My first

My father has been a huge influence on me, and his love of photography rubbed off on me fairly early. For me photography was all about capturing memories growing up, until one day I was hanging about in our garden and saw a gorgeous wild lizard just hanging out. I rushed back into the house to get my camera, and instead of running for whatever point and shoot 35mm I was using those days ( I think it was a yashica or a canon ) I instead grabbed my father’s Minolta SLR which had a nice zoom attached to it. I was not really permitted to use his camera, but there was a roll of film in there, I just could not help myself. I got on my stomach and crawled towards the lizard and the minute I saw it through the viewfinder, I was blown away. This was better than what I was looking at it in real life. It was closer, felt sharper, more true. I clicked a few photos and the lizard almost seemed to pose for me. Opening it’s mouth ever so slightly. Felt like a true National Geographic moment for me.

Some asshole hit that poor lizard within minutes of me taking those photos, and a couple of vicious karachi crows swooped down and ripped it to shreds. I tried photographing that too but I was just in so much shock over that sudden violence after that immersive beauty experience.

I put the camera back, got the film developed and could not believe my eyes when I saw the prints of the close up shots. I was blown away. I did this ? I took those photographs ?

I ended up submitting the image a few months later to a school competition and won first prize, which was wonderful ( the reward was another photo of a boring still life, very underwhelming, maybe that’s where my disinterest of product and still life photography comes from ? ha )

I have not been able to find a high resolution scan of the image yet, but here's a low rez one for now, will update it once I can find and scan the original negative.