Beyond Photography - Ms Word version

BEYONDPHOTOGRAPHY

The Quest for the Ultimate Image

Subroto Mukerji

Beyond Photography ~ The Quest for the Ultimate Image

I dedicate this book to

the sacred memory of my best friend…

Baman Deva Mukerji.Father always encouraged me to write the book

he knew was in me, all of thirty years ago…

to my inimitable guru

S. Paul

the Great Master who befriended me.

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CONTENTS

Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………...…….2Copyright…………………………………………………………………………………...……..5Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..……...6Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..……...8Prologue……………………………………………………………………………………..…...20

Beyond Photography – Part One- Coming to Grips with the SLR……………….…………………….………….29- The Starting Point – The Shutter Speed…………………………………….….31- – The Aperture…………………………………………… .34- – Depth of Field……………………………………………36- – Lenses……………………………………………………37- – Exposure by ‘Experience Meter’……………………… ..41- – Filters for Daily Use……………………………………...44- – Flash Synchronization……………………………………45

Beyond Photography – Part Two- – 35 mm Film.…………………………..…………………..50- – Film Sensitivity…………………………………………...52- – ‘f’ Numbers and Focal Length……………………………56- – Variable ‘f’ Numbers……………………………………..60

– Focusing- – The Law of One-Thirds …………………………………..61 - – Focusing on the Hyperfocal……………………………….62- – Postscript………………………………………………………………….. …64-

Beyond Photography – Part Three- Airing the Lenses!..………………………………………………………….….66

Beyond Photography – Part Four- Light…………………………………………………………………………….76- Breaking the Rules…………………………………………………………… 79- Special Effects Filters……………….………………………… ………………83 - Which System?…………………………………………………………… ……84

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- When to Shoot?……………………………………………………………… …85- The Digital World…………………………………………………………… …87- Special Effects……………………………………………………………… ….89- Panoramas and Groups……………………………………………………… …95

Beyond Photography – Part Five- Life – The Underlying Theme

- – Composition……………………………………………….97- – Portraits………………………………………………… 104- – Bespectacled sitters………………….…………………. 106

- – Low-Key and High-Key Portraits……………………….. 110- – Landscapes………………………………………………. 112- – Capturing Love……..……………………………….…… 114- – The Fountainhead.……………………………………… 120

Epilogue…………………………………………………………………………….…..……132TIPS FOR BETTER PICTURES…………………………………………………..…….134

“We have two lives - the one we learn with and the life we live after that.” ~Bernard Malamud, The Natural

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Copyright

The author asserts his moral right over the ownership of the contents this book, they being his personal intellectual property. No part of the book may be copied, Xeroxed, quoted, or otherwise reproduced without the express written permission of the author.

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Acknowledgements

I acknowledge my indebtedness to my guru, S. Paul, a creative artist par excellence

who – three decades ago – somehow bridged the enormous gulf that separated his

towering genius from my own far humbler endowments, to extend a hand of friendship

to a greenhorn. I am indeed lucky to know one such as him. His accomplishments are

lofty indeed, but even greater are his humanity, his reverence for all life, and his tireless

dedication to his calling…the hallmarks of a Master.

This book also gives me an opportunity to thank Thomas Abraham (Señor El Tomāso)

of LM Ericsson, Austria, and all those other friends who encouraged me to take up the

camera—many of whom I never got around to thanking in so many words.

There is nothing I can ever do or say that will enable me to make amends to my wife,

Sumita, for the insanely fanatical and self-centered way in which I pursued (but never

quite caught up with) photography—a hobby she never really approved of. Yet she not

only put up with my lunacy, she once even sold a diamond ring to buy me an enlarger.

Her elation, on the rare occasions when I managed to do something a tad out of the

ordinary, always left me red-faced and fidgety. I seriously doubt that I merit such

devotion and deep commitment. She is a divinely ordained cosmic gift to keep me

afloat in a world where lifelong companionship is becoming such a rarity.

And to my timeless muse, who always tried to get me to activate some smidgeon of

potential that she imagined lurking within my submerged self, I say, “Merci! But for

you, mamselle, this book would never have happened.” Life after life, her inspiration is

a karmic debt I fail to square, which is why it tracks me relentlessly across the eons.

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Photography according to Maitani...

"In the future I believe all those who want to leave a record will be photographers of some kind. Our concept of a photographer will broaden. It will include everything from those in the area of scientific recording to those who use it to record everything in the household. And there will be many who would hold exhibitions and publish photographic collections as a means of personal expression. In that world of the future there will also be people who use photographs, rather than words, in an attempt to change society."

"Photography has many different roles and education is one of its most important. The photograph is valuable in conveying what only you can see and therefore, understand. The photograph’s value is in its ability to act as an extension of the human eye. There will always be a need for photographs as long as people use their eyes."

"Every form of human communication starts as a pure thought in the brain but passes through the hand or mouth which act as a filter. Even if a person is extremely sensitive, if they are not skilled in the use of speech or body language, their meaning may not be conveyed effectively. Since the photographic medium affords faithful recordability, images are made without those filters. There is a spontaneous, pure expression that is unique to photography."

"Its apparent ease frequently causes people to overshoot, to take pictures of things they really don’t want to photograph. That’s when you’d like to have that filter. That’s a fact to always keep in mind when picking up a camera."

"A camera is just a tool for taking pictures. As a designer, I want to design a camera that becomes an inseparable part of the photographer, a camera that does not get in the way. But I take pictures too and I have come to realize that because the contemporary camera is at its state-of-the-art limits, surpassing those limits is a problem that the photographer will have to solve by himself." ~ Yoshihisa Maitani of Olympus Camera Company

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“In eve “In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

-Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965)


INTRODUCTION

The Seductive Camera

This book was originally intended for the amateur who was keen to

improve his photographic skills. I’ve lost count of the people who’ve asked me

questions like, “How is it that all my pictures come out dark…and usually blurred?”

or “I’ll bring my camera and lenses over some time; I wonder if you’d care to

explain the correlation between the various functions?” So I decided to write a

primer that would cover the basics of taking good pictures without obsessively

dwelling on the technicalities ad nauseaum, for such books – numerous as they are

– can be monotonous, and I’ve always felt that a lecture is the most boring thing on

earth.

It was never my intention to put the reader out of his or her misery;

euthanasia is not my style. All I wanted to do was to try my hand at a little book that

shoots from the hip (lip?) and, while enthusing the beginner, expands her mind by

exposing her to some of the endless vistas that one can explore with the camera…

besides breaking him of his habit of reflexively reaching for his automatic compact

camera only on birthdays, class reunions or picnics. But before the book had

progressed halfway, it got away from me—just like everything else I’ve written.

As this particular book began to write itself out of me, a by-now

familiar feeling of déjà vu engulfed me…a signal that this book, too, was taking me

where it wanted to go. After I’d gotten the transcribing out of the way, then, I took a

short breather before going over what had come through me. I found it was, again, a

sort of rehash of my life learnings (that’s a grammatically verboten word I’ve

picked up from all the HRM books I’ve edited), this time clad in photographic garb.

At the same time, I dimly glimpsed my subconscious motivations: what I’d really

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No matter how accomplished one may think himself, when he sets out to learn a new language, science, or the bicycle, he has entered a new realm as truly as if he were a child newly born into the world. ~Frances Willard, How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle


wanted to explore was not just the substance but also the essence of photography.

My timeless muse was at it again…

In lapsing now and then into introspective mode, I was unwittingly

going beyond – far beyond – photography, to venture into another universe I’d

never dreamt had anything at all to do with making pictures with a camera…the

realm of unfathomable everythingness. This is a zone where there is no space, no

time—just an everlasting encounter with Truth, Light and Beauty of which we are

all part, from quark to cosmos, across all eternity. Ahead of me, a glittering trail of

stardust illuminated the path taken by my muse as she – after having yanked me out

of my comatose state – led the way across the vast chasm that separates our

mundane from our eternal selves.

Not surprisingly (with her in the picture), it had turned out to be a

different sort of photography book, one that – while often adopting a philosophical

tone – shared practical information (and, more importantly, probably had the ability

to trigger ideas that had the potential to provoke people to action). I think that is

why, perhaps, I’ve adopted a conversational style, with minimal use of jargon.

Never did I feel the urge to copy anyone else’s book. Good, mediocre or just plain

lousy, the book would be all my own…well, almost all my own. I just have to

acknowledge once again the role my muse has played in making it whatever it has

turned out to be – that’s your privilege to decide.

So as to obviate the perils of exemplification, I’ve purposely avoided

too many of the pictures that are de rigueur in ‘how-to’ books on photography.

Beginners tend to use visual examples as templates, and that’s something that can

seriously inhibit experimentation as well as hobble development. Moreover, the

high degree of subjectivity involved in the selection process signals that it’s likely to

be another’s version of a pretty pictorial book on photography. We have enough of

those already. All I wanted to write was a short, punchy, inspirational book that

pointed in the right direction – to borrow a phrase from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

once quoted by my timeless muse – without getting in the way of the action.

Now that I’ve finished writing it, two people, thirty years apart, can

heave their respective sighs of relief. One is my father, who – way back in 1977 –

encouraged me to write a book on photography. The other is a dazzling friend who

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was born a mere three years before that, in 1974. She is crazy about vintage cars and

photography, and she had once sent me a few well-put-together emails to clue me

up on certain points. I owe her a backlog of debts that I can probably never adjust.

Some people are human catalysts; they go through life changing people but remain

unchanged themselves. Thank God for that!

Both she and Dad probably expected much more from my pen than

this pocket-sized effort. But given the circumstances, it’s the best I could manage. I

hope they’ll understand.

What is it that definitively sets Man apart from the animal world? It

is not communication, for animals have been proved to communicate. It’s not

intelligence or manual dexterity—the primates demonstrate them in ample measure.

It’s got to be the elusive thing called ‘creativity’, always more apparent in its results,

whether conceptual (e.g., the General Theory of Relativity) or tangible (such as the

ancient cave paintings, found in the Lascaux caves in France, or the far older images

of humanoids and animals scrawled on rocks in the Tassili region of the Sahara).

Ever since Man has looked at his world with awe and wonder, he has

tried to capture his memories in (startlingly real and evocative) images that seek to

mirror his perceived reality. Whatever the medium, however, we can be sure that

men were (and are) essentially dissatisfied with their creative efforts…whether it be

bushman rock paintings, caveman art, photographic images, computer generated 3-

D imagery, verisimilitudinarian or virtual reality—with ‘reality’ sometimes

overlapping these, as in motion picture representations such as the Arnold

Schwarzeneggar (to spell his name the way he did earlier, way back in 1969 before

he won his first Mr. Universe title) blockbuster Total Recall.

Optics have been around for centuries, but till the nineteenth century

no one had been able to make images by means other than manual efforts – that is,

by pencil, charcoal or paint on paper or canvas – before the invention of

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photography. It owed its genesis to the laboratory discovery that silver halide crystals

react to light by undergoing a chemical change…and nothing was ever the same

again. Photography forever changed the way we relate to the world around us.

All credit must go to the early pioneers, men like Joseph Nicéphore

Niépce and Louis Daguerre, who saw the potential in the new developments in

science and initiated the art and the science of mechanized image making. Over the

years, the process was further refined, with cameras more or less keeping pace with

the latest scientific developments, till finally, the age of the 35 mm camera dawned.

I’ve skipped a lot of history here, because I don’t think very many of

my readers want to know about all that old stuff. But I cannot resist squeezing in a

rambling (if far from comprehensive – that would take another

book) discussion about 35 mm cameras, because this is the

point where, for the first time, the portals of photography

opened to the common man. It didn’t happen overnight, of

course, but the writing was on the wall. Any camera/film

system that was easily portable, relatively cheap and simple to

use was destined to be democratized in an age of mass production.

35 mm photography really got going when the renowned optical firm

of Ernst Leitz GmbH, Wetzlar (now literally a Mecca for photo enthusiasts who

come on pilgrimage from all over the globe, and who approach it with as much awe

as a Hindu approaches the Temple of Jaggannath at Puri) was given a charter to

develop an instrument to test the new 35 mm film developed for making motion

pictures. They, in turn, hired an optical engineer called Oskar Barnack and told him

to work on it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Long used to working on microscopes and other precision optical

instruments, Barnack did the only thing he could: he came up with a high-precision

optical instrument that happened to take pictures. It was tiny, easily handheld and

simple to use—once the film had been loaded in the body. This was easier said than

done, because in order to ensure that the film lay inexorably along the film plane (the

focal plane, i.e., the flat surface at which the image cast by the lens falls), the back of

the camera had to be so designed as to be completely removable. Leitz weren’t

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taking any chances with a foldable, hinged back with a steel, spring-loaded pressure

plate, as in modern cameras.

It was hardly a paragon of convenience, that first Leica (the ‘Ur-

Leica), but to photographers of the day, used to bulky roll film and before that, the

unwieldy, wooden plate cameras that could weigh forty pounds with tripod, it was

manna from heaven. Even as early as 1905, Barnack had the idea of reducing the

format of negatives and then enlarging the photographs after they had been exposed.

It was ten years later, as development manager at Leica, that he was able to put his

theory into practice. He took an instrument for taking exposure samples for cinema

film and turned it into the world's first 35 mm camera: the 'Ur-Leica'.

It was a simple but elegant solution: that of doubling the cinema film format created

the miniature film format of 24 x 34 mm (it became 24 x 36 mm a bit later). The first

photos - of outstanding quality for the time - were made in 1914. The First World

War interrupted progress, and it was only in 1924 that the first Leica (Leitz Camera)

went into serial production, and was presented to the public in 1925. Today, of

course, we have cameras with auto-loading, an innovation that is – in my opinion – a

mixed blessing. In my manual loading cameras, I always managed to get 38 frames

out of the film, unlike the strictly 36 frames these programmed cameras deliver.

They go into auto-rewind mode after the 36th frame, and that’s it.

Moreover, people like Mitchell Funk rewound film on their Nikon Fs

to certain (already exposed) frames, in order to make perfectly registered double

exposures. The Nikon F had a film counter that actually counted backwards as one

rewound the film (by hand, of course) so it was easy to return to a previously

exposed frame if one had recorded the frame number—which Mitchell Funk

routinely does. Sometimes, the old ways are the still the best.

Although the famed Leica Model 1A – now worth its weight in gold

to collectors – was cumbersome to load and not exactly easy to use, the picture

quality – incredible by contemporary standards – can easily match those taken by all

but the best cameras available today.

Featuring revolutionary Leitz optics, the new Leica cameras were an

instant hit with field, sports, and news photographers of the stature of Henri Cartier-

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Bresson (one of the co-founders of Magnum Photos, the famous newsphoto service),

but they also had many detractors. Some lamented the arrival of a format (35 mm)

that sounded the death knell of photography as a leisurely, contemplative medium:

the end of the lovingly composed, excruciatingly tedious one-shot an-hour process.

Bertrand Russell compared the 35 mm camera with the cod “that lays

a million eggs in order that one may hatch”. Elitists hate their exclusive tramping

grounds being thrown open to the public. It says much for the prescience of this

famous philosopher that his words presaged the coming of a new age of

photography.

Model after improved model followed in a steady stream from the

hallowed works of E. Leitz GmbH, Wetzlar, West Germany, more notable among

them the Leica IIIF, the Leica IIIG, the legendary Leica M3, with its exquisite

Elmarit, Summitar and Summicron lenses…to be finally topped by Leica’s first

Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera: the fabled Leicaflex, a reply to the growing might

of the (now long defunct) Swiss Alpa and the Japanese kamikaze cost-busters.

I have used both the M3 as well as the Leicaflex, and am hard pressed

to describe the rapture of using these awesome instruments. Leica stood for the

pinnacle of the camera maker’s art, to be finally challenged by two ‘upstarts’ from

distant Japan…Nikon and Canon.

The Korean War in the early

1950s coincided with the

development of a Japanese

rangefinder camera (it focused

by turning the lens till two discrete images of the

scene coincided in the viewfinder – much like the

rangefinder device used by riflemen) by Japan’s oldest optical firm: Nippon Kogaku

K.K., of Tokyo.

Combining the best features of the Contax (another justifiably famous

German camera, that harnessed the power of Carl Zeiss optics) and the Leica, the

Nikon S was given away free to war correspondents covering the Korean War. It was

a smash hit with them. The little camera was incredibly rugged, even under battle

conditions, and the Nikkor lenses it used were second to none…so they reported.

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Practically overnight, the less-than-than-half-the-price-of-a-Contax

Nikon S2 became a major sensation.

Then came the march of

the Nikon SLRs: the redoubtable Nikon

F exploded onto the scene, followed by

what is arguably the most famous SLR of

all time—the fabulous Nikon F2

Photomic, with its horizontally traveling

cloth (later titanium foil) shutter, and

infinitely variable manually set shutter

speeds from 1/60th of a second all the way

to 1/2000th of a second…not counting, of course, the slower click-stopped speed

settings.

None other than the legendary S. Paul owned the first F2 that I ever

used, and I still remember my amazement that a mechanical (as opposed to an

electronically-controlled) shutter could be this smooth, and have so light yet so

positive a release. It was heavy (but not unduly so), divinely balanced and utterly

heavenly to use; its lever-operated film-wind was deliciously smooth, as if the gears

were coated with butter.

Moreover, its unique 100% viewfinder integrity – what you saw was

what you got on film, not 95% or 93% as in most other makes/models – allowed one

to shoot 35 transparencies keeping

the outer mounts in mind and

composing the picture accordingly

in the viewfinder.

Variants of the F2

followed, such as the F2AS and the

Hi-Eyepoint (which featured a

unique high-vision eyepiece in place of the Photomic finder) mostly concerned with

the removable / interchangeable pentaprism atop the camera that contained the

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metering system. Add an MD-2 battery-operated motor drive that allowed picture

taking at a then-phenomenal 5 frames a second (you saw an F2 powered by an MD-2

being used to photograph the ill-fated Padre in The Omen), and you were deep in

professional territory.

I preferred the economical but essentially robust Nikon FE (which

still lives on in the Nikon FM 3A) with its electronic shutter and MD-12 motor-drive

that allowed sequential shots at 3.5 frames per second…and since it used the same

razor sharp Nikkor optics as did the F2, it was theoretically its equal. S. Paul always

eyed my compact FE / MD-12 motor-driven combination warily, knowing I had the

armament to (hypothetically) match him in the field 99% of the time.

The fact is that I never came even remotely close to emulating my

guru; he is beyond the reach of any lensman…the Maharajah of

Photographers (as Pramod Kapoor, the suave publisher of Roli Books calls

him), all of six years older than his brother Raghu Rai, today a legend in his own

right.

A cousin of mine, who was the General Manager of the New India

Assurance Company way back in the early 1980s, once went all the way to Japan to

hunt for an F2 in pristine condition; he had a severe heart condition and his health

was fast deteriorating. But his desire to add the king of cameras to his collection of

fine cameras prevailed; on reaching Tokyo, he asked his Japanese friends to hunt

high and low for the fabled beast. Even in those days, a basic F2 Photomic was a

highly prized item, and a second-hand specimen in mint condition was almost

impossible to locate, because no one wanted to sell.

Despite the fact that his Japanese underwriters, part of a mighty

zaibatsu, joined in the merry chase, it took him three weeks to find one! ‘Bindu’

Mukerji died a year later; the Nikon had not been used even once. He went to the

Happy Hunting Grounds with a smile on his face. Such is the irresistible fascination

of these superlative optical instruments.

Lest I manage to give you the impression that Nikon is the only good

Japanese camera manufacturer, allow me to remind you of the erstwhile Kwanon

Camera Company named after Kwanon, the Japanese Goddess of Mercy. This once-

small camera maker made excellent rangefinder cameras, but in unleashing the

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versatile Canon F1, with its exhaustive repertoire of accessories that vastly extended

its capabilities, mercy flew out of the back door, which is perhaps why they renamed

the company as the Canon Camera Company. The Canon bombardment had begun.

Well known for its outstanding compacts, it now became a big name in SLRs as

well.

The Canon F1 was a worthy opponent of the Nikon F2. Its more

plebian stablemates were global best sellers, and one model – the aperture-priority,

semi-automatic Canon AE-1 – even held the record for the maximum number of

SLR cameras sold for a particular model. Though prestigious and exquisitely

engineered, Nikons were very expensive; Canons perhaps cost a tad less but

performed just as well, and the Canon optics were second to none. Their high-speed

super-telephoto lenses such as the 600 mm f.4 were very popular with sports and

wildlife photographers.

Asahi Pentax (the Pentax Spotmatic F had spot metering, a very

handy way to read exposure) and its Takumar lenses, in their traditional screw-mount

avatar, was a superb instrument. Asahi occupy a special place in the history of

cameras; they introduced the instant return mirror. In an SLR (Single Lens Reflex)

camera, the viewfinder shows the actual image that will appear on film; it is not an

approximation, as in rangefinder cameras, because the picture-taking optics and the

viewing optics are one and the same.

Light enters an SLR’s lens, bounces off a mirror positioned at a 45°

degree angle, and ricochets around twice inside a pentaprism (5-sided prism) – once

to correct its upside-down orientation and once again to flip the image the correct

way around, i.e., left-to-right – before entering the eye!

At the instant of exposure (i.e., at that moment in time when the

shutter opens to admit light), the mirror flips up out of the way (the viewfinder image

is blanked for a fraction of a second; this action is quite apparent at slow shutter

speeds like ½ or ¼th of a second, when the

viewfinder blacks out disconcertingly for

an instant), allowing light to strike the

film that lies stretched out beyond the

now open shutter.

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MIRROR LOCK-UP LEVER

Before Asahi Optical Company invented the instant return mirror, the mirror had to

be manually flipped out of the way, and manually returned in order to restore vision

through the viewfinder (even lenses had to be manually stopped down to the taking

aperture, just before exposure, and manually reopened thereafter).

In fact, the redoubtable Nikkormat – a Nikon SLR with its hardy

band of diehard aficionados who practically swore by this machine – shares with the

Nikon F the provision for folding away the mirror manually. They are both

mechanical cameras…but what cameras! A mirror lock is still a very useful feature

for photomicrography (photography through a microscope) even in these days of

near vibration-free shutters, where even the negligible amount of dither caused by

the mirror’s flip-flop action was enough to blur the image.

The instant return mirror breakthrough came about the same time as

TTL (Through-The-Lens) metering. It involved the placement of a suitably

calibrated light meter placed inside (as opposed to the traditional handheld light

meter) the body of the camera to read the intensity of light at the film plane itself.

The TTL meter recommended appropriate combinations of apertures and shutter

speeds (these two components of exposure are explained later in the text).

To OLYMPUS goes the credit for inventing another important feature:

‘TTL flash metering at the film plane’. OLYMPUS is another excellent make; their

Zuiko lenses are astonishing in their sharpness and color rendition, and the brilliance

of Chief Designer Yoshihisa Maitani, ensures that they keep coming up with

ingenious solutions to many of the bugbears in 35 mm photography, such as more

ergonomic placement of controls. The Asahi Pentax ‘Spotmatic’ model had a TTL

meter that measured the intensity of light over a small central area of the viewfinder.

As a result, the photographer could get spot-on (no pun intended) exposures of the

most important of his target scene…separate, handheld spot-meters became a rarity.

TTL metering was obviously better than a general meter reading of

the scene (a system followed by Minolta for a long time; it’s averaging metering

system was effective under most situations but was apt to be fooled by scenes with

17


predominantly dark areas where the main subject was well lit, since it tended to try

and expose them correctly, in the process over exposing the better lit main subject).

Thus, it often recommended and enabled (unless you shifted to

manual ‘Experience Metering’ mode – see Page 30), in the ‘automatic’ mode, a

reading (shutter-speed-aperture combination) quite inappropriate for the main

subject.

In time, with the coming of sophisticated electronics and programs

that averaged light in all sorts of combinations and shooting situations, the

Spotmatic, with its screw-mounting lenses – the other major manufacturers all had

their own versions of bayonet mounts – was left far behind in terms of sophistication.

Yet, thousands of these rugged cameras are still in service, still giving the best of

images through their light, inexpensive, screw mount Takumar lenses. Pentax

reinvented itself in the early ’80s with a new bayonet mount and a slew of compact

SLRs like the amazing ME and MX, which seriously challenged the OLYMPUS OM2.

Of the lesser known manufacturers such as Konica (their partnership

with Minolta is now defunct, as is Fuji), Ricoh, Cosina, Yashica and Topcon, let it be

said that they do a fine job, giving full value for money. For all practical purposes,

there would be no discernible difference between a picture taken with a Nikon and

one taken with a Cosina or Ricoh.

This awkward but undeniable fact may serve to discourage what I call

‘Camera Fever’, a malady that once afflicted me to no small degree. In the ultimate

analysis, it is the photographer who takes the picture, not the camera1. This holds

true even for the clunky and relatively unsophisticated Russian bow-wows like the

Kiev and Zenit, what to speak of the once-fashionable and now defunct Alpa Swiss,

and the redoubtable Voightlander from Germany. So if I stray now and then

into the heady world of cameras and their enticing accessories, please bear with me.

It is an infection that never quite leaves the system.

Nonetheless, it has to be admitted that the more sophisticated the

camera (within reasonable limits), the easier it is to get the technical bits out of the

way and start taking pictures. It is only when the limitations of automation

increasingly manifest themselves that we stop to reconsider. This is where we start

1 See Part Five of this book for more on the creative aspects of photography.

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looking for ways of achieving more control over the image, so as to facilitate the

process of ideation. One of the main reasons for writing this little book is to help

greenhorns over this hurdle, drawing upon my own experience with automatics.

