Aug 19, 2023 02:10 PM IST

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On World Photography Day,observed on August 19, here’s pointing the lens towards some NCR-based shutterbugs who are creating captivating compositions that challenge conventional norms.

On World Photography Day, today, here’s turning the lens towards some NCR-based photographers who are clicking captivating frames to shatter conventional norms. From whispering the tale of women’s mental well-being to painting emotions in pixels, daring to unmask taboos, and spotlighting menstruation and hygiene struggles — every click of theirs is an attempt to capture narratives that demand attention, through a canvas where compositions speak louder than words.

The sanity of survival

Cheena Kapoor, a Delhi-based photographer chose to capture the Forgotten Daughters in the female ward at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), in the Capital. The place houses about 80 women with mental health problems. “Mental illness is not the only war the women fight here. It’s also the stigma of social acceptance and gender discrimination, which is a major cause of their trauma,” shares Kapoor, who has been practising her hand at the lens since eight years. She adds, “The male ward is always filled with anxious faces of family members waiting for the sons to return home while the daughters have been easily forgotten because most of them have faced one trauma or the other to be stuck in the mental health situation they are in, after which even their families do not wish to acknowledge their existence. The dilemma of hope in these women is what has been captured in the photo series.”

Love without limitations

“When I was chasing my dream to become a doctor, photography simply happened to me and that too wedding photography. The way emotions unfold at an Indian wedding is phenomenal,” says Sumit Verma, a Noida-based photographer breaking the stigma around weddings of couples from the LGBTQ+ community by offering them free photoshoots of their weddings and union ceremony. Verma, who started clicking pictures via his father’s camera since he was 10 years old, shares, “I had witnessed how hotels and resorts tend to deny bookings for same sex marriages, which is why I wanted to work for their inclusivity in the society. By focusing on LGBTQ+ couples, I aim to create a platform that acknowledges and validates their relationships, showing that they are just as significant and beautiful as any other couple because as per my belief, love comes with no boundaries, and such is the story of the same-sex couples who I’ve clicked.”

Good stains on the frames

“I believe it was important for a man to represent menstrual hygiene and talk about menstruation in some way because its not only a ‘women’ probably. The word menstruation itself has the word men in it, which is I felt it was important to educate people about it,” says Niraj Gera, a Delhi-based photographer who has been sensitising the society towards the stigmas associated with menstruation hygiene through his docu-series, Sacred Stains. “It wasn’t easy to capture the pictures in this series because even today, women in the rural parts of Delhi and other places are not very comfortable talking about menstruation with a man. This is why, for some photos I had to pose with the sanitary pad to make them know how it’s okay to touch the pad, even for a man, and they need to befriend it for their own betterment,” shares Gera, who’s been clicking pictures since 13 years.

Author tweets @maishascribbles

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• ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  

  Manvi Singh

  Manvi Singh writes on art, culture and campus, for the daily Entertainment & Lifestyle supplement, HT City.

• Topics
• World Photography Day

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It’s been a big summer for cinema. After a slow few years, moviegoers have returned in droves, hungry for the high-production, ambitious blockbusters on offer. 

This special looks at the global cinema industry through the lenses of nine photographers. Spanning Brigitte Lacombe on film sets, Park Chan-wook’s everyday objects, Gelareh Kiazand’s Iranian women and Nadia Lee Cohen’s vision of Hollywood, it’s a celebration of the art, craft and big personalities of moviemaking.

Celebrity

Brigitte Lacombe

FRANCE and the US

French photographer Brigitte Lacombe has been photographing film sets since 1975. Working for Elle magazine that year, aged 25, she found herself in Cannes, photographing Dustin Hoffman. “He threw me this invitation to come and work on this next movie when I left,” she told journalist Emily McDermott in 2015. “It turned out to be All the President’s Men.”

In the five decades since, Lacombe has photographed behind the scenes of films being made by Martin Scorsese, with whom she has a longstanding friendship, Federico Fellini, Steven Spielberg, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Lynne Ramsay, Michael Haneke and many more.

The skill, she says, is to “be invisible, interested, patient”. Above all, it’s “to love cinema, and to love actors”. It is the opposite world to her regular studio work, photographing Dior campaigns or making editorial shots of artists, politicians and intellectuals.

“In the studio, I am in control. On a film set, I am a guest. I have no control over anything. Even though I am there at the invitation of the director, my presence is not essential. I need to adapt to their world and observe, find my way without interfering.”

