latentsouls

The Dewarists 2011

2012-01-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

( This post is a bit late but still. :P )

It has always been a mystery to me that how does one come-up with a tune or a song. I am sure all of us who are not musicians love some kind of music and wonder where it comes from? Life has been beautiful to me and I have had the privilege of being friends with some hardcore music lovers as-well-as some really beautiful musicians. And we have spent nights listening to Nusratji or Abidaji or more recently discovered Mukul Shivputra. And the mystery is still unresolved.

Had a great time shooting the series. As I was there in the very room when Shubhaji was trying different tunes to make a "Dur Kinara" with Swaratma or when Papon at 3:30 am went back to the recording room (which was Partho da's hotel room) and started working on the "Khulle da raab" and at that hour his voice was heavenly. I was there, and I was there with a camera.

On this project I made some friends who I know will stay for life, and the team I was working with was beautiful. :)
Hope you enjoy watching the following episodes.

KODAK : Images

2011-12-30T11:21:00.001-08:00

Juna Bazzar

2011-11-22T08:58:00.001-08:00

The only thing that one can expect at a Juna Bazzar is to find something totally unexpected. The other day I found these really beautiful 120mm slides from the 70s (I think) and I ended up buying them all. You can see them and make your own stories. I think the pictures are by two different families, which ended up in a single tray at the bazzar only to land into my treasure box. :) Spent a day cleaning them, did as much as i could.

Posting them here as downloadable wallpapers for your computers. (Right click, open in a tab let it load and save it to your computer!) Also uploading the actual square format un-cropped version as a downloadable zip file. (Link)

Dombari : Street Artists : Pune

2011-09-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Palestinian refugee camp : latakia : syria

2011-08-18T03:14:00.001-07:00

Nine months ago I was in Syria's port city of Latakia visiting the Palestinian refugee camps. Trying to understand the problems of a set of people who have been refugees for the past 60 odd years. Their third generation born in a country they can't call there own. And the situation was bad regular power cuts in the nights, not equal job rights and a constant feeling that they are at someone else's mercy. On 16th Aug two days ago Assad's army launched a heavy gunfire on the refugee camps and reports are that thousands of palestinians have fled again...

(Most of the names have been linked to the Wikipedia pages for references.)

Here are some Photographs of the refugee camp in Latakia.

Latakian coast line (view from the camp)

Yasser Arafat supporter.

Third generation in Syria

A coffee shop called Jaffa. Named after an old palestinian city

Mohammad took me around the camp. Age: 20

Hamas office in camp.

Aid ship leaving for Gaza form Latakia's port.

Photographs by: Aditi Kulkarni

2011-07-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

G-53. Pg. 210. Coming home.

2011-07-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

A farmer returns to God; his blood still on Gaza streets

2011-06-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

This would be the first story that I publish on the blog about my experiences in GAZA.

I met him took pictures of him and was also invited by him to his house for a cup of tea.
Four days later we get the news of his death by a sniper.

Let me warn you. This is not a happy story.

When I met Hajji Mohammed on a January morning, he was standing in front of his hut, keeping his hands on his eyes against the winter sun, mouth opened, as if phrasing a question. Hajji Mohammed lived at Beit Hanoun in the north-east tip of the Gaza strip, located by the Hanoun stream, a few hundred metres away from the Palestine-Israel border.

Ahlan Wassahlan - welcome wholeheartedly - he said as he led me to his hut with the traditional Arabic greeting. His hut smelt of black coffee and lemon. A digital clock cast a faint green light on his table. "My name is Hajji Mohammed. I am 72," he said. "My wife's name is Raigah," he added before bursting into laughter. Raigah is an unusual name, meaning 'relax' in Arabic. "Raigah", he repeated, laughing aloud again, amused by his partner's name.

But the couple had not relaxed much during the last many years. They are part of the 12 per cent of the population of Gaza who suffer due to Israeli security policies along the troubled border. Israel had established "no-go zones" and frequently bulldozed farmlands and stopped farm workers from entering the fields, leading to deaths and loss of jobs for 178,000 people out of the 1.5 million Gazans.

A United Nations report estimates that the restricted land comprises 17 per cent of Gaza's total land mass and 35 per cent of the agricultural land. The study, issued by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, says that Israel has never clearly informed those living in the area where they may and may not live and do agricultural work.

According to the report, Israel under international law must protect civilians and civilian structures. Israel argues that it is only returning fire at Hamas cadre operating from the area, who fire at Israeli military. Caught in the crossfire, many farmers are killed.

The Israeli Air Force often drops leaflets telling farmers they should not venture within 990 feet of the border. According to the report, the actual restricted area varies from 3,300 to 4,950 feet.

"The Israeli military has consistently failed to provide the affected population with accurate information about the main parameters of the access regime being enforced, particularly in the farming areas, and to a lesser degree in the restricted fishing areas," the report said.

"You don't know how far you can go. The no-go zones have restricted our movements," says Mohammed. It estimates that damage done by Israel to border farms and property over the past five years amounts to about $308 million.

Mohammed could see the border from his hut across double rows of citrus fruit trees. The street in front of his home had a bleached exhausted feel. His hut was shivering under heavy wind and stood under the brainscape of fast moving clouds. At night, the sun gives way to the silvery sweep of searchlights.

"We finish our work early by four 4 pm return to our hut. My earning has come down substantially," he said. Last month all he earned was 500 shekels. "It could take care only of my cigarettes," he said. "This is Malboro Ahmar (red),' he reminded. Then he drew on his cigarette, tripped forward to drop ash in the bowl and dipped back, breathing out plumes of smoke in patterns. His bones pushed at the ridges of his body as if the bones, even his muscles, chin and veins had been covered too thinly with his sun-beaten skin.

Gaza, a skinny town that lies like a worn-out running shoe lace along the Mediterranean, was hit by an economic blockade enforced by Egypt and Israel after the Hamas took over the Strip. His son has just lost his job. "He was working as a blacksmith and there is no more work for him," says Mohammed.