Those who have outgrown their tiny auto-everything compacts and

want to take control of their picture making, would probably find this book helpful.

But photography – like all the really important things in life – is a product of passion,

precision, practice and perseverance. There is no easy short cut to becoming a good

photographer…and photography palls when results are consistently below

expectations. Many a potential photo-artist has abandoned the medium because of

this; I’d like to do my little bit in preventing this attrition. All it takes is some hard

work, dedication (stick-at-it-tiveness’), and some guidance. I hope the latter can be

found between the covers of this book. The good news is that – like gambling at Las

Vegas – no one ever had such a good time working up a sweat as they can have in

working at creating great images.

Prologue

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Many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas Alva Edison


Prologue

The Return of El Tomāso

October, 1976. My father, my wife, and I had gone to the cantonment

area at Patiala, where Durga Puja was being celebrated. I don’t know whether you

are aware of it or not, but this is the time of year when all Bongs are non compos

mentis by varying degrees. The extent of abnormality can be determined by applying

a mathematical formula I have discovered, which I call the Bongonsong Scale. It

works like this: take the distance of one’s abode from Calcutta (sorry, Kolkata),

divide it by the number of years spent living outside Bengal, then multiply the

outcome by the square root of the number of rossogollas one can consume in a single

day, exactly a week before Ashtami. Rest assured that a score of 100 or more on the

Bongonsong Scale means that the pull is still strong, even if camouflaged.

Long insulated from the baleful effects of this temporary loss of

sanity (the Sherwood academic year ended in December), and the considerable

distance of Nainital from Kolkata, I am revealed as a true-blue Bong by the

enormous quantities of rossogollas I can put away at a sitting. My individual score

hits the 150 mark on the Bong-on-song Scale; I am not as immune to the malady as I

would have imagined.

A terrible restlessness, a naked wanderlust, always hits me hard

around this time of year. I remember remarking to my wife of six months that Señor

Tomās said he would come to India around the end of September, but there is no

further news from him, although he has kept in touch with me all these years, after

he left us at Solan to work for LM Ericsson, Kuwait almost three years ago.

Señor Tomās, better known as El Tomāso, was my neighbor in Hauz

Khas, and was known as ‘the Hauz Khas Bulletman’ in the neighbourhood. It was

the daily sight of his immaculate Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle that goaded

me into buying one, and thereafter we became fast friends. He was a paying guest

with a hardy Punjabi family next door that bathed in cold water in the depths of

Delhi's severe winter. Ergo, he too perforce had to take cold-water showers,

something that was anathema to the warm south in him, for he is from balmy Kerala.

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I gave him the duplicate key to my little apartment, with its geyser-

equipped bathroom, so that he could use it any time he liked. Tomās never forgot this

small token of my regard for him. He was growing out of his job with Ericsson India,

and wanted to go abroad—there was an uncle in the BKME (Bank of Kuwait and the

Middle East) who had promised to sponsor him provided he managed an

appointment letter from LM Ericsson, Kuwait.

So one fine day, Tomās resigned his job and joined my parents and

me in Solan (Himachal Pradesh), my first posting as a Probationary Officer with the

State Bank. We were delighted to have him! About three months passed happily,

with Tomās well adjusted to his life with us. But one day, he bared his heart to my

father (this came out much later), revealing his distress at the prolonged stay and

wondering why the long-promised NOC (‘No-objection Certificate’) had still not

come from Kuwait. Dad, who was quite a palmist, told him not to worry and that his

NOC was due any day; he would be an NRI soon…and stay that way.

A couple of days later, Tomās came loping into the house, found that

Dad had gone to the fruit market, located him there and showed him the NOC that

had come that very day poste restante. That same afternoon, he left for Delhi and for

a new life with LM Ericsson Telefonatibolaget, P.O. Box 5979, Safat, Kuwait.

I bade him a gloomy farewell, knowing that the chances of seeing him

again were bleak. The late Lars Magnus Ericsson had set up a small radio repair shop

about a century ago in Sweden that had grown into a global communications

behemoth and taken my best friend away from me.

As we returned from the Durga Puja mela at the cantonment area in

Patiala, we saw a long, low, dusty shape with thick radial tires parked in front of the

house. Arabic lettering peeped out from behind the splashes of mud on the

registration plate. I rang the doorbell, and Mother opened it. There was joy on her

face. “Guess who’s here!” she chortled gleefully. It was Tomās!

I hugged my dear friend whom I’d never thought to see again. He was

my fellow Bulletman, my partner in many a hair-raising, high-speed Bullet trip over

remote mountain roads. His driving skills are simply phenomenal. I am barely good,

but Tomās is outstanding, a born rally driver. Anything with a motor and wheels

becomes a controlled subsonic missile in his hands. Yes, that’s the 6-cylinder Datsun

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260 Z Sports 2+2 he’d sent me photographs of, the ones with the new TV tower in

Kuwait and the huge oil tankers navigating the Gulf, in the background.

With him were a young, recently married English couple, André and

Doreen Winter, very keen on computers, cars, rallying, and photography. M/S AndorAndor

MicrosystemsMicrosystems were computerizing the Bank of Kuwait. André had a bag full of

equipment and fine lenses, from a 300mm Takumar telephoto to a 16 mm full-frame

fish-eye lens, to go with the Asahi-Pentax ‘Spotmatic F’ body.

I wondered whether Tomās had remembered to bring me the small

camera I needed: the cameras available in India were crude and unsophisticated. I

needn’t have worried; he had remembered to bring my camera.

But what a camera! It was the new MinoltaMinolta single-lens reflex, the

XE-1, produced after Minolta Camera Company signed their collaboration agreement

with Ernst Leitz GmbH, Wetzlar, West Germany, manufacturers of the legendary

Leica Leica cameras. Details of its sophisticated features would fill this page: Copal-LeitLeitzz

electronic shutter, twin metal shutter curtains with vertical travel, infinitely variable

shutter speeds on ‘Auto’ from 30 seconds to 1,000th of a second, aperture-priority

automatic exposure, through-the-lens (TTL) metering with MinoltaMinolta’s patented

averaging exposure system reading a weighted average of the entire scene, multiple

exposure capability, self timer, low-battery LED, comprehensive viewfinder readout,

depth-of-field preview, ±2 stops exposure compensation on Auto, auto-exposure

memory lock, optional full manual override, M90 (Manual, 1/90 th second) setting for

manual/flash shooting even without batteries, MinoltaMinolta’s patented bayonet mount

accepting a mind-boggling array of Rokkor lenses…it goes on and on and on: and all

in the expensive, black ‘professional’ finish.

Bulging in a distinctly masculine manner at the front end was a huge

chunk of glass weighing 14 ounces: the fabulous 58 mm, f1: 1.2 MC Noct-Rokkor

lens, excellent for flash-less, ‘available light’ picture taking. Incredibly, there was

even an accessory 200 mm f4.5 Tele-Rokkor telephoto lens, along with a 2X tele-

extender, all in individual, original MinoltaMinolta cases!

I was speechless. I’d lost my tongue. Besides, there was a large

obstruction in my throat. No sound issued forth, no matter how hard I tried. I’d asked

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for a pebble: the man had brought me the whole goddam mountain. In one fell

swoop, he had handed me the equipment I needed to become a serious photographer.

Ever since I had a tonsillectomy in 1955, I’d been using the Model T

of cameras, a Kodak ‘Baby Brownie’ box camera giving eight exposures per 127 roll

of film, which my cousin Otima (‘Iron Lady’ Otima Bordia, IAS, elder daughter of

my uncle, Justice Basu Deva Mukerji) had then presented me. It had cost her all of

19/- rupees of desperately saved pocket money, which represented a considerable

sacrifice in those days.

Through all my boyhood and young manhood, it had coped with me,

while faithfully recording fishing, hunting and camping trips, and sundry other

outings. I hardly found any incentive to buy the crude, 120-size roll film cameras

from Agfa-Gevaert then available in India. After twenty years of hard use, however,

the Brownie’s bakelite body had started chipping, and ingress of light into the

chamber meant that its useful life was over. Amazingly, the lens and leaf shutter

were still in perfect condition—a tribute to Eastman Kodak’s commitment to quality.

Seeing my interest in photography, an indigent but indulgent maternal

uncle had sent me many books on the subject. These I had pored over, absorbing

technical know-how as well as tips on better photography. I drooled over the pictures

of cameras, especially the single-lens reflexes with their instant-return mirrors, TTL

metering, and lens interchangeability that made this type of 35 mm beast the most

versatile of all picture-taking instruments. I read and re-read many other books I

bought, but alas! I was a cameraman sans camera.

Now, thanks to El Tomāso, the long wait was over. Fitted with the

200 mm telelens, the camera felt familiar in my hands, but this time, a gun that did

not kill or maim, freezing images on film forever. 36 rounds, single shot or rapid-

fire, up close in macro or as distant as the stars, I could now ‘shoot’ anything visible

to the eye…or beyond. The mustachioed rally driver from the Gulf had made my

dream come true.

The trio had driven overland all the way from Kuwait in the Persian

Gulf, through Afghanistan and into India. Tomās over-flew Pakistan, as he did not

manage a visa from the Pakis, rejoining the party at Amritsar. I remembered that

only six years earlier, the Indian Armed Forces had given the Pakistan army a

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drubbing in the 1971 war, and the memories still rankled across the border. As we

tucked into a hearty dinner, we made plans.

It was decided that we would drive down to Delhi, then on to Agra to

see the Taj Mahal before returning to Delhi. We would then fly to Srinagar, Kashmir.

I baulked at this: I could not impose any further, although Tomās insisted that he

would take care of the tickets. The Kuwaiti Dinar was then valued at an exchange

rate of Rs.13/- to a Dinar, and Tomās was apparently flush with Indian Rupees.

But I could take advantage of his generosity no further. I came up

with Rs.5,000 – all I could then spare – which sum I pressed into Tomās’s reluctant

hands. That’s all I paid for the camera and probably the best holiday I ever had. In

return, I got priceless memories that would last a lifetime. The next day, I took ten

days leave and we were off in the 260 Z Sports 2+2.

High-speed cruising, at least of this variety, was something new to

me. 150 kilometers an hour on the speedometer and climbing steadily, yet I had total

control, thanks to the low center of gravity, wide BridgestoneBridgestone radials and GirlingGirling

disc brakes on all four wheels. The Grand Trunk road never felt like this before.

Could Sher Shah Suri, who made this road, ever have imagined that one day, people

would travel on it at such fantastic speeds?

The NISSAN Datsun glides, floats; whatever the condition of the road

surface might be, it’s no concern of ours. Tinted glasses, power steering, genuine

leather bucket seats, 6-track quadraphonic music from the cartridge player, silent air-

conditioning; the works! The trusty Ambassador was revealed as a bullock-cart!

The shock-absorbing, soundproofing qualities of this famous rally car

were legendary. At 175 kilometers an hour (that’s well over 100 miles an hour—the

ton! At last!), one cannot hear any exterior noise inside the Datsun’s luxurious

passenger compartment. The high-frequency triple horns can only be felt (through

the co-pilot’s footrest, or the driver’s foot-pedals), not heard. You know they are

working from the way traffic veers sharply to the left, giving me room to overtake.

A quick declutch, a mere tap on the tubby gear lever to shift down to

fourth, a slight jab of the right foot, and the engine responds gallantly; the car surges

forward eagerly, pressing us violently back, deep into the aromatic leather. Things

recede dizzyingly in the rear-view mirror as I slip back into top, and the muted,

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superbly responsive engine hurls the streamlined projectile at nearly 180 kilometers

an hour (112.5 mph) ventre à terre towards Delhi. The capital now seems

disappointingly close as the odometer reels in the distance rapidly.

Agra! I cannot find the words to express the wonder that life was for

me then. My heart overflowed with love, happiness, and bonhomie, and my body

seemed to be bursting with physical power. Every breath I took seemed to invigorate

me even further, as I reveled in the magic of youth. My wife of seven months (!) and

I had never seen the Taj Mahal. We were now gazing at it for the first time, and that

too in the company of dear friends. After seeing the mausoleum, we wandered about

the grounds the whole afternoon. I was not prepared for the sheer grandeur, the

breathtaking immensity, of this poem in marble. No photograph of this monument to

eternal love can ever hope to do it justice.

It was a fantasy world; the very air seemed to whisper of an ancient

love that lives on beyond the grave. The best description of the Taj Mahal that I’ve

come across is couched in poetic, not architectural language: “A teardrop on the

cheek of time.” I empathized with Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and his lost love,

Mumtaz. Her death must have made him realize that he, too, was mortal, and that

nothing lasts forever…except love. The monument was, perhaps, his way of telling

us that love endures even after the body, evanescent and ephemeral, is gone. That

moonlit night at the Taj, I pinched myself often, to see if I was dreaming.

There were hardly any people around, and André put the Pentax on a

tripod and took many long exposures with the fish-eye lens. We felt very close to our

wives. Poor Señor Tomās. Then unmarried, he was very fidgety, trapped between

two young couples on their second honeymoon. The restlessness would increase

further in Kashmir!

The Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir was distinguished IAS

officer Sushital Banerjee, my paternal cousin. When we alighted from the plane and I

phoned my sister-in-law Ranu, that beautiful and capable lady at once sent a car to

fetch us. It was a Sunday, and I found dada was home. He was very happy to see me

and my friends: my Dad (his maternal uncle) was his boyhood hero and he would

spend hours giving him the massage disciples traditionally give to their gurus,

pressing his biceps, muscular back and brawny legs after his workout or game.

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Sushital was meeting my wife for the first time (he sent me a gold

Sheaffer’sSheaffer’s pen set as a wedding present, but pressing duties came in the way of his

attending the reception at our ancestral home, Madhu Mandir, Allahabad); he

remarked that if such a lovely lady could not tame and domesticate me, nobody ever

would. (Did she? I often wonder.) The lady in question blushed at the neat

compliment from this extraordinarily handsome and charismatic man who exuded

power and authority.

Sushital regrets that, on account of government regulations, he cannot

have André and Doreen as guests in his official residence, but he’d arrange

something even better. That evening, the couple was settled in ‘Armstrong’, a

Category ‘A’ houseboat moored on the Dal Lake, with its own dedicated shikara

(similar to a Venetian gondola, except that it is paddled, not poled).

I have rarely seen such luxury as I saw on that house-boat; a lavishly

equipped kitchen, two plush bedrooms, a magnificent drawing room littered with

genuine antiques, engaging bric-a-brac, and Persian carpets. There are flowers

everywhere, even on the balconies. It is a floating palace! There is no air-

conditioning—all you need to do is to open the window!

It is verily a paradise on earth, this idyllic vale of Kashmir, tailor-

made for romance. I envied the young English couple, so obviously in love, and

guiltily wished that we, too, had a houseboat! But that’s being ungrateful—Bowdi

looked after us very well, and gave us a lovely suite in the West Wing of the huge

bungalow on the Bundh. André was most impressed by the armed guards at the gate,

and the magnificent Chinar trees in the beautiful garden.

Trips were arranged for us to see Sonamarg, Pahalgam, Gulmarg,

Chashmeshahi, etc. From Gulmarg, we took horses to Khillanmarg and on to

Alpatthar, beyond the tree line and even beyond the snowline. André had difficulty

breathing, and asked me what height we were at—he paled under his tan when he

learnt he was at over 12,000 feet! That’s almost two thousand feet higher than Ben

Nevis, I pointed out, the highest peak in the British Isles! No wonder the Englishman

had trouble finding enough oxygen to breathe. Doreen, my wife and I were not

affected by the height: we must have highlander blood in us.

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André is a throwback to Viking forebears; burly, and with a bushy,

reddish beard, he could pass as Eric the Red himself—the ancient Norwegian

explorer who discovered, named and founded a colony on the world’s largest island,

Greenland, an intentional misnomer designed to attract settlers. In reality, 87% of

Greenland is ice-bound round the year! What an adman he’d have made. A last

snowball fight, then we galloped downhill to Gulmarg and drove back to Srinagar.

One evening, we even got to meet Sheikh Abdullah, the ‘Lion of

Kashmir’, a giant of a man in every sense of the term, with his leonine countenance

and his massive, six-and-a-half-foot frame. Another evening, Lakshmi Kant Jha, the

well-known ex-bureaucrat, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and now

the Governor of J&K, drops by. He is an old family friend, married to beautiful

Mekhala, whose own house was not far from Madhu Mandir.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, El Tomāso had borrowed the

Minolta Minolta and fled to Trivandrum (now Tiruvananthapuram); he just couldn’t take any

more. (A few months later, he too, got married…to Anila, a typical southern bellé

with a smooth, dusky complexion and classic features).

There was a last minute glitch: Indian Airlines informed us over the

phone that we did not have ‘OK’ tickets, so on the proposed day of our departure,

there are no seats available on the plane for any of us! Sushital steps in quietly and

asks for the Station Officer or some such official who is in-charge of the airport. A

few terse remarks are addressed to that worthy.

Half an hour later, we learn that a special flight has been ‘arranged’ to

accommodate the sudden demand for seats on the busy Srinagar-Delhi route. Thus

did we return to Delhi as per schedule.

In India, as everywhere else, it pays to know the powers that be.

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The Mother of all lenses…!! Nikkor Super telephoto Zoom lens 1200-1700mm

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Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune in to. ~ Wayne Dyer


COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE SLR

It is hard to shed habits, for they become so much a part of us that

they are very difficult to shake off. Even with the sophisticated MinoltaMinolta XE-1XE-1 in my

hands, I found, after exposing a few rolls of film, that I was still taking snaps, not

making pictures. It was as if I was still using the ‘Baby Brownie’ box camera, with

its universal-focus, constant aperture, and fixed shutter-speed.

For one thing, I was using the camera on its ‘Auto’ setting, which

allowed me to relinquish the responsibility of determining the correct exposure. This

means that the camera’s metering system was giving me the shutter speed that, in its

wisdom, it felt was appropriate for the aperture I’d set on the lens: remember, this

was an aperture-priority automatic camera. You set the aperture and it set the

corresponding shutter speed, both visible within the bright viewfinder, that not only

reflected the aperture number set on the lens (via an ingenious prismatic system) into

a ‘box’ at the top of the viewfinder, but also showed a needle that swung vertically

up and down the full scale of shutter speeds to indicate the speed available.

There were three concentric focusing aids right in the center of the

bright, contrasty viewfinder: the ‘split image’ focusing aid, one that split an image

(like a jawline, a pair of spectacles or a hemline), that you then ‘joined up’ into a

coherent item by turning the soft, rubberized lens focusing ring. There was also a

shimmering outer ring that turned clear when the image was in focus. Either of these

Beyond Photography

PART ONE

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Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily. ~Thomas Szasz


usually suited the subject; if not, the rest of the ground glass of the viewfinder was

the fallback position.

Since – despite all the theoretical knowledge I’d picked up from

books (and which seemed to promptly desert me in actual picture-taking situations) –

I didn’t bother too much about which aperture was set on the lens, I usually got a

shutter speed totally inappropriate for the subject I was shooting.

For example, to freeze (if that’s what the creative requirement was) a

fast-moving subject like a car crossing horizontally in front of me, I needed a shutter

speed of at least 1/500th of a second. If the aperture setting on the lens, however,

happened to be f.11, there was no way, with 125 ASA negative film, I was going to

get more than 1/125th, except in very brightly lit conditions. To achieve 1/500 th of a

second, I needed an aperture setting of f.5.6!

To confound matters further, if the averaging system used by

MinoltaMinolta found some dark areas in the frame/ background, it tried to expose those

shaded areas correctly by further lowering the shutter speed, thereby overexposing

the subject. On account of all these factors, I usually found that, although the frame

was correctly focused – focusing was something I had to do (and still prefer doing)

myself – my subject was either over- or under-exposed, the background was

distracting from the point of view of contrast (too dark or too light to make the

subject stand out against it), or the composition was just plain rotten (there were

telephone poles ‘growing’ out of people’s heads, the classic bloomer!).

Worse still, the subject itself was usually blurred when I wanted it to

be pin-sharp, thanks to camera shake. The natural tremor of a person’s hands can be

horrendously magnified in pictures shot at slow shutter speeds, which is a problem

we’ll examine a bit later in the book. Certain situations can call for a blurred subject,

but that’s also something that we’ll go into later on.

THE STARTING POINT

In order to get more meaningful pictures, I realized that I first needed to understand

the inter-relationship between shutter-speed and aperture that produced a correct

exposure. A correctly exposed negative is one which is neither dense nor too ‘thin’,

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that has detail in both highlights as well shadow areas, and which prints in all its

finest details on ‘normal’ photographic paper.

Though I am not going to go into too much detail about darkroom aspects, suffice it

to say that there are basically three types of light-sensitive paper available to the

photographer (going from little 3” x 5” sheets, to mammoth rolls that can be cut in

the darkroom for making blow-ups). The three grades (coming in glossy and matt

surface variants) are suited to negatives fitting into any of the three categories of

negatives, as cited above.

Only when I used proper combinations of the two components of exposure, i.e.,

shutter-speed and aperture, could I hope to meet the requirements of correct

exposure of the main subject. ‘Correct exposure’ was, as I came to realize, entirely

dependent on the creative aspects of the shot I had in mind. This, in turn, threw up

the need to satisfy certain technical requirements that I had in mind. In other words,

what was correct exposure for one subject or situation was not necessarily the

correct exposure for another situation.

But at the starting point, I had to properly understand what ‘shutter-speed’ and

‘aperture’ meant, in the first place! This was where ‘control’ started; I was obviously

out of control at the starting line itself!

The Shutter Speed

I found that shutter speed determines the duration for which light falls on the film.

That is why it is expressed in terms of seconds or fractions of a second. The larger

the fraction sounds, the shorter is the duration of the exposure; e.g., 1/60th of a

second is a slower shutter-speed, giving more time to the light to fall on the film,

than, say, 1/250th, 1/1000th or even 1/2,000th of a second, the last two being very short

exposures (fast shutter-speeds). Fast shutter-speeds can ‘freeze’ rapid movement; a

car flashing past appears stationary in the picture.

If a speed of say, 1/30th second is used, however, that same car would

register on film as a blur…not bad, if you are looking to capture an image about the

velocity and impatience of road users around you, juxtaposed against a slower strata

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of travelers – say, a cyclist – to add the contrast that highlights what life in a

metropolis is all about. It’s not a good solution if your intention was to show the

car’s details…but it’s a good one if you want to illustrate the hazards of cycling on

busy roads with fast, undisciplined traffic, a common feature on Indian roads.

High shutter speeds can freeze action. High-speed flash can produce

the same effect, provided the available light is too weak to create an image on film,

except at very large apertures (such as f.1.4). This is why strobe lights in discos work

so well: flashing on for a very brief intervals of time before shutting off again, the

infinitesimally-brief (but very intense, as a compensation for the brevity) winks of

light mean that your retina only registers ‘freeze frames’ of the scene, a very pleasing

effect when some of the better-looking dancers are ‘frozen’ in attractive ‘poses’ on

the retina of your eyes.

I seem to remember a disco called ‘Ghungroo’ in the Delhi of my

wild youth, which had this sort of arrangement. Pulses of light from electronic

flashguns (significantly called ‘strobes’ in America, or ‘Speed Lights’ by NikonNikon),

are normally as short as 1/1,000th of a second or of even briefer duration, and have

the same effect as that of high shutter-speed in daylight. This is the reason why

exposures made with electronic flash as a light source can freeze motion so

effectively.

The shutter of your camera, instead of controlling the intensity of light

from its natural source, usually daylight, (something quite beyond it’s control!),

restricts the duration of light going through it to the film lying behind it, for certain

fixed intervals of time, i.e., as per the shutter-speed setting.

In a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, there are two shutter curtains,

both simultaneously ‘cocked’ by the simple act of winding on film, either by thumb,

or, as is usually the case today, by merely shutting the camera back after loading the

film cartridge and allowing the camera’s built-in motor to automatically wind on the

film to frame 1. On your pressing the shutter-release button, one curtain starts on its

journey from one side of the film to the other, while the second curtain follows suit

fractions of a second later.

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The gap between the two curtains as they travel (horizontally or

vertically, as per the design of the shutter, it doesn’t matter too much for all practical

purposes) determines the shutter–speed…and, coupled with the aperture, gives the

exposure! Before we go on to discuss aperture, a simple example might serve as an

aid to memory in remembering that shutter-speed is but one-half of the equation. The

other half, of course, is aperture:

Shutter-speed x Aperture = Exposure.

Let us suppose you are seated in a room, in total darkness. You are facing the door,

and there is a piece of unexposed film in your hand. The room has only one (sliding)

light-tight door, and that being presently tightly shut, no light has managed to sneak

in from the sunlit balcony beyond it to hit the film and expose it.

But now, if someone opens and shuts the door for a thousandth of a

second, a small quantity of light will manage, in that brief interval, to get through to

the film and register on it…i.e., ‘expose’ it. The light hitting the film will cause a

chemical reaction in it, which is what ‘exposure’ means.

When that light is a focused image, such as through the focused lens

of a camera (read ‘shutter’ for ‘sliding door’), unlike simple ingress of unfocused

light coming though a doorway as in our example, it will form a (latent) focused

image on the film, an image that will emerge, as if by magic, after the film is

chemically processed.

However, depending on how sensitive the film is (yes, films come in

various types and sensitivities, but for the sake of simplicity we will continue to talk,

for the time being, of standard negative film, the type you use to shoot your picnic

snapshots), some effect to the exposure to light would have resulted.

