Thushara Padmanabhan Kambil - Blogging Has Been So Fulfilling for Me

I started my food page towards the end of June 2020 and it's unbelievable that it has only been 6 months! I have grown so much with regards to my photography skills, and met some of the most creative professionals from around the world and became friends with so many of them! It's been so fulfilling that I know for sure now this is my passion.

Tell us about your background and journey.

My family hails from Kerala, India, but I was a full-blown NRI kid till I came down to India for my higher studies. I was born and raised in Dubai. Surprisingly, I have studied science my whole life. I studied microbiology in my graduate studies and did my PG in Biomedical Genetics.

I have worked as a Newborn screening scientist in Bangalore for about 5 years after which I got married, had a baby and then came back to Dubai to work as an analytical scientist. I quit my job close to the lockdown period that happened in Dubai earlier this year and started trying out different bakes for my son to make lockdown a bit more interesting for him. 

I have always been passionate about photography, and I was more into landscape and wildlife photography before I ventured into food photography. So every time I made something new, I would take a picture. A couple of my friends and my husband then encouraged me to start an Instagram feed to showcase them. I was quite hesitant since I wasn't really active on Instagram before that, but I just gave it a try.

I started my food page towards the end of June 2020 and it's unbelievable that it has only been 6 months! I have grown so much with regards to my photography skills, and met some of the most creative professionals from around the world and became friends with so many of them! It's been so fulfilling that I know for sure now this is my passion. 

I have won a few contests, hosted Photography challenges, given tips and tricks on mobile photography and editing. It has been an amazing journey and I have even landed with some clients professionally. I have only dipped my feet into this field and I am very excited to see where this takes me.



Which is your favourite cuisine and dish?

Being brought up in a multicultural environment, I cannot pinpoint on just one cuisine. The world has so many incredible cultures and cuisines, and I have only tried a few. But my favourites would be the Keralite cuisine of course. I come from a city on the Malabar coast called Thalassery that is famous for its biryanis so my favourite dish would be seafood (mussels fry) and biryani!! Close to the Keralite cuisine comes Italian. I absolutely love it and it's my go to comfort cuisine. 

I'm a die-hard fan of spicy pepperoni, so a very thin-crusted pizza with loads of pepperoni and cheese and basil would be my ideal food! It would be tough not to mention Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Srilankan, French..the list goes on...



How often do you cook for posting pictures on Instagram?

Earlier I used to cook more often than I do now. When I started it was more about food blogging. But now my feed has evolved into food photography and so a lot of my Instagram posts are of raw food. 

But I do cook at least twice a week and try to plan my posts according to the most recent challenges and contests that take place. Shooting raw food gives us less pressure to focus on trying different techniques in food photography.

Which is your favourite book?

I love reading so I have a lot of favourite books! I'm a voracious fiction reader. And a book that would be my all-time favourite would be The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger and I'm a huge Stephen King fan too!



How long does it take to get a perfect Instagram shot?

That depends on whether you are prepared for the shoot. It's a long mental process (for me). A lot of professionals draw and plan their frames, but I do that mentally. Sometimes if I know what I'm going to cook, I will usually have an image in my mind of what my pictures should look like in the end. 

And then my whole setup should work towards getting that or even close to that image. I don't have a studio or even a proper place to shoot. I do all of my shoots in my bedroom using natural window light. So a shoot depends on the Sun too, whether it's a cloudy day or sunny day. Now especially that it's winters, the days are shorter also. 

So keeping all this in mind, if it's a planned shoot, then it could take probably an hour or less. If it's an unplanned and sudden shoot, it could take more than 2 hours sometimes.



What type of camera do you use?

I use my Redmi smartphone for all my photography currently that's up on my Instagram. A lot of people are shocked to know that these images are using a mobile phone camera. But my phone camera has decent specifications. It is a 64mp camera with a 2mp macro lens. 

I love shooting macro photos or close up photography because I love noticing and capturing details and also some of my most popular images have been macro shots. A lot of people have asked me to give tips or do courses in mobile photography and probably next year I intend to also. I hope that by mid of next year I can get a proper DSLR camera and lighting gear to take this forward professionally.

Interviewed by - Saba Parveen