Why I Chose Photography, and What It Has Led Me to

I did not come to photography the way most people do. I didn't grow up with a camera in my hands or spend weekends as a kid developing film in a darkroom. Photography found me later, and when it did, it grabbed hold of something I hadn't known was loose — my understanding of what it means to be precise, intentional, and fully in control of a single moment.

What pulled me in wasn't the art. Not at first, anyway. It was the engineering. The pure, unapologetic specificity of the instrument itself.

The Specificity of a Camera — And of a Clear Mind

One of the many things that I find so appealing in photography is how specific it is. Here is this object, a digital camera, with specific dimensions, and made of specific materials, and composed of specific parts. Each specific part has a specific function. None of the parts are confused about what its job is.

Think about that for a moment. The lens knows it gathers and focuses light. The sensor knows it converts photons into data. The shutter knows its role is to control the duration of exposure. The mirror, the prism, the autofocus motor — every component exists for one reason and executes that reason without hesitation or ambiguity.

There is something profoundly calming about an object that knows exactly what it is.

I started thinking about this in the context of people — particularly the executives I coach. How many leaders walk into their roles with that kind of clarity? How many of them can say, without hesitation, "This is my function. This is my purpose. I am not confused about my job"? The honest answer, in my experience, is very few. Most senior leaders carry a kind of ambient confusion about their role that they've learned to mask with confidence and activity. They're busy. They're decisive. But ask them what their single most important job is — the one thing only they can do — and you'll often get a pause that tells you everything.

A camera never pauses like that. Every part is aligned. Every component serves the whole. And the result is an instrument capable of capturing reality with stunning fidelity.

The mind is exactly like a camera. We have full control over what we think. The choice is ours on what to focus on, what to let in, how long to hold the exposure. The question is whether we're shooting in manual mode — or letting the environment decide for us. — Dr. Dhru Beeharilal

ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed: The Settings We Choose in Life

In photography, three settings determine everything: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Together, they form what photographers call the exposure triangle. Get them right, and you capture exactly what you intended. Get them wrong, and you end up with noise, blur, or darkness — no matter how good the subject was.

I've come to see these three settings as a direct metaphor for how leaders operate.

ISO is your sensitivity to context. In a camera, ISO controls how sensitive the sensor is to light. Crank it up and you can see in near-darkness, but you introduce grain — noise that distorts the image. Keep it low and the image is clean, but you need more light to see anything at all. Leaders face the same trade-off daily. High sensitivity to your environment means you pick up on subtle signals — the tension in a room, the unspoken concern behind a question, the cultural shift happening three levels below you. But too much sensitivity and everything becomes noise. You react to every signal with equal urgency, and your judgment gets grainy. The best executives I work with have learned to calibrate their ISO — to be deeply aware without being overwhelmed.

Aperture is your depth of perspective. A wide aperture (low f-number) creates a shallow depth of field — your subject is razor-sharp, but everything else melts into a soft blur. A narrow aperture brings everything into focus simultaneously. Leaders make this choice constantly. Do you go deep on one initiative, one relationship, one problem — giving it your full attention at the cost of peripheral vision? Or do you widen your view to see the entire landscape, knowing that nothing will be quite as sharp? Neither is wrong. But choosing deliberately, rather than defaulting, is the difference between a leader who commands their focus and one whose focus commands them.

Shutter speed is your decisiveness. A fast shutter freezes motion — it captures a single instant with perfect clarity. A slow shutter lets motion blur, creating a sense of movement and time passing. Some decisions need to be frozen — made quickly, cleanly, without deliberation. Others benefit from a longer exposure, from letting the situation develop before you commit. The leaders who struggle most are the ones using the wrong shutter speed for the moment. They deliberate when speed is needed. They rush when patience would have revealed more.

These aren't abstract metaphors. Every executive I coach is, whether they realize it or not, walking around with their own exposure triangle. Their settings determine what they see, what they miss, and whether the picture they're creating matches the one they intended.

