Archive for January, 2012
“The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.”
~Henri Cartier-Bresson
I have been experimenting with the alignments and placement of various subjects in a photograph. Things change constantly giving birth to different meanings and at one instant they form a design very obvious to human eye. To me it is the ‘Decisive Moment’
“The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.”
~Henri Cartier-Bresson
Can you reflect the personality of a human in just one photograph?
“I try”, it is what I said while discussing portrait photography with a college mate. There are many things you have to take into account if you really wanna make a good portrait photograph- THE portrait photograph.
The most important thing is how you handle your model. Can you make him comfortable in his own skin? Can you make them so naked that they can’t hide what they are?
Observation is another important aspect. You must have expertise in noticing the very distinctive features of the model. It can be facial structure, expressions, the way he uses his hands, the way his hairs are, how he stands etc.
The third point is to have a ‘common sense‘. Camera doesn’t see what you see. You must have enough knowledge to manipulate or enhance what you wanna show.
Portrait photography is the most challenging and adventurous genre to me. It is knowing your model through your camera. I tried to take a portrait yesterday. It is unfinished and I am still in search of that ‘one’ photograph. I spent 2.5 hrs photographing the model and still din’t got the right result.
Here are some of the different shots:
The one I found closest to her character-
While randomly wandering down the thinking lane I suddenly got this idea. I thought of what could be inside a human mind (Philosphically). And somehow I connected the story of Adam eating the apple and gaining wisdom to what is inside the mind- An Apple.
Initially I thought of capturing a side-silhouette of a person as it would be easy to post-process.
But after transferring my images to laptop I found this image better for the purpose.
After a lot of work in Photoshop I got a nice result
I tried to keep eyes sharp and it was not easy. It was lit from above with a torch.
Some other shots:
Selected shot:
I was appearing a little bit congested so I added some more black background in post-processing.
Final photograph:
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
~Elliott Erwitt
This photograph originated from a sequence of events which led each-other to finally emerge as a photograph.
I was doing photography to cover an event when I noticed some wooden rectangles which were framing people to give them a separate space of themselves. I took some shots and looked for some other similar framings. That is when I noticed this gate. I observed it for nearly 20 mins and then took 1 trial photograph.
After this I decided to make better use of it and asked a girl to stand at the gate.
I noticed the glow around the edges of the girl. It was due to the difference in the light intensity on opposite sides of the gate. Light was more intense inside than outside. I decided to make use of it and even exaggerate it. So I switched off some lights on the outer side.
Now to take the photograph to next level I had to decide on what I want to highlight in this photograph. After some thinking I decided on showing it as some kind of dilemma of ‘to enter or not’ . I switched off some more lights but had to change the model as the girl got busy.
I tried various poses and positions as I had no idea how to depict ‘dilemma’ of taking a decision. Again change of model as this boy also left.
I wanted to try more but the lights had to be switched on. After analyzing all my shots I shortlisted the above one to edit.
In the series of my HDR images, I tried taking HDR without sunset. HDR photographs generally have bright colors and huge details. So I decided to shoot one of my favourite places: Coffee Shack of IIT Bombay, as its colors are very vibrant and I like its hut shaped structure.
As usual I started with a trial photograph with a quick understanding of the place.
The lights were very low as it was nearly 6:00 PM. I liked this view of the hut but din’t like the gutter cover. So I decided to change my position to a closer point.
Now the hut was looking slightly disproportionate, so I slightly changed my angle.
This frame looked nice to me, so I fixed my tripod and shot 6 photographs at different exposures. They were merged by using Photoshop HDR pro to get and HDR image. I tried using Photomatrix ( a separate software which specializes in making HDRs ) but couldn’t get the hang of it. I am still not able to create HDRs as I see on internet but I have improved.
Another smoke photography result but this time I left a little smoke in the background to make it feel like real smoke.
Building on my experience of capturing smoke I tried to shoot some real-life situations. I used torch to light the smoke.
1. The background light was disturbing
2. Smoke was not well-lit
3. The expressions on the face were interesting.
4. Black and white medium would look better
5. No focus on the subject
Did some editing in photoshop like making the background black, sharpening and some increase in contrast.
Final result is:
The Silent Discourse 