We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lenji Jacob a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lenji, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

It is amazing when you discover a new journey through your journey. At a very young age I was introduced to theater by my father and as a stage artist the emphasis prevailed towards expressions and emotions. He used to always say that “you become a successful artist when the audience sitting in the last row of the theater can see and get involved with the emotions you are attempting to display.”
As a photographer, I am a strong believer that art form has a process of evolution and in my case the more I used my camera I found myself learning and experimenting with various aspects of photography. Being a part of the theater helped develop my artistic bone and skillset that prepared me to anticipate and capture the emotions of my clients to cherish forever. With my photography I have always attempted to tell a story, it could be a story of people, place or things.

In the year when COVID had impacted the whole world, I pushed my creative envelope and started my journey of storytelling through filmmaking. My movies based on Alzehimers (ThuvalSparsham – A feather touch) and COVID (RanduMukham – Two Faces) have won me short film awards at both national and international film festivals.

My most recent movie based on LGBTQIA (Nishabda Nombrangal – Silent Pains) has been the most meaningful project to date. In India, LGBTQIA Indians battle family expectations and social pressures to live their authentic lives and suicides in the LGBTQIA are at a raise. With this movie using my theatrical and photography skills I was able to increase awareness in the Indian community.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a financial professional and had started photography as a hobby. With Pose and Click Photography, I envisioned this dream to capture impeccable moments of life and pixelate them into pictures; somewhere down the lines of where a picture expresses a thousand times better than words. I wanted my pictures to tell a story, and make my audience experience that moment of life I attempted to freeze with my pictures. As a photographer, the priceless gift is when your client is exploding with a reaction of happiness when they see your work and relive that moment again.

With Pose and Click Photography, we really specialize in people, places, and things. We have completed an array of segments that includes Wedding Photography, Engagement Photography, Corporate Photography, Family or Special Event Photography, Pregnancy & Newborn Photography, Fashion Photography, Modeling and Fashion Portfolios, Boudoir Photography, Headshot Photography, Landscape photography, Travel and Street Photography, Movie and Media Photography artwork and many more.

With Pose and Click Photography, my customers have transitioned to become my friends, and almost 100% of the business is referred from my previous clients. As a photographer, when your customer becomes your biggest fan it is an extremely proud and priceless moment. This moment enhances when both your work and the customer become published in a magazine or article.

As a photographer, I take pride in my work and pay close attention to details of my customer needs. This photographic journey is a continuous learning path and I will continue to push my creativity and risk failures. This is potentially what sets my work apart from lots of photographers.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

When you are learning a new technique, a failure shouldn’t be an obstacle but a teacher on how another method needs to be utilized to attain your goal. I would consider my challenges as a learning experience when experimenting with the art of photography. I have invested plenty of hours failing and learning techniques when it came to photography and editing techniques.

With smartphones at the tip of your fingers, information is readily available instantly. There are many leading photographers in the industry from different parts of the world, I have watched countless hours on Youtube learning their style and techniques of photography. YouTube has been one of my prime sources of information for learning new techniques, Photoshop, Lightroom, and many more. “Mastering Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO and Exposure” by Al Judge is a great read for all photographers. I constantly experiment with different available photography editing apps, of which some apps such as Snap Seed I have kept saved on my phone for quite some time. I use them for quick edits of photos that I may have captured on a phone.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Sometimes when the going gets tough, then the tough gets going.

This is when I had taken on my first assignment of an engagement photoshoot. After taking two clicks of my couple with standard posing, I realized I needed to switch gears immediately and make it interactive and active. The groom did not like posing and was very uncomfortable with the concept of posing for pictures. I made them chase each other, walk, jump, interact with each and as a result, the pictures came out phenomenal with plenty of stories and memories for the couple. The best compliment of this session was the couple telling me that they never felt they were at a photo shoot but were on a date.

There was no looking back after this venture. Today I am a published photographer, winner of many photography competitions and an award winning short filmmaker. I have traveled many places capturing pictures of places like the USA, Canada, India, Israel, Jordan, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Egypt, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, the Caribbean Islands, and many more. I have been blessed to become part of many engagements, weddings, family events, corporate events, fashion, etc. as a photographer. Now with my photography, I wanted to tell a story rather than just a point-and-shoot picture.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.poseandclick.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/poseandclick

Image Credits
Lenji Jacob