Aakaash Bali is an imaginative photographer and retoucher who was born and raised in Queens, New York. He spent most of his childhood with drawing, watching movies and 90’s cartoons, which fascinated him a lot. He started taking photos with a 35mm Minolta film camera, which was his father’s, and never gave up the machine since then. “I conveniently took his camera and started taking pictures of people’s expressions, patterns, colors, and anything that told visual story. It became a bit of an obsession. ” He tells his story in his bio and adds; “I focused solely on my photography skills until I was around 14. At that age, I picked up a very early version of Photoshop and spent hours each day drawing, painting, and sketching. Once I bought my first professional digital camera, I started editing the images I shot. I practiced until I figured out how to make a great image even better.” He then became a self-taught photographer taking inspiration from movies and real-life moments. He is very fond of playing with light and color then blending the two to evoke a certain emotion. “I try and create images in ways that they seem cinematic and emotional. I suppose “emotionally driven photographs” describes my work pretty well. I’ve been able to adapt this style to a few different genres of photography. Combining photography and editing to create stories has become my goal.” he says. You can clearly see his talent and passion for photography in his images and wonder about the story in each of them. Keep scrolling to see his impressive portfolio and remember to follow him on Instagram for more.