Her pictures offer a glimpse into a world otherwise concealed. During the making of All the President’s Men, shot on location in Washington DC, she captures director Alan Pakula and Robert Redford deep in conversation with their crew, with the Lincoln Memorial standing firm in the background. In another, John Malkovich holds a cigarette to Uma Thurman’s lips on a break from shooting Dangerous Liaisons in a château just outside Paris. They are “a mixture of themselves, smoking with sunglasses”, Lacombe observes, and professionals, dressed in their period costumes and ready to return to work.

Nadia Lee Cohen

US and UK

Nadia Lee Cohen is a photographer, film-maker and self-portrait artist. Essex-born and now based in the US, she is heavily inspired by Americana and British cinema, particularly from the 1960s and ’70s. Her photographs of stars, including Sophia Loren and Lana Del Rey — often set against a backdrop of a sultry, sweaty LA — straddle the line between the glamorous and the garish. She’s best known for Women, a series of 100 portraits of women wearing whatever they feel it is to be “unclothed”. The resulting images present a vision of “strong femininity”, she says. She answers our questions about her cinematic inspirations.

If you could be any movie star for a day, who would you be?
Is Larry David a movie star?

What’s your favourite movie?
The Shining is still my favourite.

What is “star quality”?
Feeling that someone is in a room before you’ve actually seen them. And having one of those signed photos of yourself on the wall of an Italian restaurant.

Which artist is inspiring you now?
I’ve a recent fascination with the ambulance-chaser photographer Enrique Metinides, in particular the image “Adela Legarreta Rivas is struck by a white Datsun on Avenida Chapultepec, 29 April 1979”.

What’s the best thing about living in LA? And the worst?
The way it looks and the way it looks.

Which photograph do you wish you’d taken?
That photo from New Year’s Eve on a street in Manchester that looks like a renaissance painting.

Is self-invention a bad thing?
Bad self-invention is bad. Good self-invention is great.

‘Women’ (5th edition) will be published by IDEA on September 17

Kalpesh Lathigra

UK

Over the past 10 years, Kalpesh Lathigra has photographed everyone from Carey Mulligan to Keir Starmer, the refugees at the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan and his friends and family in London using his Polaroid Studio Express — a four-lens camera typically used to take UK passport photos. “The passport or identity card photograph is the one photograph we all have,” he says.

Lathigra’s A Democratic Portrait series has become a way for the photographer to equalise his subjects: everyone is treated with the same basic flash lighting and proportions. It’s also been a means to retain some creative control over his photographs.

Free from the constraints of the creative direction of celebrity photoshoots, Lathigra has been able to capture his subjects more candidly. Preparing his sitters, he asks simply for their “quietness and introspection”. “It allows a form of transcendence,” he says. But some are old hands. Joan Collins was “the consummate professional, charming and effectively controlling the whole affair,” recalls Lathigra. She checked her hair and changed her outfit for the picture. “In essence, she knew exactly how she wanted to be seen.”

Art

Christian Marclay

UK

I first thought of making a video about doors while working on my 24-hour installation “The Clock”, a sequence of film fragments showing clocks that flowed in real time. I was searching for “editing points” that would allow me to move from one minute to the next, one film excerpt to another. I noticed that a door scene offered an interesting transitional moment.

The door is a threshold between two spaces, but it could also be a threshold between two films. Someone opening a door and entering a new space is usually filmed with a “shot-reverse shot”, where the door is opened from one side and the camera is moved to the other side to show the actor entering the next space. In my film, someone opens a door then someone else enters a new space and a new film. We accept the illusion briefly, and then we see the actors are not the same. We realise we have been fooled.

These editing techniques form the basis of cinematography. They are the grammar of cinema. Movies are made from thousands of fragments, edited together to create an illusion of continuity, a realistic flow and, ultimately, a narrative.

The film that really allowed me to understand this was Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, which I saw as an art student in the late 1970s. She used jump cuts to show someone’s feet while they were walking, but each step was taken on a different surface: carpet, concrete, grass, sand.

“Doors” has been the most difficult of all my videos to edit. I had to find scenes in which an actor enters and exits a space, then the speed of the motion had to match, as well as the direction of the opening door (pushed or pulled, hinged left or right). I had an assistant watching everything from American film noir to French New Wave, Hollywood blockbusters and obscure German B-movies. I focused on the editing, which is all-consuming. I did not have the pleasure of watching all of these films (which is why my knowledge of cinema is, surprisingly, spotty). It would be too distracting.

