A Buck Fifty.

It was a Thursday night in November three years ago and I was sitting in a corner table with a friend at Juniors Cheesecake on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. A dollar and fifty cents – a mere buck fifty – was the difference between the slice of cheesecake I wanted and the slice of cheesecake I could actually afford. We had come up to visit my family for a few days and decided to go and have a guy’s night out that day – only problem being I was broke. At the time, I was a student on a student budget – got help with rent from my father and earned some pocket change doing web design work on the side. So, why was I strapped for cash? Because I had big plans – plans that would wind up changing my life. I was going to buy my first camera! The goal: saving up $450 so I could get a brand new Rebel XT for myself with an additional $50 for a cheap plastic 50mm lens.

This wasn’t the same as a goal one has for the holidays – I have to save up for a PS3… I gotta get that bike… I need a new flat screen TV. This was more of a need that bore testimony to my story, to my life, and to my struggle. I didn’t get into photography because I liked taking pictures of pretty things, wanted to be one with art, or to make a fast buck. The reasons I became a photographer are directly correlated to my human experience.

Starting off at a very early age, I developed an extreme speech impediment – one that only grew when I had to learn english as a second language once we came to America. My father was fortunate enough to land a great engineering job very quickly and we settled in the suburbs of Staten Island right outside of Manhattan. This meant that, at the time, I was the only brown Pakistani kid in a neighborhood of Italians and Russians. Life made me aware of two things at a very early age – that race mattered (at least where I was) and that it wasn’t okay to have deficiencies. I quickly became the immigrant kid who couldn’t talk right and so started the story. I have been chased home, have been pitied on by teachers I looked up to, have been laughed at by whole class rooms full of people, and even had groups of kids throw stones at me. These things didn’t happen once, not twice, but day in and day out for the majority of my childhood and adolescent life. Constantly and consistently, I was put down, demeaned, and abused and being extremely skinny didn’t help at the time either. Over and over, I was pushed and my confidence was crushed all for people’s amusement.

Why?

Because I was brown and I stuttered.

At home, my brother was too young to really understand any of this, my mom didn’t speak english at the time and couldn’t really do anything about it, and my dad already had enough to deal with in regards to providing for the family and establishing a home for us. We have never been the touchy feely family that sits around the table holding hands talking about feelings. It was seen as being weak. My father had witnessed a civil war and a genocide in his life, came to america with barely anything, and became a total success story. He was a completely self-made man. How could I sit there and complain to him about my problems? So, unable to speak properly and unable to confide in people, I turned to the only medium of communication I could find around me – paper and pen. I wrote poetry, drew pictures, painted, charcoal sketched, etc. I developed an appreciation for art from childhood.

Now, lets fast forward a decade and half or so. In high school, I had overcome my speech impediment and in college I had actually started to have lots friendly acquaintances – superficial friends that were useful for passing the time. On the inside, however, I had become cynical, mean, untrusting, headstrong and skeptical. My outlook on people was that they were broken, fickle, and selfish – that the vast majority of people would take everything from me if I allowed them to. I didn’t like, but had come to appreciate, being alone and keeping my life private from those around me. It’s the one thing I had learned throughout life – keeping everything in and keeping everybody out.

Two things changed all that for me.

First, I was introduced to a very special girl through family friends. She was my exact opposite in personality. She genuinely LIKED people, LIKED sharing, LIKED laughing, and actually LIKED seeing the best in people. I was dumbfounded that someone could naturally be this sincere in their niceness – there were no strings attached, no stipulations, and no agendas. She was… nice. So, what did I do? Being the smart guy that I am, I wound up marrying her.

Second, I was introduced to photography. I always knew what photography was, but had never really seen how it could be an art form until the day I stumbled upon the photography of Gabe McClintock. I was mesmerized. It was his work that was a catalyst for the development of my desire to pursue photography. I spent hours a day just staring at his pictures – that’s not a figure of speech or an exaggeration. I, literally, spent hours at a time reviewing his portfolio. He had established a style, a look, and an attitude that was undoubtedly him – a level of branding that people rarely achieve. Since then, I fell in love with photography and I had the hunger to learn a new medium of art. Wedding photography became my new passion – it was a way to tell a story of the human experience – and a positive experience at that. The beauty of the whole process amazed me and, as cliche` as it sounds, I realized I didn’t really want to do anything else but photography.

Photography also signified freedom for me. Freedom to do things my way, freedom from having a boss tell me what to do, freedom to be excellent in something so profound, and the freedom to have the time to live the way I wanted to. I saw the chance and took the risk and this brings us back to that slice of cheesecake. I had been saving up for a camera and seeing as how I didn’t have a steady employment at that time, I was counting pennies, honestly. I had started to save on groceries by living off oatmeal, started driving as less as possible, and pretty much saving every dollar that I could for a few months. I knew I wanted to be a photographer and for that, I knew I had to sacrifice for a camera. It was an exciting time for me as I had finally found something that I wanted to be undeniably good at. I had never really found my thing and hence, hadn’t ever taken the time to excel at anything until then. I had always done things because I had to, but in regards to photography, I was pursuing it because I wanted to.

Three years later, I’m grateful for it all.

The two people who gave me an appreciation for the beauty of the human experience:
Gabe McClintock, a Canadian photographer I have never met and Mahroo Ahsan, the girl I married. One showed me how beautiful the connection between people can be and the other actually connected with me =)

If you want to succeed, find your inspirations.