"I Try to Focus on Impressing a Certain Niche"

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1. Tell us about your background and journey.

Hi, I am Dhenesh Annamalai, and I hail from the beautiful town of Salem, Tamilnadu. After completing my Engineering as a Civil major, I started working as a Site Engineer in Chennai.

Meanwhile, I had a passion for photography, and that passion leads me to learn it’s basics from Youtube. As a self-taught photographer, I started to capture all my traveling moments. And by that time, my passion drove me to venture out into other domains.

My eyes started to discern for the spots above my head for a possibility to capture my shots from an unusual perspective. It was there, the aerial photographer in me was born!! It is a whole different experience to have an elevated view of the surroundings.

In 2019, January, I acquired my first drone and started implementing my photography from the birds-eye-view. So now, Photography is my background, and the sky is my journey.

2. What led you to start your page on Instagram and what it is about?

As an artist, showcasing my true potential and letting the mass rejoice my art is the highest form of happiness for me. I choose Instagram because it’s a visually alluring and interactive platform with a wide audience base.

My page on the app serves as my portfolio and the presence of brands/ publications there allows for recognition and connections with fellow artists. Getting positive and encouraging feedback from like-minded people and my other audience helps me better boost my #aerial_holic energy.

3. What does travel feel like to you?

I believe that travel is essential for one’s growth to broaden the view and perspective of the world. Experiencing other cultures, meeting people from other communities and other countries.

Viewing the places at its rawest form we get to know both the sides of the world, its beauty, and menace. While traveling, you can feel both an interconnected, and individual soul within. It has made me better appreciate my homeland and culture deeper than before.

My aerial photography taught me to see a different perspective of the same world I live in. As a result, I have become a much more tolerant person.

4. Being a travel photographer, how would you spice up your traveling portfolio to avoid monotonous photos?

I plan my travel in such a way that I get to explore the less visited and less explored corners of the world. Even time plays an important role to record an interesting portfolio. Both time and place come hand in hand for unusual and extraordinary shots.

With these factors, my viewers can expect out of the ordinary sight even of an already well-known place to them. These adventures are what keeps me going on. I also use social media to draw influences from other photographers so that I get a better idea about many other factors that matter.

5. What do you think influences consumer behavior?

Consumer behavior is driven by various cultural, personal, social, and psychological factors. I find the personal factor purely motivational and I adore the magnitude of the incentive such that it pushes one to develop preferences after viewing the content.

To be more specific, the surprise factor operating behind curiosity is what keeps it interesting. The same surprise factor within, accelerated my curiosity to view the world from a non-clichéd perspective.

It pursued me to fly drones and it is the same, in an essence that would attract consumers and allure them to demand more.

6. What is your idea of success or your mantra in life?

If defining the idea behind success were that easy, I wouldn’t have taken this long period to reach where I am today. I believe that success is a journey, and not a destination.

If I were to be content with smaller goals and achievements, it would hinder my path to move forward and acclaim better and bigger dreams. Thus, I am filled with the aspiration to travel this trail of success, regardless of the circumstances it presents.

Somebody getting and being inspired by my work, is where my journey to success truly begun. When we inspire somebody, we eventually develop more responsibility and dedication towards our work.

7. How can someone become a successful social media influencer?

In today’s day and age, social media is one of the most powerful tools to learn and unlearn. Practicing these tools would take an unpredictable amount of time, and as I mentioned earlier, success can only be acquired through small episodes of progress.

I try to focus on impressing a certain niche and also give it my best to make my work stand out in the enigmatic arena of aerial- photography related posts.

It took me years to finally be able to read heartfelt messages about how inspiring and beautiful my work is and it genuinely makes me feel amazing knowing that my work has had an impact on somebody’s life.

Seeing the hashtag with words, "inspired by #aerial_holic", gives me immense pleasure and motivation. Through my experience, I can say that this path of trying to become an amateur in this field is hard and pain-staking but I certainly do believe that it is possible with determination.

Besides that, I do wish the best for others and look forward to guiding creative-minded people in the right direction.

- Dhenesh Annamalai

IG: aerial_holic

- Interviewed By: Anurag Jaiswal

Some of his work