Goa Can Be India's Creative Capital

Shantanu sheorey is always pushing creative boundaries and posing similar challenges to his students at the one school goa.

- Cara Shrivastava

CREATIVITY MAKES OUR lives that much more colourful. It is a skill we all possess, but few know how to harness and turn it into pure talent. You can perhaps attribute this to great timing or maybe better circumstances, or even pure luck, but you cannot deny talent when it is presented to you in its raw, physical form.

Shantanu Sheorey is one of these creative elements, constantly pushing through with innovative ideas, and putting them to work. His journey began back at the Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai as a graphic designer. “Graphic design was my first calling. Photography happened along the way through student projects. Other students, who were too lazy to do their own short shoots, would ask me to complete their projects which, in turn, helped build my skill.”

Back then, in the late 1980s, if you were part of the commercial art section, art directors would come to see your work as this was the only source of talent for advertising agencies in Mumbai. This would result in immediate offers once you were out of college. Before he was out of college, Shantanu was assisting prominent photographer Vilas Bhende. Once he graduated, he stayed there for 6-8 months, even though he got other job offers, until he set off on his own.

Lights, Camera...

In the industry, photographers don’t take up jobs, they take up assignments, often scored through recommendations or through word of mouth. His first big assignment came through the advertising agency Rediffusion, who had hired five senior photographers in the country to capture different perspectives of a campaign for Khatau Saris. This was Shantanu Sheorey’s moment in the light for, back then, the concept of creative photography didn’t exist.