Emotions run high in the best shots

IT doesn't matter what camera you use. A picture is about the story it tells, not the colours and composition. These were some of the tips that former National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry doled out last week, when he was peppered with questions by an avid crowd of hobbyist photographers, bloggers and fans at the opening of his solo exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery.

"All the cameras are the same ... the difference between them is insignificant. Some of the best works I've seen are taken with a plastic camera," declares the 65-year-old whose break-out moment early on in his career is that of the famous Afghan girl picture in National Geographic magazine.

The eye and the vision is more important than the technical part, he reiterates. And it's no surprise as well that he has no nostalgia for film, having embraced digital cameras more than a decade ago. Sundaram Tagore Gallery now has 53 of McCurry's iconic photographs on a solo exhibition which fits into the gallery's vision for "intercultural dialogue".