Taking Control: Why Leadership Requires the Same Intentionality as Photography

Most cameras have an automatic mode. You point, you press the button, and the camera makes all the decisions for you. It reads the light, selects the aperture, chooses the shutter speed, adjusts the ISO. The result is usually acceptable. Sometimes even good. But it is never yours.

This is just the same with the mind. We have full control over what we think. The choice is ours on what to focus on, what to expose ourselves to, how quickly we act. But most people — including most leaders — are operating on auto. They react to whatever the environment throws at them. They let the light dictate the image.

Switching to manual mode in photography is initially disorienting. You have to think about things the camera used to handle for you. You make mistakes. Your early shots are overexposed or too dark. But over time, something shifts. You start to see light differently. You anticipate. You compose the image before you press the shutter. You are no longer capturing what happens to be there — you are creating what you intended to capture.

This is exactly what happens when a leader becomes intentional about their own mind. When they stop reacting and start choosing. When they decide — deliberately, with full awareness — where to direct their attention, how much depth to allow, and when to act. It requires discipline. It requires practice. And it requires the kind of self-awareness that most people avoid because it means admitting that your "auto mode" isn't producing the results you want.

I made it a point to be methodical about the process of learning photography. I studied the mechanics. I practiced the settings until they were instinctive. I shot thousands of frames that went nowhere, learning from every one. That same discipline — that commitment to understanding your instrument before expecting mastery — is what separates good leaders from great ones.

The Intersection of Control and the Unknown

Here is the part that surprised me most.

I expected photography to be entirely about control. And for a while, it was. I obsessed over settings, over technical precision, over getting every exposure exactly right. But the photographs that moved me — the ones I kept returning to — were never the technically perfect ones. They were the ones where something unexpected happened. A shift in light I didn't anticipate. A subject who moved at exactly the wrong moment, which turned out to be exactly the right moment. A reflection I hadn't noticed until I reviewed the image later.

Photography taught me that mastery isn't about eliminating the unknown. It's about being so prepared, so fluent in your craft, that when the unknown shows up — and it always does — you can respond to it rather than be defeated by it.

In the intersection between the need for control and the fear of not knowing what's out there lies an unexpected sweet spot that I would have never found otherwise. That sweet spot is where the most honest photographs live — and where the most effective leadership happens. — Dr. Dhru Beeharilal

This is the paradox every senior executive faces. You need control — over strategy, over execution, over your own emotional state. But you also need to be comfortable with the fact that you cannot control everything. Markets shift. People surprise you. The world hands you light you didn't plan for. The leaders who thrive are the ones who have practiced their craft so thoroughly that they can hold both — the discipline of preparation and the openness to what emerges.

That method became madness at some point — the sheer volume of practice, the relentless attention to detail, the refusal to accept "good enough." But now it all makes sense. The madness was the training. The specificity was the foundation. And the unexpected beauty that comes from mastering your instrument while remaining open to surprise — that is the whole point.

Leadership Through the LENS

Photography didn't just give me a hobby. It gave me a framework.

When I developed the LENS program — Leadership Empowerment and Navigational Strategy — it wasn't an accident that the name evokes a camera. The connection runs deeper than branding. Every principle in that program traces back to what I learned standing behind a viewfinder, making thousands of small decisions per second about what to include, what to exclude, and how to see.

The program asks executives to do what a photographer does: slow down, examine your settings, understand why you're getting the results you're getting, and then — deliberately, methodically — adjust. Not randomly. Not reactively. With the precision of someone who understands their instrument.

Because that's what you are, as a leader. You are the instrument. Your mind, your attention, your judgment, your emotional calibration — these are your lens, your sensor, your shutter. And just like a camera, you can operate on auto and get acceptable results. Or you can take manual control and create something that reflects exactly who you intended to be.

I chose photography because it appealed to the part of me that craves specificity. I stayed with it because it taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way: that the most powerful form of control is the kind that makes room for what you can't predict.

That lesson changed how I coach. It changed how I lead. And if you're willing to look at your own settings honestly — your sensitivity, your depth, your speed — it can change how you lead, too.