But if the person at the door now decides to slide it open and shut it

again after an interval of a full second, the film will, in all probability, be totally

fogged by the heavy exposure (thanks to the long duration of the exposure). In other

words, the duration of the exposure has been far too long, and the film is ‘over-

33


exposed’, like any movie star can be if s/he gets too much coverage, ‘fogging’ the

minds of cine-goers! Too much of a good thing can be bad!

However, if it were dusk, the evening light coming from outside

would be very weak (weak intensity of light), and the one-second duration of the

exposure ought to be right on the button! In other words, we have the option of

adjusting shutter-speed according to the intensity of light, by keeping aperture (the

doorway) constant so as to balance the equation and achieve correct exposure.

The Aperture

But there is another way of achieving this most desirable correct exposure: changing

the other half of the equation, i.e., by keeping the shutter-speed constant and varying

the aperture!

The aperture you have set on the lens is, of course, the other half of

the equation that you can fiddle around with. The aperture mechanism of the lens of

a single-lens reflex camera closely resembles the iris of the human eye.

By virtue of an arrangement

of overlapping metal plates,

each the approximate shape of

a butterfly’s wing secured in

an annular configuration that

allows each plate a certain

degree of free lateral movement, the aperture through which light must pass (like the

iris of your eye) can be increased or decreased. What this means is that by

controlling this ‘aperture’ or iris, you can control the amount of light getting through

the lens and onto the film.

If you look through a window on a bright day, the outside glare can

hurt your eyes for a few moments. But then the iris of your eye reacts by closing

down, narrowing the pupil (letting in a smaller amount of light) till the harsh glare no

longer causes discomfort. While the human eye can take a few seconds to thus adjust

itself, in a camera the actual iris shuts down to the aperture set by you on the

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aperture-setting ring on the lens, in microseconds, at the instant of your pressing the

shutter-release button (on an SLR camera).

If you had looked out of the window through a card with a single

pinhole punched in it, the scene would not have dazzled your eyes at all; the tiny

aperture of the pinhole would have restricted light to the extent that the harshly-lit

scene outside would have looked pretty dim! (When you were back at school, you

might have made your very own pinhole camera; they need exposures of quite long

durations, because the pinhole allows so little light to squeeze through to the film).

Equation: tiny aperture x long shutter-speed = correct exposure

The small aperture controls the amount of light reaching your eye to the point where

it does not ‘over-expose’ the scene on the retina of your eye and cause pain (at which

point, you shut your eyes tightly). It’s like a tap whose knurled knob can be used to

control the flow of water; the wider you open the aperture inside the nozzle of the

tap, by twisting the knob anti-clockwise, the more the amount of water (read ‘light’,

in the case of your camera) that gets through in a given span of time (the other half of

the equation: remember shutter-speed alias ‘duration’?).

A proper combination of Aperture and Shutter-speed (the two elements vital to

exposure) gives us a well-exposed negative or transparency. To examine the

relationship between the two in greater detail, let us take the analogy of the tap a

little further.

Let us suppose we are filling a large bucket of water from the tap. We

are given only one minute to fill the bucket. We therefore open the tap the correct

amount, so as to fill the bucket within this pre-set time duration. Transposing this

analogy to an actual picture-taking situation, let us suppose we are told to shoot the

picture at a shutter-speed of 1/250th of a second. So we set ‘1/250’ on the shutter-

speed dial on the top of the camera, then adjust the aperture ring on the lens

manually to the aperture recommended by the camera’s in-built exposure meter.

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Different makes of cameras convey this information in different ways.

Usually, the better makes of automatic cameras also give you the option of full

manual control, allowing you to override ‘auto’ and make manual adjustments of

shutter-speed and aperture, the way many professionals still do.

As you become familiar with your picture taking and with the way

your camera works, you will learn that, in a variety of situations, it is better to

override the ‘auto’ setting and go the manual route. Exposure meters can be fooled

(though, in this age of computer-like cameras, this is getting somewhat rare), but

once your ‘experience’ meter gets going, you can instantly come up with the correct

combination of shutter-speed and aperture and compensate manually. Later, we will

explore this point in greater detail.

Depth of Field is another factor affected by the aperture (apart from the amount of

light it controls). The ‘depth of field’ is the distance behind, as well as the distance in

front of, your subject, that is acceptably sharp at a given aperture. In other words, it

is the zone of sharpness. The basic rule is: the smaller the aperture (e.g., f.11, not

f.4), the deeper the zone of sharpness, i.e., the area that is acceptably sharp to the

eye, both in front of and behind the subject. I will expand on this point a bit, later on.

Professional photographers, who shoot scenic pictures or college

graduation group photographs, know this well. You may have noticed that in most of

your pictures taken with a simple box camera, your friends clustered in the close

foreground, the cars in the parking lot behind, and the distant skyscrapers…all were

in good focus: a very ‘deep’ depth of field indeed! This is because such cameras

have very small lenses (which are very inexpensive when mass-produced), with very

small, fixed apertures.

But in serious photography, such a universal depth of field (dof) is not

always desirable. So many things in focus—it can confuse the eye and steal the

thunder from the main subject—your friends! You don’t want a picture-postcard

frame of Dal Lake, do you? All you want is a well-composed picture of your friends

in sharp detail, with the rest of the scene out of focusout of focus so as not to distract the eye.

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A professional would try for a shot at a very wide aperture, perhaps

f.2.8 or even f.2. With the aperture ring on the lens at this setting, he would set the

shutter-speed to about 1/2,000th of a second, or even 1/4,000th of a second with ASA

100 film in daylight. Voilà! A super-sharp photograph of your gang; the rest is an

inconsequential mish-mash. However, if you guys want a record of your visit to the

Eiffel Tower, he’ll probably use f.8 or f.11, so as to get it to loom up sharply in the

background…because that’s exactly why the gang is posing before it!

The high shutter-speed of 250th of a second used in the group shot

would have yielded another side benefit: the blurry effect of camera shake would

have been neutralized! Many people buy expensive cameras, and then wonder why

the pictures always come out blurred and hazy! Don’t be shy of using a small tripod,

especially for static scenes, like panoramas, taken at small apertures and slow

shutter-speeds, or when you intend joining the group picture when using a self-timer

(fight off the urge to rest the camera on the bonnet of the car with its engine

running).

There are two other factors that affect depth of field: the focal length

of the lens in use, and the distance of the subject from the film plane:

To increase dof, then, (a) use a wide-angle lens, say, one of 28 or 24 mm

focal length (b) use the smallest possible aperture (c) get as far from the

subject as possible (but don’t let it disappear from view altogether!)

To decrease dof, (a) use a lens with as long a focal length as consistent

with your aims (b) use as wide an aperture as possible (c) get as close to

the subject as possible.

Somewhere within these tips lies the solution that best lets

you shoot it like you want.

LENSES

As mentioned earlier, the single-lens

reflex camera’s versatility rests on the fact that it can

accept a wide range of interchangeable lenses

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encompassing true fish-eye (6 mm or 8 mm), full-frame fish-eye (16 mm) to super-

wide (18 mm), ultra-wide (20 mm), wide (24 to 35 mm), normal (50 to 58 mm),

short tele (85 to105 mm, excellent for portraiture), medium tele (135 mm) to long

(200 to 300 mm) to super long (500 mm to 2,000 mm) telephoto lenses—favorites

of wildlife photographers.

Wide-angle and ultra wide-angle lenses

start off from 35 mm focal length, and go all the

way down to 20 mm, whereafter they enter the

zone of super-wide angle lenses that give enormous

depth of field.

Certain (very expensive) fish-eyes have a 360º arc

of vision, and a depth-of-field that extends all the

way from infinity right down to the glass surface of the lens, so that you can actually

photograph an ant walking across the front element!

Fish-eye lenses were originally

developed for scientific and space

use, but image-makers specializing in

product and advertising photography

have also exploited the impact of the

unique perspective it offers.

Fisheyes are different from ultra-

wideangle lenses, since their most

obvious feature is the weird curvilinear

FULL-FRAME FISH-EYE LENSES

perspective distortion that causes extreme bending of straight lines, especially those

near the edges of the frame. The angle of coverage of fish-eye lenses can be anything

from 220º to 360º!

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Other noticeable (and often very handy) features are the exceptional depth of field

and stretched out perspective. The wide-angle lens has the effect of ‘stretching’ a

scene: a room can look very long; a small car’s bonnet can look as long as that of a

Ferrari. This is an intrinsic property that comes with the lens, and can be used to

good advantage in certain situations, which you’ll appreciate as you go along.

Narrow-angle lenses

At the other extreme, the longer the focal length of the lens, the narrower the zone of

sharpness, other things being equal, i.e., given the same aperture setting. Portrait,

sports, and news photographers often use this to their advantage; it allows them to

concentrate on the most important area of the picture: the actual subject.

Moreover, the longer the lens, the more it ‘compresses’ distance. If

you have watched cricket on TV, you will have noticed how the pitch appears very

short, hardly the 22 yards it’s meant to be. The bowler seems to almost bounce the

ball off the batsman’s head! The telezoom of the TV camera has ‘compressed’ the

distance. Famed film director David Lean used the long lens to stunning effect in his

classic movie Lawrence of Arabia¸ in a scene where the Black Prince (Omar Sharif)

looms out of the desert on his racing camel…but though the animal is obviously

going flat out, it doesn’t seem to making any progress; it appears to be dancing on

one spot as it races towards you, thanks to the tremendous magnification.

Still photographers use this property of telelenses in various creative

ways; to emphasize the confusion caused by mile-long traffic jams, with the vehicles

tightly bunched together; the incredible masses of pedestrians on Kolkata’s streets;

row after claustrophobic row of low-income housing complexes; the profusion of

blooms in a rose garden, to heighten the impact of their collective beauty, etc.

The telelens is indispensable when you have to compact distance…

and also when you’d like to selectively isolate a subject, as the close-up of the old

Turkey Buzzard’s eye in the opening frames of McKenna’s Gold. Suppose you

would like to highlight just one runner (possibly the one you think will win the race)

in a line-up of sprint stars at the starting blocks, just fit the longest telezoom in your

39


bag, open the aperture as wide as that permissible under exposure considerations,

focus slightly ahead of this particular runner as he crouches there (all seen side view,

not front on). He will be sharply etched, while his competitors will fall progressively

out of focus on either side of him.

I vividly remember a prize-winning shot by legendary photographer

S. Paul, shot with a NikonNikon F2AS, MD-2 motor drive, and 180 mm f 2.8 Nikkor lens

wide open at f 2.8 and 1/500th of a second (on Kodachrome ™ 64 transparency

film), of a Republic Day parade in New Delhi: only the red feathered pom-pom on

the beret of a striding soldier was in sharp focus; the rest of the picture, the solidly-

packed phalanx of marchers, was hazy.

What a shot! What incredible impact! That lone, sharply etched pom-

pom neatly summed up the martial overtones of the parade, the esprit de corps, and

the sheer élan of the crack battalion! Such blazing inspiration is the stuff that great

photographs are made of.

Macro lenses (such as the stupendous 55 mm f.2.8 Nikkor), lens

extension tubes (auto as well as non-auto), and bellows attachments, enable close-up

photography to extend into the tinier world of macro-photography, allowing one to

explore and record a wonder-world of rare coins, stamps, patterns in bark, and the

subtle textures of nature…minute flowers and infinitesimally small insects that

usually go unnoticed.

And with a microscope attachment, we can take pictures through a

microscope; photomicrography allows you to take pictures right down to the atomic

level of matter (using a tunneling electron microscope).

You can even photograph the

heavens by attaching your SLR camera to a

telescope (like the Celestron 1000 mm, using

very long exposures and an equatorial drive

(highly recommended) that allows your camera

rig to compensate for the Earth’s rotation.

From macrocosm to microcosm, it’s all yours,

baby! Phew!

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Exposure by ‘Experience Meter’2

A rough guide, a rule of thumb, that I always use, is that I take the

correct bright daylight exposure to be a product of the reciprocal of the film speed,

and an aperture of f.11. Impressed? Now I’ll stow the jargon and simply say that if

you are using 125 ASA film, your bright daylight shutter-speed will be 1/125th of a

second at an aperture of f.11. Now you can consign your old hand-held light

(exposure) meter3 to the dustbin…even if it’s a Gossen Luna Pro!

125 ASA film = 125th of a second shutter speed, at an aperture of

f.11…that’s simple, isn’t it? If your film is rated at 400 ASA, use 1/500 th of a second

at f.11 (there’s no 400th of a second setting on a camera’s shutter speed dial, so one

has to make do with the closest alternative — 1/500th of a second).

It follows from this that, if correct exposure is merely a product of – a

combination of – both aperture as well as shutter-speed, we can fiddle around with

this basic equation. Let us suppose it is:

Shutter-speed (1/125th sec) x Aperture (f.11) = Correct exposure (Bright daylight with 125 ASA film) Then, we can use any of the following combinations:

Shutter speed Aperture (equipment permitting)

1/15 32 1/30 22 1/60 16 1/125 11 1/250 8 1/500 5.6

1/1,000 4 1/2,000 2.8 1/4,000 2 1/8,000 1.4

2 The term is borrowed from my guru, the legendary S. Paul.3 An exposure meter suggests workable combinations of shutter speed and aperture.

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The above table is recommended for bright daylight exposures only,

with ASA 100 to 125 negative films. For daylight beach or snow scenes (where

there’s more light bouncing around), use f.16 with 1/125th of a second as the base for

a fresh table.

It will be observed from the ‘Experience Meter’4 chart above that,

depending on our priority, i.e., whether we wish to achieve greater depth of field or a

shallower one (to highlight a subject and obliterate a disturbing background), we can

select appropriate combinations of the base exposure (which is based on the

reciprocal of the film-speed) to get an appropriate shutter-speed & aperture combo to

achieve our aims.

1/125 th with f.11 is a suitable combination for achieving excellent

depth of field coupled with fair motion-stopping power, especially if the subject is

not traveling too fast, i.e., is coming straight at us or crossing diagonally in front of

us.

Alternatively, our priority might be to freeze motion or, at the other

extreme, blur it creatively. If so, we will select higher shutter-speeds to ‘stop’

motion, or lower shutter-speeds to blur it, along with the appropriate apertures (see

chart) that will ensure correct exposures.

4 “Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.” ~ Oscar Wilde (Lady Windemere’s Fan, 1896)

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Or we can use a ‘middle’ combination that will give us reasonable

action-stopping power as well as a useful depth of field, which on the basis of the

above chart may be 1/250th and f.8, or 1/500th with f.5.6.

Another rule of thumb worth mentioning here is that, for shake-free

hand held exposures (more pictures are marred by camera shake than any other

factor unless it’s the ‘no film’ factor!), use a shutter speed at least as fast as the

reciprocal of the focal length of the lens in use.

So if you are using the 50 mm, 55 mm, or 58 mm ‘normal’ lens, 1/60 th

second is the bottom limit before you use a support—a doorway, a table-top, a

tripod, a monopod or anything solid and stationary which can stabilize you.

The Nikkor Zoom 85~250mm f/4.0~4.5 Auto lens

If you’re using a 300 mm lens, select 1/250th second or higher, say,

1/500th; I’ve sometimes gotten away with 1/125th of a second with a 500 mm mirror

lens, but I always had some kind of support, be it a branch or a rock. Ashok Talwar,

well-known producer and director of television serials and rabid OLYMPUS man, had

designed an aluminium shoulder stock-cum-pistol grip with a cable release where the

trigger on an AK-47 would normally reside, on which to mount his OM-1 with

telelens. It was a very nifty gadget for those long tele shots of flying painted storks

he was so fond of. Alas, he settled down to taking endless pictures of nesting

43


bulbuls from his bedroom window, and the nifty contraption disappeared into a vast

dungeon where he stashed his memorable collection of photographic junk.

On the other hand, I’ve often seen S. Paul using his shoulder ‘firing’

NOVOFLEX’ 400 mm f.1: 4.5 ‘follow-focus’ telelens, that focuses by squeezing

and/or releasing the spring-loaded trigger built into the pistol grip. It is an excellent

‘weapon’ for someone like him, with his incredible reflexes, sharp eyesight, and

knack for capturing breathtaking images of birds in flight.

Filters for daily use

I do not believe that the keen amateur needs much more than a UV (also called

‘skylight’) filter on his lens, which not only protects the front element of the lens but

also neutralizes UV (ultra violet) rays from the sun that give color photographs a

bluish cast. I personally prefer using a 1A filter, which does all this and a bit more,

imparting a faint pinkish (or ‘warming’) effect to my color pictures that I find very

pleasing. I use ‘HOYA’ filters, but you can choose any brand that appeals to you.

The only other filter that I will recommend for colour film is a

polarizing filter. As light coming off reflections can degrade images, the polarizing

filter, by virtue of its internal construction, acts like a Venetian blind and

‘rationalizes’ the rays of light, eliminating scattered rays that spoil the picture

(degrade image quality) by hitting the lens at odd angles.

A polariser tames glare or reflections off many types of surfaces, like

water. Details appear again in brightly-lit portions, whereas burnt-out highlights is all

you’d get without it. One more effect of a polarizing filter is to enhance colors, so

that blue skies look bluer, making white clouds stand out contrastily against them

(see calendar shots), greatly enhancing the visual appeal of a scene. With slight

under-exposure of a transparency film, and the use of a polarizing filter, breathtaking

effects can be achieved.

Another widget that photographers love to use for taming excessive

levels of light intensity is a neutral density filter. This filter, like your sunglasses,

curtails light by as much as 10%. Neutral density filters come in different strengths

expressed as 2X, 4X etc. A 2X ND filter cuts light by one stop, so that, for example,

44


you can use 1/1,000th of a second at the beach at f.4 instead of 5.6, as recommended.

This larger aperture also allows you to narrow the depth of field.

A 4X ND filter can help if you are caught with 800 ASA film in your

camera on a bright day, by bringing exposure combinations within control. With the

4X ND filter fitted, the 800 ASA film becomes as a film two stops slower, i.e., the

equivalent of a 200 ASA film. Although it is the rare amateur who is likely to face

such a crisis, I mention it simply to add another angle to the possibilities offered by

ND filters. Who knows to what use you may have to put one to, if you always load

400 ASA or faster film? But buy the other two filters first!

Flash Synchronization

Unlike leaf shutters, where flash synchronizes with each and every shutter-speed,

focal plane shutters in most5 SLR cameras cannot synchronize with flash beyond,

usually, 1/125th of a second or 1/250th of a second shutter-speed. Without going into

the technicalities of why this is so, let us confront the problems that arise from this

property.

Suppose we have to use 1/500th of a second in a daylight shot and also need to use

some fill-in flash (to brighten up – throw some light into – shadow areas) as well, we

will have to compromise by reducing the shutter-speed to 1/250th which is the

maximum speed at which flash-sync occurs (with, say, the NikonNikon FM2).

But this will defeat the purpose of the main exposure, which may be

to get a shot that freezes action, yet has flash lightening up shadows and revealing

detail lurking there. The ideal balance we are in search of will be lost. You may even

end up with two overlapping images, one in response to the available light, the other

in response to the flash. Not a bad effect, something to file away for future reference!

Although electronic flash in general cannot sync at shutter speeds

higher than 1//250th of a second, there is another (but a little more cumbersome and

expensive way) to take flash pictures at any shutter-speed—focal plane flashbulbs.

For all those who have never seen a flashgun that uses flashbulbs, something not

entirely surprising since these conventional flashguns have more or less gone the

5 There are exceptions, like the Olympus 4T — a major advantage despite its hefty retail price.

45


way of the Dodo, let me explain that these guns used flashbulbs that had to be

discarded after use. Since these bulbs became very hot after the exposure had been

made, they usually gave the negligent or absent-minded a memory or two to last a

lifetime if he touched them with ungloved hands. I really have no idea if at all focal

plane flashbulbs (or such flashguns) are available today. Perhaps not; their

inconvenience apart, in this age of instant karma, they wouldn’t find any takers.

Every camera system or flashgun has something going for it, and

most SLRs are in trouble here. Some Nikons have managed to circumvent the

problem by means of a special, very expensive flashgun dedicated to some of their

top-of-the-line models. But most pros who are into fashion or other forms of

commercial photography prefer to use leaf-shutter cameras/ lens combinations (not

only because they sync with flash at any shutter speed, but because the larger

negative gives the greater detail necessary for their magazine/poster shoots!).

Hasselblad, Zenza Bronica, Rolleiflex, Mamiya, Kowa and Yashica are some of the

major systems.

Since these are all 120 roll-film cameras, and hardly as versatile or

compact as SLRs, this use of lens-shutter cameras with flash has remained firmly

within the domain of photographers who specialize in high-speed nature and

scientific photography, fashion, table top food photography, and other sundry studio

image-making. These large format cameras, however, pack enormous detail into the

negative due to the larger surface area, which is why they are popular professionally.

I would always advise the keen photo-enthusiast to save up money

and buy the outfit that will help fulfil his/her aspirations, no matter if it takes a

year…or two. Good, solidly made cameras, like, say, the NikonNikon FM3A will last a

lifetime, as will the lenses. Even pros use their gear for years before discarding it.

In the hands of an amateur, there is enough built-in durability in the

better makes to ensure many, many years of trouble-free service. It would be a pity

to see genuine interest and enthusiasm wither and die merely because the

photographer outgrew his equipment, or if the camera purchased did not come up to

expectations. Choose as carefully as you’d choose a life partner, and once you’ve

46


decided, stick to your ‘guns’, that’s my advice. I doubt you’ll ever regret taking it.

It’s very expensive to

switch camera

systems, believe you

me.

After becoming acclimatized to the enormous potential of the MinoltaMinolta

XE-1XE-1, I acquired a Hanimex zoom lens, a 90~230 mm, f4.5~5.6 optic. One John

Hannes, in far-off Australia, had gone into the import-export business, and guess

what he named his company that was soon specializing in marketing, under its own

brand name, a range of fine photographic equipment? No prizes for guessing

correctly!

I wish to thank John for an excellent lens marketed by his company; it

was one of those sturdy, well balanced, no-nonsense zooms with good performance

(and very lucky for me, too) that featured an adjustable (and lockable) tripod-

mounting collar, besides separate rubberized rings for focusing and zooming.

With most zoom lenses, it is advisable to focus at the maximum focal

length of the zoom range, and then zoom out/in until the composition is judged to be

ideal. All this takes much longer to explain than to actually do. Push-pull zoom

lenses were very expensive in the middle seventies, and, unlike today, not always

capable of delivering image quality comparable with those obtainable from fixed

focal length lenses. That doesn’t include NikonNikon’s fabulous but stiffly priced push-

Beyond Photography

PART TWO

47

I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. ~Winston Churchill


pull f4.0 80~200 mm Zoom-Nikkor…my dream lens that, one day in the future, I

was to actually acquire.

The great advantage the Hanimex zoom had over the 200 mm Rokkor

telelens I owned was, of course, that I could ‘crop’ the image in the viewfinder itself,

eliminating much of the composition that I normally had to do in the darkroom. That

is, I could enlarge or shrink (zoom in or zoom out of) a scene while viewing it in the

viewfinder, compose, and press the shutter button when it felt just right.

This reduced cropping at the enlargement stage, and obviously made

better use of the potential of the tiny 35 mm negative, whose 24 mm x 36 mm size

was not as tolerant of ‘wastage’ as a larger format like, for example, the 120 roll-film

negative, which is 70 mm x 70 mm square.

The 90 ~ 150 mm portion of the zooming range of the Hanimex lens

was ideal for portraiture, and at 230 mm – with four times the magnification of my

58 mm standard lens – I could pull in quite distant subjects. Images shot with the

aperture wide open at f4.5 were sharp from corner to corner, and with the

background thrown well out of focus at about 150 mm in tightly composed shots,

subjects stood out even more sharply because I made it a point to select contrasting

backgrounds that isolated them still further and made them ‘pop out’ of the picture.

Shooting with fine-grain 125 ASA B&W film, I was able to use fairly

high shutter-speeds in sunlight because I shot with the lens ‘wide open’ (i.e., at the

maximum aperture of f.4.5), and I could get razor-sharp handheld pictures with

reassuring repeatability, having established my own working formula. My pictures

started to show signs of a ‘signature’.

To try and get at the basics of available-light outdoor portraiture, I

made my wife of but a few months the principal guinea pig of these experiments, and

I was gratified to find that the results were generally appreciated! I won’t deny that

the subject was enthusiastic and…ahem! pretty photogenic!

This ‘in-camera composition’ was even more important where I was

exposing transparency film, which, after development, is cut into individual frames

48


and returned in cardboard mounts of a standard size that fits all slide projectors and

slide copiers.

No cropping in the lab is at all possible with transparency film, unless

you use a magnifying slide-copier (which, of course entails loading another slide

film in the camera), in which case a degree of re-composition, color-mixing,

sandwiching, and other tricks are possible. For the hoi polloi, like any big-game

hunter, what they shoot is usually what they get to mount on the wall!

Since we are on the subject of film, I might as well add a few remarks

that may help you in choosing the right film for your picture-taking needs.

35 mm FILM (ammo)

Films are broadly divided into two categories

1. Negative film, and

2. Transparency film.

In turn, negative films are available in two types:

Black & white (B&W) film, and

Color film.

As its name implies, B&W negative film, on being developed after exposure, yields

a strip of film, about 1.5 meters long, called the ‘negative’. This strip of film, with

the characteristic sprocket-holes running down the sides, is then snipped into six

strips of six frames each (six sixes are thirty-six…the official number of frames, or

shots, available on the film) and stored in cellophane negative envelopes.

To ‘print’ these negatives, they need to be slipped into the negative

tray of a photo-enlarger, a device that focuses light from a powerful electric bulb,

and through a ‘condenser’ onto the negative, and thereby projecting the ensuing

negative image onto an easel (where the light-sensitive photo paper is fixed).