Doors are fascinating objects, rich with symbolism. They can hide or reveal, express opposites of light or dark, exterior or interior, open or closed. This richness is the reason film-makers love them. Making this video, I realised that even though we constantly encounter doors, we don’t think much about them. Try to remember all the doors you’ve gone through today. We are constantly pushing and pulling them, entering and exiting architectural spaces. They are commonplace, yet unfamiliar. We find ourselves wondering what is on the other side, where we may end up. There is the fear and anxiety we associate with the unknown, but also anticipation and potential.

Words by Christian Marclay. ‘Doors’ is on show at White Cube Mason’s Yard from September 6 to 30

Film Posters

Egypt

From the 1930s until the 1980s, Egyptian films were the most widely watched cinema across the Arab world. As the country refined its movie-making style (melodramatic, musical, rich with romance), a parallel industry emerged in the accompanying posters. These were made mostly with stone lithographic printing and designed by illustrators who worked independently from the production studios. Excitement around the release of new posters soon began to rival that around the films themselves. Would-be viewers would see new designs plastered around Cairo’s squares and on rooftop billboards, as Joseph Fahim recalls in Moving Pictures Painted: 200 Posters From the Golden Age of Egyptian Cinema. “For decades, the sight of movie posters was integral to Egyptian life.” They became “more than mere publicity tools; they were dreamscapes close at hand”. Subtlety, he writes, held little importance, and their sumptuous designs mirrored the melodrama of the stories they advertised. “Each carried a confection of emotions, sentiments and big personalities. Love, action, comedy, sex, violence, fantasy.”

From ‘Moving Pictures Painted: 200 Posters From the Golden Age of Egyptian Cinema’, with essays from Joseph Fahim, Haytham Nawar and Christiane Gruber, published by CentreCentre

Park Chan-wook

South Korea

As a student, Park Chan-wook wandered the streets of Seoul with his photography club, his eye drawn to the city itself over its inhabitants.

He went on to become a film-maker, producing meticulously plotted psychological thrillers (Oldboy, The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave), but continued to make still photographs in his free time, describing the spontaneity of photography as an “antidote” to the painstaking work of film-making. In 2021, he published a photography book titled Your Faces. 

Chan-wook is still interested in the cityscapes and inanimate subjects he photographed in his youth, but in Your Faces we see his desire to find characters, or faces, within each frame. “Whether it’s landscape or still life, perhaps I shoot all things as if shooting a portrait,” he has said. “I portray the status, character, life dynamics, current sentiment, and face of whoever has become the subject of my camera. This is how I communicate with all beings of the world.”

As film magazine editor Haery Kim observes in an essay accompanying Chan-wook’s photographs, “here is a storyteller freed from the confinements of storytelling”.

Park Chan-wook’s ‘Your Faces’ is published by Eulyoo Publishing

Gelareh Kiazand

US and Canada

These portraits were taken by Iranian film-maker and photographer Gelareh Kiazand during the filming of Shirin by Abbas Kiarostami. The film records more than 100 actresses sitting in a cinema, watching a screening of a tragic love story by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, entitled “Khosrow and Shirin”. “Shirin was one of Kiarostami’s favourite films that he made. It was his tribute not only to one of Iran’s oldest love stories, but to cinema,” Kiazand says. “He believed cinema exemplified the art of a reaction. We as the audience would see how these women reacted to feeling love and loss. That was also the aim of the photographs.” She shot them as a series of reactions from one angle, to show no distinction, hiding in a corner behind a black cloth with only her lens visible, so as not to influence the actors. “Working with him taught you to keep it simple and just watch life.”

Kiazand’s work is included in ‘Breathing Space: Iranian Women Photographers’ by Anahita Ghabaian, published by Thames & Hudson

Craft

Sarker Protick

Bangladesh

Bangla films tend to follow the same narrative structure: a romance between a hero and a heroine comes under threat from a vengeful villain. The tension often stems from the risk of violence (which, when it comes, is often paired with comic sound effects).

Following the unrest in Bangladesh in 2013, which broke out when a senior Islamist political leader was sentenced to death, bloodshed became a part of daily real life. The banality of the situation prompted Bangladeshi visual artist Sarker Protick to stage his own depictions of violence in the style of Bangla cinema.

Working on sets in the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation in Dhaka, he created tableau photographs of crime bosses and their captives. The resulting photographs “oscillate between the real and the imaginary”.

