Surya Chidambaram's speciality is he shoots his pictures only on his iPhone. "My trip to Spain was the start of my iPhonegraphy. Everyone at the trip clicked hundreds of pictures in ten days, whereas I clicked about 100 pictures in three days. People loved my photographs".
"I photograph, edit and publish on iPhone alone. My Mac is only to store images", Surya explains. "After I edit a particular set of images the process doesn't end there, I revisit the photos again after 3 weeks or one month, with a fresh mind. I work on all the photos again. So the already edited photos will have a new view, or the images that didn't make the first time into good images will get selected. It is squeezing every little bit and every image till I am happy. My only question to self is what if this is my next most amazing photo? Why leave any stone unturned."
Surya's family has been into business for the past 100 years. Kamala cinemas and Sun industries India are his family businesses. Surya has captured and stored more than 9,500 photos as of now.
"Every Sunday I go to Mylapore, Sowcarpet and other areas at early in the morning, and start shooting on my iPhone. I made multiple friends in these areas because of the number of times I've visited this place. We are building a new house and instead of using art works of other people, the architect and the interiors want to print my iPhone pictures and put up those. I am now sitting with 10,000 images and selecting about a thousand to segregate and chose where to use what image," he says.
"I am a self taught photographer. And I do not believe in the hard and fast rule of following all the rules of photography. I cannot shoot in a studio or with artificial lights. My family has been supportive of my photography because I photograph only on weekends. Monday to Friday even I am a working class man in the factory. I love teaching, imparting knowledge and making people comfortable to shoot with what they have. I enjoy this, as it is my passion," he adds.
"If I can help people by raising the cost to help people better their life I would be most happy to do it. I do not charge people for shooting or teaching generally because that is my way of giving it back to the society, connecting with people and stories," he concludes.