Mohammed worked as a driver for a short while and wanted to work as a driver again. "My left eye has gone almost blind. I am not sure whether I can drive properly," he said. Mohammed, a fan of vintage Bollywood movies, remembered two Indian officials visiting his village in the late 80s. "One of them looked like Amitabh Bachchan. At first I thought it was Amitabh," he said.

During the last Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008, the tanks started to move in from the border at 4 am. "When I saw them coming, I left everything and ran towards the town," said Mohammed with a neutral voice, as if it had happened to someone else.

"This is the only job I could do now. There is nowhere else we can go. Now I am back here," he added. Are you afraid of getting shot by Israelis while working at farm? "If I die here of the bullets, bless me saying inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon" (We belong to God and to Him we return).

Israel often intrudes into border farms to destroy citrus trees, as tall as men, saying they provide cover for militants. Many farmers have now turned to growing potatoes and onions which has led to a steep drop in their income. "Most citrus trees have been destroyed. I don't know who will go first - me or the farms. In any case, it is end of the story for me," said Mohammed before taking a break to scratch his hands and accessible parts of his legs.

As I prepared to leave, he asked me whether I lived near Amitabh Bachchan's home, as if to pass on some message. "I live in Delhi, he lives in Mumbai," I said.

A week after our meeting, on the night of January 11, he was shot during an Israeli fusillade. The ambulance couldn't reach his hut for long due to the heavy firing. It took him five hours to die.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon. Hajji Mohammed has returned to God. But his blood is still on the streets of Gaza.

Story by: Shafi Rahman (India Today)
Photographs: Swapnil Sonawane

Bath room in Mauritius

2011-06-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Point Of View : Arundhati Roy

2011-06-06T00:59:00.000-07:00

Arundhati Roy: 'They are trying to keep me destabilised. Anybody who says anything is in danger'

The Booker prize-winning novelist on her political activism in India, why she no longer condemns violent resistance – and why it doesn't matter if she never writes a second novel

Arundhati Roy. Photograph: Sarah Lee

This is not an ideal beginning. I bump into Arundhati Roy as we are both heading for the loo in the foyer of the large building that houses her publisher Penguin's offices. There are some authors, V S Naipaul say, with whom this could be awkward. But not Roy, who makes me feel instantly at ease. A few minutes later, her publicist settles us in a small, bare room. As we take our positions on either side of a narrow desk I liken it to an interrogation suite. But she says that in India, interrogation rooms are a good deal less salubrious than this.

Roy, who is 50 this year, is best known for her 1997 Booker prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, but for the past decade has been an increasingly vocal critic of the Indian state, attacking its policy towards Kashmir, the environmental destruction wrought by rapid development, the country's nuclear weapons programme and corruption. As a prominent opponent of everything connected with globalisation, she is seeking to construct a "new modernity" based on sustainability and a defence of traditional ways of life.

Her new book, Broken Republic, brings together three essays about the Maoist guerrilla movement in the forests of central India that is resisting the government's attempts to develop and mine land on which tribal people live. The central essay, Walking with the Comrades, is a brilliant piece of reportage, recounting three weeks she spent with the guerrillas in the forest. She must, I suggest, have been in great personal danger. "Everybody's in great danger there, so you can't go round feeling you are specially in danger," she says in her pleasant, high-pitched voice. In any case, she says, the violence of bullets and torture are no greater than the violence of hunger and malnutrition, of vulnerable people feeling they're under siege.

Her time with the guerrillas made a profound impression. She describes spending nights sleeping on the forest floor in a "thousand-star hotel", applauds "the ferocity and grandeur of these poor people fighting back", and says "being in the forest made me feel like there was enough space in my body for all my organs". She detests glitzy, corporate, growth-obsessed modern Indian, and there in the forest she found a brief peace.

There is intense anger in the book, I say, implying that if she toned it down she might find a readier audience. "The anger is calibrated," she insists. "It's less than I actually feel." But even so, her critics call her shrill. "That word 'shrill' is reserved for any expression of feeling. It's all right for the establishment to be as shrill as it likes about annihilating people."

Is her political engagement derived from her mother, Mary Roy, who set up a school for girls in Kerala and has a reputation as a women's rights activist? "She's not an activist," says Roy. "I don't know why people keep saying that. My mother is like a character who escaped from the set of a Fellini film." She laughs at her own description. "She's a whole performing universe of her own. Activists would run a mile from her because they could not deal with what she is."

I want to talk more about Mary Roy – and eventually we do – but there's one important point to clear up first. Guerrillas use violence, generally directed against the police and army, but sometimes causing injury and death to civilians caught in the crossfire. Does she condemn that violence? "I don't condemn it any more," she says. "If you're an adivasi [tribal Indian] living in a forest village and 800 CRP [Central Reserve Police] come and surround your village and start burning it, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to go on hunger strike? Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation."

Her critics label her a Maoist sympathiser. Is she? "I am a Maoist sympathiser," she says. "I'm not a Maoist ideologue, because the communist movements in history have been just as destructive as capitalism. But right now, when the assault is on, I feel they are very much part of the resistance that I support."

Roy talks about the resistance as an "insurrection"; she makes India sound as if it's ripe for a Chinese or Russian-style revolution. So how come we in the west don't hear about these mini-wars? "I have been told quite openly by several correspondents of international newspapers," she says, "that they have instructions – 'No negative news from India' – because it's an investment destination. So you don't hear about it. But there is an insurrection, and it's not just a Maoist insurrection. Everywhere in the country, people are fighting." I find the suggestion that such an injunction exists – or that self-respecting journalists would accept it – ridiculous. Foreign reporting of India might well be lazy or myopic, but I don't believe it's corrupt.

She sounds like a member of a religious sect, I say, as if she has seen the light. "It's a way of life, a way of thinking," she replies without taking offence. "I know people in India, even the modern young people, understand that here is something that's alive." So why not give up the plush home in Delhi and the media appearances, and return to the forest? "I'd be more than happy to if I had to, but I would be a liability to them in the forest. The battles have to be fought in different ways. The military side is just one part of it. What I do is another part of the battle."

