I am Muskan Dharani, a second-year commercial photography major at SCAD. I started getting interested in photography after I took a workshop about six years ago.
Photo by Muskan Dharani 
Photo by Muskan Dharani
Since then, I’ve been the designated photographer at most school events and Model United Nations. During high school, I pursued photography as a passion but never thought of it as a potential career option. After spending a year at the University of Toronto, I realized that I didn’t want to study Global Politics anymore and applied to SCAD to study photography.
As an Indian millennial girl studying away from home, there are few things that keep me rooted in my heritage and my culture. One of these things is the elaborate outfits that we wear on special occasions. I wanted to capture the moods that we go through when we wear these outfits.
It enables us to feel playful, sexy and elegant and most importantly, we feel like queens. Most of my memories in traditional outfits are with my family and are some of the best days of my life where I felt most powerful. I wanted those feelings to come across through the photos.
Photo by Muskan Dharani 
Photo by Muskan Dharani
This was my first major shoot at SCAD with multiple people — my models were Ritvi Jain, Rhea Sheth, Anya Law, Harissa Sheikh and Shalaka Nallakandy Churai — and as much I was looking forward to it, I was also nervous. There were some hiccups along the way but when it finished, I couldn’t have been happier. All the ups and downs that took place are lessons for the future. When I started selecting the photos and it was difficult to select the ones I love the most — that’s when I knew that it was a job well done.
