I have a photography assignment that I have to finish, I'm done with taking the pictures, and the tough part comes in here, when you need to sift through the good ones, and select them for a final collection.
Photography is amazing, and photographers are an interesting breed. They can be intimidating sometimes, with their huge cameras, expensive equipment and business-like air.
There are probably many people, who can philosophically say, " It's not about the equipment" . But people would still pay an arm and a leg for a good photograph. and for a lot of people, a good photograph is possible only with good equipment. But I personally believe that , no matter what your image making device is, if you've caught what you want to catch, you're a photographer. This confidence I got from a teacher, who felt that rather than just using the tool, it was necessary for us to understand the subject, the frame and essentially, develop the eye for them.
I've seen many breeds of photographers, and each of them with their set of idiosyncrasies, and perhaps, in India, the whole affair of taking a photograph is quite a memorable one. Back when pictures were expensive to take (I think this was in the fifties, but this is not such a general thing in India) a lot of people would not bother to have one taken unless on important occasions like Marriages, because you saw your daughter for the last time as part of your family, events in the village, and deaths, because they needed some sort of memorabilia. My English teacher in high school remembered how, in his village, once the person has died, they'd employ a photographer , huddle around the dead person and try to make the body sit straight, as if alive, for a family photograph. The more affluent had greater access ,and would get pictures taken at every possible occasion. A lot of other cultures would resist pictures, since they felt they'd call upon them the evil eye, while in places like Gujarat, the very sight of a camera would draw crowds to you, enthusiastically waiting in line to be captured.
My good friend Harish , a filmmaker, talked of this one incident, when, he'd worked as a journalist, and had to go into the rural heartlands of a place (I've forgotten which). They had some work with the local residents there, and somehow, happened to be around when a fight erupted in the community. The situation had come to blows, when they chose to start taking pictures. The crowds would immediately snap to attention and smile and pose for the picture, and after the snap, they'd get back to the fight. This would happen repeatedly, since Harish and his friend were trying to catch the fight in progress, but the crowd would interrupt the fight and snap to attention and smile each time, grumbling.
Photographers have it tough. There is great emphasis on the "defining moment", a moment that supposedly "makes" the photograph, and for that, they need to become invisible to the people at that spot. I don't know how exactly a lot of photographers achieve this, what with their outlandishly expensive and huge equipment and the obvious air of someone who doesn't belong there, blend in. I suppose each person has his technique. I for one, had to get a ton of permissions first, and second, had to use a camera that is hardly noticeable, (gasps in horror!) a digicam. The other time, I was in a public space, and I generally smile a bit when I encounter people, so people would find me nonthreatening and not bother when I click in the vicinity.
How important though, is capturing a moment to someone using a camera? I believe half the market in India uses the services of photographers who hardly subscribe to the term. A few years after I left my town to study, when I came back for the holidays, my mother really wanted a formal family photograph. So we went to the local photographer's studio wearing nice clothes and asked him to click a few pictures. A few days later, I left for college. I returned to find a set of framed and laminated photographs that the photographer had distorted across a larger frame, so my mother was covering half of it, looking much larger than she really is (imagine her rage) , and others, where the well-meaning photographer with the best of his aesthetic sense, had eliminated the background I and my sister had stood before, and photo shopped a large artificial flower into the frame, almost the size of our faces. I lost my faith in regular studio photographers after that. But he only meant well ,and was only doing what his contemporaries across the country were doing.
And indeed, I started paying greater attention to their antics after this, and a large number of people really wanted that stuff. You'd have a newly married couple in full wedding finery standing on a table in the Titanic pose, and the photographer would Photoshop them onto a ship, or a sunset, or a moonlit night backdrop. There would be a photograph of a couple in the wedding pandal, and the backdrop around them would be erased and they'd be placed in Swiss mountains doing the Homa. A lot of pilgrimage centres would have booths with devotional concept art backdrops that the pilgrims would pose in front of and get pictures of . This brings me to the wedding photographer . He was a real species unto himself, and his job involved bringing a hot heavy flash into the wedding area, interrupting the wedding, irritating the priest, pushing the well-wishers and the guests away to get a better view of the couple's faces( Imagine their discomfort, smiling into a hot yellow flash, under all that makeup and finery) and generally stepping on the cake, only to produce a video of unrealistic proportions, with sentimental film songs as the soundtrack, to be given to the families as a memory of their kids' wedding. The ones these days, thankfully, are not that irritating or disruptive.
