My Journey

Thanks for visiting myshutterstories.com. My name is Sunita Kori and I am the owner and the lone employee of My Shutter Stories. I am based in Naperville, Illinois. I started this business in the fall of 2018 and it has been an eventful and a very rewarding journey. Read on if you are interested in learning how I landed here.

I got my bachelor’s degree in Information Technology in 2005. I was never interested in computers and quit my corporate job after working there for two years. My father-in-law gifted me with a basic DSLR in 2009. I started carrying it with me everywhere and took countless pictures exclusively in automatic mode. I was never interested in improving my photography skills, instead, I was more fascinated by looking at them and remembering the moments.

In winter 2009 I took it to a beach and dropped the lens in the sand. I got it fixed at a local repair shop. The owner offered me a week’s worth of warranty on his repair. But the problem was, I didn’t know how to assess the quality of the images. The fear of losing this lens pushed me to learn the working of the camera. I read, experimented, and learned a lot that week. By the way, his repair job was spot on(in my opinion).

This incident changed my perspective on photography and life for good. I started learning new things and every time I apply my learning and got the desired outcome I felt a great sense of accomplishment regardless of how trivial it was.

Our son was born in 2010 and we moved from India to the US in 2014. I continued taking a lot of pictures of friends and family. I never had any intention to do this for money. But soon, I realized that I was running out of challenges. I was predictable for my subjects. There was nothing new in my compositions. I was stuck in this spider web for several months struggling to find ways to come out of it. I even tried landscape photography for a few months, but I never enjoyed it as much. Finally, I succumbed to the inevitable – started My Shutter Stories.

My philosophy about photography is to create soulful compositions. I would like to understand the family’s dynamics, a person’s nature, or his/her mood on that particular day and try to bring that in my compositions. The photographer in me craves the challenge posed by the uniqueness of every person. I consider myself to be fortunate for having this as my career.