About the Founder
Deepak Soni never set out to become a photographer. He found his way into it the way most lasting things happen: by hobby, then by obsession. It began in college in Jodhpur, a camera picked up on a whim, and within a year what had started as curiosity had quietly become a calling. There was no formal training behind it, no photography school shaping his eye. What he knows, he learned by shooting, by failing, by paying closer attention than most people think to pay.
Today, that instinct has grown into Chitra Chaukhat, a Jodhpur-based photography studio built on a conviction Deepak has never wavered from: Rajasthan is not a setting. It is a subject. The sandstone facades, the filtered desert light, the centuries of craft embedded in every haveli and courtyard, these are not simply backdrops for a wedding or a brand shoot. They are collaborators in the frame, and Deepak's work treats them that way.
This philosophy is what has carried him across two worlds that most photographers keep separate. On one side, royal Rajput and destination weddings held in the palaces and havelis that define this region's grandeur, where every ceremony asks to be documented with both intimacy and scale. On the other, commercial work for hotels, jewellery houses, and interior brands, where the same discipline of light and composition is applied to a different kind of storytelling. Few studios attempt this range with any real conviction. Fewer still make it feel like the same hand is behind both. For Deepak, it always has been.
Clients who work with him describe the same thing in different words: a photographer who is present without being intrusive, exacting without ever making the process feel clinical. He believes a good photograph should not announce itself as staged, and a great one should not need to. That belief shows in the restraint of his editing, the patience of his shooting, and the priority he places on truth over trend.
Beyond the camera, Deepak remains closely woven into Jodhpur's business and creative community, including as an active member of BNI Jodhpur, where the principle is the same one he applies to his clients: reputation is built one honest interaction at a time, and trust, once earned, is worth protecting.
Today, Chitra Chaukhat stands as an extension of that philosophy. Not a service, but a point of view. One that believes Rajasthan's light and legacy deserve to be photographed with the same seriousness given to the people standing within it.