I question her absolutism, her Manichaean view of the world, but I admire her courage. Her home has been pelted with stones; the Indian launch of Broken Republic was interrupted by pro-government demonstrators who stormed the stage; she may be charged with sedition for saying that Kashmiris should be given the right of self-determination. "They are trying to keep me destabilised," she says. Does she feel threatened? "Anybody who says anything is in danger. Hundreds of people are in jail."
Roy has likened writing fiction and polemic to the difference between dancing and walking. Does she not want to dance again? "Of course I do." Is she working on a new novel? "I have been," she says with a laugh, "but I don't get much time to do it." Does it bother her that the followup to The God of Small Things has been so long in coming? "I'm a highly unambitious person," she says. "What does it matter if there is or isn't a novel? I really don't look at it that way. For me, nothing would have been worth not going into that forest."

It's hard to judge whether there will be a second novel. The God of Small Things drew so much on her own life – her charismatic but overbearing mother; a drunken tea-planter father whom her mother left when Roy was very young; her own departure from home in her late teens – that it may be a one-off, a book as much lived as written. She gives ambiguous answers about whether she expects a second novel to appear. On the one hand, she says she is engaged with the resistance movement and that it dominates her thoughts. But almost in the same breath she says others have "picked up the baton" and she would like to return to fiction, to dance again.

What is certain is that little of the second novel has so far been written. She prefers not to tell me what it is about; indeed, she says it would not be possible to pinpoint the theme. "I don't have subjects. It's not like I'm trying to write an anti-dam novel. Fiction is too beautiful to be about just one thing. It should be about everything." Has she been blocked by the pressure of having to follow up a Booker winner? "No," she says. "We're not children all wanting to come first in class and win prizes. It's the pleasure of doing it. I don't know whether it will be a good book, but I'm curious about how and what I will write after these journeys."

Are her agent and publisher disappointed still to be waiting for the second novel? "They always knew there wasn't going to be some novel-producing factory," she says. "I was very clear about that. I don't see the point. I did something. I enjoyed doing it. I'm doing something now. I'm living to the edges of my fingernails, using everything I have. It's impossible for me to look at things politically or in any way as a project, to further my career. You're injected directly into the blood of the places in which you're living and what's going on there."

She has no financial need to write another novel. The God of Small Things, which sold more than 6m copies around the world, set her up for life, even though she has given much of the money away. She even spurned offers for the film rights, because she didn't want anyone interpreting her book for the screen. "Every reader has a vision of it in their head," she says, "and I didn't want it to be one film." She is strong-willed. Back in 1996, when The God of Small Things was being prepared for publication, she insisted on having control of the cover image because she didn't want "a jacket with tigers and ladies in saris". She is her indomitable mother's daughter.

I insist she tell me more about her Fellini-esque mother. She is, says Roy, like an empress. She has a number of buttons beside her bed which, when you press them, emit different bird calls. Each call signals to one of her retinue what she requires. Has she been the centre of her daughter's life? "No, she has been the centre of a lot of conflict in my life. She's an extraordinary women, and when we are together I feel like we are two nuclear-armed states." She laughs loudly. "We have to be a bit careful."
To defuse the family tensions, Roy left home when she was 16 to study architecture in Delhi – even then she wanted to build a new world. She married a fellow student at the age of 17. "He was a very nice guy, but I didn't take it seriously," she says. In 1984 she met and married film-maker Pradip Krishen, and helped him bring up his two daughters by an earlier marriage. They now live separately, though she still refers to him as her "sweetheart". So why separate? "My life is so crazy. There's so much pressure and idiosyncrasy. I don't have any establishment. I don't have anyone to mediate between me and the world. It's just based on instinct." I think what she's saying is that freedom matters more to her than anything else.

She chose not to have children because it would have impinged on that freedom. "For a long time I didn't have the means to support them," she says, "and once I did I thought I was too unreliable. So many of the women in India who are fighting these battles don't have children, because anything can happen. You have to be light on your feet and light in your head. I like to be a mobile republic."
Roy has in the past described herself as "a natural-born feminist". What did she mean by that? "Because of my mother and the way I grew up without a father to look after me, you learned early on that rule number one was look out for yourself. Much of what I can do and say now comes from being independent at an early age." Her mother was born into a wealthy, conservative Christian community in Kerala, but put herself outside the pale by marrying Ranjit Roy, a Hindu from West Bengal. When she returned to her home state after her divorce she had little money and was thus doubly marginalised. The mother eventually triumphed over all these obstacles and made a success of the school she founded, but growing up an outsider has left its mark on her daughter.

Roy says she has always been polemical, and points to her run-in with director Shekhar Kapur in the mid-1990s over his film Bandit Queen – she questioned whether he had the right to portray the rape of a living person on screen without that woman's consent. It may be that the novel is the exception in a life of agitation, rather than the agitation an odd outcrop in a life of fiction-writing. But has she sacrificed too much for the struggle – the chance to dance, children, perhaps even her second marriage? "I don't see any of these things as sacrifices," she says. "They are positive choices. I feel surrounded by love, by excitement. They are not being done in some martyr-like way. When I was walking through the forest with the comrades, we were laughing all the time."

Botanical gardens ooty

2011-05-06T01:09:00.000-07:00

Had a great time shooting this series. Used a 11mm lens made for Canon 7D, which is a camera with a smaller sensor size on my Canon 5D Mark ll. That is the cause for this circular vignetting as the sensor exceeds the lens's covering power.

Gave me an opportunity to hunt curves in the frame.