Working in the dim glow of a red lamp (B&W print paper is not

affected by this colored ‘safe’ light), the darkroom technician focuses the image on

to the paper and makes an exposure. The exposed paper is now successively passed

49


through developer, stop-bath and fixer, at which stage normal room lighting can be

switched on and the results viewed.

As you will notice, this highly simplified version of the process of

developing a print from a negative is analogous to the chain of events that go into

making the negative itself inside the camera.

The subject of darkroom techniques is a fascinating world where a lot

of creativity can be unleashed, and it would benefit those keen on specializing in

B&W work to read some of the excellent books available on the subject before

setting up their own darkroom. All chemicals necessary to the processes are readily

available, either off-the-shelf or in raw form, for self-preparation as per various

popular formulae. Professional processing of B&W materials has become rare, and

inordinately expensive after the advent of automatic color processing booths and

studios.

But B&W is a medium that, ipso facto, is conducive to a lot of highly

artistic control at every stage of the process, and presents certain subjects in a unique

way that color materials can never hope to emulate. It is no accident that many great

photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Yousuf Karsh,

Philippe Halsman, Wynn Bullock, Bill Binzen, Duane Michals, Jay Maisel and

Dorothea Lange favored the use of B&W.

It is a world within a world that may take a lifetime to really master. I

can assure you that the results are well worth the effort. B & W, by its very nature,

forces one to achieve modeling and depth by the use of light and shadow, by

judiciously using intermediate shades of gray, or even by using chiaroscuro, i.e., a

style of stark contrasts borrowed from painting.

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Guru Dutt, the famed filmmaker, director and actor, made full use of it in classics like Pyaasa. B&W is a deeply evocative medium that color just cannot compete with, in certain respects. Just take a look at some of the photographs taken by S. Paul and you’ll know what I mean. Yet, this maestro can produce winning shots in color as well, such is his immense versatility.


For the average hobby photographer, however, the most popular

medium today is color. 35 mm color negative film is inexpensive, gives excellent

results (it is very tolerant to under or over-exposure), processing (usually by the

ubiquitous C-41 Kodak™ process) is quick and cheap, and the standard 3” x 5” prints

that return from the lab are easily slipped into albums.

Moreover, enlargements can be selectively made and aren’t at all

expensive considering the decorative and/or sentimental value of the images, besides

the fact that they make superb conversation pieces. Always get them laminated and

mounted for best effect. They’ll fade if bright sunlight or strong room lighting falls

on them regularly, but that can’t be helped. They can last twenty years or more if

well cared for, and repay the investment many times over by bringing back

memories of past times or important events.

Film sensitivity

Film sensitivity is a subject worth going into at this stage. As we

have seen, we have no control over an external natural source of light. Who can

control the sun? Yet, if light is weak, we need to supplement it or use a film that

manages to produce an acceptable image with the light available…or we use a

Leica R5 with a superfast lens, like Leitz’s astronomically-priced 50 mm f.1

Noctilux!

Electronic flash is not always the solution: how many of us have

watched a television program relaying a live day-night one-day cricket match, and

spotted little winks of light high up in the tiered stands after dark when the stadium

lights have come on.

These puny bursts of light come from the tiny, ridiculously

inadequate (for the purpose they are being put to) flashguns built into the box

cameras of fans hoping to capture an image of their favorite stars. There they are,

clicking away like maniacs, expecting the little pop-up flashguns in their cameras to

emit light intense enough to cross half a stadium and capture an image!

Flash has limited range, depending on the model, the film speed in

use, and the aperture set on the lens, and it consumes prodigious amounts of

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electricity / battery power. Had it not been so, someone would have, by now made an

electronic flashgun large enough to photograph the moon during its dark phase! But

who knows what the future holds…

Always remember that it is the distance of the light-source from the

image that determines its intensity, as far as the film is concerned. In other words, a

weak flashgun close to a subject will be more effective than a powerful flashgun

much further away. This is the inverse square law we all learnt in school: light fall

off is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. That is, if the flashgun is

moved 2 feet away, the light fall-off is 4 times (22; or 2 x 2 = 4). This is a very useful

thing to remember for those using off-camera flash, fired by a cable connection or a

slave unit triggered by an on-camera flash.

Multiple-flash rigs are not only possible but are frequently used by

professionals, and the TTL metering systems in many cameras fine-tune the duration

of the flash (and thereby, ‘manage’ the exposure).

No, the first thing a photographer does in response to low-light

conditions is to switch to a high-speed film. It is better to anticipate the lighting

conditions that will prevail at the time/ place of shooting, and load the appropriate

film right in the beginning itself.

High-speed film is normally 200 ASA, 400 ASA, or even faster. The

grains of silver-based chemicals in the film are larger, so they capture more light.

This has the effect of increasing its sensitivity or speed, thereby extending the range

of electronic flash, and enabling use of the smaller maximum aperture of your

camera lens (it may not have the fabulous, super-fast 58 mm, f1: 1.2 MC Noct-

Rokkor lens that El Tomāso gave me!). Fast film and a fast lens means we can use

higher shutter-speeds, often making hand-held available-light photography viable.

The downside to using fast film is that images can be slightly grainier,

the degree of graininess increasing in direct proportion to the speed of the film. The

faster the film, the grainier the image! This is because the chemicals tend to clump

together, giving the effect of graininess when processed.

Blow-ups, i.e., really big enlargements of the sizes possible with

slower, and far more commonly used 100 ASA film, are often disappointing if one

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isn’t careful. Color tones (also called ‘color saturation’) are somewhat subdued, and

overall lack of good color contrast may be evident. I am talking about the vast

majority of photographers. The key to getting the best out of fast film is perfect

exposure, which is where most of us stumble.

However, it must be admitted that, over the years, the quality of

images made with fast films has shown a marked improvement with the application

of new, improved film manufacturing technologies. I think the advantages of using

fast film, for the amateur, would out-weigh the disadvantages, apart from the slightly

higher cost of the film. But even that may be offset by the fact that the faster film

will enable those images to be captured that would otherwise have remained elusive.

Occasionally, photographers ‘push’ a film one or two ‘stops’. This

means, for example, that they will expose a 100 ASA film at a rating of 400 ASA,

and tell the lab to ‘push’ it two stops (a rating of 200 ASA is a push of one stop, i.e.,

twice the sensitivity) during processing. Incidentally, when a film’s rated speed,

usually expressed in ASA (American Standards Association) is double that of

another film, it is said to be twice as fast, or twice as sensitive to light.

I once exposed 1,600 ASA color negative film at a meter rating of

400 ASA (i.e. I ‘pulled’ it two stops; 1,600 to 800, then halving it to 400 ASA),

using an on-camera flash and another for side lighting, activated by a slave unit that

triggered off the remote flash when light from the on-camera flash hit it. Equipment

used was a NikonNikon FE and 105 mm f.2.5 Nikkor lens at an aperture of f.22,

guesstimated on the basis of the double-flash arrangement and the average distance

of the subject from the light-source (the two flashguns).

I told the lab to ‘pull’ the processing by two stops…and was delighted

with the results: blow-ups of 20” x 32” were sharp with negligible graininess, color

contrast was excellent, and there was good shadow detail.

With negative film, always expose for the shadows, i.e., aim to get an

exposure that will yield good detail in the shadows (it is always better to over-expose

color negative film slightly). You can do this by taking a careful meter reading for

the shadows. If you don’t have an exposure meter in your camera or a hand-held

exposure meter/ spot meter, then take the instructions that come with the film as a

starting point, and give a slightly heavier exposure.

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Alternatively, you can try to give double the exposure (one stop down

in shutter-speed, e.g., 1/125 to 1/60, or one stop wider aperture, e.g., f11 down to f8)

than what you think a normal shot by the prevailing light would entail. Color film is

very tolerant to over-exposure, i.e., it has good ‘exposure latitude’, as we guys say.

The highlights (the brighter parts of the picture) will take care of themselves. In fact,

this way you’ll see detail in highlights you would never get to see otherwise!

Highlights don’t get burnt out very easily, as they would be if you

were using transparency film, where the exact opposite holds good: expose for the

highlights, and let the shadows take care of themselves. Transparency film has many

properties that are the exact opposite of negative film. Let’s just say it has a more

positive outlook on life! Reasonable under-exposure yields good color saturation and

rich color contrast. Considerable under-exposure can yield startling effects, including

color shift…definitely worth a try.

I routinely expose Kodachrome 100 (an excellent transparency film)

at 125 ASA., thereby under-exposing it slightly. In a pinch, I can go even half a stop

over, and rate it at 160 ASA. I’ve rarely come away with bad pictures as a result of

this; quite the contrary, in fact.

As a bonus, the faster rating enables use of a higher shutter-speed

and/or a smaller aperture, in case you need some depth of field, as you might in

cloudy conditions. All the transparency films now in the shops seem to have the

same characteristics, but their color balance differs marginally. Choose the one that

gives you the colors that you think are most true to life, or the film that you can get

processed in your town itself. It is hard to wait three weeks for an out-station lab to

return your processed TPs.

One factor common to all color films is that long, really l-o-n-g

exposures (and by that I mean exposures of about twenty seconds or more) will

produce an effect called ‘color shift’. The colors of the image undergo distortion:

they no longer echo the true colors of the subject.

One moonlit night at Bharatpur (the world-famous Ghana-Keoladeo

Bird Sanctuary that I visited for a week in 1977, when it was in its heyday), I put the

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MinoltaMinolta XE-1 XE-1 on a tripod and, with a 28 mm wide-angle lens, made a long night

exposure of the misty, moody marshes with the moon hovering overhead. The auto

exposure lasted about 40 seconds.

I was using ORWO (produced by the same plant in Wolfen, East

Germany, that was so badly damaged by Allied bombing during World War II) color

transparency film rated at 50 ASA, and when the film came back from Bombay, duly

processed, I was delighted to find that the night shot was of quite acceptable quality,

aesthetically speaking. But the dominant tone was a deep purple, which would no

doubt have tickled pink the rock band that sports this name!

‘f’ NUMBERS AND FOCAL LENGTH

Before I go on to other things, I’d like to try and clear up one

mystery that’s probably been bothering you: the meaning of those mysterious

hieroglyphics, the (‘f’ numbers) numerals that precede a lens’s focal length in my

narrative, and which are often found inscribed even on some compact cameras. And

what is this ‘focal length’ I keep referring to?

Theoretically speaking, the focal length of a lens is the distance from

the rear element (the glass at the back of the lens) and the point where the light is

brought to a focus by the lens (on a flat surface called the ‘film plane’).

The whole idea of having a lens in the camera, you will appreciate, is

to bring a focused image to the film. In a true long-focus lens of 200 mm focal

length, for instance, this distance will always be 200 mm., necessitating a longer lens

barrel. This longer focus has the effect of pulling the subject closer, in other words,

magnifying it!

In the ‘normal’ lens of 50 mm focal length that your SLR camera

might have come with, this distance will be found to be 50 mm. Incidentally, this

lens is called a ‘normal’ lens not because other lenses are abnormal, but because the

size of the images given by it corresponds to the size of the subject as perceived by

the naked eye. Many photographers choose to call it the ‘Standard’ lens.

A ‘telephoto’ lens, to be exact, is an optically corrected, but

physically shorter (i.e., no longer a true long-focus) lens that ensures that the light

comes to a focus at the film plane.

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Here’s the secret of the hieroglyphics: the ‘f’ numbers (engraved on

the scale opposite the aperture dial are merely sizes of the aperture, i.e., the opening

for the light to squeeze through to get to the film. The maximum aperture possible

(inscribed on the lens front ring) is always the maximum aperture of the lens. It is

merely a mathematical expression derived from dividing the focal length by the

actual diameter of the front element of the lens.

Try it. Take up your compact camera, which may be fitted with what

the manufacturer claims to be a 35 mm f.4.0 lens. The diameter of the front element

has to be 35 / 4.0. Measure it carefully with a scale: the result will be 8.75 mm …

Voilà! The mystery of the fabled ‘f’ number demystified!

Or measure the diameter of the front element of the 50 mm f.1.4

normal lens on your fine SLR camera, and divide the focal length (50) by it; the

answer will always come to 1.4, which confirms that the diameter of the front

element is 50 divided by 1.4 = 35.71 mm. Simple!

Actually, the ‘f’ number is always expressed (quite correctly) as a

ratio, so you may find 1: 1.4 inscribed on your SLR’s normal lens, or 1: 1.8, or

maybe even f.1: 2, which is still plenty fast for many low-light situations, though not,

obviously, as fast as a 1.8, 1.4, or 1.2 lens—remember my 58 mm f.1: 1.2 Rokkor,

with its huge front element? That’s why 600 mm f.4 superfast telelenses look like

bazookas.

The logic of the ‘f’ number – front lens element relationship is simple,

if you’ll recall the analogy of the tap filling the bucket of water, or the iris of the eye

widening in bad light. The wider the aperture (here, the front end of the glass where

the light enters the camera), the greater is the amount of light accessing the film.

It’s no wonder that professionals, who often have to get sharp pictures

in poor light, need fast lenses like the f.1: 1.4 to give them access to as much light as

possible (and, incidentally, enable the fastest shutter-speeds possible under the said

dimly-lit conditions). They usually don’t need depth of field for a carefully focused

news picture in poor light.

If they do, they are in trouble. There is no way they can use an

aperture of, say, f.8, (giving reasonable dof, especially with a 50 mm lens and a

subject at medium distance): the low shutter-speeds that will then become obligatory

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for obtaining a properly exposed negative will mean the subject, if moving, is going

to be badly (probably unrecognizably) blurred.

This is where they will have to introduce an artificial light source

(flash, or sometimes even a ‘sun-gun’, as used by videographers) … or load faster

film! This is why many professionals carry two or three camera bodies: they are

loaded with different types of film and fitted with lenses that will best utilize the

properties of each rig in a given situation. There’s always a way out!

By virtue of the design compulsions in producing fast lenses, a lot of

optical ‘corrections’ are necessary; optical aberrations are unavoidably inherent in

the such designs, and this necessitates many elements inside the lens, busily

canceling out each other’s errors. The faster the lens, the bulkier, heavier, and

costlier it inevitably is.

In years to come, better, more efficient glasses will certainly be made.

Moreover, computer programs for designing better lenses are always improving, so

cost and size are gradually coming down. Yet, an f.1: 1.2 lens will always be twice

as expensive as an F.1: 1.8 lens, so if the 1.8 is more than adequate for your needs, it

may not be wise to spend more for a 1.2 which will tire you (I mean it: every extra

ounce costs, in the field), burn a hole in your pocket, and may not give equal image

quality to boot, aperture for aperture!

In fact, such super-fast lenses are designed in such a way that their

best performance – in terms of image quality – comes in at the wider apertures.

That’s the whole purpose of buying a fast lens: to use it in poor light or wide open, to

get faster shutter speeds, isn’t it? Obviously, the f.1.2, f.2, and f.2.8 aperture settings

are going to be used a lot of the time, so the performance at these apertures had

better be very good.

This is doubly true because the vast majority of lenses usually

perform best when they are used three or four apertures down from maximum

aperture. The act of going down the aperture scale, by the way, is called ‘stopping

down’.

The term ‘stops’ has come to acquire the meaning of one exposure

quantity, commonly referred to as ‘exposure value’, or ‘EV’. Let us take a simple

example. If, at 1/125th of a second, you go from f.4 to f.5.6, you have stopped down

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‘one stop’. But if you kept the aperture at f.4, and increased the shutter speed to

1/250th of a second, you’ve again managed to shift the exposure equation one ‘stop’!

In other words, adjusting either aperture or shutter speed is expressed

informally in terms of ‘stops’. Hence, going from f.4 to f.5.6 is equivalent to going

from say, 1/125th of a second shutter speed to 1/250th…both of which register the

effect that a smaller aperture (more depth of field) or a faster shutter speed (better

ability to freeze action, or less visible effects of camera shake) would have on the

image.

To reiterate, the so-called ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ lens that usually

comes with the camera is almost always of 50mm to 58 mm focal length. This is

because this focal length gives what manufacturers think is a magnification and

perspective closest to that of the human eye. 58 mm is closer to achieving this than

50 mm is…but 50 mm is a nice, round number!

Any lens with a focal length less than about 35 mm may be said to a

wide-angle. And any lens of about 75 mm and over is called a telephoto lens. Today,

there are some excellent zoom lenses, like the Tamron 28~210 mm f.4.5~5.6, that

cover angles of vision from wide-angle, to normal, to telephoto!

I always buy a body and lens separately; so, perhaps, should you.

Many people hardly ever use their normal lens, except on rare occasions when they

need to take (without-flash) available light pictures. I’d advise you to buy a good

body (but don’t try Anita Roddick’s The Body Shop!), like a NikonNikon FM3, and one

good zoom from a reputed ‘independent ‘such as Tokina, Vivitar, Tamron, Kalimar,

or Hanimex (manufacturer’s ‘original’ lenses are just too expensive to be sensible

purchases. Lenses from independent lens manufacturers are often of excellent

quality; they’ve got to be, if these firms want to stay in business.

I’d recommend a 28~125 mm f.4.5~5.6, or a 28~200 mm of the same

range, if you wanted to start off with just one lens. Couple that with a dedicated or

matching auto-flash that ties-in with the camera’s electronics and activates various

LED (light emitting diode) signals (such as ‘flash charged’) in the viewfinder, and

you’re in business.

When I switched from Minolta to Nikon, I found that, by some happy

coincidence, the electronics of my Minolta 200X flash dovetailed perfectly with

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those of my Nikon FE (again, a tip from S. Paul!) Ideally, the angle of coverage of

the flash should adequately cover the angle of vision of a 28 mm lens, in that the

image is evenly illuminated from one corner to the other (using that 28~200 zoom).

Nissin, Toshiba, Vivitar, and Hanimex are some good makes of flashgun. If you can

afford it, however, do buy the camera maker’s model-specific dedicated flashgun.

Fit a good quality UV or 1A filter on the lens to protect it. It’s a

worthwhile investment, is usually relatively inexpensive, and may even improve

your pictures. That’s all. Keep lenses in an airtight jar with a packet of desiccant,

such as silica gel, available at all photo goods stores, when lenses are not in use.

Store the body separately, fitted with an inexpensive body cap to keep

out dust. After an outdoor shoot, blow out dust from the body using a blower brush,

taking care not to touch the shutter curtains or the mirror. The instant return mirror is

surface silvered, which means it is a very delicate coating. Do not touch it! Once

scratched, nothing can be done except to replace it…a very expensive proposition.

VARIABLE ‘f’ NUMBERS

I wonder if you’ve you ever noticed that sometimes, the aperture is

marked as f.1: 4~5.6, say on a 100~300 mm telezoom lens? That little squiggle (~)

signifies that the maximum aperture, like the focal length, is variable in actual use,

i.e., it varies with the focal length as the zoom is zoomed in or out. It will be a true

f.1: 4 at the shorter focal length (here, 100 mm), but when the zoom is set at 300

mm, the working aperture will measure out at f.5.6. Intermediate zoom settings will

effectively yield intermediate ‘f ‘ numbers.

This is perfectly understandable when we realize that the diameter of

the front element remains constant! There is no way the effective aperture can

remain at (an effective maximum of) f.4, when the lens zooms out to full 300 mm.

The two ‘f’ numbers mean that the zoom is an f.4 at the shorter focal

length setting, but gradually shifts to a 5.6 as you zoom out to the maximum foal

length). To reiterate, this happens because the size of the front element stays

constant, apropos the explanation given a few paragraphs back.

This also means that as the lens zooms out to 300 mm, the shutter-

speed falls by upto a ‘stop’ (all else remaining constant). If you are getting, say,

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1/500th of a second from the TTL meter at f.4, the reading will slip to 1/250 th of a

second at the 300 mm zoom setting, provided the intensity of available light and all

else remains the same. Try it, and see for yourself.

Nowadays, computerized flashguns and through the lens flash (TTL

flash metering at the film plane) and TTL auto exposure, automatically compensate

for the reduced effective aperture, so that we can safely ignore all this; exposure

itself doesn’t suffer!

Remember, each adjacent setting of either aperture or shutter-speed

means a difference of ‘one stop’, i.e., one notch of aperture or shutter speed. Ditto

for film speed settings, as made on the camera’s film speed dial (nowadays, cameras

have built-in automatic film speed sensors that can read the code on the film can).

This is known as ‘DX’ coding, and has been accepted by all camera manufacturers

FOCUSING

Focusing is an important subject that we haven’t covered too exhaustively till now. It

is of supreme importance in photography, because there is no point in shooting a

well-exposed but out-of-focus picture (unless that is what the Art Director wants!).

Focusing mechanisms vary, but apart from fixed or ‘universal’ focus

compact cameras, most cameras use some form of parallax or range finder focusing

aid. Two images may be made to coincide in the viewfinder by turning the focusing

ring, or, in the case of most SLR cameras, there may be three aids; the ground glass

of the viewfinder screen itself, a central split-image that lines up at correct focus, and

a shimmering ring concentric to the split image, that clears up when correct focus is

achieved.

Each has its use in the field, and experience will show which is best

in a given situation. I find myself using the split-image about 90% of the time.

The Law Of One-Thirds

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This ‘law’ states (correctly, I may add) that no matter how shallow or deep the depth

of field, the actual zone of focus is ⅓ rd in front of the subject and ⅔ rd behind it. So if

the zone of focus is all of 3 meters, there is acceptable sharpness available one meter

in front of, and two meters behind, the subject.

This becomes important when we want to either eliminate as much of

a distracting background as possible (even after using the other tricks up our sleeves

such as using a telelens – that has a shallow depth of field to begin with – and using

the widest aperture possible, consistent with exposure requirements).

In order to maximize a background blur, therefore, I focus slightly

closer! Bingo! There is very little sharpness left in the now severely attenuated ‘zone

of focus’ (remember, dof decreases as you focus closer). The background, i.e.,

practically everything behind the subject gets progressively hazier, and the subject

seems to leap out of the picture! It looks so much sharper, so very relevant, standing

out against the inconsequential, blurred background.

This is one way to eliminate from the frame those unwelcome ‘sight-

seers’ when you are photographing your friend at the beach. Of course, you could

blow the crowd away with a .44 magnum from Smith & Wesson, but you may

just as well kneel and frame her against the sky from a low angle, using a 35 mm

lens.

This will not only eliminate any problems with the background but

will also accentuate her long legs, ‘stretching’ them by harnessing the optical

phenomenon known as ‘perspective distortion’ to add even more impact to the

picture. It’s an old trick of ‘cheesecake’ and catwalk photographers.

Focusing On The Hyperfocal

This is another way of ensuring you are in focus in an emergency

when there isn’t time to even focus, just to click. On the barrel of your fine lens, you

will notice two rows of figures.

One set of figures, being the focusing range of the lens, is etched on

the rotatable focusing ring. This scale can start at one foot (closest focus of the lens)

and extend, in suitable gradations, to infinity (∞).

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The other set of figures is engraved on the fixed part of the barrel, just

above the knurled, rotating aperture ring (normally seen just where the lens fits into

the body of the camera). This has a centrally located arrow or diamond symbol, with

identically spaced notches with numbers (the numbers represent aperture numbers)

on both sides of the central arrow.

Now, listen carefully: if you want a safe zone of focus at a particular

aperture, first of all, set that aperture on the lens (as usual, by rotating the aperture

ring). Next, line up the infinity symbol (∞) on the focusing ring with a number

(corresponding to – and identical with – the aperture set on the lens) on the aperture

ring.

You’ll find the other ‘f’ number etched on the focusing ring (there are

two identical sets of ‘f’ numbers etched on the focusing ring, on either side of the

central notch) will fall opposite the notch/number representing some closer distance.

The difference between the two distances thus bracketed, is the ‘zone of focus’ at

your disposal…at that particular aperture. Within that range, you do not have to

focus.

Having done that, you only have to ensure proper exposure settings as

you go on snapping pictures, without constantly needing to focus and refocus…

within that earmarked distance. This zone is variable according to aperture,

shrinking as larger apertures are selected.

I’ll illustrate that with an example. Suppose you anticipate that the

action you’d like to capture on film will occur between 10 feet and 20 feet from you

(perhaps in a boxing ring). First set a suitable shutter-speed and aperture to give

desirable effects and correct exposure (or leave it to the ‘auto’ setting).

Then proceed to place the 20-foot mark on the distance scale opposite

one ‘f’ number representing the aperture in use, and see whether the 10-foot mark

falls against the aperture number on the other side of the arrow or diamond. If it

does, you’re through. Now everything you shoot within the pre-set range will be in

focus. If it doesn’t, either shift to a smaller aperture setting, or adjust within the zone

of focus that you’ve got.

This works very well on manual exposure and non-auto focus

cameras. Remember, not all auto-focus cameras give 100% accurate results all the

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time, especially when you’re in a hurry and the camera’s autofocus sensor is relating

to some other object in the background! It is reassuring to recall that many great

photographers use the hyperfocal technique with stunning effect, and many street

and action photographers use it most of the time.

This is only a technique. If you feel you have the hand-eye

coordination to focus manually in step with the action, do so by all means. Many

photographers have such superb reflexes that they can focus in a trice. Years of

practice have honed their responses to the point that they are easily able to keep pace

with the action.

POSTSCRIPT

It is so easy to get ensnared by the romance of the techniques and

equipment that are so much an intrinsic part of coming to grips with photography,

that many of us never leave, preferring to stay on as ‘techies’ or equipment-

worshippers. The camera manufacturers love this. It means an army of unpaid

advisors or evangelists who take it upon themselves to guide people on technical

matters. Perhaps I am one of them; I really don’t know. I sure love fine cameras.

