How to become an artist

Intro

At the highest level, work is art. The skill to produce said work is beyond bours grinded in the office. It comes from years of wrestling with one’s own idneity, improving one’s taste, and packaging it to resonate with the rest of the world.

What does the mastery journey look like

I recently went on a photography workshop around India. On the surface, it looked like pure fun, but deep down, it mirrored the stages of the mastery journey.

Part 1: The setup

To become a master, you need periods where you dedicate every second of every day to the craft. Everything else—food, logistics, shelter—must be automated to give your brain space to hyper focus on learning.

This began in Chennai. The logistics were handled; I didn’t have to think about where I was sleeping or eating. My only job was to observe, keep shooting, and stay questioning.

The task itself, was a warm up. We started with trying to capture “ordinary moments”. This was already a signficant pattern interrupt forcing me to slow down, since I usually approach travel with a specific goal in mind. By ordinary moments with no goal, I mean visiting a fish market at 5am: I have no place being here, I don’t even eat fish! But by letting these “sidequests” guide my observation, I found hidden stories, like being able to explore up close the acid-washed desks of fishing boats, and stoic old men untangling nets. There was surprisingly never any downtime, if you let the brain run wild towards a productive purpose, you might find yourself infiltrating a game of cricket with kids you met on the beach!

Part 2: Observing masters

We all love the idea of the savant genius, who locked himself in his room for years, and emerged a master. But who wants to live such a lonely drugerous life, when you can surround yourself with masters who’ve already made their mistakes, so you can turn off your ego and simply copy?

I experienced this first hand while on the ground in Thiruchendur, a famous temple city by the sea, documenting a festival. Between the thousands of people, elaborate costumes, fire rituals, I felt like an overwhelmed intruder. But as I wanted as the rest of the team (even other photographers) held their ground, how they interacted with people, and how they didn’t let awdkwardness stop them from getting their shot.

Now I didn’t have to copy their exact settings, but I could adapt their confidence and mindset until I understood it deeply myself, and could use it in my own work.

(note to editor, integrate this): I wasn’t too happy about it, since I had already visited Thiruchendur temple a few weeks prior with a couple friends. But I was comically wrong—this was a completely different experience. It’s still fascinating how many different stories can exist in such a small area—the many sides of life you’d never realize you wanted to experience.

(integrate this): Sometimes it felt like there were more photographers than participants. It felt wrong. Like a bastardization of the festival. Instead of living in the moment, people were there to extract content. Maybe that was my own insecurity masked as moral high ground, but I felt out of place.

Part 3: Drilling

Only when the mindset is set and teachers acquired, is it worth drilling the technicals. The specifics like exposure settings, composition, lighting, all only make sense in the context of on the field training.

Varanasi was my training ground. The city is overloaded with colors and energy, but it is still a controlled setting. We could now transform “taking photos” into specific exercises like hunting for five pairs of interesting hands, or trying to frame 4 bald heads in the same shot (kinda hilarious this was real).

I still remember the breakthrough moment. We found this intense looking aunty (older woman) to pose for us holding an aarti (fire used for prayer) at night. I knew I only had limited time to get a good shot, and I used all my skills—framing, lighting, background— and kept shooting away. The result was one of my favorite shots—her eyes fierce, the flame ethereal. It was the first time I felt I could relive a story through a frame I had constructed.

(incorporate): We took a scenic boat tour down the numerous ghats—these iconic steps and structures that define the riverfront, and gives context for how powerful the Ganga really is. However they managed to build such solid structures along such a fluid river, I will never understand. The streets were filled with chai wallahs and people bathing in the river, separated by narrow alleyways, colorful steps, temples, monkeys, and dogs. And the colors—reds and oranges everywhere—added such an energetic flair to the city, it was impossible to feel tired despite by 4 hours of sleep a day. The nights were just as active. Huge crowds gathered around the pyres for the evening blue hour aartis, huddling under umbrellas to show their devotion even while being mercilessly rained on.

Part 4: Immersion

Finally, to create true art, you must merge with the ethos of the craft itself. You cannot remain an observer; you must become part of the scene.

This clicked in Kolkata. We were photographing a traditional wrestling gym. Instead of standing on the sidelines with a zoom lens, I took off my shoes and shirt. I joined them. I survived a respectable two minutes in the ring before getting absolutely pummeled, but that physical immersion changed my photography. I also discovered a deeper truth about myself: I enjoy the true aspect of being a part of the story as much as I like documenting the story.

Another huge realization started forming when my mentor kept stressing to “get closer,” and to eliminate negative space. Now, I realize this physical proximity creates emotional proximity. By entering their world, the photos became natural and personal. I wasn’t taking photos of wrestlers; I was taking photos with them.

(incorporate): By this point, I was moving lighter, crouching easily, and framing faster. My friend let me try his Leica Q3, and the fixed focal length forced me to move for every shot. It made me more intentional, and probably is going to be my next birthday present. Can’t overstate how much Kolkata was useful in hammering in my technique and style.

Ship

After you learn, you must produce. in technology, we call this “shipping.”

You need to constantly ship to discover your style, and build discipline of producing evne when you’re not fully satisfied.

There’s this famous study where they had a group of 100 art students. They wanted to see who improves more over the course of the semester. They had 50 people produce a peice of work everyday, whereas the other group simply had to do one final project. The daily people trounced the final project people by so much, simply because of the reps.

Of course, it is terrifying to ship art because public judgment becomes a siren call that lures you toward vanity metrics. It’s easy to start making “slop” to satisfy the algorithm rather than delivering your emotions. But yet, you must preserve your huamnity while you ship, to train even this resistance against conformity.

