Culture and Strategy

AH2 (Art Happens Here)

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 :)

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

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

Crows that need to flee.

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

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!!!