All the hype also adds up to people who insist on upgrading their

equipment every year to keep up with the latest models released before Christmas.

I’ve been through this, so I speak from personal experience.

The medium is no longer the massage, with apologies to Marshall

McLuhan…the masseur is! We take time getting used to a camera, but once that’s

done, it’s better to let it ‘drive itself’, and concentrate on making pictures: the sole

reason for buying your camera, to begin with…remember?

Let me assure you that any modern camera made in the last decade

and later, is perfectly capable of handling almost any photographic challenge. The

greatest challenge almost always comes from the mind, and it’s better to invest in

upgrading that, and not equipment. Strange, how cameras and lenses keep getting

‘better’ every year, but the pictures generally don’t.

I wouldn’t mind sharing a thought or two with you here: the mind is

far more powerful than we can imagine. Listen to your intuition. Use it well; it is a

good guide to the unexpected. In photography, anticipation is very important. Try to

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anticipate your next moment of truth, ready with the right equipment, film and even

raingear.

Whether you capture images on film or digital disk is immaterial: the

basic techniques will always remain the same as long as the laws of physics, as we

know them today, continue to apply. I may not be there to see the results of your

efforts, but you will.

Study art. The Great Masters of painting and photography have left

behind peerless examples of their inner vision as captured on canvas and film. While

appreciating their skill, do try to have something to say with your camera, and go

about saying it. You don’t want to take snapshots with a $1,000 camera, do you? In

other words, develop an area or two of specialization: it makes things a lot simpler.

Some of the masters of painting I’m particularly fond of are Vermeer

(for his muted colors and his subtle out-of-focus effects that draw the eye to the main

subject; Turner (for his wild colors, vivid imagery, adventurous themes, and his use

of out-of-focus images to appeal to the imagination and invoke emotion; Salvador

Dali (for his zany sense of humor, boundless creativity and masterful technique); and

definitely Vincent Van Gogh (whose paintings amaze me, as much by his technique

as his imaginative use of everyday scenes, and his unerring sense of composition and

balance). And Degas of course, for his action-packed pictures of dancers on stage

(Avinash Pasricha has obviously been greatly influenced by him), or Paul Gauguin,

with his blunt, crazily juxtaposed colors and exotic compositions.

This could go on and on, but the point is that we have nothing to lose

and much to gain by studying the masterpieces of art and trying to learn what we can

from our priceless heritage, albeit conveyed through the use of another, older

medium.

I hope, dear reader, you will safely traverse the minefield of

equipment and techniques to emerge unscathed at the other side, a master of the

medium, an artist, not merely a craftsman, your eyes on distant horizons of

creativity, your camera always slung around your neck, not a toy but a means of

translating, for the benefit of others, your vision of the world as you see it.

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AIRING THE LENSES!

In 1980, El Tomāso again came to India from Kuwait, this time by

air. In the cargo bay of a Boeing parked in a hangar at Delhi’s Palam airport was a

brand-new, rally-modified Subaru 4-wheel drive car that he planned to use in that

year’s Great Himalayan Rally.

There was just one hitch: although the car’s documents were valid (it

was supported by a carnet, a document that admits vehicles imported for specific

short-term use, such as a Car Rally, without paying customs duty), the customs

authorities were mysteriously dragging their feet in releasing the car. In desperation,

Tomās finally asked me to see if I could come up with an answer to Indian babudom.

A senior from College, then a high-ranking official in Customs &

Excise (and since retired), was buttonholed. This Indian version of Kojak (of Telly

Savalas fame), Lothar (Mandrake’s muscle-bound sidekick), and Oddjob (the

fearsome martial-arts expert from a Bond book) all rolled into one, swung into action

immediately. We went down to Palam in my rickety Fiat. Minutes later, the

gleaming Subaru was standing on the tarmac!

Tomās had brought a new camera for me, the just launched, ultra-

compact, super-silent MinoltaMinolta XD-11XD-11 SLR. It was a dream camera, with aperture-

priority as well as shutter-priority automatic exposure, plus full manual override and,

Beyond Photography

PART THREE

65

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd all be millionaires. ~Abigail Van Buren


apart from the usual bucketful of MinoltaMinolta features, it also had a motor-winder.

Reluctantly, I disposed of the faithful XE-1XE-1 and tuned in to the new XD-11XD-11.

Tomās had brought another XD-11XD-11 for his brother, but it had an f.1.4

lens, whereas mine had an f.1.2. He was a bit disappointed, I guess, when I chose to

keep the f.1.4 normal lens; the truth is that I’d never owned an f.1.4, and wanted to

know what it felt like. Besides, it was a lot lighter and – according to the lens reports

published in the magazines – it was an outstanding performer.

My mind drifted back a couple of years, shortly after Tomās had

brought me the MinoltaMinolta XE-1XE-1. Way back in 1978, the Government of India’s

publicity arm, the DAVP (Directorate of Audio and Visual Publicity) announced an

All-India Photographic competition under the banner ‘Children of India

Photographic Competition’. It was open to all Indian nationals. That included me.

Raw as I was, I decided to have a bash at it, consoled by the presence

of the trusty XE-1XE-1. Packing a rucksack and lugging my little camera bag, I took off

for the Kulu Valley…if nothing else, the mountain air would do me good, and blow

the cobwebs out of my banker’s bored and befuddled brain. I’ve never had a head for

figures, unless it’s ‘f’ numbers, shutter speeds or lens focal lengths!

I had packed only four rolls of 35 mm B&W ORWO film that I’d

bulk-loaded into film cassettes, and which I rated at 125 ASA. I had the Hanimex

90~230 mm, f4.5~5.6 zoom lens and the 58 mm f.1.2 normal lens. If I wanted to

walk a lot, which I fully intended to do, I didn’t want to be carrying too much gear.

Besides, I expected I’d have to do quick, available-light shooting at

some distance from the subject. I knew how self-conscious Indians become

whenever a camera is pointed at them (everywhere except in Kashmir, where they

ask you for money the moment you point your camera at them, no doubt having

imbibed this habit after being voluntarily paid for the privilege of being

photographed by foreigners, who are used to such fine courtesies).

For many days, I wandered all over Kulu town and its neighboring

hamlets, but I could not get a single ‘decisive moment’ shot of the sort that the great

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Henri Cartier-Bresson used to take. I did not want a posed picture; I needed a

spontaneous shot that would capture the joy of being a child, without revealing any

hint of the camera’s intrusion.

A day before my departure, I found myself wandering aimlessly over

rolling grassland about half-a mile above the town. Tired and thirsty, I sat down

under a pine tree to rest my legs. Some distance away, a little boy was enjoying

himself, pushing a full-sized bicycle up a smooth slope and then running downhill

with it. He wasn’t big enough to ride it, but this was the next-best thing.

He ran down the slope with it again and again, the wind tossing his

hair, back-lit with the golden rays of a late-afternoon sun, into disarray. The joy on

his face, the exhilaration that suffused his tiny, perfect features, was a perfect

representation of his private world in this Valley of the Gods. The pedals of the

bicycle spun with an abandon that matched his own, the spokes of the gleaming

wheels were blurred discs of light…and suddenly I came alive to the possibility that

here was my picture.

I grabbed the XE-1XE-1 and focused at a point diagonally opposite me, on

his usual downhill path. I had just a few seconds to take the shot. I set the shutter-

speed to1/30th of a second (the aperture came to f.5.6 in that evening light), and, at

full 230 mm zoom, the Hanimex 90~230 mm, f4.5~5.6 zoom lens threw the

background well out of focus.

As the boy came running down the slope again, I ‘panned’ the camera

with him as he sped down the slope, squeezing off three frames as fast as my thumb

could wind the film and my index finger squeeze the shutter button.

Because I had to use a slow shutter-speed like 1/30 th of a second,

which invited the risk of camera-shake spoiling the photograph, I kept sitting on the

grass, resting the lens on my bent knee for support. I treated it as I would a rifle,

following (panning) the ‘target’ in my ‘gun-sights’ (the viewfinder).

Fortunately, this also improved the angle of composition. I left

enough space in the frame ahead of the subject for it to ‘run into’, without a static

centered placement that might have ‘choked’ the action.

The slow shutter-speed must have blurred the whirling pedals and

wheels, but the panning movement meant that ‘I was moving’ at a pace relatively

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equal to that of the subject, thereby ensuring that, essentially, it would remain sharp.

Incidentally, panning at slow speed blurs an unwanted background ever further.

I knew I had captured the mood I wanted: the fantastic, ecstatic world

of childhood. I put the camera down, a warm glow within me, and as I did so, the

boy took one last, lingering look up the slope and disappeared over the ridge,

unaware that he had been captured forever on film. I am ever grateful to that

unknown boy, and to the spirit of the hills that rewards the earnest and the

ingenuous.

Before I mention that this image I captured at Kulu won a prize at the

All India exhibition that followed, (where I found, to my amazement and delight, my

little contribution rubbing shoulders with photographs taken by legends of the

pictorial world like S. Paul, Raghu Rai, O.P. Sharma, FRPS, Shiv Kumar and N.

Thiagarajan), I wish to beg your pardon for the detailed description of how the

picture was taken.

It is an attempt, not to glorify my fluke, but to pass on to you

whatever lessons may lie buried in the episode, in case they are someday of some

small help to you in your own photographic efforts. Nothing teaches better than

experience, even if it’s someone else’s.

It was the great S. Paul himself, my guru in absentia – he can see an

ordinary, everyday scene that you and I might walk past and extract a prize-winning

image from it – who gave me the names and addresses of some foreign publications

that invited transparencies for their forthcoming annual issues and for competitions.

Here, too, I met with occasional and modest success, encouragement enough to keep

the hobby going.

Then one day, Satish Tomar suggested we go to Dudhwa National

Park, beyond the district of Sitapur in northern Uttar Pradesh, and adjacent to the

Nepal border. That sounded very interesting; so far, I was only familiar with the

Kumaon hills and a few portions of Garhwal; I had never been to the jungles of

Dudhwa, near the Indo-Nepal border, which were said to be very impressive.

We drove down to Dudhwa in a Matador van, the five of us: O.P.

Sharma and his charming and gifted wife Chitrangada, who was an accomplished

artist and photographer in her own right; Satish; O.P.’s brother, S.K.Sharma (all

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OLYMPUS users); and I. Satish hadn’t brought any equipment, so I lent him the

MinoltaMinolta XD-11XD-11 fitted with the 100~500 mm f1: 8 Zoom-Rokkor I had recently

acquired. I preferred to use the 80~200 mm f4.0 Zoom-Nikkor on my new NikonNikon

FE fitted with an MD-12 motor drive, with the 500 mm f.8 mirror lens backing it up

in case I needed to take more distant telephoto pictures.

I was no stranger to dense Terai forests of sub-Himalayan India, but I

must admit that these dark, impenetrable jungles were beyond my experience and

filled me with trepidation, not merely because there was a man-eater rumored to be

running loose. Having at last ventured into these dark, thick forests that looked like

something out of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, I was worried whether

there would enough light penetrating the matted canopy overhead to make

handholding possible?

I pushed the rolls of Kodachrome ™ 64 transparency film deeper into

my camera bag and reluctantly loaded Ektachrome™ 400. I didn’t favor the bluish

cast that this otherwise satisfactory film was then infamous for, but there was no

alternative. I had to use fast film if I wanted to return home with pictures.

I wished I had one of those super-fast (but ultra-expensive, bulky and

heavy) 400 mm f.2.8 and 600 mm f.4 lenses that professional sports photographers

use. The wide apertures on these super-expensive would enable me to use the higher

shutter-speeds I would obviously need in this gloomy world of half-light.

In wildlife photography, there are no compromises on the road to

consistent success—it usually needs highly specialized equipment and loads of

money and time (and even an extra life or two) to really make it big-time. I am but a

hobbyist on holiday, however—no need to get too carried away.

At the heart of this approximately 300-square mile national park is

‘Tiger Haven’, where it all started. ‘Billy’ Arjun Singh is the extraordinary man who

came and settled here, carving out this private retreat in terrain in which no city

slicker would be caught dead in (which fate would likely fast befall him, unless he

happened to be a master of jungle-craft like Billy).

Shamed by Billy’s effort, and galvanized into reluctant action, the

authorities took a leaf from his book and, recognizing his pioneering efforts, declared

a large area surrounding it a national monument, with ‘Tiger Haven’ as its nucleus.

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The Forest Rest House has remarkable 8 mm movie footage on

Harriet, a wild female leopard that Billy hand-reared, right from the fateful day when

he found the little cub abandoned by her mother in the jungle. One is strongly

reminded of Joy Adamson and the lioness, Elsa, the heroine of the ‘Born Free’ series

of books and films. I venture to suggest that Billy’s achievement is even greater,

though relatively unknown, despite an excellent book from Pramod Kapoor’s Roli

Books. Thus do pioneers like Billy go unsung in this our ‘India Shining’.

A lot of Dudhwa is marshy country, and to see it we go on elephant

back through the tall elephant grass. The terrain is perfect for rhino, and I learn that

indeed, at one time there were rhinos here, but they had died out for reasons better

known to those who subscribe to the myth that its horn is an aphrodisiac.

Some years later, the then Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, a

keen naturalist and photographer, re-introduced rhinos to Dudhwa, but they fared

poorly, running into a string of catastrophes that soon decimated the small herd.

Nothing has been heard of the Dudhwa rhinos for years. I’m almost certain they’ve

been exported to China…in CKD condition. But as of now, Manmohan Singh and

Sunita Narain are trying to figure out ‘Where have all the tigers gone?’…sung to the

tune of the old Joan Baez country music hit, ‘Where have all the soldiers gone, long

time passing…’

Riding on the swaying back of a large elephant through this sea of

grass in a wild, untamed wilderness, armed with only a camera, is somewhat

unnerving. Any moment, I expect the elephant to rear back, trunk uplifted as it

trumpets a shrill warning blast as it is confronted by a snarling tiger. If the beast

leaps into the open howdah with murder in its heart, as per the shikar yarns my Dad

used to tell me, I don’t think I can stop it with the 500 mm mirror lens (even at

1/500th of a second!)

I wish I held a loaded Holland & Holland. .500 Express rifle

instead! And me a self-professed conservationist! But the instinct of self-

conservation is still very much alive and well in me, thank you. When it comes to

‘eat or be eaten’, or any other basic instinct for that matter, I find I am still a

caveman under the skin, a barefoot bushman if you please; bewitched, bedraggled,

benumbed…and bloody scared!

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There is no electricity in the Forest Rest House. We slip into our

sleeping bags after a simple dinner and talk in hushed voices by the flickering light

of a hurricane lantern. The night is full of tigers; their coughing grunts and muted

roars are all around us. These hunters are principally nocturnal predators, and now

they fall silent. They are out in search of dinner.

We fervently wish them well in their efforts; we wouldn’t like their

thoughts to turn to our unarmed little group huddled in a small room in an unlit

cottage deep in their kingdom. The wooden doors and windows wouldn’t last a

second before the sledgehammer blows of a tiger’s paws.

Sleep is disturbed and fitful; the night outside is far too alive for

comfort. I dream of little, dark men riding tigers and encircling us. For some reason,

a verse from Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’ is recited by one of them:

“Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.”

The morning is bright and sunny, dispelling the fears of the night

before, when we were Bushmen gathered around a dying hurricane lantern. It has

drizzled in the night, and the forest has come alive with color as myriad wildflowers

bloom, and the air is full of hundreds of butterflies of every color and description.

S.K. Sharma is busy with his OLYMPUS OM-2 and macro lens with

extension tubes. He is in his element—this is his area of specialization. With the

superb OM-2 that has so many photographic firsts to its credit (including TTL off-

the-film-plane metering, thanks to the genius of Maitani, OLYMPUS Camera

Company’s technical director), and the normal lens with extension tubes that enables

him to capture detail as small as 1:1 life-size on film, S.K. is having a ball.

Then it’s time again for another elephant ride through dense jungle.

Dudhwa has the largest anthills I’ve ever seen, ant-cities much taller than a man and

teeming with life. Ant bears (a relative of the Pangolin) love to tear them apart to get

at the juicy grubs inside. They are impervious to the bites of thousands of warrior

ants that swarm over them, protected as they are by their thick hides and tough skin.

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I have never seen such tall teak trees; some of them towering at least

250 feet high. It gives me a crick in the neck, just looking up at them. The upper

canopy comes together, a leafy ceiling almost shutting out the daylight. I am getting

only 1/60th of a second at f.5.6 with Ektachrome™ 400 rated at 800 ASA!

It’s practically impossible now to handhold the 500 mm mirror lens

and get sharp pictures, on this heaving island of an elephant’s back. Birds of

Paradise, with their long, feathery tails, flit from tree to tree in their characteristic

swooping, dipping, motion. Parakeets, green pigeons, jungle fowl, mynahs, racquet-

tailed drongos: there are birds everywhere. Monkeys eye us curiously as we sway

past.

A giant iguana is clinging grimly to a branch of a tree under which

our elephant passes. It is so close for a moment that I could reach out and touch it. I

shudder: an enormous chunk of flesh has been gouged out of its meaty back by some

predator. I don’t think it will survive. I make some exposures with the 80~200 mm

zoom (at about 1/125th and f.4—they didn’t come out well, marred by camera shake).

We press on to the Core Area with our special passes. Here, from a

high tower, we see a herd of the rare swamp deer (known as Hangul?), grazing as

they go along. Suddenly, something spooks them.

As I raise the NikonNikon FE and 500 mm mirror rig, with the motor drive

set at 3.5 frames-per-second continuous fire, I’m half hoping to see a rampaging tiger

wading into them. But no such thing happens. I never learnt what spooked them, but

the chattering motor drive gets me some excellent frames as the herd—antlered

males, does, and fawns—splashes through the swamp in a spray of water and

disappears into the cover of the forest beyond.

Though I got some memorable pictures, the frames could have done

with at least one stop less exposure. They were over-exposed by one stop! A pity. I

was puzzled at first: I had been exposing at 1/500 th of a second, which was, to my

mind, just right for the light conditions. The mirror lens has a fixed aperture of f.8, so

there was little I could do there. Then I remembered something I’d once read (I have

an annoying habit of remembering a piece of vital information when it’s too late).

I had once come across an article in POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY about

a pro called Caroll Seghers III who was given the assignment to shoot pictures of a

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white horse, for the ‘White Horse’ whisky advertising campaign (over the famous

caption ‘No whisky in the world can run with the White Horse’). He chose to shoot a

powerfully muscled, handsome white horse running up a hill towards him, with

bluish-purple mountains smoking mistily in the background.

Topping the rise, its milky whiteness set off by the green grass of the

hillside and side lit by a late afternoon sun’s golden rays, the horse gave him the

great shots he had seen in his mind.

But he discovered something that I had filed away in my mind for just

this sort of eventuality. He used to get over-exposed pictures, shooting at long range

with long lenses to compress distance, as he was now doing, to blur those lovely but

distracting purplish-blue mountains behind the horse.

Bracketing saved him now. ‘Bracketing’ is taking one or more frames

at ‘correct’ exposure, then two or more frames which are intentionally over exposed

by varying degrees, and some more frames progressively under-exposed by up to

two full stops, is a safety measure taken by pros who have spent a small fortune to

set up a shoot in some remote, exotic location. At least one frame or two will turn out

to be right on the button! (Many auto-focus, auto exposure SLRs available today

offer auto-bracketing as well).

Seghers found, just as his experience told him, that the frames that

were one to 1½ stops under-exposed were just right. For some odd reason, under-

exposure of this magnitude was called for in such long-range shooting. If only I had

remembered this, and shot the stampeding swamp deer at 1/1,000th of a second, I’d

have got well color-saturated pictures that would have been even sharper because of

the higher shutter-speed! Back home, I kicked myself in frustration for not

bracketing. Too late!

The next day, we come across a Tharu encampment. The Tharu

tribals are the last of a stone-age peoples who still lead a nomadic existence inside

this forest preserve. The men are wiry, and good archers—they can bring down a

flying duck with a single arrow. The women are small, slim and bare-breasted,

festooned with silver medallions and copper and iron jewelry. They lose their

shyness after they cadge a few cigarettes from us, and do not object to having their

photographs taken.

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With the golden afternoon sunlight as backlighting, I go into my

favorite ‘portrait mode’, using weak flash to provide fill-in for shadow areas, in these

against-the-light shots.

With the superb NikonNikon multi-coating on the lens’ internal surfaces,

flare (reflections inside the lens that degrade image quality) is ruthlessly eliminated

even in these into-the-light shots, and the lens hood

shuts out extraneous glare. The legendary 80~200 mm

f4.0 Zoom-Nikkor does a fantastic job. Truly, NikonNikon

have every right to call this lens one of the sharpest

lenses in all 35 mm photography.

As we are driving off reluctantly from this great Jurassic swamp (so

like the primeval swamp of Pal-ul-Don straight out of the pages of Tarzan comics), a

grinning Fisher Cat, sitting right next to the road as if for a portrait, gives us a parting

gift. The shots are perfect; Chitrangada Sharma is the most enthusiastic of all as she

leans out of the window of the Matador van and clicks frame after frame with her

OLYMPUS OM-4T, with its titanium shutter, and 50~150 mm f.3.5 OLYMPUS zoom.

Then we hit the dusty road to Delhi, taking us back to our dreary,

humdrum everyday existence from which we have escaped for a few days, days that

we’ll remember for a long, long time.

I gift these cherished memories to you, dear reader…memories of

days long vanished into the mists of time, in the hope that they will entertain as well

as inspire you to undertake similar adventures, if only to give the city-cramped

lenses a well deserved outing.

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Beyond Photography

PART FOUR

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” ~ Sigmund Freud

LIGHT

One of the things I belatedly realized was that where there is no light,

there is no photography (an earth-shattering discovery!). In fact, the word

‘photography’ itself means ‘writing with light’—from ‘photo’ and ‘graphos’, the

Greek words for ‘light’ and ‘writing’ respectively—so much so that I realized that

film reacts to light (unless you want to include airport X-Rays, which can fog film

unless you take the precaution of wrapping it in a lead-lined bag) howsoever it falls

on it.

I proceeded to experiment. I made the subject sit on a chair in a light-

proofed room, and placed the camera (with its 50 mm f.1: 1.4 lens) loaded with

Kodak TRI-X 400 ASA B&W film, on a tripod. I kept the shutter open by means of a

cable release (with the camera’s shutter-speed dial set at ‘B’ for ‘bulb’, at which

position a continuous pressure on the shutter release keeps the shutter open

indefinitely) with its button fully depressed and locked by means of the little knurled

knob all cable releases have for this very purpose.

I then took up an ordinary flashlight (even a pen-cell torch will do)

and ‘painted’ the subject with light. I moved the beam of light evenly all over the

subject, even behind it (taking care to see that no light shone directly into the lens of

the camera), for about 2 minutes, at an aperture of f.2.8. When I developed the

negative, I got a marvelous result hard to duplicate by any other means. By various

permutations and combinations of this technique, I was able to get results that varied

from very ordinary-looking pictures to bizarre, outlandish effects.

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It’s often handy to know beforehand how to achieve a certain effect,

because you never know when you’ll need a piece of serendipitously obtained

information. The most wonderful of effects await the keen enthusiast or professional

who is willing to experiment, to go into this technique with patience, methodical

approach (by which I mean maintaining a written—or computer—record of settings,

lighting details, processing / darkroom work, and results obtained), an open mind and

a sense of curiosity and wonder.

With color film, whether transparency film or negative film, the

results were even more spectacular (with the torch covered with different colored

cellophane papers for part exposures)… but for the fact that a yellowish colorcast

dominated all the frames. This is because color materials are normally balanced for

sunlight. As we all know, light has seven colors in it, the good old VIBGYOR color

spectrum of school days. The color temperature of sunlight is 5,600º Kelvin.

If you give normal, everyday-use color film a normal (not a painting-

with-light type) exposure to light at this temperature (as does electronic flash), all

colors will appear natural to the eye [provided (a) you haven’t left a colored filter on

the lens by mistake (b) the walls of your room are not predominantly of a particular

color—light bounces around the room, taking on the color of surrounding areas—

before entering the lens while the shutter is open, and (c) no colored light from any

other source has influenced the results (how about orange-hued sodium-vapor street

lights?)]

Tungsten light (the light that comes from the tungsten filaments of domestic electric

bulbs or even non-electronic flash studio lights) has a lower color temperature, about

5,200º Kelvin, and is yellowish (or ‘warmer’, as we photographers say) as far as

color film is concerned, hence color pictures exposed by this light source on daylight

film have a yellowish colorcast. I am told it is possible to take normal-looking

pictures on daylight color film with tungsten lighting, by fitting a blue filter on the

lens. I never got around to trying it, though, perhaps because I had no such filter.

Conversely, there are special films that are designed for professionals

in mind, balanced for the 5,200º Kelvin color temperature of tungsten lighting (or the

sun-guns used by videographers) that some studios still favor. In case this ‘Tungsten

film’ has to be exposed to the 5,600º Kelvin color temperature of daylight, it is

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probably expeditious to fit a yellow filter over the lens to balance the light to the

color that is correct for this particular film.

Neon lights give a greenish-blue cast to pictures on daylight film exposed by their

light, and in case you often need to correct this, special FL (for ‘fluorescent’) filters

are available that are balanced to the color temperatures of the variety of neon

lighting available today. Neon can be quite a nuisance for those very particular about

the color authenticity of their images, and especially so in available-light

photography with daylight color films.