(Click on the picture to see it at a good enough resolution)

Ustad Bismillah Khan Sahab

2011-04-18T05:26:00.000-07:00

Found this really amazing book shop in Varanasi called the Harmony Book Store. I ended up buying some six amazing books from this place. This shop is a must visit if you go to Banaras. While going through some photography books got my hands on a Raghu Rai's book on Varanasi (beautiful pictures!) and one of the pictures was of Ustad Bismillah Khan Sahab and it was taken in Varanasi, when I asked Rakesh the store owner he told me that Ustadji's house was not very far away in Dal Mandi.

I had to go and see where the maestro lived and mastered his art.

In the first picture is his son reading the Koran.

Holi - Varanasi.

2011-04-18T02:02:00.000-07:00

"Aabe oh! Bhosadik!" - I turn back to see this man painted in silver smiling at me. He continues "Bura na mano holi hai"

(Click on the picture to see it at a good enough resolution)

Varanasi: Day 1

2011-02-26T16:19:00.000-08:00

Gurgaon in the month of December.

2011-01-15T14:55:00.000-08:00

Concrete city early in the morning.

Click on the images and view them at the actual pixel size.

Morning Cya

2010-12-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

           It's cold out side... So, I walk into a Cya (tea) cafe. My usual one. I say usual even though it's only been 4 days that I've spent in Istanbul. These people really make you feel at home though you can't talk their language and they can't speak yours. They are great hosts.
           But coming back to this particular morning...
So, I walk into this Cya cafe (evi as they call cafes here) my usual one. Erol is sitting with Edris who's there every morning having cya and cigarettes with his morning newspaper. The breakfast today is local bread, salted cheese, salted butter and black olives marinated in something that makes them taste a bit sour. Ofcourse I am invited, can't say no to them... you can't say no to these people. I have already had my breakfast at the hotel but I'll have to spend next ten mins trying to explain it to them... so I just go with it.
           Just so that you get a feel of this place: It's a sunday morning and the sun is out after two days of rain and snow. All the local Cya Evis in Turkey have these really low tables like one and a half feet high with four stools around them just as low. There are around four tables in the Evi. The sun is mild and is punched through a thin layer of clouds passing by. So the light is constantly changing. It's beautiful!
          I start eating the warm bread with cheese. We exchange smiles in silence. There are other people in the evi. A group of four men are having the same breakfast, they are sitting in a corner making small talk. There's a tough looking guy wearing heavy leather boots with muck stains on them. He's reading the funny papers and then there's a bum Umer who's trying hard to stay awake while rolling tobacco.
          My second cya comes on the table, its uncalled for. Edris offers me a ham chop, I say no, he insists, I try to explain to him that I'm a vegetarian but what he gets out of my sign language is that I've had breakfast at the hotel! I can live with that. So no more vegetarian explanation, I am at my last piece of bread. The door behind me opens and a gush of cold wind makes its way into the warm evi. First thing I see is the tough guy's face change from tough to the one when your father walks into the room.
         "salam vale kum" I hear from behind me. "Vale kum aus salam" everybody in the evi choruses. The tough guy all humbled up stands up to shake this guy's hand. The shadow on the front wall moves and the man behind me walks by and sits himself on one of the stools. He takes a place from where he sees everyone and as the front wall of the evi is all glass he can also see outside. It's Yusuf. He must be 6'1 wearing black trousers, black clean shiny shoes, black shirt, on which he's wearing a grey sweater, thin black jacket with another long coat to keep himself warm in style. Grey short hair goes perfectly in harmony with the gray sweater. Stubble as if he's not shaven for two days. Everybody's making small talk with him just to make a conversation. This guy looks, talks, walks exactly like the padrone in 'The Godfather' part one. The one in Robert De Niro's neighborhood who's the black hand there and walks around wearing all white. Extorting protection money from all the Italians in his neighborhood.
            Yusuf starts talking to the bum Umer making fun of him, Umer's absent minded and doesn't get the joke, everybody else is laughing. I can't understand a word of what they are saying but one just knows. Umer's still trying hard to roll his cigarette while Erol a 55+ guy who runs the evi comes and puts another cup of cya in front of him.
            Now without a word spoken to him the tough guy has already rolled a cigarette for Yusuf. He puts it in his mouth and the tough guy lights it up for him. Taking a small newspaper pudi out of his pocket, Yusuf says something to Erol. He takes a few rolling papers from the tough guy and goes and sits behind the cay counter. All I could see was Erol cutting a transparent piece of plastic from a carry bag and give it to Yusuf who's now opened the pudi and smelling the stuff in it. Erol says something to which Yusuf just nods his head. Erol comes back with a cup of cay. Edris by now has cleaned up the table and is smoking a cigarette while reading the news.
           Other four guys sitting in the corner have finished eating and for some reason hurry out of the evi. Each one greeting Yusuf while walking out. He doesn't even look at them, he's busy trying to relight the hand rolled cigarette and with a lot of smoke around him it looks like a Gordon Willis frame.
           The tough guy sitting next to him is tearing wide strips of newspaper that he's been reading. Yusuf takes the stuff out of his paper pudi puts it in the piece of plastic that Erol has handed over. This stuff Yusuf's been working with is some kind of green fine powder. He takes the paper strip from the table. Edris offers me a cigarette. Yusuf puts the plastic pudi into the paper strip and rolls it real tight into a packet and while doing so says something to Erol who's behind the cay machine. He answers from there and the only word that I understand is 'Hindistan'. I look at Erol and then at Yusuf who's looking at me right in the eyes. He smiles not too much and then nods, I smile back. He gets back to his paper packet. Now he's rolling the packet in the second paper strip, making it as tight as possible. Erol comes back with a piece of silver foil. Wrapping the newspaper packet in the foil Yusuf nudges the tough guy who gets up and gets a handy stove and a pair of tongs. He lights it up in one corner close to the cay machine. Yusuf goes to the stove and with the packet held in between the tongs he starts roasting it. While he's doing that the tough guy has gone out and got a piece of broken marble tile. After the roast which happens for like 5 minutes, Yusuf puts the foil packet on the floor and places the marble tile on it. He then stands on it pressing it down real hard.
            By now I have already started writing down this whole morning in my small Rubberband dairy and have filled up 2-3 pages of it. As Yusuf's done with standing on the packet the tough guy picks up the tile and throws it out. Yusuf picks the packet up and opens it. The green powder has now transformed into a really thin round plastic chip like thing. He breaks a small piece out of it and hands it over to Erol who's still behind the counter with the rolling paper. Yusuf also hands over three cigarettes to him and then comes back and sits at his observant corner.
            I can see Erol working with the rolling paper and tobacco sitting behind the counter. After a couple of minutes he calls Yusuf and they both go back to a inner room with a massive 2 paper joint.
            Yusuf comes out with slightly heavy lidded eyes and without a word the tough guy gets up and goes to the inner room. Yusuf gives a small piece of the green chip to the Umer who's been waiting for it. He smiles the widest that he could. Yusuf walks out.
            I sit there writing all this. Feeling that if I go from here without writing it today I'll never remember it the way it is happening in front of me. So I keep writing frantically. Yusuf returns after 15-20 minutes, he walks in, smiles at me and goes and sits right next to the huge glass panel window that overlooks the road and one can see everything happening on the street. He's very silent... I don't think he says much anyways.
           He's sitting there wearing all black looking out in some deep thought... and the sun comes out of the clouds. Perfect! I tell myself, without even thinking twice about it I put down my dairy and pen, pick up my camera and walk up to him and just with a gesture ask him if I can make a picture of him. Point blank he says NO looking right into my eyes again. I look at Erol he's known me for past few days "I am not a stranger here" my look says to Erol. He smiles and puts up his shoulders in a way that tells me he doesn't have a say in the matter. OK I go back to my stool. Yusuf is now talking to Erol and looking at me at the same time. I don't know what Erol tells him but he calls me and with a hand gesture asks me to put up my camera.
          The sun is gone behind the clouds again, but the frame is still beautiful. I look through my eyepiece 35mm full frame perfect! I under expose by 1/3 stop. CLICK! I catch him looking out at something. Cigarette in his right hand and a metal strap watch on his left that's sneaks out of his black over coat's sleeve... I point my camera at him again thing time he looks directly at the lens, the same look! Sharp. With my left hand that's under the lens I point towards the window, he gets it. He looks out again. CLICK!
          I smile, he smiles. I go back and sit down on my stool pushing it closer to the wall behind me, resting my back on the wall I start writing again. I am now a couple of more pages down when Yusuf is ready to go, he comes up to me, puts his hand on my head and ruffles up my hair. Smiles. Leaves.

