Archive for the ‘ Portraits ’ Category
Went out for the photo-walk in the morning. Not much people on the roads but able to get this one. I moved closer to them with a smile and camera in my hand. They din’t objected, in fact they were happy. All the little girl said was- “Dikhao” (Let me see) after it was over.
“A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows”
~John Powell
“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating…
…and you finish off as an orgasm.”
~George Carlin
to see with much more sharpness and on black background: Flickr
This photograph got developed naturally. Initially I just saw this old lady sitting on this swing. The first thing that came to my mind is how a child and a old person are same. After that I went there in the park and sat in front of them. After sometime everybody forgot about me. And that is when I started photographing. After some time this girl came and started playing on the swing. That was when I imagined my final photograph. The old woman and a young child, both at the swing but with a difference. The old woman just want to see, she has lost all the enthusiasm to explore. While the child is full of energy.
After spending a lot of time I am not able to get what I wanted but it is close. I am getting more and more observant of my surroundings. Sometimes I feel the desire to manually control things and create a photograph. But to create something in this manner gives you a vast area to explore. You get all types of models, their different styles in their natural surroundings. It is just a little more complicated but I would like to master it rather than learn to manually create them.
“A single chair in the corner of a dark balcony,
And a lot of windows watch me”
~Fatima Naoot
What is this old lady thinking? Does she want to talk? Or she just want to watch.
Must see here on Flickr as it looks superb on black background
Photography has given me a lot of wonderful experiences. You talk to unknown strangers without any context, without any judgement. you just talk. I was a little apprehensive about going close to her and taking the photograph. I thought she would refuse. I was taking a long distance photograph when she called me.
She was speaking Marathi I guess and I din’t understand a single word she said. But I felt connected to her. It was like she was searching for someone to talk.
I just listened to her and took photographs. She was not nervous.
There are some photography tips I learnt from this photograph. I think you will benefit from them too.
1. The placement of subject: I cropped the upper portion to allow more of the wall in the lower portion. This shifted the weight to the upper side and now you feel that you are looking up.
2. The color: I added some texture on the background of the balcony. The blue color of the background gave the depth to the photograph. It gave the lady a push and a color contrast.
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm”
~Henry David Thoreau
See on flickr for a much better quality and black background
Spent a lot of time on editing. I read some tutorial on ‘How to give a painterly effect?’ in a book by Scott Kelby yesterday. I din’t have any suitable photograph to try at that time. I went for a photo-walk in the small break I got between rains. I saw this old lady from a long distance and I decided to take a photograph. It came instinctively to me that only the side pose will reflect her true state. In side pose you can see the bend in her body which makes a lot of impact. I waited for her till she came opposite to me and took this photograph. After going through Lightroom and Photoshop the final result came out to be complete different from the original.
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See on Flickr for a better and non-distracting background
I din’t experiment a lot with this photograph as I observed it just how I wanted it to be. I just used a little trick I use while photographing people. I start from a distance taking a larger area. It helps in avoiding people to become conscious. Then you can go closer and closer until they notice you. If they don’t panic, you can experiment with various angles. If not, say sorry and leave. You just have to crop them to get the photograph.
“Old men’s eyes are like old men’s memories; they are strongest for things a long way off”
GEORGE ELIOT
See on Flickr for a better view
I took this photograph at Lakeside, IITB. I like to capture static frames. When you just sit at a place, let your mind loose, enjoy the silence. It shows ‘growing old’ in a very positive manner. Not for the death but for the life you have lived. For all the stories and adventures lived. This song My Way sung by Frank Sinatra just says everything I want to say by this photograph.
“And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and ev’ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way
I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
“Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way”
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!
Yes, it was my way”
I have decided to start again my old style of showing how a photograph is made.
1. I observed this old man sitting near the lake, just lost in his thoughts. I took the initial trial photograph to see the exposure and the make up for the difference between what you see in Camera and what appears to your eyes.
2. The contrast was good but the highlights appeared too much washed out. So I removed the sky by changing the vantage point.
3. It was better than previous one but not something which stands out. So I decided to make use of some surrounding features. I clicked one frame using a tree to make a frame and another one through the grass.
4. I liked the one taken though grass. The placing of grass on right side was intentional to balance the weight of the photograph. The use of grass led to a new idea of clicking through a lower angle showing more of the out of focus grass.
5. After editing it in Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5, adding some textures, I got my final photograph.
I also edited one other photograph as it was also impactful.
The first railway on Indian sub-continent ran over a stretch of 21 miles from Bombay to Thane on 16 April 1853.In nearly 150 years it has grown over 114,500 kilometres which carry over 30 million passengers daily.Indian Railways (reporting mark IR) is an iconic Indian organisation, owned and operated by the Government of India through the Ministry of Railways. It has the world’s fourth largest railway network after those of the United States, Russia and China.
I have been documenting the platforms for a long time now. Till now it has not been specifically for photography, but now having a good amount of images on the subject I think I will research it more and make it more detailed.
You can see the complete set on flickr with all the photographs till now here
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.
~Henry Ford
I have been trying different formats for portrait photography for some time now. Portraits excite me to no ends. I want to document some people near me and maybe extend it to others if it goes well. She is an Undergraduate in MSc. Chemistry at IIT Bombay who is more interested in business than chemistry. She plays guitar, read books, sort of addicted of coffee and chocolates :P.
See on Flickr for a better view
Taken during a photo-walk on the streets of Mumbai. This home was just on the road. While the structure of the home suggests the problem of getting a place to live, the woman depicts a lonely housewife. By coincidence the color of the saree matches the color of walls and makes the photograph more interesting.
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The Silent Discourse 