Charu Shah Photography

My name is Charu and I capture real moments. 

I use Singapore’s beautiful natural light, I prefer outdoors, I use the shadow of a tree’s canopy. I do not shoot in closed studios with big white lights in your children’s face so that you have to coax smiles out of them.

 

My grandmother or Ba taught me that beauty is inherent in the everyday. 

She could create art out of anything:  wax candles, mud motifs, paper collages, coloured powder patterns, metal carvings, terracotta pots. She would draw on floor tiles to bring good luck or decorate the entrance of our building with chalk. If there was a marriage, she would draw beautiful rangoli along the edge of the entire floor and thus she brought the entire community closer.

 

My daughter rekindled Ba’s legacy

After graduating from LASALLE I bought my first DSLR with big plans to be a portrait photographer. By that time my daughter was a few months old and I found myself struggling with things that other mothers seemed to have mastered at the first go. My daughter cried a lot, she didn’t sleep soundly, she didn’t feed much and I was miserable and confused. But in between the tough times I experienced tiny moments of bliss just watching her tiny toes and fingers, her nose, her toothless mouth, the hair that defied gravity, her huge eyes. I felt an overwhelming urge to capture those incredible moments and keep them in a box forever. My daughter became my first model. She made me realise that there was uncaptured beauty in everyday moments — in an exhausted mother’s small smile, a child’s laugh, in that hug when everything ceases to exist except that person you love. 

 

Don’t wear that itchy new dress just because it looks good

It’s one less thing you have to worry about. Don’t over prep your children. Don’t keep reminding them to smile or pose. Don’t braid your daughter’s hair if that makes her uncomfortable. 

 

Real beauty lies in small sun-kissed moments, in comfortable camaraderie and in honest expressions. I would like to invite you to see yourself and your family as you are: real and beautiful.