Yusuf : Click on the picture to see it at a better resolution.

Anatolian Light

2010-12-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

Even trash looks beautiful here in Cappadocia. The light is so beautiful that it's just making me take pictures of absolute roadside trash. Posting some here more will follow.

History of Anatolia

Iron Bolts and metal ropes.

2010-08-06T01:29:00.001-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen say hello to the new photographer on the block! Mandar Jadhav :)

His version of San Francisco's Golden gate bridge!

Please click on the image and see it at the actual pixel size.

Ashok Mehta. The Great Indian Cowboy

2010-07-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

Picture courtesy: Ashokji's FB profile :)

( As written by Mr. Rajiv Menon )

In 1981 when 36 Chowringee lane was released, I was a student of the Film and television Institute of Tamilnadu. Everyone who had seen the film was very impressed with its flawless direction and acting. But we cinematography students were stunned by the visual style that was truly international. We were curious; we heard that a new cinematographer had shot the film. Which institute did he belong to? Was he trained abroad? We were astounded .We heard that Ashok Mehta was not from any institute. He had worked his way up in the Bombay film industry.

Those were difficult times for the Hindi film industry’s cinematographers. On one side the strong influence of film noir and Hollywood style direct lighting that dictated the beauty of the fifties was giving way to a more realistic style achieved by Subrata Mitra. On the other side when colour came in, would Orwo stock reproduce this? They hit the light straight ,when mini brutes arrived, two, three shadows were seen on the wall, so they put more butter paper, more lights, more confusion followed. Laboratories added to the chaos, they wanted to get a thick negative ,directors were asking for zoom ins… the cinematographer involuntarily slipped into bouncing light of the ceiling, but at the expense of contrast. Slowly but surely, the cinematographer was forgetting the importance of lighting, in creating the mood of a scene.

Ashok Mehta was the man, who brought back contrast and lighting in to Mainstream Hindi film cinematography. The work in Trikaal was truly European and the work in Utsav, was seductively Indian. Was he inspired by Sven Nyquist or Ravi Varma? Where did he learn to bounce light and yet keep the contrast?

I finally met the master on the sets of Sushman, while I operated the Steadicam. He had covered the courtyard with black polyester cutting off the sun, he then bounced HMI lights on to bounce boards, then had meters of black cloth skirting around it. When he felt the unit hands did not get his idea, he climbed scaffoldings, banged nails into rafters, hung lights from roof like large bats, thus generating a soft source light in the courtyard.

While doing night interiors, he was using single point sources hidden behind lamps, removing lights from stands and Fresnel’s, bouncing from unconventional angles... It was magical he was working with his hands, he was part light man, part set assistant, he was everywhere, climbing, screaming, sawing wood …,…it was like seeing a potter or a sculptor work, creating something beautiful out of mud, he was building the shot, step by step out of nothing, right in front of the stunned film unit . There was an air of wonder and resignation.

His assistant had not arrived, in addition to operating the Steadicam, I got to work on everything, pulling focus, reading exposure, I was convinced that we were seriously underexposing the film. But he was sure and trusted his eyes. Then we went and saw rushes in Prasad Hyderabad…It was beautiful. I expressed my surprise to him, he took me aside and said’ “beta You have to be brave when you light, you expose for what you want to see…….”.

He had opened my eyes, Three years in the institute had not taught me so much as two week on the sets of Sushman. What was amazing is Ashokji was not a slave of the incident light meter or the grains in the dark areas, He was exposing for the frame and he was getting consistent printer point numbers too. He was thinking more like the way we technically qualified cinematographers would expose reversal film… when in doubt, Underexpose!

