Early Beginnings: Interview With Sudhir Misra

At Depositphotos, we feature photographers that come from all sorts of professional backgrounds. Today, we had a chat with a new member of the Depositphotos community, Sudhir Misra. Sudhir is in the early stages of developing his portfolio, however his skillful eye and passion for his work is encouraging and motivating.

Sudhir has access to some of the most beautiful reserves, making it ideal to photograph wildlife. His images reflect the beauty that is all around him, shifting the focus between nature and animals in their natural habitats. Here’s a little bit about Sudhir’s work, his experience and his journey with stock photography.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional career.

I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1983. Still living here. By profession, I’m a sound engineer. I run a company called 344 Studios which mainly does audio work for television, and I’ve been doing this for around 12 years. Photography started around 10 years ago as a hobby. It’s a great passion of mine. Would love very much one day to transition to becoming a professional photographer.

Did you recently start working as a stock photographer?

Stock photography is still very new to me. I was contacted via Instagram by Depositphotos about selling some of my work on the stock platform and was very excited. So still very much learning the whole process and how it works. Have never really sold any of my photographs before. I guess I feel that I still have a lot to learn before I can consider my work to have any value.

Where do you travel to take photos of wildlife?

Living in South Africa is a blessing for wildlife photography. We have an abundance of national parks with an amazing array of wildlife. My favorite place to travel is the Kruger National Park, which is about a 4 hour drive from my home. We tend to visit several times a year. Though I have big dreams of traveling further up Africa to visit some of the other amazing parks in Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and Namibia. Would love to witness the wildebeest migration, but probably Etosha is my biggest dream.

What has been your closest encounter with an animal?

There have been a few. Being a camper, you often get hyena that patrol the borders of the campsites looking for scraps of meet. There’s only a fence that separates us. I’ve had leopard walk right past my car window, maybe two meters away. One of the closest and best encounters was last year in October when we witnessed a pride of lion take down a buffalo about 10 meters from our car. The adrenalin you feel is absolutely incredible and managed to get some amazing photographs which I still have to upload.

What is are your hobbies outside of photography?

I very much enjoy film photography and have an unnecessarily large collection of vintage cameras and lenses. I also very much enjoy growing plants, especially Bonsai. Have a good few trees taking up most of my tiny balcony.

Who do you look up to in the world of photography?

My biggest influence would probably be Steve McCury, I adore his work. And I also enjoy spending time admiring the works of Henri-Cartier Brasson.

What kind of equipment do you use for wildlife photography?

I use a fujifilm X-T1 with a 100-400mm lens. Try and keep things as simple and as light as possible.

What’s your favourite part about working as a photographer?

I would love to work as a professional photographer one day. My favorite part when that day comes, would probably be traveling and living a nomadic lifestyle.

Is it really difficult to get started in stock photography? What was your journey like?

I don’t think it’s very difficult. It requires a lot of dedication and upkeep. My journey is still a new one, but so far has been very pleasant working with Depositphotos.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received that you’d like to share with fellow photographers?

I’ve read somewhere, can’t remember where, that we must stop worrying about gear, and megapixels and specs and pixels and all that nonsense – all cameras take pictures. You should rather focus on telling stories.