On World Photography Day, this year’s theme ‘Home’ invites photographers to set scenery aside and chase something closer: the spaces, faces, and small everyday moments that feel unmistakably their own. CE connects with photographers about the one photo they keep returning to, the picture that carries the feeling of home in every frame
Home beyond
Home to me is Hyderabad. It’s been such a wonderful city — a place of architecture and immense beauty. Everybody around the globe only thinks of Golconda Fort and Charminar, but Hyderabad has many other monuments that only people here can truly relate to. I’ve been fortunate to photograph the Charminar and Mecca Masjid together in one frame — nobody had ever shown both monuments together before. It happened during Eid, standing with a friend on a parapet wall, quite risky honestly. I felt Hyderabad wasn’t just one monument, so I wanted to show what it truly was. I shot the picture in sixteen images, made a print, and put it up on Facebook. A friend from Delhi called and said, ‘Lenny, beautiful picture, when did you take it?’ I told him we’d shot it that very morning. That affirmation told me this was a picture everybody needed to see. Even after all these years, the meaning of home hasn’t changed for me. Our family has been in photography for over a century — I’m the third generation, my son the fourth. Photography has always been near and dear to us; give us anything to shoot, from a needle to an aircraft, and we’ll do it. That’s rare today. Industrial photography became my path — fashion was never my subject.
-Lenny Emanuel, veteran Industrial and advertising photographer
Moment alongside life
A poet writes. An artist paints. And photographers capture the decisive moment — one that matters more than the home it shows, or doesn’t. For me, photography preserves how a home once was, turning a moment into a memory. Waiting for the Khairatabad Ganesha procession on the Telugu Thalli flyover, I spotted two childhood journeys unfolding below at once — one man carrying a child and a suitcase, another walking hand-in-hand with a kid, half in shadow. That’s when I clicked — light and shadow, life and journey, side by side in one frame. I often try to anticipate a moment’s emotion, but the journey usually surprises me instead. Still, a photographer’s job is simple: keep taking the photographs.
-Naveen Janga aka Nwinphoto, street photographer and founder of Photowalks Hyderabad
From home...to forever
Home means different things to different people but in the context of wedding photography, this particular photograph speaks a lot to me. Bhagya, the bride, was leaving from her family home, to the wedding venue, amidst heavy rain and gave one final look at her house. The expression, the weather, the mood, and the people around her really conveyed a certain mood and emotion to me. It’s a feeling that many people can probably associate with, of leaving their childhood place and moving to a new place.
-Kishor Krishnamoorthi, wedding photographer