When he was outside he transformed from being a source lighting inspired realistic cameraman to a Sergio Leone cowboy! Ashokji brought in aesthetics of the western where the landscape plays an important part of the narrative, The composition of the boat man while the young bride leaves her village, the out of focus rape scene, the joyful day interiors, the mustard fields in the ravines of Chambal and the massacre on blinding white light in the burning afternoon sun. The fluidity of the camera movement, the jolt he gave you with his modernist compositions, added to the allure of Bandit Queen. I truly believe it is one of the most beautifully shot Indian films in recent memory.

Ashok Mehta did not go to any institute; he did not carry the baggage of formal education. But he was the inspiration to a generation of new cinematographers like us. He helped us believe that we must be responsible for the image, to be a team player, fraternize with the light men over chai, enjoy the shoot, pour your blood and sweat into your film because shooting a film was an opportunity of a life time. Something he must have been so acutely aware working as a camera attender, sitting on the other side of the unwritten boundary lines of the industry, yearning for an opportunity to become the cinematographer of a film some day! So let’s raise the Stetson…to the one and only spaghetti western hero of cinematography Ashokji!

- Rajiv Menon

Interviews of Ashokji : Video 01 - Video 02 - Video 03 - Video 04 - Video 05 - Video 06

TV commercials : Manjal soap - Nokia - Titan Raga

DISPOSABLE CAMERA roll two :)

2010-07-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

DISPOSABLE CAMERA roll one :)

2010-07-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

ART + PUSH

2010-03-29T14:26:00.001-07:00

Watch it full-screen and with 'Scaling' off.

Untitled from Swapnil Sonawane on Vimeo.

Vidu's b'day + NID + Ahmadabad Darshan!

2010-03-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

Haridwar via Ahmedabad and Vadodara

2010-03-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

3 beautiful days with Vidi at NID - 2 days in Vadodra - 5 days in Haridwar - 2 days in Delhi!

In this trip I definitely got to know one thing that I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT EXPOSURE... as yet. Having said that I hope you still enjoy the pictures and some drawings made in Haridwar.

This was the first time that I tried my hand on TPs (transparencies), love the colors that this film can generate (Fuji Sensia 100 asa). I pushed processed all the rolls by 2 stops and just one I tried pushing 6 STOPS! Dad wasn't really happy with the whole idea but the situation was such... evening arti at the temple happens at Hari-ki-pauri right next to the Ganga temple at around 7:00 Pm with no natural light and the only light source being the burning flames from the huge arti, I could either decide to push the film or not take pictures at all. My choice was obvious :P I pushed! Discovered what this does to the film is that it turns all the blacks into deep reddish cast all over the film. Must admit I kind of like the effect. :) Other than that tried exposing the rest of the film 1/2 stop under which was a bad idea. Dust and speckles on the images are intentional as this I feel adds up to whole FILM look where the digital is just too damn clean. :P

But nevertheless had a great time taking pictures, meeting new people and some great old friends.

1st 8 pictures are the ones that are from the '6stops' pushed TP! :)

"All that you need to make a film is a gun and a girl" - Godard

2009-11-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

I had written this as my study paper in March at my Institute. On this great filmmaker that I am exploring called 'Jean-Luc Godard' Read and try to watch his films like 'Breathless' and 'A Band Apart' I do have both the films on DVD so if anybody want to see them you can just call me. :)

Godard

Platform - Sept-Oct 2009

2009-10-14T02:08:00.000-07:00

Click on the image to enlarge.

Canon 5D Mark ll Trials.

2009-08-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

Canon 5D Mark ll trails from Swapnil Sonawane on Vimeo.

Shot on the 5D, extremely impressive, great colors, beautifully sharp. The video has a slight shake coz I was pulling the focus on a the huge n heavy 70-200mm lens and the camera was on a not so great Manfrotto tripod. :P

I really want to shoot more on this one!
enjoy!

Another freeze frame from one of the videos.

Gas station. Bangalore.

2009-08-23T01:44:00.001-07:00

Shot on a Sony point-and-shoot. Think it was at 5:45 in the morning.

Untitled Abhi.

2009-08-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Just putting it togather.

2009-08-06T22:15:00.001-07:00

Both the places don't look any thing like they do in these pictures :P

Untitled at Marina

2009-07-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

Happy Accidents

2009-07-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Shot on film with my 35mm Nikon FM2. Developed and scanned at a careless, stupid film processing lab in madras. Resulted in some beautiful landscapes. Happy accidents as Conrad Hall would say :)

The Silent Gallery.

2009-07-04T00:25:00.000-07:00

I did this series in Delhi as a part of this photography workshop conducted by Beat Presser (swiss photographer) in December 08. We spent 10 amazing days exploring the concept 'My Oasis Of Silence'. And the deal was, by the end of the workshop every photographer should come up with a series of photographs depicting his/her oasis of silence.

I found my silence in the ever silent walls and ceilings of the 'National Gallery of Modern Art'. As they have to be latent and take a backseat so that the paintings by the great artists can be in the limelight.

Every time I go to Delhi I find myself spending hours at this beautiful Gallery.

Wall as usual

2009-07-03T06:39:00.000-07:00

Click on the image to enlarge and read.

2009-06-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

ma and pa

2009-06-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

I really don't have to write anything.

Mumbai edit

2009-06-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

One fine day Hayden comes up to me and says that he wants some cool looking slides to project on a screen behind the band that he plays in. They were suppose to perform at some concert. Now I get hyper about it and say that I'll only make a video and that he's suppose to pay for the travel and other small expences. :P He discusses it with his band and says yes. Pamila aka pami has a new camera that she wants to play with. I tell her about this small project and she gets hyper about it. We decided and shot this on a Sunday.

Music is from the movie Aamir and it's been edited by Chandana.

