Ilesh started assisting his father at an early age. Growing up, he made his career in the same profession of Photography and took his family business to new heights.

Ilesh Shah is a Professional Photographer based in Ahmedabad. He has been working in this profession for the last forty years. He has been running his studio for the last twenty-five years under the name of ‘Nilesh Shah Photography’, before that he used to do freelancing work. He shares that currently, he is a Regional Member of AIPTIA, in which he represents the Western Region, particularly Gujarat. And he has also travelled to many countries of the world for his work.

Ilesh belongs to Ahmedabad and did all his schooling from there itself. He did B.Com from H.L. College of Commerce, Ahmedabad. Reminiscing about his childhood, Ilesh says that he did not like to go to school in his childhood due to which he skipped school many times.

Ilesh says that he started working with his father when he was in 7th grade. At present he works in every segment of photography and cinematography be it wedding, commercial, industrial, product photography, portfolio, fashion industry and many more. He says that being a good cinematographer, he has made many documentaries for several corporate houses.

Ilesh says that his life has been very smooth so far and he did not face any major struggle uptill now. He shares that he was never a good student in studies and after 10th, he had to go to an English medium school. Those two years were challenging for him.

Talking about his achievements, Ilesh shares that he has been honoured by almost all the Photography and Cinematography Associations of Gujarat for his work. He is also associated with Tamron and has also conducted workshops for Kodak and Fujifilm all over India. Along with that, he has trained many photographers under him and has also worked as a Visiting Faculty at Ahuja Classes.

Ilesh considers Ansel Adams, Phillippe Halsman, David Bellemere, Kahlil Gibran and Amrita Pritam as his role models for their splendid work in their genres. Apart from this, he also follows many painters like Picasso and others as he gets inspiration for their understanding of colours and combinations.

Talking about Leadership, Ilesh says that he doesn’t consider himself to be a leader but to be a good leader, he thinks that if a person is not true to himself, then he is not a good leader. He thinks that a leader must have a clear vision and goals and he should keep walking on the path of honesty to achieve his goals.

Ilesh feels that both Education and Experience are equally important because education cannot take you far without experience. He says that education is like information and experience is like knowledge so if you can’t convert the information into knowledge, then that information becomes useless. So, in his opinion, both Education and Experience are necessary in their respective places.

When asked about his Covid experience, Ilesh says that till now he and his family have been very lucky as no one has got infected with this deadly disease so far and all are safe. When he was at home and didn’t have much work to do, he revisited his old photographs, edited them and created a new catalogue.

Whenever Ilesh gets free time, he learns something new about photography, researches about it and experiments with it. Apart from this, he likes to go on a walk, travel and read.

If Ilesh could change something by going back in time, then he would like to go back to his school and college time to relive those moments.

Ilesh suggests the newcomers who want to be a good photographer to work on their communication skills by learning the English language. Second, if you pick anything, at least do it for four-five years because only after that you will be able to decide whether that thing is working for you or not.