Stanley Kubrick

UK

Stanley Kubrick enlisted his Barry Lyndon production designer Roy Walker to work on the sets for The Shining. Walker began with ground plans; then, after lengthy talks with Kubrick, he had white cardboard models built of furniture and sofas. Once Kubrick approved a cardboard model, a wooden scale model was constructed in the film studio in Hertfordshire, where most of the film was shot. “Cause Stanley could never make his mind up about anything,” Walker said, “instead of doing sketches — because you can sketch forever with Stanley, and he’d just throw them all away — it all started, funnily enough, when I suggested doing models. So we started building these models to a big scale, one inch to the foot they were, or a half-inch to the foot. And because we had these models, everything became three-dimensional to Stanley.”

The director of photography John Alcott could also light these miniature sets and photograph them with his Nikon still camera, using the same angles they might use later, then test different lighting arrangements and study the results with Kubrick, a process that took weeks or longer.

Excerpted from ‘Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining’ by Lee Unkrich and J W Rinzler, published by Taschen

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Saturday marks World Photography Day. And in celebration, The National has rounded up some of the best artists behind the lens from across the Arab world.

Here are eight to know.

Youssef Nabil

Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil’s work combines different artistic sensibilities from the East and West.

Nabil first gained recognition for his stunning portraits of renowned artists and film stars including Robert De Niro, Alicia Keys, Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat, French actress Catherine Deneuve and Egyptian actors Omar Sharif and Faten Hamama.

Nabil’s portraits and his later works, where he creates otherworldly images, are mesmerising not only for his distinctive hand-colouring technique on gelatin silver prints, but for the way he captures his sitters and subject matter.

Amir Hazim

Living between Dubai and Baghdad, Iraqi photographer Amir Hazim’s work captures streets, portraits and architecture.

Hazim’s work is known for his cinematic, black-and-white photography – often capturing moments as they occur organically – as well as more considered and composed images through his portraits.

Across all his works, Hazim records his own observations and Baghdad’s social history, while exploring human nature and presence, as part of a larger conversation around cultural complexity and archiving the present moment.

Van Leo

Van Leo is perhaps one of the most important figures in the art of portraiture of his generation, making a profound impact on Arab pop culture.

Leo and his family escaped the Armenian genocide in 1925 when he was four and settled in Egypt. Growing up in the ’30s, Leo had an interest in photography and undertook an apprenticeship in the field before opening his own studio with his brother in 1941.

Leo’s portraits of people, particularly those of Egyptian celebrities, were influenced by Hollywood’s glamorous and theatrical aesthetics. His extreme attention to detail, from lighting, composition and style, produced some of his memorable images. These include portraits of renowned figures such as poet Doria Shafik and writer Taha Hussein, as well as his own innovative self-portraits.

Mous Lamrabat

Moroccan-Belgian photographer Mous Lamrabat has taken the idea of hybrid style to a new space.

Speaking to the generation of Middle Eastern people who are reinterpreting their heritage through an urban and more international voice, Lamrabat explores identity, globalisation and fashion.

The subjects in his portraits wear niqabs, abayas and kaftans along with other distinctly traditional items of clothing and patterns, which he styles and photographs in a way that reframes them culturally without losing their authenticity.

Marie Al Khazen

Marie Al Khazen was an early adopter of photography in Lebanon. Her images of rural life in the 1920s are considered a unique archival record of the region at a particular time. The photo above illustrates Al Khazen’s style of capturing landscapes and how people interact with nature.

Aside from her landscape photographs, which she developed using a set-up in her own darkroom, Al Khazen also photographed people in particular narratives dressing them in specific clothing.

One of her most well-known images is entitled Two Women Disguised as Men, a self-portrait of her with her sister where they are smoking and dressed in western business suits under a large painted portrait of their grandfather.

Hassan Hajjaj

Known for combining Moroccan and western pop culture in his work, Hassan Hajjaj has made a name for himself internationally by subverting his audiences’ expectations.

In his work Chillin, four Morrocan women are dressed in what seems to be traditional clothing. However, instead of wearing traditional black, the fabrics are animal print or adorned with the logo of a high-end fashion brand. Even the women’s poses, with two looking downward and the others gazing out at the viewer, are a commentary on how women, particularly Arab women, have been depicted in art and photography.

These contrasts create jarring and fun concepts, which are also displayed in another one of his most famous works Kesh Angels in 2010.

Here, Hajjaj photographed five veiled women sitting comfortably in “power poses” on motorbikes in front of Marrakesh’s Theatre Royal.

Latif Al Ani

Known as the “father of Iraqi photography”, Latif Al Ani captured the country’s changing face as it entered a new urban phase.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Al Ani was one of the only photographers to archive the country’s changing architectural and rural landscapes, alongside Baghdad’s post-colonial society and the rising middle class.

