'Delhi Photo Festival a platform India has been craving for'

The two-week long biennial Delhi Photo Festival that kicked off on September 27 is the kind of platform that India's ever growing community of photographers have been missing for many years.

This year, with Canon India throwing its might behind the event, it is expected to be bigger than ever before.

"India is a huge photography market. In fact, we might have the most number of wedding photographers in the world. But the photographers here have been starved of a good quality photo festival to showcase their work. There are some efforts here and there, but most fragmented. Or you have photographers doing exhibitions on their own," explained Alok Bharadwaj, Executive Vice-President of Canon India.

Bharadwaj says the fest being put together by India Habitat Centre and Nazar Foundation is a great initiative and Canon is very proud to be associated with it. But he is clear that India needs at least four such festivals every year.  

"These two weeks... we will get to see the kind of talent on offer. Plus, photographers here will get to learn from some great names from abroad," he added. He feels that efforts like this will make amateur photographers realise their true potential.

According to Canon India's statistics, the average age of its last 50,000 DSLR customers is 29, of which almost 30 per cent are women. "This shows how the demography is changing. Youngsters are finding value in investing in a DSLR," he said.

With the growing interest of women in photography, Bharadwaj hopes coming editions of the festival will have dedicated days for women to showcase their work.

At present, only about 2,50,000 DSLRs are sold in India. But the paraphernalia of lenses and accessories makes it a Rs 2,000 crore market. With compact cameras losing out to the more ubiquitous phone camera, manufacturers are pushing for the adoption of affordable DSLRs.

In fact, they already account for 60 per cent of Canon India's camera sales and is expected to go up to 80 per cent in a couple of years. The company hopes this genre will become mass market from its present niche status.

That would also mean a democratization of "creative photography", which is much different from the "shares photography" that phone cameras thrive on.