A recently held lecture happened in a gallery full of precious pieces of design (with a lot of furniture) and the lecture was held by a certain veteran furniture designer , and attended by a prominent Museum curator, a historian, design students and a magazine editor. Since it was a rare opportunity, a lot of photographers had come, and while the talk was going on, one photographer very casually settled his bag and his bulky equipment onto a precious chair on display (despite it being on a pedestal) , and went around clicking pictures of the lecture, while the rest of us looked on, scandalised. We couldn't stop him, since it would mean interrupting the lecture, which was being video-recorded, and the man , once he had the shots he wanted, picked it up and moved away. The things that happen for the sake of the frame are really surprising.
I remember Stephen Leacock's short story, the Photographer, that talks of his experience with this enthusiastic photographer, who, for the sake of a good picture, distorts the author's face, until it resembles him no more, and I feel that things haven't changed much even today. The Photographer's journey is a unique one, and their work for the frame is often justified for them.
I finally managed to get the hang of handling this atrociously heavy camera, and took some pictures for my assignment, and lo behold, half the ones I thought would be good were shaky. And I'd shot them on the spur of the moment outside, where you can't really set things up for your convenience, maybe go again with the camera.
I'd borrowed the camera, so it wasn't possible again, but I'd lost some of the good ones, and I have to sigh and get on with what I have. My faculty would have pursed his lips at them, but I can say that I enjoy taking pictures. It allowed me to notice things I wouldn't pay attention to, and I started paying attention to how I saw things, even without a camera. the politics of the frame , the semiotics of the things a Photographer would include within it, all fascinate me, and essentially, I wonder, how a simple piece of image making equipment has manifested itself in its possibilities , on one hand, becoming an art, and on the other, an expression of memory and a will to preserve , all the while reflecting the choices made by a society regarding the way things are captured , and its eventual visual culture.
Photography is amazing, and photographers are an interesting breed. They can be intimidating sometimes, with their huge cameras, expensive equipment and business-like air.
There are probably many people, who can philosophically say, " It's not about the equipment" . But people would still pay an arm and a leg for a good photograph. and for a lot of people, a good photograph is possible only with good equipment. But I personally believe that , no matter what your image making device is, if you've caught what you want to catch, you're a photographer. This confidence I got from a teacher, who felt that rather than just using the tool, it was necessary for us to understand the subject, the frame and essentially, develop the eye for them.
I've seen many breeds of photographers, and each of them with their set of idiosyncrasies, and perhaps, in India, the whole affair of taking a photograph is quite a memorable one. Back when pictures were expensive to take (I think this was in the fifties, but this is not such a general thing in India) a lot of people would not bother to have one taken unless on important occasions like Marriages, because you saw your daughter for the last time as part of your family, events in the village, and deaths, because they needed some sort of memorabilia. My English teacher in high school remembered how, in his village, once the person has died, they'd employ a photographer , huddle around the dead person and try to make the body sit straight, as if alive, for a family photograph. The more affluent had greater access ,and would get pictures taken at every possible occasion. A lot of other cultures would resist pictures, since they felt they'd call upon them the evil eye, while in places like Gujarat, the very sight of a camera would draw crowds to you, enthusiastically waiting in line to be captured.
My good friend Harish , a filmmaker, talked of this one incident, when, he'd worked as a journalist, and had to go into the rural heartlands of a place (I've forgotten which). They had some work with the local residents there, and somehow, happened to be around when a fight erupted in the community. The situation had come to blows, when they chose to start taking pictures. The crowds would immediately snap to attention and smile and pose for the picture, and after the snap, they'd get back to the fight. This would happen repeatedly, since Harish and his friend were trying to catch the fight in progress, but the crowd would interrupt the fight and snap to attention and smile each time, grumbling.
