Suvo Mitra

I grew up in the eastern Indian states near my birthplace, Kolkata, and studied in New Delhi for a short while before leaving for the United States. Occasionally as a teenager in the 1980s and more frequently as a student in the 1990s, I took photos with basic film point-and-shoot cameras, except when I got to take a friend’s Pentax SLR for a term abroad at Edinburgh University. In the late 1990s, I settled in Nottingham, England, with my wife whom I had met in Edinburgh a few years ago. I bought my first autofocus SLR camera in the summer of 2002, and the following summer, my first digital SLR. There followed several years of camera and lens changes, clubs and exhibitions, and family and work commitments through which my photography made slow but steady progress on the sidelines of a busy life. I look forward to a time of life when taking pictures becomes the main pursuit.

I photograph what I find beautiful, but I don’t chase the spectacular. I take places as I find them. I don’t try to make them yield pictures I see in my mind’s eye. I don’t return for just the right light at the right time of year. Having taken the image, I crop and adjust for colour, contrast or brightness, but I don’t add or remove content, and I don’t composite except for focus-stacking or panorama.