Chronicling Iraq before the rise of Saddam Hussein, Al Ani captured the boundless optimistic spirit of the country’s golden age as it experienced a socio-economic boom and entered into a modern, exciting future, while also remaining true to its heritage.

Khalil Hamra

Palestinian photojournalist Khalil Hamra has gained worldwide recognition for his powerful work across the region.

Since joining the Associated Press in 2002, he’s covered and documented the blockade of Gaza, the Egyptian uprisings and the civil war in Syria.

In 2009, Khalil was recognised by the Overseas Press Club of America with the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his series covering the conflict in Gaza and has won two Pulitzer Prizes in the breaking news category (2013 and 2019).

Updated: August 19, 2023, 3:01 AM

World Photography Day 2023: World Photography Day is observed on August 19 every year globally. The day celebrates the process of documenting memories. Also, it aims to bridge the gap between photographers and photo lovers from all over the world so they can learn and earn on a common platform.

World Photography Day’s origins can be traced back to 1837 when Frenchmen Louis Daguerre and Joseph Nicephore Niepce created the Daguerreotype, the earliest photography technique. Also, World Photography Day on August 19, annually commemorates the declaration of patent for the invention by the French government.

This year World Photography Day will be celebrated on the theme, ‘Landscapes.’ According to the worldphotographyday.com, “On World Photography Day this year, feel free to share the best photos you’ve taken of landscapes and don’t forget to tag  #WorldPhotographyDay and #WorldPhotographyDay2023 on the social media platform of your choice. “

World Photography Day 2023: Wishes & Messages

• On this World Photography Day, best wishes to you. Take photographs that are unlike anything else and that will win everyone over.
• Photography embraces reality in a way that is so subtly different from reality that it truly transcends it. I wish you a happy World Photography Day.
• The world seems to you as radically different once you begin viewing it through the lens. Happy World Photography Day, everyone.
• The same camera and lens are used, yet how distinctive a picture is will depend on whose hands are holding it. All the best!
• You don’t just capture a picture; you actually produce one since your talent aids in the process. Safeguard your camera!
• You don’t need the latest technology to take good pictures; you just need the ability to observe and make the subject come to life. Greetings on World Photography Day.
• Let’s turn our hobby of taking pictures into a passion for taking images on the occasion of World Photography Day. Enjoy your day!
• For a photographer, every moment is special and every place is lovely because he can use his lens to make it appear so different. Greetings on World Photography Day.
• Happy World Photography Day, everyone. Click to record the moments and save them as a memory for later.
• Before taking a nice image, you must take a lot of terrible ones. I wish you a happy World Photography Day, my love.

World Photography Day 2023: WhatsApp & Facebook Status

• On this World Photography Day, best wishes to you. Don’t be afraid to snap photos because they serve as memories’ canvases.
• Happy World Photography Day, everyone. The most imaginative method to view the world is through photographs.
• Good photographers are endowed with an outlook that differs from the rest of the world. Greetings on World Photography Day.
• Make World Photography Day a lovely occasion to honour the love of taking pictures. I wish you all a happy World Photography Day.
• All people enjoy looking at photographs because they jog our memories and touch us on a deep level. On this World Photography Day, best wishes.
• Happy World Photography Day! May you take many more stunning photos to record the wonderful events in your life.
• By taking pictures of all the key occasions and compiling them into a life album, you can make it a wonderful World Photography Day.
• A single click will suffice to record the moment. I’d like to wish you a very happy World Photography Day.
• Some people enjoy taking pictures, while others prefer to be in them. On this World Photography Day, best wishes.
• Photographers are magicians who can transform common people into something remarkable. On this World Photography Day click crazy.

World Photography Day 2023: Images

Change your dp with these amazing pictures to gain some extra view.

Source: Vecteezy.com (Pinterest)

Source: Pinterest

Source: The Cottage Market (Pinterest)

Source: Freepik (Pinterest)

World Photography Day 2023: Famous & Inspirational Quotes

• “In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”- Alfred Stieglitz
• “There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”- Robert Frank
• “Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.”- Anonymous
• “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”- Aaron Siskind
• “When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.”- Alfred Eisenstaedt
• “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”- Ansel Adams
• “A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”- Edward Steichen
• “It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.”- Paul Caponigro
• “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”- Andy Warhol
• “Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.”- Diane Arbus
• “What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are time and light.”- John Berger
• “There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.”- Abraham Lincoln

Do not forget to click and create memories this World Photography Day. Happy Clicking!

