He's the kind of person that defines simplicity and is a man who finds beauty in everything. After 33 years of teaching English in various universities in Kathmandu, Mr Dipak Sakya has recently discovered the passion for photography.
Mr Sakya does not consider himself an expert photographer but has views on how photography can have an impact on people. He says, "Photography is turning creative thinking into critical thinking". Photography makes you think. It goes against the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) convention and gives out various meanings the way you interpret it.
"It's like reading the work of Shakespeare. You can read what he's written, re-read it and get a different meaning out of it every time ."
Mr Sakya believes that photography makes it a lot easier to explain the context to his students. "I don't even needs books to teach". On his English lessons, he often took photographers as guest lecturers to his class. To him, photography is an imaginative way of learning different things where the outcome is always different than what is anticipated. The result of an analysis of photography always comes out different than what he meant and the observers are never wrong.
"A picture is worth a thousand words, a caption is worth another thousand."
Just like David Bowie, Mr Sakya also likes to mash up things by adding a caption. He believes these few words set as guidelines assist in revealing deeper meanings of a photograph. He says the combinatory play of photography and literature with the inclusion of a little description makes a beautiful picture better. He usually goes with short witty captions.
However, he likes to capture the mood of the moment which has more beauty and meaning than those posed for. "There's a big difference between a smile when someone is looking at the camera and when I take a photograph of someone smiling." He likes to take pictures where the object and situation present itself naturally.
"Many times, I find something in my photos which I cannot imagine. Photography captures the beauty of the moment and is a way to revisit a happy memory."
Mr Sakya believes that there is a bad part about photography as well. A lot of what we see in photographs may be fake. The worst kind of fake is people showing they have helped and amplifying the effort they have put in. He also despises photographers who disrespect privacy and those do anything to bring their pictures to light, compromising the view of the actual live attendee of the event.
"People exaggerate about what is happening. If you take a bigger frame of the same picture, you will realise how little they've actually done."
Mr Sakya has also taught photography to a batch of some 5 groups for some 5/6 months. In his photography classes, he often brings in literature and finds it easier to teach photography to students with the help of poems and excerpts from books.
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference."
-Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Mr Sakya says that in every field, we must be ready to face criticism by taking our own path and to understand ourselves. He says it is important to learn Rules and Regulations, but only to break them.
"Only by breaking the rules, it becomes your own views."
He also says that we must be ready to embrace ourselves from all the negative comments we might receive and consider it a different opinion rather than criticism, and these remarks will only improve you and make you a better person.
"To be creative, you have to be different, do it your way, and because of this people may not like you."
Now in his retired life, he lives in Kathmandu and does not travel much. When asked why he says he is a "kuwa ko bhyaguto" and says the valley has enough beauty in it yet to be explored. He always keeps his camera close, sometimes be it just a camera phone to capture the beauty of everyday life.
Mr Sakya believes that you do not need expensive cameras to start learning photography. He thinks you can always start with something simple and less expensive and get better equipment as you progress.
Some terrific piece of advice from someone who considers himself an amateur photographer right?
His primary responsibility now is to be a good grandfather and takes care of the little child. Like most wise men, he enjoys the beauty of the simplicity of his self-fulfilled life.
Here're some of his photographs.
Follow Mr Dipak Sakya on Instagram for a view of everyday life and witty captions
Writer: Abish Shakya
Follow me on Twitter: @abishakya
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