“As a child, I was always drawn to nature, especially clouds. Their shifting forms felt like stories unfolding in the sky. I was born and brought up in Hyderabad. My father was a journalist with a Telugu daily, and my mother was a homemaker. In Grade 3, I moved to a boarding school in Nalgonda. It was there, in those wide open spaces, that I began to notice the sky more deeply. I started writing poems in Urdu, Telugu, and English, inspired by the clouds above me.
By the time I reached Grade 8, I had started taking photos of clouds using my father’s old keypad phone. My friends didn’t understand why I was so interested in something as ordinary as clouds. They teased me about it, but I didn’t stop. In 2011, I captured a cloud that looked like the 1983 World Cup trophy, just before India won the tournament. That moment stayed with me. It felt like the sky had quietly shared something special.
In 2013, I began sharing my cloud photographs more regularly. During the Telangana agitation, I clicked a cloud that resembled the map of Telangana. It felt significant. In 2018, I had the opportunity to showcase 80 of my cloud images at the ICCR Art Gallery, supported by Dr Mamidi Harikrishna Garu. One of my images, where a cloud looked like a person smoking, then a lion, and then a skeleton, was later used in an anti-drug campaign by Hyderabad Police in 2023. Another formation that meant a lot to me was a Kohinoor-shaped cloud appearing between the minarets of the Charminar.
Over time, I exhibited my work in schools, colleges, and public spaces. At Nehru Zoological Park, over 100 animal-shaped cloud photographs were displayed for nearly 100 days. One of them, titled Fauna Fantasia, represented the life cycle and was deeply appreciated. So far, I have captured more than 18,600 images of clouds.
In 2021, I presented the Devarakonda – Life in a Century photography exhibition. That project stayed in my heart. In 2023, I decided to take it further and began creating a film using Artificial Intelligence. By early 2025, I shared a one-minute preview of the concept with Dr Mamidi Harikrishna Garu, Director of the Department of Language and Culture, Government of Telangana.
After seven months of hard work, it became one of the first Telugu AI documentary films, lasting 58 minutes and covering 100 years of Devarakonda’s history.
The film was officially launched at Cinivaram, Paidi Jairaj Preview Theatre, Ravindra Bharathi. It brings together over 1000 old photographs, oral histories, and AI-generated visuals to depict traditional professions, forest life, water scarcity, agriculture, architecture, clothing styles, and festivals. It is a tribute to the lives and stories of the people of Devarakonda.
Dr Riyaz Garu, Chairman of the Telangana Grandhalaya Parishad, Ponnam Ravichandra Garu, a respected film critic and writer, and Dr Mamidi Harikrishna Garu formally declared Devarakonda: Life in a Century as the first AI-generated documentary film made in India using a century’s worth of photographs.
What started with simply observing the sky has led me to document the ground beneath it. Through clouds and culture, I continue to search for stories worth listening to.”
– Younus Farhaan, Cloud Photographer and AI Filmmaker