Imran Waheed has struggled through the thick and thin of life keeping his passion for photography alive. He is blessed with creative madness.

His father was a photographer, and he forced Imran to learn the basics of the photography in the early 80s when he had finished high school. Holding a camera standstill, and then developing the images patiently in the dark room, required patience, which Imran did not like much. In those days, he more into sports like hockey, football and swimming. After school, he studied engineering. It was 1992 when while working for the power sector in Oman, Imran became friends with Pakistani and Indian photographers. His wife urged him to buy a professional camera to take snapshots of their newborn son.

He bought a DSLR camera and learned the basics of photography from Dr Saqib Naeem , his brother-in-law, who was a photographer with a sound command on basic skills.

Portraits, wild life, sports and infra red photography were the genres he practiced mostly.

‘To capture the fast moving objects, I would spend hours daily at Polo Club and captured their matches and practice sessions,” he recalls.

Later on, he decided to be a sports photographer, leaving a well paid job at a multinational company and buying equipment worth Rs1 million in 2005.

His decisions were not welcomed by his fellow photographers, who tried to convince him at a meeting not to go for a risky venture. Initially, he showed the signs of retreat, but at the end of the meeting, he stood up and said, “All of you’re cowards and are stopping me because of professional jealousy.”

With that started an uncertain period.

“There was no specific sports publication those days, and I wasn’t representing any newspaper as well, so I wasn’t allowed to enter the stadium to cover cricket. I would go there every day to seek permission to enter the stadium, along with a fellow photographer.

“After struggling for a month they let us enter the main gate and after I offered to cover the events for free and give data to the Pakistan Cricket Board before leaving the stadium.

“That was March 2005, a jam packed stadium for a domestic Twenty20. I still remember the aura and enthusiasm of the cheering crowd,” he smiles.

A good number of photographers from leading national and international publications was covering the event. Most of them left after making a few clicks but Imran stayed there till the last ball, watching every moment through the lense.

‘Agha Akbar, famous sports editor, was impressed by my work, and he called me to his office. Later, he got my work published in a national daily. That’s how I started working as a professional sports photographer and earned my living from this profession till the end of international sports in Pakistan after the attack on Sri Lankan Cricket team,” he narrates.

He is a frequenter to the rural Punjab to cover traditional games like tent pegging, bull race and kabbadi.

‘I love the cheerful environment, as it gives me energy to keep going.”

Hi sighs that regional sports are dying. There are no sponsors for them.

“I always get mesmerised by the energy of the rural folks which gives adorable images,” he said.

His works have been published in various Pakistani and international publications. He participated in numerous group shows and has been acknowledged in photography competitions in Pakistan and abroad.

He is grateful to his fellow photographer Umair Ghani and sculptor Khaleequr Rehman for being instrumental in developing the skills and aesthetic understanding of the images. He is gifted with a sense of composition and a sound understanding of contrast and light. The kinetic element of the scenes remains the mainstay of his candid photographs.

While exposing ordinary landscapes with infra red technique, he transforms mundane landscapes into surrealistic images.

Imran loves playfulness both in the life and the photography. He is brave enough to exercise his freedom and is skilled enough to express it well in photographs. He catches his subjects at the peak of their joyful action and makes them a treat to vision. These happy scenes have sometimes a shade of seriousness, a deceptive darkness, showing a polyphonic aspect, but very well synchronised to make a stunningly beautiful image.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2016