I am a hobbyist photographer. I love Landscapes, Sunsets, Macro, night and wildlife photography.

A Brief Long Wait..

I am Mohamed Irshad, a freelance travel photographer. I have been actively involved in photography since the past 15 years, though I did not possess a camera of my own for most of that period.

One day my uncle let me use his good old polaroid instant camera since he didn't find any use of it for years. It a huge box and weighed at least 5 Kg. It was a heavy monster but I could not make it work. It was too big to carry around and was not convincing .

In 1996, I met my then best friend Shiaz. He came from a rich family; so at the age of 10, he had his own automatic film camera that would automatically progress to the next blank frame so its ready to shoot the next shot immediately.

Shiaz was generous enough to let me use his camera and did not mind me wasting a few frames. Sometimes he forcibly made me try it. I didn't want to waste his shots. This is when I started to think of having my own camera.

I was too young at that time and even a basic camera cost a lot. Even if I managed to convince my parents buy me one, post production cost too much at that time.

Sometimes later, we went on a family trip to Edison bungalow - a beautiful castle in Welimada, Sri Lanka built by the English using only rocks, well isolated from the populated areas and built on top of a hill. My uncles new film camera caught my attention. He was taking photographs of the beautiful scenery that extended from the bungalow towards the distant horizon. I wanted to give it a try but it was an expensive equipment and I wasn't sure my uncle would let me use it. Hesitantly I expressed my interest to him, and he did let me take one shot. I tried to capture the distant mountains.I was happy about it and from that moment on, I wanted to learn about photography and have my own camera.

By late 2002, my cousin sister had bought an Olympus 1.3 megapixel digital camera. It was one of the fist of its type, and it surprised many people because many were not used to digital cameras that had a display. She always helped me towards achiving my dreams, so she let me take it with me whenever I wanted to. It was another very expensive equipment of its time.

I wanted to learn more of this art. So I had her camera with me most of the time when she wasn't using it. As time passed on, I came across several resources and people motivating me to pursue this interest.

Having used her Olympus very often, I tried to get creative with the shots I took. The interest I showed in it resulted in me becoming the co photographer of her wedding. Next was her elder brothers wedding and then the younger brothers... I was officially accepted as their photographer.

Throughout these years, I have collected a decent amount of knowledge about photography and got hold of a DSLR sometimes back. Since then I have been applying what I have learnt towards my photographs and improve my skills.