Photo- Expo

 

Red !

Next to portraits, I love still life. I love to portray (or show) the absence of someone or the loneliness that I feel by photographing the objects/things very close to them. I’ve tried many shots before, but this was the one where i really felt, how would it be when my senior(friend) leaves the institute. He sits and works all through the day there, everyday at 4 pm we used to go for tea. After September i’ll be going alone………

P.S: This was my favorite of the 36 shots from this roll. I wanted the red color of the cushion in chair and the soft lighting from the window, it came as i expected

Workers

    Due to the increase in the intake of the students, there are new hostels being built up in our campus, obviously lot of constructions sites in our hostel zone. One such construction site is near my hostel, the people who work here are mostly from northern part of India. Its a common thing everywhere, that people who migrate from other parts of the state will be underpaid and will have less privileges. But they are happy with it.

    I approached them,  and they happily allowed me to take photographs.  Most of them are posed shots, even-though i would love to shoot natural poses which  takes a lot of effort starting from gaining their confidence by being one among them.

              Its been  a month since I posted and i’ll be writing lots of posts in the upcoming weeks. Meanwhile enjoy this one…

His bag which contains the money and the tickets 

  I took this shot last November, when i was travelling to Munnar (kerala) by bus with my friend.  We boarded the bus a minute before it started, so we got last the seat. I sat next to the conductor. Our trip was unplanned, we decided two days before the start, we knew very less about the place particularly no clue about the hotels. During the 3 hour journey, i started talking with him and we ended up having a nice chat till the end.  When we reached the destination, he helped us in finding the right guide for the trip who in turn helped us choosing the right hotel and also arranged a jeep for the site seeing.  Without his help ……….

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First roll

     The Past few months I shot 3 rolls of Black and white film in various occasion. Since the developing cost for b/w film is extremely high ( 5 times the film), I decided to do it on my own. But I was delaying it, as I couldn’t find anyone teaching me.  Two weeks back, me and my uncle decided to give it a try in his home. After  surfing through a lot of materials in the net, we started the process.   And guess we developed the film on our own,  it was average. We were able to get nearly 25 out of 36 frames in a good finish.

      And then I developed the other two rolls in my hostel, I improved a lot. But there were few frames destroyed due to the finger prints while loading the film. Here are few shots from the first roll, that I took in Vedenthangal bird sanctuary.

Blissful morning

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The Hunt starts

     After a our photo shoot in the sanctuary, we had a small breakfast at the road side shop. Well he is the son of the lady, who was cooking the food for us. There were very few shops nearby and he is the only kid in that vicinity . He was just roaming on the road trying to play, eventually got bored. I shot this, while he was having his breakfast.

Innocence

  Hope you enjoyed it

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Kids

 

 

Curiosity

I’m tired of this race

I’m flying

Brothers

Prayers

Madurai widely known as The Temple City, is the place where I stayed during my bachelors  and I got a chance to visit the city two weeks back. One of the interesting feature of this city is its architecture. The city is built around the Famous Meenakshi Amman temple  and it appears like concentric rectangles when viewed from air. The thing I love about this city is that the people always respect others even strangers irrespective of  the age and it is always flooded with people all through the day(so they also call it as The Sleepless city). Having reached by 3.00 in the morning, I decided to visit the  Meenakshi Amman temple at 7.00.

I’m sharing the bestof the lot…

The tradition

Friday is considered as the auspicious day in the week for Hindus. Women go to their near by temple and lite these small earthern lamps  and pray.

Another form of lamp used in the temples

I’m Coming- running towards his mom, they were performing form some rites there with the priests.

Art-Doors with idols carved on them

 

Prayers- Lemon is one of the sacred fruit offered to the god

Thulabaram-Weight balance

When their wishes comes true,  sometimes they offer something(Fruits, clothes, rice, silver,gold ) that they can afford equal to their weight or the weight of the youngest person in their family.

Roses

Deep Inside

A scaled version of the temple and my reflection on the glass.

Lamps used in home during auspicious occasions

Prayer-Here I give

Elephant is considered the other form of the deity Vinayaka and people bow under him,  he’ll (Elephant) place the tip of his trunk over their head, wishing them.

Hope you enjoyed it

Portraits

Portraiture and street photography are my favorites.

My friend Sarat Chandra

I was surprised when I saw this shot on the screen, because I  under-exposed  it(Somewhere I learnt in film Under-exposed shot will not be good) also I used a shutter speed of 1/15 which is the first time for me without shaking . Seriously film has lot of surprises in store….

My Cousin Yeshwanthra

 

Cute Guy

You can learn many things from children.  How much patience you have, for instance.  ~Franklin P. Jones

I shot this cute pie when he was walking with his dad in the Ground. His dad is a professor in my Institute.

Its me !!

Sleepless nights leads to this- Self portraits. Seriously it sucks, i’m not able to express myself .  Anyway this is first self portrait in Film

 

Shot in November, Developed in Jan & Scanned in Feb

I was inspired to film photography mainly by flickr, particularly after seeing Labrancaro’s photostream. I started with B/W film and I bought 3  Nova 125 Speed rolls which is the only B/W film available here. And I got the film slr from my uncle. I shot my first roll using canon A2E AF-SLR and the 3rd one using Minolta X-700 MF-SLR. I damaged the second one while rewinding it, luckily i didn’t shoot anything it.  The worst part was the next one, finding a lab to develop the rolls, it took nearly two months to find a guy. Finally got it scanned in Feb. All the credits goes to my uncle who helped me finding this guy and who also gave his SLR’s to shoot with. Till now I ask my uncle’s opinion

Best of the two rolls

The Macho man - First shot

My first shot – I love cats and my hostel has 3 and I think shot two, the other one runs away. This one is the manly of the three and he eats spicy foods only. He always sleeps on the phone desk and I shot this using Canon A2E AF SLR with 28-105 EF lens.

Deepak-My senior

One of the Entrances to Open Air Theatre

 

My best friend -Sarat Chandra

Idols @ Mamallapuram

Mamallapuram -A tourist spot

Kapaleeshwar Temple

Lake in our Campus with hostel buildings

Washing room

Stairs in My lab

P.S

This week was the best week of my life, I visited my undergrad college, went to a Bird sanctuary, got my scans for a couple of film rolls and also prints of my best shots

Photowalk

My first photo-walk in Parrys Corner (also known as Broadway) with my friend, organized by Chennai Weekend Clickers. We started as early as 5.30 in the morning from the campus to reach the destination in time (7 am).   After having tea in a road side shop, we split into groups each taking a street for the shoot.  Going in groups has its advantage, you’ll never hesitate to take shots of people, which we’ll never do while going alone mostly (for me).

Best of the lot.

 

 

 

 

I also took few shots using Minolta X-700 (with B/W film) it’ll take time for uploading the shots.