Smart Photography

If you head over to Vp Colony in Ayanavaram, you’ll find us on North Street. Smart Photography has been in this old building, number 19, for quite some time. It’s a familiar spot for the people living nearby. The rooms have high ceilings and that old Chennai smell of wood and dust. We do a lot of different things here. Some days we are cleaning lenses and checking batteries for a wedding shoot. Other days, someone just wants a simple passport photo for an application. We have these big backdrops hung up and some lights that have seen better days but still work perfectly. It’s not a fancy studio you’d see in a magazine. It’s more of a local shop where you can sit down and talk about what you need. My father had a camera before me, and I just kind of took it up. We have a lot of old prints stored in boxes that tell the history of the families around here. When the festival season starts, it gets really hectic. We are out all night taking photos and then back here in the morning to sort through them. It’s tiring but it’s what we do. We like the noise of the neighborhood and the way the light hits the street in the evening. It’s home. We don't need much else besides a good lens and some decent light.