Localens: Your photos, your perspective

KARACHI:

By the time the clock struck 11:59pm on December 31, 2013, The Express Tribune’s photography competition Localens’ inbox was bursting. At the time of closing, the competition had received close to 3,000 entries.

These were whittled down to the winning shots and the Best of Show category by a panel of judges, and the results were announced on March 12.

This man starts his day around 7am close to the Wazir Khan Mosque,  Lahore. PHOTO: MEHLUM SADRIWALA

Going through nearly 3,000 entries can never be an easy task, especially when so many photographs were astounding on so many levels.  Entries came from urban centres, small tehsils and goths across Azad Jammu Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Punjab and Sindh. A few entries trickled in from other countries, sent by Pakistanis residing there (and were unfortunately rejected for that reason).

The winners

Sikandar Hayat Khan from Lahore, who won the first prize in the competition, started his journey from a pastoral village in Punjab. As soon as he was done with his intermediate degree, Khan wasted no time in reaching “the cultural land of architecture and music, born from the Mughal Empire – Lahore.”

The local labourers of Hafizabad, Punjab struggle to dry the annual paddy crop harvest. PHOTO: SIKANDAR HAYAT

Having majored in graphic design from the University of Punjab, he is an aspiring photojournalist, who takes inspiration from American photojournalist Steve McCurry of the “Afghan Girl” fame and Nadeem Khawar, a veteran photographer from Pakistan.

Hailing from what Khan calls a “remote part of Pakistan”, he says the soil and open sky call him to tell the stories of everyday lives with extraordinary tales.

Khan took the winning shot with a Nikon60D.

Winning second place is Asfan Majeed from Karachi, currently enrolled in a Masters of Business Administration Programme at SZABIST. Majeed picked up his first camera, a NikonP500 in August 2012.

Even though he calls it only a “creative hobby”, the self-taught amateur photographer reckons he must have taken 20,000 images since his first. All with the aim to perfect with experience. Currently busy making a time-lapse video titled My Karachi, Majeed took his final shot with a Canon EOS 600D.

At third place, Mehlum Sadriwala, also from Karachi, says his inspiration to shoot came from an inability to draw as well as he wanted to, “So I started using my sister’s camera and just fell in love.”



Even though he works in his family-run construction business, he decided to teach himself how to take photographs on the side. And now, “photography is in my blood,” shares Sadriwala.

When asked about his photographic inspirations, he says, “Steve Mccurry all the way. His blog is like a holy book to me.” His winning shot was taken using a NikonD90.

Localens

The Express Tribune Education Initiatives started this competition to encourage budding photographers to continue learning. The project was lucky to find partners in Alliance Française, the US State Department and Nokia who helped take Localens a step further.

Our judges

Jean-François Chénin, the Director of Alliance Française Karachi, has worked across various fields such as international development and women’s affairs – with an underlying focus on research and education.

Max Becherer is a freelance photojournalist represented by Polaris Images since 2004. Now in Islamabad, Becherer has previously worked in Egypt, Iraq and Afghanistan, covering combat and displacement.



Izdeyar Setna received a diploma from the New England School of Photography, Boston, in 2000 before pursuing a BFA Photography at the Parsons School of Design, New York, from where he graduated in 2005.

To take a look at the Best of Show, log on to http://localens.tribune.com.pk/

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14^th, 2014.