“Taking these photos allows me to express my creative side, which I didn’t think I had before”

Aarushi Kodipyaka: “I started my [photography] business in 2020 and it honestly started when I used to go on walks with my family in our neighborhood. I used to take random photos of things in my neighborhood, like the trees or those little gnomes people keep in front of their houses. And then I realized that I looked forward to the walks because I was taking those photos. So that sort of propelled me to start using an old camera that we had and I started messing around with the buttons, playing with the filters and experimenting around. Then I realized that [there] was a thrill when taking these photos. So it made me happy to go on those walks every day and that’s what got me started. 

I am open to any type of photography but predominantly, my experience has been nature and people. I especially love to take photos of nature. It’s a lot easier to get creative with things found naturally rather than people because people tend to want conventional portraits, but [with nature], you can express different things in inanimate objects rather than animate ones. I love taking [these] photos, but I especially love the process of editing them because there’s no simple formula to it. You need to see what is best for the image and what brings out its best aspects. It helps me center my focus on one thing and I get to be very creative in this process because it’s completely up to me. 

However, I am not an artist. I understand that photography is art, but regarding more conventional forms of art, like painting, drawing, and sculpting, I can’t do that. I can’t draw to save my life. I can’t color inside the lines. I can’t paint or anything. So taking these photos allows me to express my creative side, which I didn’t think I had before. And because I’ve always been a logical person, like I prefer to code and do math and science, this is a very unconventional side of me that I didn’t explore before. But over time, I realized that if you love what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like work. And with photography, I genuinely feel like that’s true because I really do love it. I do love the way that I capture things because I can let others know how I think and it’s something I’m passionate about.”