We always have to keep in mind that light travels at 186,000 miles a

second, or about 300,000 kilometers an hour. Even brief exposures are enough for

light from various different (and perhaps quite unlikely or unanticipated) sources to

enter the lens, either directly or by reflection, and influence the color of your frames.

I was once doing an impromptu portrait session in a friend’s flat, and

failed to take the magnificent maroon-colored velvet curtains into my calculations. I

was using bounced flash (with an electronic flashgun that had a head that tilted by

degrees from –7º to 90º (i.e., from a little lower than horizontal, to straight up at the

ceiling), with another off-camera flash triggered by a cordless remote slave unit.

I was dismayed when the transparencies came back from the lab…all

the pictures displayed an overall slightly reddish colorcast that, I later realized, was

due to light bouncing off the extensive coverage of maroon curtains in the apartment.

I would try to avoid using bounced flash where the walls are any color

other than white or off-white. Otherwise, bounced flash indoors is a marvelous way

of eliminating harsh shadows (especially those unflattering shadows that appear

under eyes and noses). It gives a more diffused look to the picture, and a good user

of bounced flash will produce photographs that look so natural that only common

sense intervenes to remind us that in no way could an indoor picture be taken other

than with the aid of flash / professional lighting.

But we were talking about bounced lighting, if I remember right, and

the effect that warm colored reflecting surfaces have on daylight color film. Just as

an example, if I were to try for a warm mood in my picture (colors suggest moods as

we all know, from ‘red-hot’ to ‘cool’ blue), I would encourage the light to bounce off

the maroon curtains...or switch on a tungsten light fixture

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Alternatively (for a diffused look), one can wrap a couple of layers of

translucent polythene around the flash head, secured by rubber bands (many a flash

gun comes with a plastic diffuser that snaps into the head, and entails a loss of one

full stop of exposure value but gives a nice, soft effect with direct flash). Some

flashguns also come with colored snap-on diffusers in case one wants to intentionally

create a certain colorcast, to evoke mood or to balance color temperature.

BREAKING THE RULES

It will defeat the whole purpose of this book, if I were to append here

a list of rules and how they can be broken. I credit the reader with more intelligence

than having to depend on me to remind her, at every bend in the road, of the

possibility (or even the need) of breaking the rules. If we were to spell out the ways

of doing so, they might even evolve into more rules!

So all I can request the reader is that she stay alert as she goes through

the text, for there are innumerable clues to jog her brain and bring it alive to the

possibilities where the rules can be bent, if not done away with altogether. This is

where I challenge the reader to spot the clues and work on them to come up with

fresh approaches. In her own interest, therefore, I refrain from spoon-feeding her

with a list of such possible outcomes.

One of the great things about photography is that there are so many

parameters, that they lend themselves to a plethora of misuse! Breaking the rules is

often a good way of getting a picture that is out of the ordinary. It goes without

saying that those who do things the way they’ve always been done, will end up with

results that have been obtained umpteen times before. To get something a little out of

the ordinary, methodology a bit out of the ordinary has to be organized.

78

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. ~Jacob Bronowski


Though it’s always an advantage to have S. Paul’s panther-like

reflexes and astounding visual and mental perception that sees a prize-winning

photograph in an everyday scene that other people walk past unawares, this is simply

not possible. That kind of gift comes but once a century. But we can all try and train

our eyes to spot a picture within a picture, or capture a ‘decisive moment’, as did

Henri Cartier-Bresson.

A decisive moment is – in my humble opinion – that wafer-thin slice

of eternity that is sandwiched between two mundane moments of time. Recall

Cartier-Bresson’s famous image of a portly, well-dressed man uncharacteristically

leaping a wide puddle. What on earth persuaded this sober, conservative senior

citizen to attempt a wild leap reminiscent of his boyhood? All we know is that

Cartier-Bresson froze him in mid-air as he soared ecstatically over the expanse of

water, reflected in the puddle against the sky.

Cartier-Bresson broke an unspoken rule: don’t even think of pointing

your camera at portly old gentlemen walking past puddles: there are no picture

opportunities there! This picture tells a story, the better for it not being externalized,

only experienced. It has no beginning and no ending. I hope the reader will find

sufficient incentive within the pages of this book to break the rules when that’s what

the occasion so demands.

Story telling is one of the important functions of photography. So is

mood creation. Study the pictures of Wynn Bullock or Ansel Adams: they take me

back either to a remote past or a distant future when Nature was or is alive and well,

and men revel in their oneness with everything else. The focus of these Masters’

efforts was Man’s unobtrusive dalliance with Nature. You, too, can try concentrating

your efforts on things that are important to you.

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A man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.” ~ Publilius Syrus


Since life often contradicts itself, in keeping with the nature of the

duality of our existence on this plane, we often have to contend with paradoxes. So,

in order to illustrate that S. Paul is right when he says that he refuses to be typecast

as a ‘decisive moment’ photographer, his vast number of reflexively shot pictures

notwithstanding, I append a few lines that speak for a more contemplative,

introspective style of picture making:

“Though there is certainly a place for decisiveness and action, there

is also a place for patience. Have you learned when to wait?

Wait for the sunrise...there will be another day.

Wait for guidance...learn to be still.

Wait for wisdom...it will come with experience.

Wait for growth...it happens in the fullness of time.

Wait for love…it will come when you are ripe and ready,

even if the other is not. It sometimes takes lifetimes to catch up

with Love.

Wait for inspiration…it could be just a smile or an email away.

Wait and be contented...it is the secret to inner peace.

There is a time to act, but there is also a time to wait. Learn how to

tell what time it is, for great things can happen for those who learn

to wait. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well: "Adopt the pace of nature;

her secret is patience."

[Adapted from Steve Goodier's A Life That Makes A Difference]

Coming back to earth for a moment—on the subject of corrective

filters, I know many B&W photographers who wouldn’t stir out of the house without

a yellow filter. In fact, I’ve often carried a set of 72 Ø (the Ø symbol denotes the

filter thread diameter, expressed in millimeters).

NikonNikon’s usual filter thread size is 52 Ø, Pentax has settled for 49 Ø,

and Minolta has shifted down from 55 Ø to 52 Ø, which means they’ve found a way

to reduce the diameter of their lens barrels, as also to standardize a filter size for a

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larger range of lenses). These diameters can vary according to the speed of the lens

in use (longer, faster lenses have large-diameter front elements and therefore

obviously need filter threading of a larger diameter).

One way of economizing on on-the-lens accessories, such as filters

and lens hoods, is to get one set of filters in a large size Ø and then use step-down

rings. These inexpensive accessories have a Ø size matching those of the lenses most

in use, and an outer Ø size matching the filter set/ lens hood.

Yellow filters, in B&W photography, darken blue skies. Big deal,

you say. But when skies are darkened, white clouds—which often add so much

appeal to a B&W landscape or portrait—stand out sharply in the photographs against

the now dark background.

Clouds are clearly visible to the naked eye even against skies of a

lighter hue because our eyes (meaning our retinas) are marvelous examples of

adaptability no camera can quite match: they have a much, much wider range of

contrast-handling ability than film has. That is a point well worth remembering,

because we need to see a scene the way a camera sees it.

You’ll know what I mean when you develop the ‘cloudy sky’ pictures

you’d taken minus a yellow filter. You’ll find to your dismay that the prominent

white masses of cumulus have blended with the general sky tones, robbing the scene

of all its impact.

Next time you go outdoors in search of B & W atmospheric shots,

you won’t forget to take your yellow filter, will you? To add even more drama (by

way of greater contrast), take (and use!) an orange filter. This does a much more

thorough job of darkening blue items than a yellow filter, giving dramatic sky

effects. A red filter produces extravagant, ominous effects that are better seen than

described. Try one. With judicious under-exposure, you can even get pictures that

look as if they were taken at night/ by moonlight.

I always try to remember that the apparent ‘sharpness’ of a picture is a

product of good lens resolution (of both camera lens as well as enlarger/ projector

lens) as well as good contrast…of tones. Filters do much here, separating the color

frequencies and adding depth to monochromatic photographs, especially valuable

when lighting or subject are both inconducive to ‘modeling’, i.e., rounded contours

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suggestive of three-dimensional solidity. They add contrast by influencing B&W

tones resulting from the primary colors in the subject.

Special-effects filters

A little extra something is often needed to add sparkle or glamour to a

picture. One popular accessory is a star-effect filter, which is a clear glass with criss-

crossing lines etched on it. It is mounted on a rotating-ring arrangement on the main

filter mount, and turning the ring enable you to rotate the orientation of the ‘star’

refection that emanates from highlights, say, the sparkling points of light from the

facets of Liz Hurley’s £ 1 million diamond ring. Star-effect filter filters come in a

range that gives four, six, or even eight-sided stars. They are fairly inexpensive. I’ve

always preferred the simple four-pointed-star ones.

Multiple-image ‘filters’ do just as their name suggests, producing

repeat images of a well-lit subject against a dark background. I bought one but never

could find much use for it. I’ve seen movie cameramen use it sometimes, but the

rationale always struck me as questionable. But don’t let that stop you from giving it

a try. Who knows what extraordinary effect you might capture? Experiment!

COKIN®: this is the brand name of a most comprehensive range of

filter accessories which are basically square-shaped plastic sheets, 3”x 3”, that you

need to simply drop into a slot in a rotating holder mounted on the lens. There are

over 50 of these plastic drop-in elements, enabling access to a mind-boggling array

of effects, from simple color filters (as needed often in B&W photography), to color

balancing, to graduated-color elements that add moody effects to outdoor shots. This

set will probably fulfil all filter fantasies of the most fanatic enthusiast or

professional!

Yet, I feel it’s my duty to add a note of caution here: it’s easy to get a

little carried away by filters (as it is with all photographic equipment). The large

majority of successful pros and amateurs do not use much more than the UV, 1A or

1B filters permanently fitted on their lenses, and maybe a polarizing filter and/or

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neon/ tungsten filter on certain occasions. Unless one is careful, filters can become a

nuisance. Use them with caution, more in B&W than in color.

WHICH SYSTEM?

This is the first question that most beginners ask. It’s a difficult one to answer

truthfully. I always say, ‘use the system that makes most sense to you, in terms of

price, features, expandability and durability. The fact that there are so many camera

manufacturers around today (almost all of them Japanese), that they must all be

doing something right.

The early battles among 35 mm cameras were between the Zeiss

Contax (not to be confused with the later high-end camera by the same name

produced by Yashica…a ‘stand alone’ brand that anticipated Toyota’s Lexus), which

produced sharp pictures but with smoother, lower-contrast tones from its Carl Zeiss

optics, and the Leica M2/ M3 rangefinder cameras, which gave sharp, contrasty

pictures from the razor sharp Leitz glasses.

Guess which of the two makes became the best-seller? Neither. They

were overtaken by Nikon’s runaway success, a rangefinder camera exemplified by

the NikonNikon S2 model, which saw action in the Korean War, and which incorporated

the best features of the Contax (with its Carl Zeiss optics) and the Leica (with their

legendary in-house Leitz lenses), and was incredibly rugged, and relatively

inexpensive. NikonNikon never looked back thereafter. Today, NikonNikon’s’s Nikkor lenses

are acknowledged as being among the best in all 35 mm photography.

So, choose the camera system that comes closest to fulfilling your

personal preferences, style, and budget. An excellent ‘lower-down-in-the-pecking-

order’ camera that often gives the ‘Big 5’ a terrific run for their money is Ricoh.

Many Ricoh SLRs have features (like a provision for making double exposures)

found only in far more expensive cameras, and they are quite affordable. Besides,

they accept lenses made by many independent manufacturers (since they use the

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Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

~Stephen Leacock (Literary Lapses, 1910)


Pentax proprietary bayonet lens mount), thereby affording access to a major camera

maker’s arsenal of lenses, apart from several independent lens manufacturers.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however, and even today I

often pine for my first SLR, the MinoltaMinolta XE-1XE-1, with its Hanimex zoom and the 58

mm f.1: 1.2 normal lens. If there was a camera to top it, it was the NikonNikon FE2 with

its MD-12 motor drive and the 28~125 mm f.3.5~4.5 Kalimar zoom.

But any camera that comes sweetly to hand, like a good gun, and

whose controls seem to be instinctively operable by you, is better for you than the

latest SuperDuper 15000GTX4 with its ‘f.1: 0.5’ hypersuperfast normal lens…which

leaves you totally befuddled; all thumbs and with nary a clue as how to get the show

on the road!

WHEN TO SHOOT?

The time of day is crucial to outdoor pictures. The best times are early

morning to about 10.00 am in the tropics, and again, late afternoon/ evening, say

from 4.00 pm to about 5.00 pm. This is because the light, coming in at a low angle, is

warm with magic, and casts shadows that give modeling to a subject. As you must

have seen in drawing class, it is shading with a soft pencil or crayon that adds depth

to a flat two-dimensional subject.

To make a 3-D subject retain its depth on a two-dimensional medium

like film, we again need shadows as well as texture (as when light sweeps across at a

low angle over a lawn), and warm lighting coming in low supplies this ‘modeling’ in

good measure. The angular light source provides the shading, and the warm colors

add color contrast as well.

Harsh shadows can create problems, however, and where this is

undesirable (it may be most desirable if the portrait is that of, say, an eighty year old

snake-charmer with his deeply-seamed face reflecting all the ups and downs of his

long life), well-balanced, diffused fill-in flash will do wonders. For landscapes or

most other outdoor shots, this morning-evening light coming in at a low angle is

almost always the universal choice. I break this ‘rule’, however, whenever I feel the

justification for it.

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Most portraitists focus on the eyes (break this rule only when you

have a point to make), unless it’s a powerful close-up, in which case a shallow depth

of field just might make the tip of the subject’s nose a little blurred. Remedy this by

either checking dof by looking through the lens at actual taking aperture (i.e., by

using the stop-down preview button, if your camera has one), or by focusing on a

point somewhere between the nose and the eyes. But if that means that both will be

unsharp, its better to stick to focusing on the pupil of the eye.

One or two experiments and you’ll get the hang of it. And always try

for a catchlight in the subject’s eyes (a ‘catchlight’ is a shiny refection, a spot of

light, caused by the eye reflecting light from the lamp or bright scene). This adds life

and depth to the face and its expression. Look closely at any good portrait, and you’ll

probably see a catchlight.

I don’t know about you, but I learnt a lot from the great portraitists

and landscapists…from the Great Masters of painting. Study the paintings of

Vermeer, for example; you’ll notice (if you haven’t done so already) that he has used

‘selective focus’. Very subtly, but unmistakably, many of his masterful indoor scenes

show the foreground and background just a bit out of focus.

The eye is forced, in spite of itself (Vermeer’s paintings contain a

wealth of fascinating detail) to look at the central area of interest of a picture). But

whether it’s Turner, Botticelli, Van Gogh, Dali, Brueghel, Gauguin, Degas, Renoir,

Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Stubbs, Chagall, Constable, or Maurice Utrillo, or anyone

else you care to name, you owe it to yourself to study their works carefully to

appreciate the finer points of composition, perspective, color, and, above all, light!

It is humbling to remember that in spite of all the technical wizardry

that a camera is capable of, the painter with canvas, brushes, oils and easel can out-

do a photographer almost every time. The supreme advantage that photography

enjoys is that it is a fast, mechanical, medium, and its output can be easily

reproduced in vast numbers— magnified, distorted, cropped, shrunk or stretched.

Edwin H. Land’s ‘Land’ camera, better known as the Polaroid®

camera, made photography an instant medium, which spontaneity is even more

marked today in the twenty-first century, when digital photography can transmit a

digitally enhanced image across the globe in a fraction of a second. But this very

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instantaneity of the image also makes it particularly prone to redundancy, as images

inundate us from all sides. We find that we are only able to remember the very best

of outstanding images…the rest are swallowed up in an ever-increasing tide of

imagery.

It’s no wonder that news photographers have taken so readily to the

digitalization of the image. The serious digital photographer, however, spends many

hours in the ‘darkroom’ of the computer, digitally altering and / or enhancing the

image to match his special vision.

THE DIGITAL WORLD Digital photography has taken the world by storm. The most

impressive thing about it is that it confers upon us the privilege of viewing an image

immediately after it has been shot (something all owners of camera phones know

only too well). If the picture is found to be lacking in any way, whether in terms of

composition, incorrect exposure or whatever, corrective action can immediately be

taken and the picture (if circumstances permit) can be shot again. It thus allows one

to have one’s cake and eat it, too. No wonder a photo-artist of the stature of S. Paul

refers to digital photography as a guru…it teaches you shot by shot, frame by frame.

Yet another important advantage of digital photography is that one

saves on film. Depending on the particular camera that one is using, it is possible to

shoot the equivalent of dozens of rolls of film…all on one tiny digi-card that can be

wiped clean by downloading the digital images onto a computer hard disk, thereby

enabling it to be re-used. The savings, in terms of film consumed, can be substantial.

A third major advantage of the digital image is that superlative

retouching or cropping can be done in the photo lab, using any of the computer

software programs like PhotoShop that have been expressly designed for the

purpose. Now we can practically do away with soft focus lenses and conventional

darkroom sleight of hand, because the image can now be digitally enhanced to an

extent that far exceeds the capabilities of the earlier technique. That includes the

time-consuming and often exasperating traditional methods of smoothing away

crow’s lines around the eyes and ‘airbrushing’ away unsightly eyebags…within the

limits of credibility, of course.

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To push an advantage further, the 10-megapixel SLR cameras now on

the market mean that resolution is as good if not better than that of the slowest, finest

of 35 mm films. Given that lenses are being continuously improved as better glasses

and coating techniques are being devised, there is nothing that one has to lose by

going digital. And for those who yearn for the ritual of loading and reloading film,

camera makers like Nikon have models that start off as conventional film cameras

but offer optional digital backs that allow you to switch to digital photography any

time, since the basics of photo making remain unaltered—correct composition and

exposure. All sorts of effects can be incorporated via the digital route that would be

very difficult to do with regular film.

If at all there is a disadvantage to the process, it is that it can

encourage a more casual approach to photography. Knowing that an image can

usually be repeated means that many are going to approach their image making with

a cavalier attitude reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw’s accusation that 35 mm

photography was like the cod that lays a million eggs so that one might hatch. Now,

the danger – if this criticism holds water – is vastly magnified.

Unless one is careful, it can be easy to adopt sloppy habits in one’s

picture taking. A single shot revolver can teach one to be very economical with

ammunition, and to make every shot count. On the other hand, a man with a sten

machine-carbine can empty a full magazine by keeping the trigger depressed for a

couple of seconds while aiming in the general direction of the target and moving the

barrel in an arc across the target.

There is much to be said for the discipline imposed by 35 mm film,

and the much harsher dictates of 120 roll film or 8” x 10” view cameras like the ones

used by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, where it could take weeks or even years

to plan and take a single picture of a scene in some remote mountain fastness!

Ultimately, it boils down to gnothi seauton – Know Thyself – words from antiquity

inscribed in the Temple of Apollo, in Athens, that predated even Socrates to whom

the words are traditionally ascribed. Photography is a hard taskmaster when we let

slip of discipline.

But conventional or digital, the photographer has nothing at all to be

ashamed of by altering the image; his is a medium pregnant with immense

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possibilities that are limited only by his equipment and his own imagination. As

Einstein said, imagination is more useful than knowledge.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

Apart from the image enhancement possible through the well

thought-out use of filters, there are a few more techniques that enable us to create

very special images. Double/multiple exposures are one such possibility that I

personally find delightful. Two photographers in this area whose work I greatly

admire, though their approaches are completely different, are Duane Michals and

Bill Binzen.

Michals, for example, once made a series of eerie images using

double-exposures, depicting the various stages of ‘the spirit leaving the body’, as the

sequence is called. Basically, the technique used is simple. A supine man is exposed

(I think) at almost full exposure (say, about 75%) For example, if ‘correct’ exposure

is 1/125th second at f.5.6, then use 1/125th second at an aperture slightly more than f.8

as set on the aperture ring), with the camera position locked in position on a tripod.

The frame is again exposed (by whatever method of double exposure:

maybe your camera has a button that allows it), this time at ½ exposure, showing the

man sitting up. This second exposure is much weaker, about half the intensity of the

first one. The developed print will show a spirit sitting up coincident with the body

of the supine man. Subsequent double-exposures (can) show the ‘wraith’ putting on a

jacket and walking off nonchalantly into the night!

Michals’ sequence opened my eyes to the vast possibilities of the

medium/technique. It can be adapted endlessly to portray almost any dream

sequence, e.g., two strangers who like each other on sight in a tramcar/ office/

restaurant (but who maintain their distance in deference to social conventions), then

getting up (as phantom figures, of course) and embracing.

Mutual attraction is a fact of the real world, and photography can

serve to graphically bring human fantasies to life, thereby touching a silent chord

within us—relieving frustrations, unleashing latent creativity, and enriching us by

exposing us to the endless possibilities that life has to offer. Before digital special

effects came to Hollywood, several landmark films were made using this technique,

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e.g., “A Matter of Life and Death”, starring David Niven, and the stunning ‘The Hot

Red Sun’, featuring inter alia Sean Connery as Roald Amundsen.

How about a multiple exposure of a flower opening? It is a difficult

technique to use, involving as it does an entire sequence of shots of the same subject

from the very same position. The camera position cannot be changed at all. This

means that, for a few hours or probably days, your camera will be in the open,

perhaps under a garden umbrella and possibly carefully covered with a protective

plastic bag slipped over it (care being taken not to move the camera the slightest bit).

Take a series of four (multiple) exposures, at 25% of the then-correct

exposure, on the same frame, going from the flower at the bud stage to a shot of it in

its full glory. See how the results come out, and modify your technique suitably to

compensate for uneven results, perhaps by starting with 20% exposure and going up

to, say, 30%, on the last exposure, so as to total 110% to 130% of a normal (single)

exposure (going by the assumption that film sensitivity decreases as exposures pile

up).

Moviemakers are at a creative advantage here. They can show it all

happening as a sequence. They usually take a few seconds of footage every other

hour till the flower has opened fully. When played back, it gives a rapid-action – and

highly evocative – seamlessly sequential presentation of the flower’s progress from

bud to blossom, a very exciting way of seeing it happen right before your very eyes.

This technique is known as ‘time lapse photography’.

Bill Binzen’s forte is the mixed image. He can take two, three, or

even more negatives, sandwich them one atop the other in the enlarger’s negative

tray, then print it (i.e., expose the whole conglomeration on the photographic paper)

normally. Alternatively, he could be selectively printing relevant parts of different

negatives, holding back irrelevant portions by ‘masking’ them out with his hands,

during printing. The effects can be, and are, simply incredible.

My favorite Binzen masterpiece is called ‘Winter Climber’. It shows a

man (with his back to us) bundled up in heavy winter clothing, surrounded by clouds

and mist, moodily walking up the side of a misty skyscraper, his shoulders hunched

against the cold! Obviously, there are at least three negatives involved here: one of

the man (underexposed slightly against snow so as to capture only his image and

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play down the snow), one of the skyscraper, and another an atmospheric shot of

clouds/mist. The image, once seen, is unforgettable for the cold, loneliness, and a

suggestion of a climb at two levels of existence, the official one (represented by the

skyscraper) and the spiritual one (the lonely journey of the soul from earth to the

Pearly Gates).

It’s a stunning masterpiece, a product of perfect technique, a vivid

imagination, and deep philosophical insight. We can all try to emulate Binzen’s

technique, but we need to be cautious and take it one step at a time.

One way of getting startling images on film is to make double

exposures on different portions of the film, using lenses of vastly different focal

lengths. For example, we could take a night scene with a 50 mm lens, positioning a

major portion of the top right hand corner of the frame on a patch of dark sky. (Since

there is no light falling here, the negative will be unexposed in this area of the

frame).

We could take a shot of the moon like this, using a normal lens. We

could then fit a 200 mm lens on the camera, put the rig on a tripod, and make another

(normal) exposure of the moon just where we had left the big blank patch in the

frame during the previous exposure. The result: a night scene with our usual moon,

along with another, huge moon four times as big as the one we are used to seeing!

The possibilities are endless, as I said.

I once made a long exposure at night, from a high vantage point, of

the traffic on Marine Drive, Mumbai (formerly ‘Bombay’), in Maharashtra, India.

Since it was a long exposure lasting several seconds, the red taillights and yellow

headlights of vehicles traversing the dual carriageway left long streaks of light on the

frame. This was a reproduction of a shot I had seen on a magazine cover. But I made

an addition.

Against a dark night sky, I made another exposure on the same frame,

from a low angle, of a friend leaping high, ballet style, taking him against the dark

sky: the high-speed exposure of the electronic flash ‘froze’ him in mid-air. The

resultant transparency showed the sharply illuminated figure of a man leaping over

the vast expanse of Marine Drive at night with the light trails of cars glowing far

below. It was quite surreal and spooky.

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The more powerful the electronic flash, the briefer the pulse of light.

This is because, as we have seen earlier, exposure needs a certain amount of light to

reach the frame. TTL (through-the-lens) flash metering means that the camera can

sense that enough light has reached the film, and terminate the flash output. We are

talking in terms of milli-fractions of a second here.

The really fast and powerful multi-flash set-ups, of the type used by

National Geographic photographers to capture Sunbirds (often inaccurately referred

to as Hummingbirds which are a related, but different species) can produce flash

exposures of 1/40,000ths of a second to freeze the amazingly swift fluttering of the

wings of these tiny, gunmetal-blue, long-billed birds as they hover in front of (enter,

and even reverse out of) a flower full of nectar! This effective shutter-speed of

1/40,000th of a second is also useful in a variety of scientific and industrial

applications. The famous ‘drop of milk’ picture, where a drop of milk scatters into

droplets on hitting the surface, the whole taking the shape of a diadem, was shot with

high-speed flash. So also was the image of a dart puncturing a balloon.