Yesterday, I published a collage of 10 photos from this trip. It is the first piece of “art” I’ve ever really published. Only I know the full depth of the emotions I felt while capturing those moments—the humidity of the fish market, the pain of the wrestling match—but shipping it closes the loop. It validates the lesson, helps me move on satisfied to the next experience.

(incorporate): equally important is to seek inspiration. Finally, improving my art comes from consistent inspiration & output. On the inspiration side, I need to look at a LOT more photographers’ work and see how I can mirror them to start. They’ve done a lot of the hard work already, so I can save years of honing my own style by learning from them. At the same time, I need to keep putting out my work. Instead of sitting on unpublished projects for years, even though I give myself time to finish, there should be a somewhat consistent candence of output. Again, shouldn’t be burning myself out, but its better than a mountain of unfinsihed, more gstress inducing work.

(incorporate): Its funny to see my progression My relationship with photography is complicated. As a kid, I hated even getting my photo taken—maybe because I didn’t like how I looked or thought photos were useless, since the moments would seemingly always be there. Parts of my thought process I’ve now overcome. Later, on a trip to Alaska, I tried vlogging (thanks, Casey Neistat) and realized I actually enjoyed taking photos. On later trips, I loved photographing my parents, and when they couldn’t take good photos of me, I’d use my tripod and clicker.

But over the past year, I realized my photos weren’t as good as I remembered. My one friend could always find something I could improve—framing, subject placement, angle—and I agreed As I met more creatives, tried making videos myself, I realized there was a deeper level of intentional story telling I had yet to unlock. This workshop came at the perfect time. A trip around India to strengthen skills I’d been working on, while I was already in India? A sign from God to broaden my horizons for sure.

Other Observations

Attention to detail: Becoming an artist is a slow, never-ending, introspective process of refining your taste. It requires paying extreme attention to both the details of your surroundings, but also the waves of your internal emotions. You never will be satisfied either—people drawn to creating have such a high bar already from the material they have consumed, which causes judgement because they haven’t leveled up their creation skill to the same level. Like the gita says, you must do the work for the sake of the work, not the fruit of the action.

Creating content: People claim making content takes you out the moment. Yet taking time to truly review and package my experiences lets me discover what parts of life I value and don’t value. Thinking of new things to create is extremely difficult, and sometimes, yes you do need to do meta-thinking to achieve this. The issue is when you develop cravings to vanity metrics, or develop aversions to trends out of ego. But it’s a life-long learning process I’m grateful to have the time and resources to undergo.

Copying: It feels weird simply copying others’ work, but copying and learning is a fine line. I used to again have a massive ego to say my work has to be extremely unique, but copying others when you start is a such a hack to speed up learning. Anyone who has mastered an artform has discovered a part of human pyshcology that tickles peoples brain (if not their own). Might as well adapt it to yourself.

General photography: Look for the light. Be comfortable and natural around people, and they will be comfortable and natural around you. Don’t be afraid to spam the camera: capture now, edit later. Do more portraits and street photography, less landscapes. People are the story. There were moments, circling intersections with my camera, where I forgot my internal monologue. That flow state is the drug we are all chasing.

• I see framing differently now. I used to love landscapes, but now I appreciate how subjects make stories feel like they’re being experience through photos. Maybe you center them between walls, use leading lines, add depth with a foreground. Or when no subject stands out, you can chase light and shadow to find one. And turning off the editor brain that makes you feel a shot might be bad, and instead, rapid fire getting 4-5 shots, and moving on to the next subject.
• Finally, photography is about capturing action in a still. Its about noticing when a street vendor is preparing a dish for a customer, and waiting for the exact moment when its handed over. Or capturing the beads of sweat of a shop keeper repainting his store sign. A good shot is awareness and patience combined—anticipating where a story might unfold.
• From day 1 to day 10, my mindset is completely different. Graduating beyond landscapes and selfies, I now try to notice the small, fleeting moments around me. And when I see others’ photos, I can’t help but spot wasted negative space or awkward framing—not to judge, but to learn. It’s still difficult nailing my own unique shots, but half the battle is to just keep shooting.

Work and art: We often distinguish between “work” (economic output) and “art” (emotional value). But as the economy shifts and “content” becomes commoditized, this distinction is blurring. The only thing that remains scarce is mastery. Funamentally, both art and work and themselves nuanced methods of communication, merging with the ultimate goal being a single unifed sense of creation, where work and art are indistinguishable. And at the sametime, it will make everyone happier by connecting them in ways that will likely solve most of the problems we face today. Good art will form relatinoships between people, and the same work will make their lives themselves sustainable.

Conclusion

People start their journey believing their original goal is the end vision. And some are so sure of themselves that they are able to stick to exactly that for the rest of their lives, no hiccups.

But others, myself included, have to pivot multiple times until they’re able to connect multiple parts of their personality to their lifes work. Your family, friends, bank account might all scream at you for being stupid, but you can’t listen.

My own path is pivoting. I started as a software engineer to bring ideas to life. I’ve realized that my mission goes beyond just code; it involves me as the character, building products, stories, and experiences. My interests when I was younger, creating videos, doing things as random as collecting iron filings on the playground in 5th grade, are combining with my professional life of engineering products.

I am inching closer to my own unified vision where my skills and talents merge, which I’m discovered through constant iteration. This trip didn’t give me all the answers, but it gave me the framework: Remove the noise, copy the masters, drill the fundamentals, and immerse yourself completely.

Shout out

Greatful to Gajan and Shivam for making the trip so smooth and educational. I met Gajan on a cruise to Antarctica and was impressed by his eye for detail. His “cut the negative space” and “get closer” will forever haunt me—in a good way. Shivam was the most competent fixer I’ve ever met. And shoutout to Jacob and Kevin—learned a lot about style and technique from the boys. Couldn’t have asked for a better crew.