I currently live in San Jose, California. Prior to this, I lived in beautiful Boulder, Colorado for about 3 years, before which I was in Bengaluru, Karnataka and Chennai, Tamil Nadu (both in India and both for about 2 years). I was born and brought up in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
I went to Presidency College, Kolkata (then affiliated with the University of Calcutta, now an autonomous university) for my B.Sc. (in Physics), and then to the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras for my M.Sc. (also in Physics). Later, I did an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Between the two Master's degrees, I was a research fellow at the Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
Photography, Travel, Singing, Hiking, Volunteering
Again, not necessarily in that order! I am an out-and-out outdoor person - I simply cannot stay indoors for too long, and love clear blue (preferably cloudless) skies and bright, sunny weather. Time and again I find myself going out for random walks, and one can find me exploring neighborhoods while walking. I believe the best way to discover any place is on foot!
My passion for photography started when I was in high school. When my father got himself a point-and-shoot digital camera (which was the newest gadget in the market then), a Canon Powershot G2, I found myself playing around with it. Soon, I was taking photos of anything and everything I was allowed to focus the camera on. A few years later, I got my first point-and-shoot digital camera (a Canon Powershot A2000), and I made sure it was my companion wherever I went. People, landscapes, street scenes - I shot them all! I even went on dedicated trips to improve my photography skills. In due time, I realized what I wanted to achieve with my photography - given a scene, I wanted to take a shot (or a sequence of shots) that conveys my story or message in the least amount of time and most effectively. For that, I figured that I needed to imagine the photograph that I would capture before I actually captured it - imagine the ideal framing of the scene, the optimal lighting, and the best angle to capture the scene from.
After honing my photography skills for about 7 years, I got my first D-SLR, and I used it to document our trip to Ladakh, Kashmir, India.
I've been fortunate enough to have two of my photos exhibited in the Gaganendra Shilpi Pradarshashala (an art gallery in Kolkata) after submitting some of my entries for the photography competition of the Indian Statistical Institute's cultural festival 'Integration'.
Email : rajarshibasak.rb@gmail.com, rajarshi.basak@colorado.edu
Phone : +1 (720) 755-0247