Janaka – Now with Blog

What is a Janaka?

Janaka (Sanskrit: जनक) or Raja Janaka (राजा जनक, rājā janaka) were the kings of Videha Kingdom. Their capital was Mithila, which is believed to be present day Janakpur, Nepal.

It also happens to be the name my parents gave me when I came into this world. When I was a child I was not particularly fond of my name. Imagine yourself back in school, amongst a myriad of kids with “normal” names like Jess or Ben or Luke or Matt, then imagine you’ve got a name like Janaka. Needless to say it didn’t help one blend into the crowd as easily as I wanted to. There’s nothing more tiring than having to correct every single person who attempts to pronounce your name.

As I got older however, I started to realise the value of a unique name. People remembered it, they found it a point of interest to engage a conversation about, I stood out from the rest just by introducing myself by name. I like it now, and eventually thanked my parents, whom I’d often complained to when I was younger, asking why they had chosen such a strange name for me. (At least they never followed through with their original intention to call my brother Merlin, that might have been a bit too much!).

So, I am Janaka.

A photographer, first and foremost. I picked up a camera when I was 14, a small point and shoot on a holiday down to visit family in an off the beaten track place called 5 mile creek. There was very little to do here except to make yourself sick by stuffing yourself with as many blueberries as you could harvest from the orchid each day and try to escape the 45c temperatures by sitting in the river for most of the day, keeping a wary eye on the half dingo half dog they kept as a pet that would lurk in the forest watching you eerily. So at the end of the day I had to find something to amuse myself with, and that turned to picking up the camera my father had bought along with us that I had never previously paid any attention to.

I started off like most of us do, by photographing anything and everything that crossed my path, from macro’s of blueberries and insects, to landscapes and portraits of my family, to abstract images of dead leaves and close ups of water on a long exposure. I was captivated by this little box that would allow me to express the world as I saw it, and record my experiences for everyone else to see.

The years went by and after saving hard for my first Digital SLR camera, a Nikon D70, I found myself in the final 2 years of high school, with a lot of pretty girls for friends, who, in their forgivable vanity, wanted their photographs taken for the booming social networking site that was sweeping the world at the time, MySpace.  This was my introduction into photographing people, which would eventually become my passion and chosen area of photography to dedicate myself to.

Step forward a few years, I lived in France for a year studying psychology, then worked on rebuilding medieval castles with traditional stone masonry methods, it was here that I fostered a great love of landscape, travel, and journalistic photography. The day that I arrived in Paris, I walked into the middle of a city wide riot, which saw me photographing hoards of angry citizens protesting amongst a sea of burning cars, hurled debris and molotov cocktails, screaming obscenities at the Military Police who formed a line against their final advancement. These images ended up appearing in French newspapers and saw me interviewed on French National TV telling my story. I then lived in Cairns working as the Director of Photography on a movie, came back to my home town of the Gold Coast and studied Medicine and Chinese Acupuncture at university, worked as the National product manager for a large online and physical store photography retailer, Cameras Direct (http://www.camerasdirect.com.au) for over 2 years, traveling to Japan, America and through Australia for conferences and events, travelled through Japan with my brother, and then India by myself, narrowly escaping death more times than I care to count, and finally worked as a real estate and architectural photographer for Light Art Media (www.lightartmedia.com) here on the Gold Coast. Through all this I continued to build upon my list of clients who i serviced in a variety of different industries, from Modeling agencies, hair stylists, restaurants, brides and grooms, event coordinators, fashion stylists, clothing designers, and many many more.

From that I then went on to work as the primary photographer for Ray White Broadbeach, cutting my teeth solo now on multi-million dollar apartments and beachfront mansions, which lead me to do work for architects, interior designers, and most recently the entire marketing imagery for the Meriton Hotels latest Queensland developments.

This brings us to the current day, where I, Janaka, a 24 year old guy passionate about all things creative, am now running my own freelance photography business and photography studio on the sunny Gold Coast in beautiful Australia.

In 3 weeks time I will be starting the newest chapter of my journey, teaching. I have had the wonderful opportunity arise where I am to become the head lecturer of photography at the Academy of Design on the Gold Coast. The sharing of knowledge has long been something that I have wanted to do, and what better place to do it than in an environment with young and old aspiring photographers alike thirsty for knowledge and direction to bring the passion and vision to life.

I will be blogging here about different photography related events happening here on the Gold Coast and within Australia, about my photography and the different projects I am working on. One of the primary reasons I set up a blogging/portfolio sharing website is to immerse myself in photo creation until I get to the point where I want to be. It’s a long hard road ahead, but I accept the challenge at look forward to how much I am going to grow from the journey!

I would love to get feedback from anybody who stumbles across this site, friends, family and strangers alike, give your honest opinions on photographs I share or blogs I write, as there is only one way for me to improve and move forward, and that is be refining my abilities – so please, share your thoughts with me, this is an open invitation.

Janaka