Important Days and Dates in August 2023

Aug 19, 2023 07:12 AM IST

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On World Photography Day, in her first ever interview, star kid Rasha Thadani, daughter of actor Raveena Tandon and producer Anil Thadani, talks about her passion for wildlife photography and her big-screen debut.

Rasha Thadani is yet to debut as an actor, but looks like the star kid has quite a fan following already, thanks to her photography skills. On World Photography Day, Rasha /says it is her mother, actor Raveena Tandon, who inspired her to take up wildlife photography.

“I must have been eight when she took us for our first tiger safari to Ranthambhore (Rajasthan)… I used to watch her use her camera and get so excited over the shots she had got. I would use her phone camera, which was obviously was easier to operate as compared to a DSLR camera, but it was a start.” says the 18-year-old, who came fourth a the Jaipur Tiger Photography Festival 2022, and was the youngest participant.

She admits she was bitted by the “keeda of photography” when she visited Bandhavgarh National Park (Madhya Pradesh) in 2021, and took her first wildlife shot. “And it has just grown bigger ever since,” says Rasha, describing photography and capturing memories as “infinite happiness, a moment frozen in time, on a reel, that’s so precious.”

The First-time experience

While Rasha, for the first time held a professional camera in Bandhavgarh, she shares that it’s magical to explore the woods. “Just being in the jungle on the whole is the most beautiful experience anybody could have. The thrill of being on the trail of a predator, following pug marks and alarm calls, and then the sudden sighting of a tiger, emerge from the foliage, in its full glory — it’s just indescribable. And capturing these moments on camera is even more thrilling,” says Rasha, admitting that at first, she was “pretty confused and clueless” about what she was doing.

She elaborates, “I was still trying the grasp the concepts of ISO and shutter speed. Also, I was a little stressed out because the animal keeps moving, so to capture the correct moment or look of the animal with the correct angle and right lighting, it’s all important. Somehow, my first few pictures came out better than I expected, but slowly I got the hang of it. I’m still learning and improving my photography skills.”

Childhood love continues…

While Rasha’s tryst with photography started only recently, she says even as a kid, she would always look for interesting things to capture. “I used to have a small digital camera, and I would roam around my farmhouse trying to find interesting things to click. I would also have it with me around the house and suddenly go, ‘Papa smile!’, and try and get that on camera. I would take pictures of my daadi, my brother, my dogs… basically whatever I found around the house, I used to try and make a story of it.,” recounts Rasha, and quips, “I now click pictures of Indian wildlife which is obviously a lot more interesting.”

She also tells us that she looks up to wildlife photographers Varun Aditya, Shaaz Jung, Sarosh Lodhi for their stunning wildlife pictures. “I see their posts every day and I’m in awe of their talent and the beauty of the Indian jungle they capture. All their pictures have a sense of mystery and magic which somehow create a story in my mind,” says Rasha, adding, “Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle book was one of my favourite books as a child. Mom also used to read us stories from Jim Corbett’s books, these photographers somehow re-created those images in my head.

Tryst with the wildlife

Explaining what fascinates her the most while she is out there capturing animals, the photography enthusiast tells us, “Photography is a lot about luck and timing. Having sightings with interesting behaviour is not something that happens every day. For example, I have never seen a kill happening, even though I’m in the jungle very often. However, some beginners might have seen a kill even if they don’t visit the forest very often. Timing is also important to capture the exact moment that you want. That split second of the tiger looking at you, or the bird opening its wings to fly. There is no retake in wildlife photography.”

While Rasha has clicked several pictures in the woods, and is proud of each one of them, she singles out this one shot and calls it one of her “favourite pictures from my collection”.

Stating that it was very difficult to capture that shot, she shares, “It was early morning, dawn, there was low light and I’d spotted a cub walking in the distance towards us on the side of the main road. The cub then started moving into the forest and looked back at us for a second. His face lit up with a ray of sunlight in between two branches of a tree. It is by far one of the best pictures in my collection.”

Camera girl, always!

From enjoying her time behind the camera to facing it for the first time, Rasha calls it surreal. “As much as I love capturing moments behind the camera, I also love being in front of it. Ever since I was a child I used to ask my mom to film me dancing or singing. In fact, there are a few videos where I’ve either recited a poem or sang a song and then said, ‘Mama show me’. I got the opportunity to work behind the camera at a pretty young age and it was an amazing experience., But, when I had to face the camera for the first time, I can’t describe that feeling,” she says, confessing that she was “nervous, scared, but extremely excited all at the same time”.