A powerful light-source can often be the difference between success

and failure, for example in macro-photography. The higher the magnification, the

narrower is the zone of sharp focus (depth of field, or ‘dof’ for short). A very narrow

dof could, however, be unacceptable when we are photographing a three-

dimensional object, no matter how small. The only way under the circumstances of

deepening the zone of focus is to stop down the aperture. Macro lenses routinely

offer apertures going all the way down to f.32, and even f.64!

But imagine the infinitesimal quantum of light reaching the film, even

with long exposures (which aren’t always feasible, either on account of outside

vibrations—perhaps from heavy traffic or due to the action of the camera’s mirror

itself—causing blurring, and also because of the color shift associated with long

exposures on color film).

The only alternative left is to prodigiously increase the amount of

light falling on the subject (the closer to the subject, the better, since light falloff is

inversely proportional to the square of the distance). Powerful, multi-rig, high-speed

electronic flash is the answer. But in a pinch, I have used a mirror to reflect sunlight

onto a tiny object. 93 million miles away it may be, but there’s still nothing quite like

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our sun, in the immediate neighborhood. You’d have to travel for 4½ years at the

speed of light before you reached Alpha Centauri—the star nearest to Earth!

I once happened to spot a tiny, white garden spider that was

ambushing little insects as they landed on the Zinnia where he had stationed himself.

He would dart out and grab the tiny bug before it could fly off again. With my

normal lens retro-fitted (fitted on the camera by means of a reversing ring, which, on

one side, screws into the filter thread in the front of a lens, and, on its other side has

the appropriate bayonet or screw mounting that allows the camera to accept it, for the

reversed normal lens doubles as a very sharp and powerful macro lens), I fixed a

makeshift lens hood to the erstwhile rear-end of the lens and started taking pictures.

Stopping down the aperture manually (the aperture ring and the back

element of the lens were now out in front), I realized that shutter-speeds were too

low for safe handholding. It was only at f.22 (which was the smallest aperture setting

on this lens) that I had all the dof I needed, but I didn’t have enough light for a

decent (I wanted over 1/60th second) shutter-speed.

Hey presto! A handy little folding traveling mirror with an adjustable

stand enabled me to reflect sunlight well enough onto the small assassin to get some

interesting transparencies, hand supported (I was flat on my belly in the grass, where

I’d placed the flower). Some white cardboard bent around the scene of the action,

and opposite the mirror, reflected a fair amount of light back into the subject. I was

now able to get some fairly respectable transparencies before the spider scuttled off.

Reflectors are always handy, and even a newspaper held by a subject

as if she were reading it, will brighten up shadows under the chin and eyes that

would be very unflattering. We all learn to improvise in the field. I even carry a

small plastic bottle with a minute nozzle, full of water, for flower pictures. One or

two squeezes, and there’s ‘dew’ on the petals to add that authentic touch of a dew-

fresh early morning bloom!

For close-ups of flowers in the field, many specialists carry (rolled-up

in their camera bags), three of four cloth backgrounds in different colors, usually

smudgy orange-red, blue-white, green yellow, or jet black in color, which an

assistant can position suitably (behind the subject, naturally), should the available

background be unsatisfactory in terms of color, contrast, or both! Again, a 3-sided

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wrap-around white cardboard (kept well out of the frame, i.e., the viewfinder) will

soften harsh shadows and reduce excessive contrast, which film cannot handle.

For flowers (as is true for all subjects), the larger the negative format,

the better the results, everything else being equal. This means that a 35 mm slide on

Kodachrome cannot quite match the magnificent detail of a 70mm x 70 mm

transparency shot on a Hasselblad or a Rolleiflex, to name but two makes of larger

format SLRs. And this will pale in comparison to the results possible with an 8” X

10” view camera such as a Sinar.

However, as a trade off, maneuverability, economy, and versatility

sink dramatically with every step up in format size. Hence, with the astonishing

amount of detail that a modern 35 mm slide-film can deliver, coupled with the

convenience and lens/ accessories available as optional extras for SLRs, most of us

would probably prefer to go the 35 mm route.

In fact, 35 mm in the twenty-first century is so good that many

punctilious photographers shooting slow B&W film/color transparencies can

routinely produce lovely transparent negatives/ slides, rich with detail both in the

highlights as well the shadows. I have seen such negatives blown-up to 3 feet x 5 feet

without a trace of grain: marvelously sharp, contrasty, and with tons of atmosphere.

As for the transparencies on, say Fujichrome or Kodachrome, they

are stunning when projected onto a full-size beaded reflector screen. Standardize,

standardize, standardize your basic technique so that you are free to think, plan, and

compose...I paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, the philosopher of Walden’s Pond,

who exhorted men to ‘simplify, simplify’. That, too, come to think of it!

In the age of large-format cameras that could top forty pounds, not

counting the mandatory tripods, which weighed much more, made of wood as they

were, with their huge lumps of glass, the miniature camera (as the purists refer to 35

mm) was undreamt of.

Perhaps even E. Leitz, Wetzlar (West Germany), never realized the

revolution they were setting into motion when they commissioned Oskar Barnack to

make the first experimental Leica model, a scientific instrument that was meant to

test the resolution and other properties of the new 35 mm motion-picture film.

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It also happened to take pictures, and startled the world with the

sharp, crisp, and detailed photographs it produced. It was the beginning of a

revolution that shows little signs of slowing down, digital cameras or no digital

cameras.

PANORAMAS & GROUPS

If you’ve never heard of the Panon ‘Widelux’ (yes, ‘Panon’, not

‘Canon’) camera, you’re forgiven. It’s the world’s only 35 mm panoramic camera,

featuring a lens that swivels across a length of film equivalent to about three frames

taken with a conventional 35 mm film camera (which are now standardized at 24mm

x 36 mm). The swiveling lens takes in a panoramic view covering about a 150º angle

of view, great for groups, the Golden Gate Bridge, or that shot of your favorite

mountain ranges. It needs a special enlarger to print the 24 mm x 120 mm negatives,

but the results would far outweigh the initial outlay, I’m certain, if panoramas or

group photography happen to be your area of special interest.

It sure beats the pants off the arduous task of taking several prints of

negatives shot at slightly different angles of vision, and then joining them by the cut-

paste method. Such attempts are never quite satisfying because there are usually

small color and contrast differences between the individual prints that are joined

together, and the joints can never be fully camouflaged because of the shift in

leveling that usually takes place, frame to frame, without a good tripod having a

panorama head.

On the subject of tripods, I cannot emphasize too strongly the

importance of buying a good one. Sooner or later, you’ll need one, I kid you not, and

a sturdy one is preferable to a flimsy contraption that will topple over in the slightest

breeze. There are several good, telescoping models in the market, with names like

Linhof and Gitzo leading the pack.

Some models even allow the camera to be mounted underneath the

central shaft, making very low-angle exposures possible by using a right-angle

periscopic viewfinder eyepiece accessory. A good lockable pan-and-tilt fluid head,

allows smooth, jerk free horizontal movement (thanks to the dampening effect of the

fluid head, that also enables you to ‘pan’ the camera to follow a moving subject),

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and, conversely, tilts from nearly vertical to steeply downwards, to add greater

control.

Many photography buffs never get past the stage of infatuation…

cameras and lenses become a life-long passion, and avid camera collectors can pay

thousands of dollars for a rare collectible, like a mint Leica IIIG, IIIF, M3 or

Leicaflex. Jason Schneider’s words, from his column ‘The Camera Collector’ in

an issue of POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY Magazine published over twenty-five years

ago, sum it up for me: “Using a Leica is like driving a Ferrari on a winding road;

the sheer excellence of the machinery creates the overwhelming illusion that one’s

modest capabilities have been vastly extended.”

Fine cameras have a mystique, an aura all their own, and merely

holding, say, a Leicaflex or the redoubtable NikonNikon F, evokes powerful emotions

which I would be the first to admit to. But if the ultimate goal is photography, pure

and simple, it’s better to inoculate oneself against the malady by focusing on the

ends, not the means. Easier said than done!

Beyond Photography

PART FIVE

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LIFE ~ THE UNDERLYING THEME

COMPOSITION

So much has already been written about how to compose a good

photograph, that I baulk at repeating the oft-quoted principles. And while it’s not a

bad thing to be a little wary of convention, it’s also true that there are some rules that

stand one in good stead in many picture taking situations. There’s no denying the

fact that certain pictures look better than others: they seem to have better balance,

better ability to draw the eye into the picture, and a more sensible use of the frame,

i.e., the 24 mm x 36 mm rectangle of film, in either vertical or horizontal format.

While sticking to my earlier position that one should learn to break

the rules, it’s obvious that we need to first know the rules before we can set about

breaking them. Years ago, a Canon camera ad carried the tagline: “Canon breaks

photography’s oldest rule ~ now, shoot against the sun!” While this was a way of

trumpeting the magnificent multi-coating (various rare-earths and other exotic

substances vapor-deposited on the lens surfaces, that tame internal reflections that

would otherwise degrade image quality) on their lenses, it also allowed one to recall

an old rule: shoot into the light and you’ll get hazy pictures with strings of octagonal

‘ghost’ images produced by internal reflections bouncing off lens elements and the

aperture iris.

Now, I’ve seen such images in the movies, and I love them. So I’ve

always had a fascination with taking against-the-light pictures that have some extent

of internal reflections. (I do much of my shooting in the late afternoon, around 4 pm

or later). Moreover, I also noticed that if I use a discreet amount of fill-in flash (i.e.,

provided my shutter speed is 1/125th of a second or slower, with the Nikon FE), I get

very lively pictures with plenty of golden highlights in the subject’s hair. And so it

came to pass that – by a process of trial and error – I started composing my portraits

against suitable natural backgrounds in order to separate the subject from the

background by means of contrast, in terms of dark and light tones, or of colors.

To bring up one more golden rule – and one very useful to stick to,

until one discovers ways of breaking it for the better – is the nine-box grid, as given

below. The idea is to position the most important element(s) of the picture at any of

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the four intersections where the lines cross each other. This is said to ensure that the

eye is not treated to a static, lifeless picture, with the subject pinned helplessly right

in the center of the frame, like a butterfly in a glass display.

THE NINE-BOX COMPOSITION GRID (Horizontal and vertical formats)

Originality is the essence of picture composition, I suppose, so it is

very important to try and surprise the viewer by adopting a picture taking angle

that’s not what he’s expecting and which, therefore, takes him completely by

surprise. One way of doing this would be to shoot your picture from an unusual

angle like, say, from a height – like the top of a water tower or, at a pinch, from the

roof of a bus – or from a worm’s eye view.

A good many news pictures (yes, news photos!) are taken this way.

News photographers are getting to be very inventive as competition hots up…don’t

look down your nose at them; they make a living from photography, and these

talented, hard working pros have to be highly alert, innovative and right on the

button as far as composition and exposure are concerned.

Horizontal format: it isn’t always necessary to follow the lines of a

subject. I would think there are good picture opportunities even in subjects that

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logically lend themselves better to a landscape view, e.g., a lake view. It is so easy to

end up with bland, uninspiring pictures of a lake, with mountains as a reflection on

its placid surface. I guess the need of the hour is to organize one’s thoughts,

reflecting on what one is trying to portray…is it stillness, in which a horizontal

format, with the lake shore neatly dividing the frame in two equal halves would be

appropriate, ably enhanced by the spectacular reflections of the mountainous

backdrop.

But if it’s to try and convey an aura of mystery or potential danger,

perhaps a misty shot of just a corner of the lake with waves lapping at jagged rocks

might give a more sinister feeling. It all depends on what one is trying to capture.

Take Loch Ness, for example; one could photograph it as just another of Scotland’s

many lakes…or one could suggest a mystery by the use of atmospherics and perhaps

even an old pair of waders cast up on the shore. Many people believe there’s

something in that deep lake that all the sonar probes and underwater cameras have so

far failed to capture (I’m one of that depleting bunch of optimists), and it’s a

challenge to suggest that there is something weird in the water when one doesn’t

have an iota of proof. A moody picture is a possible answer.

Vertical format: one can be forgiven, again, for following the lines of

a subject like, say, one of those medieval towers along the Grand Trunk Road that

Sher Shah Suri put up at regular intervals. If it was one’s aim to conjure up a feel of

those times, when India’s version of Pony Express riders galloped at breakneck

speed along this dangerous route frequented by bloodthirsty brigands, one could take

a slightly distant shot of a tower (in fact, a horse changing station) in vertical format,

coupled with a very low horizon preferably with lots of sky (and gray, ominous-

looking clouds) and a bleak, barren landscape in the background stretching to a

distant horizon…

Though I personally feel that a picture broken into equal halves by the

horizon (or lake shore; whatever) is best avoided, you’ll find the rule is quite useful

when purposively broken, and also to prove that one doesn’t need to apply it

slavishly. Again, once the feel for composition as per the dictates of the nine-box

grid has been imbibed, you might find that something within tells you when not to

apply the rule. It is useful to get that tingle in your gut that tells you what’s right…

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and don’t forget the unusual, serendipitous element that might crop up in a picture

frame. Bank upon it happening; in fact, look for it. I think we start seeing things

when we’re half expecting them to happen.

Here again, I refer to a sort of sixth sense that many photographers

(and hunters, anglers, etc.) develop, one that leads to flashes of insight that inspire a

composition quite unusual at first, and one that often flies in the teeth of

conventional wisdom. But in retrospect, and encouraged by exclamations of surprise

from viewers, you’ll be thankful for that little voice in your heart that tells your head

to compose the picture just so. Try to go with a blend of right-brain and left-brain

propulsion.

The only way I can explain it is that photography is, first and

foremost, an act of creation, and not a way of merely recording something. And if

you have to ask as to what creation has to do with photography, which is merely a

record of what’s happening right before one’s eyes, it might surprise many of us to

know that, according to Quantum Physics and some of the latest theories about the

physical world, we see what we want to see—what we wish to see tends to appear

right before our very eyes! We do what we think we can do. No more, no less.

This is perhaps what self-fulfilling prophecies are partly about. We

usually end up with results – and I’m not talking just about photography here – that

we’re programmed to produce. A child, whose parents have drummed into him that

he’s a dunce, will usually flunk his tests. A man who knows he’s good can be relied

upon to come up with the solutions. We are what we think we are — another thought

I’d like to leave with you. We do what we think we can do. We see what we believe

we’ll see, often enough to destroy the argument that it’s due to coincidence. I

sincerely believe there are no coincidences in life.

The eye is much less like a camera system than what we were taught

to believe in High School; there’s a whole lot of mental processing of the image

involved both before and after we take the picture, and thought, being energy, (if we

remember our High School physics) is what matter is made of. Ergo, thought can

influence matter (and even create or destroy it), if one is inclined to accept accounts

of the mystic powers possessed by great sages and mystics of India that one can find

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within the pages of books like Yogananda Paramhansa’s fascinating Autobiography

of a Yogi.

Suffice it to say that it is very important to keep an open mind: if only

for the obvious reason that a closed and stultified mind cannot grow, because of its

inability to absorb (and benefit from) new ideas, or even generate them… and new

ideas mean new picture opportunities. Creative visualization is a tool I have often

used with a fair amount of success. Shakti Gawain has written the standard book on

the subject. Who can deny the fact that a negative thinker usually attracts negative

outcomes to himself? The same thing applies to positive thinking.

I am told by minds far greater than my own that the thought energizes

whatever it dwells on lovingly and longingly; it has the ability to draw those things

to oneself. I know too little about the working of the human mind to elaborate

further, but I have a hunch that there is much to be said for stilling the mind and

allowing it to freewheel and daydream…a much maligned but supremely creative

activity said to take place when the mind is connected to the universal unconscious,

whose existence was postulated by Freud’s breakaway former disciple, Carl Jung.

Thus it may be seen that photography at its highest levels is an act of

creation, and as a means thereby of making things happen. I cannot stress this point

enough, though the utilitarian aspect should certainly not be dismissed—it has

undoubtedly played a major role in society as a means of communication, and right

useful has it been, too, all the way from the tiny negatives shot by the diminutive

Minox ‘spy’ cameras, to the 120 format moonwalk photos of Buzz Aldrin and Neil

Armstrong taken with a modified Hasselblad (a superb Swedish SLR camera,

largely handmade and very, very expensive).

However, photography is, at bottom, art…a type of human activity

that one can define as an act of creation. Creativity – to take you back to what was

mentioned in the introduction – is what sets Man firmly apart from the rest of the

animal world. Like all other art forms, photography draws on life (of both the

observable as well the visually undetectable variety) – its raw material and its

sustenance – much as does writing, painting or sculpture.

It may not seem as plastic a medium as, say, painting, but in truth, a

realized Master like S. Paul will create his pictures, compelled as he is by the

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selfsame urges and indeed, powers that flow from attunement with higher

dimensions of living that transcend mundane reality.

Great pictures, whether on celluloid or on canvas, are invariably

created in the mind of the artist. This is because, in some way very hard to describe –

and analogous to the adage that when the pupil is ready is ready, the Master arrives

(or the book idea, or the theme for a painting–how else can one explain a book like

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, or a painting like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da

Vinci, better known for his sculpture?) – a photograph, existing in an unseen world

of possibilities, manifests itself when the cameraman is ready for it. While turning

the camera outwards, then, the true lensman falls back on Wordsworth’s inward eye

for effecting the essential connection with the realm of the Collective Unconscious

where the picture really exists.

If you’ve ever seen S. Paul’s evocative picture of a bird at the exact

moment when its wings are fully extended in the glorious freedom of flight6, as are

its tail-feathers, you’ll know what I mean. One could hardly conceive that such

ethereal beauty could exist in the flight of a common rock pigeon, until a cameraman

like S. Paul freezes that very instant of time and showcases the wonder of this

incredibly lovely event. What triggered his reflexes to react at precisely this

fractional moment in time? It is not coincidence, for he has created many such

pictures.

We see the world through lenses that are not made of either glass or

of organic matter. Our perceptions are all unique, just as we are all unique, like

snowflakes are. No two snowflakes are identical—they never were and never will be.

And neither are we; from the dawn of creation to the Last Trumpet, there will never

be anyone like you or me or S. Paul. Such is the ineffable grandeur of Nature.

In other words, no two photographers possess identical perceptions of

the world, and never can two lensmen take identical photographs. Try it. Ask three or

four of your friends to go out and take pictures of, say, a rose. The outcome of each

effort will be different, even under studio conditions, with identical equipment! Even

if they are shooting from almost the same angle, each will imbue his particular image

6 The photograph is entitled “Sheer Beauty”, and was shot with a Nikon F 301 and 105 mm f.2.8 micro-Nikkor. It won 1st Prize at a prestigious international photo contest, in the “Inspirational Image” category and earned $10,000 for S. Paul, like hundreds of his other international triumphs.

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with elements that set it apart from the others. This is because we all vibrate at

different frequencies, though some are very close to others. They say great minds

think alike…perhaps this explains why.

At that mysterious level of matter where things are forever in fluid

motion, a quantum soup comprising sub-atomic particles like electrons and quarks –

thought to be the very building blocks of atoms and hence the solid universe we

think we know so well – things seem to be mere projections of the observer’s

predilections and aspirations, mere mindstuff. This is perhaps what prompted Sir

James Jeans7 to note: “The universe seems more like a great thought than a great

machine.” Thus do we come to sense that the world is indeed a mirage of our own

making, just as the Bhagawad Gita says it is. And people tell us to be original, when

in fact we are all unique, each and every one of us!

The reality is that we cannot help but be original; it’s societal

conditioning that’s responsible for compelling us to conform to so-called norms. The

norm actually is that there is no norm! All great Masters know this, which is why

many of them have not bothered with acquiring a ‘good’ education, in the

conventional sense of the term. They have voluntarily opted out of the diminishing

influence of a procrustean educational system that spares no effort to perpetuate

mediocrity by dulling the intellect and discouraging creativity and self-expression.

As Mark Twain always maintained, we should never let book learning

come in the way of our education. This is why I insist that a book (including this

one) should only guide, share, create awareness, encourage introspection and

galvanize into action; it should especially avoid prescribing what is right and what is

wrong. There is no right or wrong, only different ways of seeing and interpreting.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Masters are far more educated – in the

real sense of the term – than the usual lot of PhDs and the so-called intelligentsia, for

they eschew learning by rote and, by taking the road less traveled, get where they are

driven to go. This is true whether we are talking of Pablo Picasso, Tyab Mehta,

Maqbool Fida Hussain, S. Paul or Ansel Adams. Guided by the Masters, and taking

inspiration from them, we too can say with Newton that if we see further today, it is

because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

7 “The Mysterious Universe”

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PORTRAITS

I do most of my portraiture outdoors, for I am not very keen on the

stereotyped studio type of shooting, with multiple lights/flash set-ups, etc., that, in

my opinion, rob the image of much of its spontaneity. Moreover, most subjects need

to be coaxed out their ‘stage fright’, and it takes a long time to put someone at ease.

Out of doors, I am able to crack a joke or just keep talking naturally as I pose the

subject, thus preserving or invoking the natural expression that I wish to capture.

Whether the shot is taken front face or slightly at an angle (even ¾

view), I always try to get the subject to turn her head in such a way that I get a

pinpoint of light in each eye, since these ‘catchlights’ add life to the eyes…which are

the soul of a portrait. In fact, most portraitists (including myself) focus on the eyes,

using the split-image focusing aid in the viewfinder to get pin-sharp focus. If there’s

backlighting to bring out glittering highlights in her hair, so much the better! In fact,

I try for that effect consciously as well.

Dry lips can mar a portrait, so I always carry a little lip-gloss or a

little container of Vaseline, to moisten lips and make them glisten. If these aren’t

to be found, I just ask the subject to lick his or her lips, to bring out a shine. Lipstick

and other make-up must be lightly applied; heavy coats of powder and other facial

cosmetics react very violently to flash, no matter how weak. They fluoresce, and the

end result is a ghastly pallor that looks as if the subject has a bad case of anemia.

In any case, my motive in making a portrait has always been to try

and capture the essence of a subject’s personality, and heavy make-up is not the best

way of achieving that end. Far better to get the subject talking about his or her job,

family or hobby: the eyes will sparkle, and the face will become animated. Your

instinct will tell you when the moment comes to squeeze the shutter (never jab the

shutter-release button; it’s the best way to induce camera shake).

I normally prefer very tightly composed portraits, with more room

ahead of the face than behind the head, if it’s a side shot. Most of my portraits, I find,

are in vertical format, but there was this portrait that I once took of a cousin who’d

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just come to India for a brief vacation. I made it in horizontal format, and somehow

managed to capture his typically roguish expression.

It isn’t a particularly tight composition, either, as is my usual practice,

so I guess one just has to go with the feel of things when taking someone’s picture.

But it was shot against the light, bringing out burnished highlights in his hair—with,

again, weak fill-in flash to light up the shadows. Today, it’s his favorite picture of

himself, perhaps because the thick black hair in the portrait is now receding as

rapidly as his memory of it when it was in pristine condition!

All said and done, however, my favorite portrait lens is the incredible

Nikkor 105 mm f.2.5. When I expect to do a lot of zooming (especially when I can’t

get close enough to the subject, or wish to get a series of images at different

magnifications) I like to use an 80~200 mm f.4 Zoom-Nikkor. These two lenses –

apart from a 50 mm f.1.4 normal lens (in case one encounters bad light, or if very

shallow dof is needed) – are all one needs for good portraiture.

I admit to frequently using a non-Nikkor lens as well – a delectable

push-pull, macro-focusing 28~105 mm f.3.5~4.5 Kalimar zoom – and find its results

extraordinarily pleasing. It’s certainly great indoors, if only one lens is practical. At

f.1: 3.5, it’s fast enough to give a clear viewfinder image under normal room

lighting, and my automatic Nikon Speedlight 90 couples very happily with the

Nikon 8008 to add just the right amount of fill-in flash.

I’d also advise you to use a matching lens hood, a deep rubber

viewfinder eyecup (a very cheap but very useful accessory) to prevent peripheral

vision from distracting you as you peer at the image in the viewfinder…and a good

SLR body fitted with a motor winder or motor drive, since manually winding on to

the next frame is a nuisance for the portraitist whose full concentration is on the

subject.

Camera orientation is very important. I prefer taking close-up

portraits in vertical format, as I’ve said before, but there’s no hard and fast rule here.

I’ve seen some very effective portraits in horizontal format. When there are two

people in a picture, the horizontal format is usually better. I’ve also come across

some very interesting portraits where the camera was held at a 25° to 35° tilt out of

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the vertical, so that when the photograph was viewed as a vertical format, the subject

was canted at a very dynamic angle. I’ve tried it, and am impressed with its potential.

In which direction the subject will be looking, i.e., the direction of the

gaze, is something for you to decide. Some portraitists like to have people look

straight into the camera. This is not a bad idea, as it evokes a direct appeal. For this

very reason, however, introverted or shy subjects often prefer not to stare directly

into the lens, but choose to look sideways. Select the angle of vision that’s just right

for your subject. It’s really great, though, when kids look directly into the camera;

they haven’t been conditioned like adults have, and their native curiosity is mirrored

in their round, wide, innocent eyes that make a child’s picture so appealing.