Mumbai Edit from Swapnil Sonawane on Vimeo.

hmm... it's a bit long (11mins), but it's fun.
special love for pami and hayden who paid for it :P

HMImonstura by: Harsh

2009-05-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

The photograph that I took on a shooting location

and this is what Harsha makes out of it! Now is he cool or what! :D Hats off to you man.

Lazy yes : guilty no!

2009-05-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

It was an amazingly lazy weekend. Came down to Bangalore to meet pavee and nishat, I got in there house at around 9:00 pm on 22nd and haven't stepped out as yet! (24th 8:46 pm :P) Just saw films and slept and ate some great food that nishat cooked. :)

Smoking on Sunny Sunday

2009-05-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

Linju in love :P

2009-05-16T00:36:00.000-07:00

Click on the image to view it at actual size.

Linju the gentle giant, talking to his girlfriend. :)

PhotoStory! :)

2009-05-12T05:44:00.001-07:00

Let the whole video load and then watch it.

The day my cycle said... enough is enough! from Swapnil Sonawane on Vimeo.

The unseen rise

2009-05-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

Let the whole video load and then watch it.

The unseen rise from Swapnil Sonawane on Vimeo.

Just an experiment with animation and time-laps photography!

Puducherry

2009-05-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

A beautiful place with some beautiful friends and my camera, nothing beats that combination!
I went to Puducherry (Pondi) last weekend, had heard about the place for so long,
about it's former French colony and the beach cafes! We even hired some bikes and went around the city, which was really great, though I wouldn't go so far and say that it was better than riding in Goa but even these rides are worth it. Went to Auroville for a while, I thought that the place was nice but not a kind of place that would really trigger me.

Walking in and around the french colony area was really good and it does give a feel that you are not in India but it doesn't last long, as u step out of those lanes you are back to what we best know as a city (peeep peep, honk honk) :P

While taking all the photographs below I somehow thought of including the pavement's into the frame. I think that's what binds the entire series together.

Bodhgaya

2009-05-07T06:53:00.000-07:00

43 photographs put together.

Abida 'Mere Dil Se'

2009-04-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

Year 2000. I am in 10th standard, in a military boarding school. Doing stuff like clandestine jumps over the fences of my school to get chicken fried rice, bunking class to hear a Viraj sing bollywoodies on a beautiful tree house he had built on some Nilgiri trees, having a fight with the seniors and them claiming that we (the furious six AVSMDR) started it. ;-) Basically in some other world far far away from the world of art, of any kind.

And on the other end of the universe a great sufi singer Abida Parveen released an album the same year called Raqs-e-Bismil just a month before my 18th birthday! AND I HAD NO CLUE! It took me three years of going to a art school, two breakups, listening to old hindi film songs, Jagjit Singh, and even Pankaj Udas until my cousin gave my dad an audio CD that he thought was one of the greatest sufi singers to live; I heard it and just felt graduated on to a different level. A place I never thought existed! She sang about love and god at the same time in the same verse. Love felt so pure in her ironclad voice.

I had no words to describe what I had experienced. Instantly we surrender to her music. For months to follow, her album was the only thing that me and my dad gifted to our friends and relatives, and the only thing me and my sister fought on was who would keep the walkman. :)

We bought every album that came out, but I think Kabir by Abida, Mere Dil Se, and above all Raqs-e-Bismil had the best lineup. Muzaffar Ali's music in Raqs-e-Bismil, the saxophone in Mere Dil Se and Gulzar's voice in Kabir by Abida just levitated the whole experience to a highly spiritual level.

Abidaji being of a Pakistani origin; I thought, with the love-hate relationship that we share with our neighbor, to hear her live either the PM has to put me on a bus or a miracle was the only way. So prayers were answered and in Feb 08' she did perform in Pune (I later discovered that she had been performing in India for quite a while). Me and my friend where at the venue one and a half hour before the concert started to get the best seats in the audience, only to discover that the place was already wall-to-wall with people. The great part was that my sister and her friends had reserved some place for us right in the front :)

I had to photograph her performance and for which I needed a faster lens than the 200mm that I have (max opening: 4) as the performance was on a school ground and started at around 6:00 in the evening and went on till 10:00 if I remember correctly. My dearest friend Kunal was kind enough to lend me his beautiful camera (EOS 5D) with a equally beautiful IS lens 70mm - 200mm with a constant opening of 2.8. It was one of the greatest live performances I've ever experienced.

First photograph is my personal favorite where my sister had tears in her eyes as she heard Abidaji perform.

Tamil Art part2

2009-04-07T00:33:00.000-07:00

Remember I had posted some amazing shoes earlier on the blog? Well this post is just an extension. :) Believe me it's just a fraction of what the city has in-stored when it comes to street art! I will keep on clicking more as long as I stay here in this amazing city of great exuberance.

For the starters: Southern India's first family :) enjoy!

Culture and Strategy

2009-04-03T03:24:00.000-07:00

AH2 (Art Happens Here)

2009-04-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Ah2 was a project that I had started when I was in Ogilvy (Mumbai) in 2007. Had my office's small digi camera, a b/w printer and beautiful a MAC at my dispense ;) So I had a lot of fun doing this one. Basically as the title suggests I wanted to say that ART happens here, between us, all around us! All that you need to do is see it, eat it, conceive it, and you'll be amazed by how much pleasure you can get from the smallest thing around you :).

I just started taking pictures of every thing that came my way! Took pictures while coming to the office, in the office while we where getting briefed for some project ;), when i went out with my friends, took pictures of kids sleeping under the flyover at night, in the train... everything! And the fun part was that I would make small B/W 4"x6" prints with just a AH2 logo on it and stick them at the same place that I had taken the picture the day before. And it would be great to see them every day till somebody had put a poster or something on it :) but even that would be great because I would take another picture of the place and stick it on top of the poster again. It was like my open air art gallery. Some friends had started noticing these pictures stuck on wall and in the streets and it I would feel really nice when they came and told me about it.