Photographers have it tough. There is great emphasis on the "defining moment", a moment that supposedly "makes" the photograph, and for that, they need to become invisible to the people at that spot. I don't know how exactly a lot of photographers achieve this, what with their outlandishly expensive and huge equipment and the obvious air of someone who doesn't belong there, blend in. I suppose each person has his technique. I for one, had to get a ton of permissions first, and second, had to use a camera that is hardly noticeable, (gasps in horror!) a digicam. The other time, I was in a public space, and I generally smile a bit when I encounter people, so people would find me nonthreatening and not bother when I click in the vicinity.
How important though, is capturing a moment to someone using a camera? I believe half the market in India uses the services of photographers who hardly subscribe to the term. A few years after I left my town to study, when I came back for the holidays, my mother really wanted a formal family photograph. So we went to the local photographer's studio wearing nice clothes and asked him to click a few pictures. A few days later, I left for college. I returned to find a set of framed and laminated photographs that the photographer had distorted across a larger frame, so my mother was covering half of it, looking much larger than she really is (imagine her rage) , and others, where the well-meaning photographer with the best of his aesthetic sense, had eliminated the background I and my sister had stood before, and photo shopped a large artificial flower into the frame, almost the size of our faces. I lost my faith in regular studio photographers after that. But he only meant well ,and was only doing what his contemporaries across the country were doing.
And indeed, I started paying greater attention to their antics after this, and a large number of people really wanted that stuff. You'd have a newly married couple in full wedding finery standing on a table in the Titanic pose, and the photographer would Photoshop them onto a ship, or a sunset, or a moonlit night backdrop. There would be a photograph of a couple in the wedding pandal, and the backdrop around them would be erased and they'd be placed in Swiss mountains doing the Homa. A lot of pilgrimage centres would have booths with devotional concept art backdrops that the pilgrims would pose in front of and get pictures of . This brings me to the wedding photographer . He was a real species unto himself, and his job involved bringing a hot heavy flash into the wedding area, interrupting the wedding, irritating the priest, pushing the well-wishers and the guests away to get a better view of the couple's faces( Imagine their discomfort, smiling into a hot yellow flash, under all that makeup and finery) and generally stepping on the cake, only to produce a video of unrealistic proportions, with sentimental film songs as the soundtrack, to be given to the families as a memory of their kids' wedding. The ones these days, thankfully, are not that irritating or disruptive.
A recently held lecture happened in a gallery full of precious pieces of design (with a lot of furniture) and the lecture was held by a certain veteran furniture designer , and attended by a prominent Museum curator, a historian, design students and a magazine editor. Since it was a rare opportunity, a lot of photographers had come, and while the talk was going on, one photographer very casually settled his bag and his bulky equipment onto a precious chair on display (despite it being on a pedestal) , and went around clicking pictures of the lecture, while the rest of us looked on, scandalised. We couldn't stop him, since it would mean interrupting the lecture, which was being video-recorded, and the man , once he had the shots he wanted, picked it up and moved away. The things that happen for the sake of the frame are really surprising.
I remember Stephen Leacock's short story, the Photographer, that talks of his experience with this enthusiastic photographer, who, for the sake of a good picture, distorts the author's face, until it resembles him no more, and I feel that things haven't changed much even today. The Photographer's journey is a unique one, and their work for the frame is often justified for them.
I finally managed to get the hang of handling this atrociously heavy camera, and took some pictures for my assignment, and lo behold, half the ones I thought would be good were shaky. And I'd shot them on the spur of the moment outside, where you can't really set things up for your convenience, maybe go again with the camera.
I'd borrowed the camera, so it wasn't possible again, but I'd lost some of the good ones, and I have to sigh and get on with what I have. My faculty would have pursed his lips at them, but I can say that I enjoy taking pictures. It allowed me to notice things I wouldn't pay attention to, and I started paying attention to how I saw things, even without a camera. the politics of the frame , the semiotics of the things a Photographer would include within it, all fascinate me, and essentially, I wonder, how a simple piece of image making equipment has manifested itself in its possibilities , on one hand, becoming an art, and on the other, an expression of memory and a will to preserve , all the while reflecting the choices made by a society regarding the way things are captured , and its eventual visual culture.
