HYDERABAD · INDIA
Hi, I'm Vikram.
Founder & Photographer, The First Impression
I photograph people and businesses that care how they're read before they get to speak.
- Based in
- Hyderabad, India
- Photographing since
- 2024, full-time focus from 2026
- Before photography
- Decathlon, Amazon, own business, Cognizant
- Also flies
- DJI drones — licensed aerial coverage
How I got here
I became a photographer because I was tired of waiting for one.
I didn't grow up carrying a DSLR. My first camera was an action camera strapped to a handlebar at the Tour of Nilgiris in 2015 — bought for one reason: so eight days of mountains wouldn't disappear.
A career followed. Decathlon, then Amazon in 2017, two years running a business of my own, then Cognizant from 2022. Photography stayed a hobby until February 2024, when we married and our wedding photographs simply never arrived. Weeks became months. Months became almost a year of the same question at home: any update?
Eventually I said it out loud — enough, I'll learn this myself. I learnt on the people I know best, shot my first maternity session in November 2025, and when our son arrived on 6 February 2026 photography stopped being a hobby altogether.
That's the whole story, and it's on vikramnekkanti.com in full. It matters here for one reason: I know exactly what it feels like to be handed a bad experience by a photographer, and I built this brand around not doing that to anyone.
Origin
Why I built The First Impression.
Most of my personal work is about memory — weddings, maternity, newborns, the ordinary evenings people forget they lived. That work has its own home.
But there's a second kind of photograph that behaves completely differently. A headshot doesn't sit in an album. It works. It's on the profile a recruiter opens, the website a client checks before replying, the speaker page, the press release, the company directory. It gets seen thousands of times by people who will never meet you.
And it's almost always treated as an afterthought — taken quickly, cropped from something else, replaced years too late.
I spent nine years inside large organisations before I picked up a camera properly. I know what those images are actually being judged against. The First Impression is that knowledge pointed at one job: photographs of people at work, made deliberately.
What I believe
Photographs outlive the trends they were shot in.
Gear isn't the investment — trust is. I care about equipment the way a pilot cares about instruments: deeply, quietly, and never in front of the passengers.
Beautiful imagery is mostly patience, preparation and refusing to leave until the moment happens. That's as true of a boardroom headshot as it is of a newborn at 7am.
And your files are yours. Delivered on time, archived on mirrored drives, never held hostage. I learnt that rule the hard way.
Directing people
Almost nobody feels natural in front of a camera, and nobody should be expected to. You'll be directed the whole way — where to place your weight, what to do with your hands, what to think about a half-second before the shutter. The confidence in the final frame is built, not waited for.
Lighting
Lighting is shaped for the individual face in front of me rather than applied from a template. Clean and even for corporate work, more directional and sculpted for editorial and character frames — always controlled, never accidental.
Retouching
Retouching removes distractions, not identity. Stray hair, a creased collar, a temporary blemish — those go. Skin texture, lines and the features that make you recognisable stay exactly where they are.
Process
How a session works.
01
Talk
We start with what the images need to achieve — the platform, the audience and the impression you want to leave.
02
Plan
Wardrobe, location, lighting and visual direction are decided before the camera comes out.
03
Shoot
You are directed throughout. Expression, posture and angle are guided frame by frame.
04
Deliver
Professionally selected, retouched and formatted images, sized for every place you'll use them.
The wider practice
One photographer. Separate brands.
The First Impression is the professional-portrait arm. The rest of the work lives where it belongs.
Credentials
Clients, publications and projects.
Deliberately empty. I started photographing professionally in 2024 and I'd rather show you nothing than invent a client list. This fills in as the work is delivered and clients approve being named.
Selected Clients
To be added.
Publications
To be added.
Projects
To be added.
Behind the Scenes
To be added.
Let's talk about your images
Tell me what the photographs need to achieve, and I'll tell you how I'd shoot them.
HYDERABAD · INDIA