I mostly treated everything in the frame as lines and not the subject itself, so composing was fun.

It was just an amazing experience.
As for the Bauhaus question: If one should tilt or not? I say tilt it all the way! :)

Digi pin-hole Part 2 :)

2009-03-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

You'll have to see this ( http://latentsouls.blogspot.com/2009/03/digipin-hole.html ) earlier post to understand how these photographs are taken :)

Just could not stop taking pictures on my digi-pinhole camera. This time shot at 100 asa and on a tripod. Tried a lot of early morning, noon and even late night exposures. It gives an amazing painting like effect with all the great colors you can imagine.

Landscape to Long-shot

2009-03-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Just came back from an excellent trip to Ooty. Well, it was basically an assignment called 'Landscape to Long shot' that we have in the institute where first Rajiv sir takes us through this very well elaborated presentation on the great landscape artists from around the world (painters and photographers) and explains what makes a good landscape an excellent long-shot! (I love the name that he's given to the assignment) As his every class is, even this class was extremely involving and inspiring. Went to places like Pavman and Avalanche which where amazing! If u want to make a historical specially for it's war sequence - you have to see 'Avalanche'. We even had some wild buffaloes chasing our butt :) Posting some selected photos here, let me know what you think of them.

Below: The first thing I see as step off the train at Ooty :)

Is't she beautiful? Everything! her skin tone, her eyebrow, color of the bandej that she's wearing. Man if she looked at me like that I would be dead! :)

These are the landscapes and if you are wondering about the aspect ratio it's 16:9 ;)

Two panoramic photos taken at 'Avalanche'. 1st one stitched in Photoshop cs3(around 5 or 6 different photographs) and the 2nd one just put together in the same but thought it looked nice without a proper stitch. Not that they are great or anything but it would just give you an idea of how amazing the place was :)

The Conversation

2009-03-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

Crows that need to flee.

2009-03-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

Crime branch : March 23 2009 : India Today : Pg. 17

They go around shouting slogans and hurling abuses at each other but if there is one thing that political parties of all hues have in common, it is their love for candidates with criminal backgrounds. And it would seem that the big two- the Congress and BJP are trying to outdo each other. In the 14th Lok Sabha, the BJP had 23 such MPs while the Congress lagged, but not too far behind, with 17 MPs. Of the 543 MPs in the 14th Lok Sabha, 125 had criminal cases pending against them. They belonged to different parties, ensuring the there was equitable distribution of the tainted. "Civic society organizations are demanding the politics be freed from crime," says Jagdeep Choikkar, former dean of IIM Ahmedabad and founder member, Association for Democratic Reforms, which complied the list.
- by Shafi Rahman

The Digipin-hole :D

2009-03-05T00:38:00.002-08:00

This was one of the most exciting experiments I've done in photography! Thanks to my institute's Prof. Mr. Gyanashekharan sir who in his class taught us something so great yet simple that I had to try it! The question he asked that morning was "Do you need a lens on your camera to form an image?" some students said yes and some no. I said no as I thought of the pin-hole camera and where it all started, that we all know! but the class went on to be more and more interesting as he started explaining us the phenomena by which it happens and how easily it can be mis-understood. And the way we have wrongly interpreted it in school, remember the image formation through lens fig. in the science text book?
Well all-n-all it was an amazing class like everyday, but something struck my head like a hammer in the end! for I had seen this incredible film called "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" shot by Mr. Roger Dikins and the realized that the man is GOD!!!!!!!!!!!! If you have seen the film you'll remember there are these shots where the frame is out of focus and kind of blurry at the edges as if taken through a piece of bad quality glass actually made in 1980s atleat thats what I thought it was. But then it struck me that to have a feel of the time Mr. Roger Dikens got the effect of the pin-hole camera WHICH by the way is seen when Jesse James is photographed dead with a huge crowd behind him. Now that's what I think is the BRILLIANCE of the cinematographer, I mean I just can't stop smiling thinking of how superb he must have had felt after seeing it on a huge screen :) Hats off to you Rodger sir!

Some shots from "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
If you have not seen the film go see it now, and if you have seen it then see it again!

So now I had to do this pin-hole photography my-self here's what it all came down to "yesteryear's effect with today's technology".

And I just couldn't stop! :D

Now I don't need a lens even on my 'digital' camera to make a picture! :) I have also put on some pictures of my camera and what I did to with it. Try it for yourself and tell me if you get anything new :) enjoy!!!

New era (Marathi: Nava Kaal)

2009-03-03T00:12:00.000-08:00

Sometime back I came across a scene which I thought would be a my statement on our political situation and the way I understand it. Where some of us are completely high on what we are doing in life, so much so that we don't really want to see or know what our politicians are doing to our country... to us. It was so ironic to see a man lying drunk right in front of a MNS's so call political information board which had Raj Thakrey's article (obviously in Marathi) that many were stopping and reading as they got in and out of the train station. Then I noticed that the name of this news paper that had the article was NAVA KAAL (new era) which I thought was quite ironic, as if this is the way we are going to see the new era. But then, I just clicked a snap that 'I' thought said something about my understanding of our political situation (but just a part of it). It's open for discussion...

Street art in Madras!

2009-03-02T03:59:00.000-08:00

Will be posting a lot of these brilliantly hand painted billboards and ads from the city. I have fallen in love with the way these guys use typography! it's all bold, animated and loud like anything. Will be putting up a post on Tamil Typo soon. :) Till then enjoy these amazing shoes!

Here in Madras

2009-02-27T04:32:00.001-08:00

Dakshin Chitra (madras) a traditional center designed by the great architect Lauri Baker
( http://www.keral.com/celebrities/lauribaker/ ). The assignment was to go here and study the architecture of traditional houses in southern India and how they react to the February sun, so I spent an entire day here just going in and out of these thatched roofed houses with mud walls. Almost all where naturally lit. As you can see in these pictures . I would recommend this place to all, if ever you plan to visit madras.