win the contest. That might

be a good way to stand a chance to win a DSLR in future!

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38 OctOber 2017 http://www.asianphotographyindia.com OctOber 2017 39

Special feature

PhotograPhers’

most memorable

assignmentsEach photographer, from every genre, has some dull days and some very exciting days. Some

assignments can be a cakewalk, and some can be more challenging and memorable than others. We spoke to three photographers from three different genres, World Press Award winner renowned chef and food photographer Michael Swamy and award-winning wildlife photographer Altaf Qadri,

Dhritiman Mukherjeethey have worked on., and they narrate to us one of their exciting and challenging assignments that

Altaf Qadri narrates to of a day spent in Asian Photography

Kashmir covering one of his most difficult assignments. Qadri shot

the body of a 16-year old Kashmiri boy who was shot during an Indian

police firing. Here is the detailed chilling account.

Twas killed when personnel of Special Operations Group of Indian police fired, his photograph was taken during the funeral of 16 year old Feroz Ahmad, alias Showkat Ahmad who

without any provocation, on civilians during a relaxation in pro-freedom strike given by Hurriyat (Freedom) conference, an amalgam of various pro-freedom

political parties, in Palhalan village of

North Kashmir’s Baramulla district. Eyewitnesses said cops fired directly at people who were running for their lives.

The 16-year old from Palhallan village received a bullet injury in the abdomen and died on the spot. Feroz was sent

by his aged father to market to buy chicken and other food items on the eve of year for Muslims during the holy month Shab-i-Qadr - holiest night of the

of the chicken shop when he was shot in the abdomen. A local resident, Ghulam Muhammad, said he was going to home Ramadan. He was standing outside

after offering prayers in the mosque and suddenly after two minutes there was commotion and he heard gunshots only

to find Feroz in a pool of blood outside a shop with chicken in his hand. Four persons, including Feroz, were killed and dozens were injured, many of them

seriously, in the incident taking the toll of civilian deaths in the valley since June 11, 2010 to 69 till September 6, 2010.

funeral was probably one of the hardest thing during my recent assignments Getting to Palhalan to cover this

in Kashmir. As soon as we heard about this incident, me and one of my colleagues, who works with the Associated Press Television News,

took a motorcycle and left the office for Palhalan, which is around 30 kms from Srinagar. We were soon joined by

around a dozen of photojournalists and video journalists, all on motorbikes. We were stopped by Indian paramilitary

troopers at various places. Somehow we managed to reach Pattan, which is a town just 2 kms before Palhalan. It was all deserted with paramilitary and army

soldiers patrolling the streets. We were stopped by a paramilitary officer, who ordered us to leave immediately from

there. I tried to convince him that we were journalists and have to go to cover the incident. But he threatened us with dire consequences if we didn’t retreat

back in two minutes. He even said that it is the media who highlight these killings otherwise no one would come to know

about incidents like this. Sensing danger we turned back. We just rode back for some five minutes when locals guided

us through an alternate road which passed through rice fields, streams, and orchards. As we were passing through orchards we met other photojournalists

who had driven from Srinagar. So we rode together in a group. After some point we reached a small stream which

was to crossed using an only plank. Three motorcycles crossed with ease but a fourth one, a photojournalist

working for a local English daily, lost his balance and headed straight into the stream drowning him momentarily, we

all helped to get him out.we heard pro-freedom slogans from a As soon as we entered the village

distance raised by mourners carrying the Feroz’s body. As soon as the body reached his home, his sister jumped

on to the hospital bed, on which the body was carried from the hospital, and embraced the dead body of her brother. “Let me see his face. Let me see him

one last time,” she cried. “He can’t die and leave us alone - please wake him. He is not talking to me,” she cried. I was

shocked to see all this happening just in front of my eyes. It’s not that I had seen a dead body and mourners for the

first time, but it was the situation as a whole which shook me. I quickly ran to the second floor of their house to get a photograph which shows the whole

scene. The only thing on my mind at that particular time was how to get pictures and reach Srinagar safely. There were

four funerals in that village but we could shoot only one as we had to rush back to Srinagar and file the pictures.

portrays the inconsolable grief of a sister. It looked like as if she was trying to wake-up her dead brother from a For me this particular picture

deep sleep. She, in fact, depicts the pain of an ordinary Kashmiri woman, whose brothers, sons, fathers, or

husbands have been killed, arrested for life or simply have been disappeared involuntarily. This pain can be seen in each and every nook and corner of

Kashmir.

Altaf Qadri