Hitting The Trail

Tania Chatterjee Tania Chatterjee is a photographer, traveller, blogger and educator based in Kolkata, India. After completing her masters in environment management, she started her career as a humanitarian professional.

- Sweta Baruah

Since 2010 she has been practising photography as her full time profession. She is founder and chief mentor of FOTORBIT Pvt. Ltd. (www.fotorbit.com), a company dedicated to promote photography as a visual art form. She conducts national and international photography tours and workshops in India and abroad. Tania’s photos have been widely published and exhibited around the world, along with numerous awards.

What sparked your interest in photography and did you have any formal training to learn this art form?

I have a passion to travel and explore new cultures and traditions. I am also a trained environmentalist and humanitarian worker; therefore, I am closely associated with nature and people. Over the years I have experienced some amazing cultural practices and met some ordinary people with their extra-ordinary life stories. I felt the urge to document those stories and thought that photography would be a perfect visual art form for this. It has been more than a decade since I have been practising photography and I never realised when photography turned into my identity.

I consider myself as a self-taught photographer. I practised photography with all my heart and soul and I bought many books and online tutorials to train myself. I spent a good amount of time observing and analysing images (in various books/ magazines/different social media platforms) of master photographers. Meanwhile, I received awards and accolades which motivated and pushed me to work harder.

Your work takes you to a lot of new places. How do you choose your next destination and how do you plan your trips?