She goes on, “Growing up, I had witnessed my mom flawlessly doing her parts in films, and that gave me a confidence boost to do the same. About my project, I don’t really know what to say right now, and I guess the audience will have to wait and watch.”

A pap favourite, but first, mama’s daughter

As fans await Rasha’s first look from her debut film alongside Aaman Devgan (nephew of actor Ajay Devgn), she seems to be already enjoying spotlight as a favourite among the paparazzi. “People have been really sweet and kind to me and I’m just thankful for that. I am grateful for all the love and positivity I’ve been receiving. It’s slightly overwhelming at such an early age but I honestly love it,” she tells us.

Ahead of her Bollywood debut, Rasha also asserts that she has there is a lot she has learnt from her mum, and she will continue to do so. “My mom’s guidance is invaluable to me, not because she’s an actor, but because she’s my mom. She has handled herself with such grace and maturity, and I want to be like her 100%. She is my role model so of course I look up to her for everything,” says Rasha, and mentions, “I would still go to her for career advice even if she wasn’t a part of the film industry. She always has my back and would always want the best for me.”

What’s next in store?

The fact that Rasha has started shooting for her film, being directed by Abhishek Kapoor and slated to release in February 2024, she must be getting used to how the film industry functions: “As of now, I love the fact that I can put my creative self out there. I’ve always been a performing arts girl. Even through school, I was always the theatre girl, or the music girl. I’ve just begun my journey and I’m excited to see what’s to unfold.”

Speaking of any potential challenges that she thinks can come in the way, she adds, “I think being from a film background predisposes you to a certain kind of expectation and pressure from the audience. I hope to live up to that expectation and I will try my best to make the audience happy.”

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• Topics
• Actor
• Raveena Tandon
• World Photography Day

Honoured with the prestigious Young Photographer of the Year Award in 2021 at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition — often hailed as the ‘Oscars of Wildlife Photography’ — Vidyun, at the tender age of 12, stands as a prodigious talent.

His photographs have also been highly commended in the 2020 edition of Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Adding to his laurels, he recently earned a Special Mention at the NatureInFocus Festival 2023.

On the occasion of World Photography Day 2023, The Weather Channel India brings you an exclusive interview with the young talent. Vidyun takes us on an incredible exploration of his photography journey, unveiling stories that breathe life into his brilliant captures, and his future plans to pursue photography professionally and explore Antarctica someday.

How did you get started with photography? What was your first photograph ever?

It was back in 2014 when photography first caught my interest. My father, who also has a passion for wildlife photography, won the category award under Amphibians and Reptiles at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in 2014.

Seeing my father on the big stage, receiving the award, inspired me a lot. As soon as we returned from the event, I asked if I could try the camera. So, I picked a camera for the first time when I was around three years old and clicked my first photograph — a photo of my father.

I started learning when I was six years old, and I have been pursuing photography ever since, with a focus on nature photography.

Why nature photography? Are there any subjects or elements that you look forward to capturing the most?

It was my father who inspired me to take up nature photography. As for my favourite subject, I would say it is the ‘Signature Spider’. It was this spider image that first got me the Highly Commended Award at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year in the under 10 years category.

This particular spider species is very common in and around Bengaluru, getting its name from the unique way in which it weaves its web. It makes white signatures around its legs that reflect UV rays, making it look bigger to its predators. I find it very interesting as a subject, and since we find it a lot around here, I have ample opportunities to capture it creatively.

Moreover, I am very passionate about macro photography, where I capture small bugs, spiders and butterflies. In macro photography, we go very close to our subject, and the images give us an extreme close-up (one is to one) of the subject.

While I focus more on bugs and geckos, I’m also exploring street photography and creating creative ads for fun.

Do you have a favourite photo? What’s the story behind that shot?

It is really difficult to pick one, but apart from the spider captures, I think this photo of a Gecko is very special to me.

I clicked this in Sringeri (a Karnataka town located in the Western Ghats) when I had just begun photography. I remember being very tired after taking several photographs quite early in the morning. Just as we were returning to our grandfather’s car, my father spotted this Gecko, and I got close to it and captured the shot from the car.

Where do you like to click most of your photos? Do you have a favourite spot?

It would be the parks and gardens of Bengaluru. Now we know it as India’s Silicon City, but one of its original nicknames is the ‘Garden City of India.’ I go to parks near my home, and once we choose a spot depending on the light, I’m ready with my camera to click photos. During holidays, we also visit the outskirts of Bengaluru for my captures.

As for spots outside Bengaluru that I love the most, it would be the forest-like areas near my grandfather’s place in Sringeri. There, I get to shoot a lot of rare species and subjects that you wouldn’t find in cities.

You have been awarded the Young Photographer of the Year Award in 2021 and have been highly commended in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition in 2020 as well. How do you feel after getting recognition at such international events?

Winning these awards is always a proud and joyous moment for me. When I get recognition and exposure at such international events and competitions, I’m more motivated to click good images.

Moreover, I love being on the stage. When receiving the awards, speaking in front of such inspiring people is a proud moment for me. I feel happy and elated when people come to congratulate me, discuss my work and click photos with me.

The process and submissions are mostly online, but when it comes to selecting the photos, firstly I focus on the creativity behind the photos and their uniqueness. It is an added plus if it’s a rare species, but I’m yet to capture one of those.

Also, my father and I are part of a forum called Creative Nature Photography. It is a collective of many acclaimed photographers. Here we upload creative images, and the senior photographers are always there to mentor us with their suggestions. In fact, their guidance and support have also helped me improve my work and think creatively for competitions.

I also enjoy meeting senior photographers at competitive events. Recently, at the NatureInFocus Ceremony, I had the opportunity to interact with Dhritiman Mukherjee, who is a senior wildlife photographer. His journey and work motivate me to explore photography more.

Tell us about the recent ‘Special Mention’ you received at the NatureInFocus Festival 2023. What is the story behind Gecko’s Garage?

Well, Gecko’s Garage is definitely one of my favourite stories. At the time, we were vacationing in the Andaman Islands. We had stopped at a hotel in Diglipur and were having dinner. I looked up, hoping to see some stars, but all I saw was the ceiling and the lamp, and suddenly this green emerald Gecko caught my attention.

After we finished dinner, my mind was still stuck on the gecko. I remember thinking what a great photo it would be. So, while everyone was busy, I just took my camera, climbed up a table and clicked the Gecko hiding in the lamp.

What are the challenges you face as a young photographer? How do you balance school life with photography?

Mostly, I photograph on weekends and holidays, and spend some time after school processing and editing my images. But a major challenge with macro photography is that we have to go quite close to the subject. There’s always a chance that it might get disturbed and fly away, so I have to be very vigilant and cautious while approaching them.

Although sometimes the subjects are ready to cooperate, and I think spiders are the most cooperative subjects. That’s also because they don’t want their prey to spot any vibrations around them, so they don’t move a lot, especially among arthropods. But then dragonflies are very jumpy and quite difficult to capture, so you have to approach them at a snail’s pace.

For a young photographer like you, we’re sure sky’s the limit. Do you look forward to pursuing professional photography in the future? What do you dream to achieve as a photographer?

Definitely! I plan to pursue photography professionally; in fact, I want to be a wildlife photographer. But there are a few fields that I find equally interesting like geology, especially collecting and photographing rocks. I also hope that I could train to become an astronaut one day, so I can pursue astrophotography.

Among these plans is my dream to visit Antarctica someday, to shoot underwater images, explore the difficult terrain, and even see if I can find spiders and capture unique and endemic species — or even discover a new species!

Are there any other images or memorable images or anecdotes that you would like to share with us?

I’m also fascinated by birds, although they are very difficult to capture, I try and capture them whenever I have the chance. Among birds, this grey wagtail is one of my favourite captures so far, I shot this during the lockdown in 2020. I was surprised to find it playing and looking at itself in the mirror of cars and trucks every day. This is one of the best images I had captured back then, and it was a fascinating experience.

But, I think there are a few more spider images that have been some of the most memorable ones for me to shoot. This image is called ‘Dome Home’, and it was particularly hard to capture because of high-speed winds and vehicles moving in the background. I remember getting only three good shots out of the hundreds of images I captured that day.

But the one with the spider right in front of Pikachu has to be my favourite. The spider was right in front of the painting, and I thought it would be a great image if I framed it well with colours in the background. That’s how I got this shot which looks like Pikachu is ready to gobble up the spider.

Then there’s a tunnel spider that I clicked at my native place, and I really loved how it turned out, looking like it was sitting amidst glittering jewels, with the dewdrop background.

I wish my friends and other people would not be so scared of spiders and lizards. I hope to specialise in arachnology (the study of spiders) to spread awareness about these friendly beings and their importance to our environment.

For more of Vidyun’s amazing work, check out his website ​and Instagram.

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