Bespectacled sitters: I have no aversion to bespectacled sitters. As a matter of fact,

my most attractive subjects have frequently been women who’ve worn glasses (I’m

thumbing my nose at Dorothy Parker as I write this). Unfortunately, some of them

insist on taking their glasses off for a portrait, and they end up as unrecognizable to

people who know them, apart from revealing the slight indentations on either side of

the bridge of the nose where the nose-pieces rest that can mar a portrait, and which

are so hard to retouch.

Some subjects also have dark circles that are camouflaged till they

take their spectacles off. Moreover, subjects with quite severe vision problems tend

to develop a vacant stare with their glasses off, not exactly the expression one wants

to proceed with. For all these reasons, I urge bespectacled sitters to keep their glasses

on, and just be their glorious, natural selves.

Perhaps their inhibitions are spurred by memories of other portraits or

snapshots where light – in bouncing off the glass surfaces – had created reflections

that obscured their charming eyes, something that’s entirely possible. I circumvent

this problem by keeping a careful eye on the image in the viewfinder; in an SLR,

remember, what you see in the viewfinder is what you get. Bounced flash usually

leaves sitters unscathed, especially where spectacle wearers are concerned.

Reflections of this nature are rarely a problem with an SLR, because

the flashgun is mounted so far off the line of the lens that reflections (and light

ricocheting off the eye’s retina) don’t trouble you. You should know that the dreaded

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‘red-eye’ – caused by light from a flash bouncing off the blood vessel-rich retina of

the eye and entering the lens, is unknown to SLRs; it belongs to the realm of

compact cameras, whose built-in flashguns are positioned near enough to the lens to

practically guarantee red-eye. Perhaps this is what prompts some people not to look

directly into the lens…effectively ruining the immediacy of the picture.

Spectacles do not mar a subject’s appearance, in my opinion. In fact,

I’ve often found that they serve to enhance beauty. It must be realized that, to others,

one’s spectacles are a part of one’s face! They also often serve to underscore

character.

I once took an impromptu portrait of my father in his favorite golf

cap. He used to wear steel-rimmed glasses, and I supplemented the room lighting

with a table lamp on one side to highlight his determined jaw and the deep creases on

his strong face. With weak fill-in flash, I made a portrait with the XE-1 and a 100 mm

f.1: 2.8 Rokkor lens set at f.4, at 1/15th of a second, using the back of a chair for

support. I think he freaked out on that picture, and for years it stood on Mother’s

chest-of-drawers. I must remember to look for it, because I can’t locate the negative.

But, as the saying goes, Beauty lies in the eye (viewfinder) of the

beholder (photographer). Funny thing is, when you really see and feel Beauty, you

can almost always capture it on film…as you often can in words. This is, perhaps,

the secret of that mysterious quality known as ‘photogeneity’ (or ‘inspiration’, in the

world of writers). I often wonder whether the camera takes a picture…or the heart!

Here is a piece I call ‘The Heart Also Sees’:

“Who could describe her—and do full justice to his subject? So

graceful, so hypnotic was her walk that it echoed the eternal rhythms of nature. Her

stride, confident and self-assured, brought to mind the heaving waves of a river, the

forest trees bending before a hurricane, the heady sway of ripened wheat as a

wayward breeze teased it while playing a riotous game of hide-and-seek through its

golden stands. At once animal and divine, it mirrored her very nature, titillating and

transcendental, sensuous and sublime. Pleasure and purpose were its twin engines,

and evoked these responses in all who had the sensitivity to perceive its feline

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power. It was pure poetry, it was pragmatic prose, it was a projection of her inner

beauty and emancipation. Untrammeled, undaunted, unafraid, it was a delicious

challenge to life itself…

If there was such a thing as melody, it was in her voice. Chimes came

to life and keened in sympathetic response to the clarity and sweetness of its dulcet

tones. Flowers turned their faces away from the sun to listen to her, and nightingales

flew away, crestfallen, shocked at their inability to match the music that issued from

her lips as speech. When she sang, as she often did in a quiet forest glade, the wind

hushed its murmur in the branches, and little rabbits crawled out of their burrows to

draw closer to the heavenly music. And when she laughed, all nature laughed with

her. The angels heard and were moved, for if mortals could sing the way she did,

half their work was already done.

When she entered a room, it immediately became brighter. The

atmosphere, too, became more cheerful and optimistic, as if her coming had

dispelled darkness and uncertainty. She brought light with her, carried it around like

a halo, because it was her and of her. The sweetness, the light, and the beauty were

so much part and parcel of her that it was hard to tell whether she was of the

ingredients or was the mixture itself. Beautiful, unique, effulgent in her timeless

loveliness, she was the very substance of purity and joy and bliss. Yet she was

human…and mortal, which was surprising, because her qualities were of the divine.

Or was it simply that he saw he saw her, not with the aid of his eyes,

but with his heart, a heart that chose to selectively filter out the dross…a heart that

perceived the precious essence of her...an essence that was of the eternal, and not

the fallible humanness that all flesh is heir to. Angelic, immortal, ever pure and

unsullable: that was how he saw her with his heart. Which was why he adored her:

as the magi adored the holy infant they had traced by following the star of

Bethlehem. An angel she was, and a baby, too, if one cared to remember her

mischievous ways and her pranks. Humor, love, happiness, vitality, and radiance

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were embodied in her. Those that saw her with the heart were never the same, ever

again. She captivated and enthralled. He was her karmic pawn…life after life.”

In other words, the Camera of the Heart is a superior instrument…it

is focused at infinity, its aperture as wide as the universe, its shutter-speed is set for

all the Ages to come...and it comes loaded with memories from the Dawn of Time.

Its capacity is endless, and its resolution is ineffable. No mere

optolectromechatronic device can ever match it...

Now, I’ve seen photographs of women who, in my opinion, were

quite plain looking, but the photographer had made them into stunning beauties…

just as I’ve read very moving passages about women who weren’t really beautiful in

the conventional sense of the word, but whom men thought were irresistibly

attractive. I like to think that the lensman (film director) thought them to be lovely,

and voila! They became so. A fantastic portrait (or movie) is always the end result of

such arcane chemistry, darkroom alchemy notwithstanding.

If you’ve ever come across (if not, Google will take you to them)

Roger Vadim’s photos of Bridget Bardot (or seen his movie And God Created

Woman), you’ll know what I’m talking about. One more tip: beautiful women are

usually very insecure. You need to bolster their confidence. Mallika Sherawat may

be an exception…but many will hotly deny that she’s beautiful! Ditto for Carmen

Electra. Aishwarya Rai is beautiful, and she’s photogenic, too, but remember: she

has the Miss World title to back up that immense confidence.

Most portraitists develop their own signature over time. One can

always spot a Yousuf Karsh or a Phillipe Halsman portrait; their styles are

distinctive, aided by the studied control that comes with carefully composed studio

portraits. Once, Karsh was trying to make a portrait of Winston Churchill. Something

about the composition did not quite gel, though, which was odd because Churchill

was in his usual dark gray suit, with his trademark cigar clenched in his teeth.

All of a sudden, an inspired Karsh reached forward and snatched the

cigar from between Churchill’s lips. Churchill did not protest or otherwise react, but

he glowered at Karsh, and the resultant portrait is the definitive portrait of the dour,

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stubborn Englishman who epitomized the gritty defiance that the English are famous

for. After having led Britain through the war years against a foe as powerful as Nazi

Germany, Churchill became as famous a symbol of dogged tenacity as his canine

counterpart…the British bulldog!

Halsman preferred to light only the subject’s head, but kept the rest of

the scene jet black. In one shot, he even got the subject to wear a black turtleneck

pullover, so that only the head registered on film (the meter reading was from the

area of the well illuminated head, ignoring the blackness beyond it). The result was a

head, in sharp detail, emerging from a sea of blackness…a very effective way of

reducing the subject to its bare essentials. As always, lighting plays an extremely

important role in portraiture: the point is worth stressing again and again. But we can

break the rules and light only one side of a face, throwing the other side into

mysterious darkness that blends with the hungry shadows beyond the frame.

Low-Key and High-Key Portraits

If you’ve ever attended a photography class (or read one of those

treatises on indoor (studio) photography, this is one of the things they’ll teach you.

Basically, the difference is something like the difference between major and minor

keys, in music; one is positive and light-hearted, while the other is, well, not exactly

gloomy…but perhaps ‘somber’ is the word I’m looking for.

Low-key portraits are lit so as to create dark, deep shadows around

the subject, while the subject itself is powerfully illuminated with two or three lamps

to bring out modeling, eliminate contrasting shadows and create a very purposeful or

dramatic mood. It’s Othello, its Hamlet, it’s Macbeth…and you can ’ave it!

High-key portraits, on the other hand, are light, airy, full-length

standing or seated compositions (usually against a seamless paper background so as

to further enhance the feeling of displacement in time and place) that give the

impression of being over-exposed. As many as four or five lamps are used. They are

exemplified by the almost complete absence of any dark tones or shadows, being

usually confined to the lighter shades (it doesn’t matter whether in B&W or color).

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Light-colored clothes, ethereal faces and poses, and very evocative

themes further accentuate this dreamlike effect, which is why it’s a favorite with

ballet photographers. It’s Rudolph Valentino, Margot Fonteyn, and Degas. It’s A

Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Comedy of Errors, it’s Much Ado About Nothing…

and I won’t have much to do with it, either.

Seriously, I have nothing, as such, against these two methods of

indoor portraiture, but something in me rebels against templates and styles, and I

prefer to muddle along, trying this and that till I feel it’s right. Being a right-brain

sort of person, I usually don’t encourage logic to encroach upon what my gut is

telling me. In any case, it’s not hard to get high-key effects when shooting against

the light and over-exposing by about two stops. I’ve tried it whenever I’ve felt like it,

and the results have rarely disappointed…and not in portraiture exclusively, either.

Again, that’s what I feel photography’s all about, really: to try and

capture a fleeting impression (an ‘emotion’, if you will) of a scene or a person that’s

hollering to be let out into the world of three-dimensional objects. There are millions

of such images, in full sound and color, locked away in the chemical memory banks

of each of our brains; we just need to be conscious of them. I try, in whatever way I

can, to liberate these images entrapped (momentarily or eternally) in my head.

Phew! I hope that didn’t sound too heavy; I have my muse to thank

for making it come out of me that way. You just go ahead and – after perhaps trying

these methods – develop a style that seems best for you. It’s all about choices, in any

case. That’s part of the freedom that photography (and life) gives you, a freedom all

the more precious for being (let’s face it) practically non-existent in the bottomline-

oriented, hideously practical and ruthlessly regimented world of ‘bread and butter’.

LANDSCAPES

I don’t think there would be many people who – gazing across a

beautiful valley – have not wished to take back memories of it on film. Or it could be

a high mountain pass, a scenic waterfall, a rushing torrent or a beautiful stand of

deodars or sequoia trees…or perhaps even a Douglas pine, said to be the world’s

longest living trees. Trees are an important part of life, but in the hustle and bustle of

life, we often tend to forget their importance to us, and their often ethereal beauty.

Trees also teach us many things, not the least of them being the benefits of patience.

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As always, talking of photographing trees always reminds me of the

aging (and infirm) Edward Steichen, who took pictures of a lone Shadblow tree over

a period of seventeen years from his upper floor bedroom window. In sunshine and

in rain, through the cycle of the seasons, he took picture after beautiful picture of that

stationary living thing, motionless yet so full of life and movement, pictures that are

unforgettable.

While we are always told to keep something in the foreground to aid

in depth perception and to avoid a bland effect, Steichen’s pictures of that Shadblow

tree have no such props. While I do not question the fact that foreground objects –

such as a branch framing the upper portion of a picture of a lovely valley that

stretches beyond it – adds to visual appeal, since it adds depth to a picture by giving

perspective orientation, I also think that we can dispense with such niceties when the

occasion demands it. In fact, again, I‘d insist that you first go with that initial gut

feeling about the scene, only later devoting thought to how you could improve the

composition further. You may often find that you can’t.

I was always a bit of a maverick when it came to composing essays

and suchlike. For example, when Cecil Derek Beaman (CDB), our class VIII English

teacher first introduced us to the intricacies of essay writing, he laid down a rule—

we had to plan this, our first essay, and include the said plan at the end. It was to be a

sort of blueprint of the piece of deathless prose that each of us was supposed to

submit, beginning with an introductory paragraph, followed by the main portion, and

summing up the whole mess with a snappy conclusion. Sherwood was a school

replete with every kind of kind of regimentation, but this boilerplate approach was

just too much for me.

I just went ahead and wrote that essay as it came out of me…and

when CDB handed in our exercise books, mine was right on top. He was very

discomfited to learn that I’d written it minus his precious blueprint, but he dimly

realized, I think, that it’s sometimes better to allow people to follow their instincts

and let the subconscious mind do the rest. It was a learning event for both of us; I

suppose, because he stopped insisting on the essay plan, and I never planned

anything I ever wrote (which remark, I’m sure, my critics will pounce upon gleefully

with the acerbic observation that it’s very evident in this book!)

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Given that, I have to compound things further by admitting that I

couldn’t draw or paint to save my life (which might explain why I was so drawn to

photography—at last, I could ‘make’ pictures painlessly). Yet, to my surprise, I got a

high mark in art in the final year of art class. When I asked stern, wooden-faced Mrs.

Taylor what I’d done to deserve it, she silently showed me some of my clumsy

efforts. One glance at them and I looked away, shuddering. They were atrocious.

But all she said was, “I liked the perspective; in each of them, from

‘Village scene’ to ‘Sunset at Ranikhet’ to ‘Portrait of a young girl’, your unorthodox

viewpoint was very refreshing…a village scene caught from a low-angle, with a

bull’s horns framing the picture!” she chuckled. “The artist must have been a crow

perched on the bull’s neck!” The high grades were not for my rotten drawing and

smudgy coloring but for my choice of perspective!

The lesson sank home—try to develop your own viewpoint, and tell it

to the best of your ability. I really don’t know whether I carried it into photography

or not, but I did try to give free rein to my imagination in my short stories…but

that’s another story!

The reason why I brought up all this old stuff here was to share with

you my realization that we only stand out from the crowd – and satisfy, in the

process, our deepest self – when we follow our heart and do what it tells us to do. It

is a learnable attitude, as any behavioral scientist worth her salt will tell you, in

situations where such learning is reinforced, i.e., encouraged and suitably rewarded.

Originality is the hallmark of S. Paul’s spectacular pictures, backed

up by immense technical virtuosity and lightning hand-eye coordination. It’s very

hard to match, but worth a try, for inspiration from the Masters is a good thing to

have with you on the endless road to mastery.

CAPTURING LOVE

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Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

~John Gardner


The most powerful and the most indefinable of the great emotions, the subject of

love has fascinated, frustrated, exasperated and motivated poets, painters, (and now

photographers) down the centuries. Can the camera actually capture an emotion? I’m

sure it can, but it’s a very subtle thing that shines in the lover’s eyes. You have to

rope in the most powerful instrument at your command – your heart – when it comes

to capturing the subtle aura of love on film.

Have you noted, in any of the photographs of Arun Nayar and Liz

Hurley, their deep commitment to each other? Did you catch the sense of emotional

homecoming in Liz Taylor’s soft smile every time she was snapped with her dashing

Irishman, Sir Richard Burton? Did you sense something was missing from pictures

of Charles and Diana?

Love, never captured directly on film, is nevertheless something that

cannot elude the merciless eye of the camera…in the right hands. Love glows on the

lover’s face; it shines like a beacon in the night, a gleam that reveals the secret joy of

the lucky couple. Indefinable though love is, its effects, thankfully, can be recorded

and interpreted. Here is my rather futile attempt to define this elusive subject:

“Better men than me have attempted to define love – even explain

it – and have faltered. Love is a giddy sensation, an emotion so unique, so

completely unworldly as to defy description. I have admitted as much, elsewhere.

Yet, at the end of the road, I feel I have earned the right to have a shy at the coconut.

I also feel I stand a pretty good chance of surviving the reader’s criticism if not

escaping her wrath at my presumption in attempting so stupendous a task.

I do have the temerity of rushing in where angels fear to tread,

however, for have I not walked with one? Who better qualified than me, then, to

attempt the impossible? Have I not – in my frenzied outpourings – taken the reader

gently by the hand and taken her down Lovers’ Lanes of the mind? I know I’m no

James Hilton, no Richard Bach, no Erich Segal; yet, emboldened by having known a

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celestial Being, I’d like tell it in my own way, and dare you to do your worst. It

won’t make the slightest difference. I am forever bedazzled. So here you go…

Love is sharing, love is giving, love is unconditional, elevating,

intoxicating, inextinguishable...eternal. Love is unselfishness; love is indestructible,

surviving in spite of everything. Love is a fine madness. It makes a rainy day

overflow with sunshine, it means you are ever thinking of the one you love, you just

want to give her all that love locked up in you, you want to die for her you are so

happy. The dividing line between life and death becomes blurred, the whole earth

looks green, and life has a strange dreamlike quality to it!

When you hold her in your arms, you are as a God: you are

invincible. The world sees the love in you and is kind to you, for ‘all the world loves

a lover’. Every little ditty becomes a Beethoven symphony, every joke is a side-

splitter, books reveal themselves anew, a single beautiful word can move you to

tears, every little restaurant is the Ritz, every road you travel with her is the

enchanted road to Gulmarg. The heart, bursting with love, becomes a temple

dedicated to the worship of Pallas Athene, to Eros and to Aphrodite, through the

sacred scripture of its own rapture.

To one’s now vastly extended sensibilities, the very air seems

surcharged with an overdose of oxygen, loaded with some exotic scent. Every

shabby little sideshow is a Disneyland, every movie is the greatest motion picture

ever made, every man is your brother, no sacrifice is too much, no road too long

when she waits at the end of it. Moments with her stretch to Eternity, Time ceases to

exist; nothing else seems to matter anymore.

You feel the whole of Creation is your playground, the stars are well

within your reach, you are immortal, and if you wanted to badly enough, you could

speak with God. For when He has blest you by giving you the miracle of her, He

surely will not resist the urge to remind you of it. Your sense of identity is extended

into the persona of the other, you become one—one body, one soul, one mind,

glorying in the Greater Being.

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The passion, the euphoria, the dementia, the sheer abandon of it, all

these signify arrival at a higher plateau of experience that all true lovers reach, a

place where the Gods themselves live, for once envious of mortals. Love takes man

outside himself to a never-never land beyond the stars of an everlasting tomorrow,

back to Alpha and Omega, back to the End…and the Beginning of it all.”

So those are my thoughts on the subject, triggered by the dazzling

beauty of my eternal muse. If we can capture a hint of all this on film – and it can be

hard at first – we’ve succeeded. Having said that, I’d like to venture the observation

that lovers rarely like to be photographed by strangers, unless the pair are the sort of

fritterati that gives toothy poses for those ‘just good friends’ Page Three pictures,

ersatz smiles and all. It takes a genuine love of humanity in general to approach

lovers and ask them outright for permission to take their picture.

S. Paul is never turned down when he makes such a request…there is

such an aura about the Master, so obvious is his mastery, his devotion to the

medium and his detached appreciation of a higher scheme of things that govern our

lives, that people fall under his spell instantly and readily allow him to take their

picture. Sincerity is the secret; curiosity puts off people, but not those who realize

that the artist is trying to capture life itself.

Great Masters are always in constant communion with Life, and, in

doing so, with the Master of all Masters Himself. They see – in the innumerable

individuations of Life – the very Source of all Life; they are well aware of the mayic

nature of reality, which our perceptions erroneously convey as being fragmented,

whereas they are but fleeting and highly individualized representations of Unity.

Who can dare refuse such people?

But what exactly is perception? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said that

anything worth seeing can only be seen with the heart. I think he was trying to tell

us to glimpse a higher reality that lies beyond our normal ways of seeing. Come to

think of it, just to perceive something is an amazing experience. I often doubt if I

have ever really perceived anything, a bud or a bird or the ever-changing shapes of

clouds in the sky, or the ‘changeless’ hills. Of course, we see these things as we pass

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by in a train or a car; but how may of us take the trouble to actually look at – and

truly perceive – a scene, a tree or a flower?

And when we do, we become inattentive to, say, the tree itself,

becoming preoccupied with trying to recall its botanical name, or with admiring its

colors, shape and so on. In other words, as soon as we ‘see’ a tree, our mind starts

prattling about it, getting in the way of perceiving what might be seen as a towering

monument to patience. I think we can only really perceive something when we

‘disconnect, when we let the mind fall still and silent, when the yammering or

echoes in our consciousness subside.

When we look at the Milky Way galaxy at night, do we really

perceive the extraordinary beauty of it, or wonder at the miracle that brings the light

from distant celestial objects to our eyes? I’ll never forget a night I once spent under

the stars, high in the mountains. A canopy of brilliant pinpoints blazed down on me

as I dumbly admired their naked splendor. Who could have guessed that there were

so many of them up there? ‘City lights must overpower them’, I thought. The

starlight ambled across thousands of light-years of space-time, pitifully slow in

negotiating the immeasurable cosmos. Some of the stars that unleashed those

photons no longer existed. It happened too far away and too long ago for me to

comprehend. Yet those wave-particles, once emitted, had journeyed for eons across

the void to reach my eyes—mind-boggling stuff…and so reminiscent of my muse.

And let me also ask you: when you perceive beauty, do you not also

experience love? Are beauty and love identical? Without love, perhaps there is no

beauty, and without beauty perhaps there is no love. “Do you love me because I'm

beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?” was the conundrum posed by

Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist (1895-1960). In the ultimate analysis, would you say

that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder?

Beauty is in form, beauty is in speech, beauty is in conduct. If there is

no love, conduct is empty; it is merely the product of society, of a particular culture,

and what is produced is mechanical, lifeless. Our love shines through our thoughts

and actions, in the words we choose to use, in our work. When the mind perceives

without the slightest flutter, then it is capable of looking into the total depth of

things, and such perception is really timeless.

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You don't really have to do anything to bring about this state of

perception; there is no discipline to be adopted, no practice, no method by which

you can learn to perceive; you only have to love. It can happen in an instant – “A

moment’s insight is worth a lifetime of experience” (Oliver Wendell Holmes) – in

fact, insight can sometimes come at the very end of a lifetime. Here is one of my

favorite poems, by Czeslaw Milosz, that goes beyond art to stir an unstruck chord in

our hearts and which brings us face to face with eternity:

Late Ripeness

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,I felt a door opening in me and I enteredthe clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seasassigned to my brush came closer,ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,grief and pity joined us.We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no divisioninto Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth partof the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirrorof polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravelstaving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,waiting for a fulfilment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,as are all men and women living at the same time,whether they are aware of it or not.

--------------------------------------------------------------------Czeslaw Milosz. New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001.(Harper Collins Publishers - 2001).

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I would venture to say, then (and you are at liberty to disagree with

me) that photography is, at bottom, a combination of four things—planning,

serendipity, inspiration and intuitive foreknowledge. I feel that, in a very curious

way, the four are one and the same, because of the intrinsic nature of life…all things

being inseparably, inscrutably and irretrievably linked in some inexpressible way.

As such, ‘attunement’ – a term I use to describe this state of oneness

with all things – brings discernment and foreknowledge, since barriers of space and

time do not exist on that higher plane of existence. In other words, photography is

really about connecting with the larger universe beyond optical vision, with a zone

of eternal Truth, Light and Beauty that lies outside the reach of all but our higher

senses.

Whenever I perceive these three vital elements that form the crucial

touchstone of timeless value, I love, for I know that all things are as much part of

me as I am of everything else, and everything must always come full circle.

“Love is action, action is knowledge, knowledge is truth, truth is love.”

~ A Sufi Master

The Fountainhead

“A miracle is not the breaking of laws, nor is it a phenomenon outside of laws. It is laws that are incomprehensible and unknown to us, and are therefore miraculous.” ~ Gurdjieff

“Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.” ~ St. Augustine

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When we see, perceive…really look at and comprehend …the works

of S. Paul, the pictures of photographers like W. Eugene Smith (notably his

masterpiece, ‘The Walk to Paradise Garden’) or abstract compositions from Ernst

Haas (refer his seminal book, ‘The Creation’), we get a clue as to what it means to

look beyond the veil and glimpse something far beyond, like a galactic cluster all of

eight billion light years away, dimly glimpsed shimmering at the outer fringes of the

known universe, whose pull is yet quite irresistible. After all, as Einstein once said,

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though

nothing is a miracle.The other is as though

everything is a miracle."

Publilius Syrus insisted that ‘The eyes are not responsible when the

mind does the seeing’. Though he omitted mention of the heart as an instrument of

sight, I agree with him that the real things in life are the things of the spirit. By that,

I mean things pertinent to a purely non-physical way of knowing and experiencing,

things that not only give one a clue as to what photography is really about, but

which also afford one a peep into the nature of all life, and thereby, into the very

salience of Creation itself.

It’s not as if the universe doesn’t communicate with us. It does.

We’ve all had them and we’ve all pooh-poohed them away…those stunning flashes

of insight, intuition, call them what you will. And they’ve often turned out to be

true! Have you ever stopped to think about this remarkable prescience that we all

experience, in varying degrees, at some time or the other in our lives?

Do we see the connection between this mysterious power we all

seem to possess in varying degrees, and our photography, or the very course of our

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To see a world in a grain of sand,And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,And eternity in an hour.

-William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter

(1757-1827)


lives? Have you ever wondered how the very person you were thinking about

phones you a minute later, on your cellphone?

Have you ever found yourself in a bookshop, just browsing, looking

for nothing in particular...and come across the very book you’ve been unconsciously

longing to read? No doubt you dismissed it as serendipity, as coincidence.

Did you ever set off with a camera, visualizing a particular

scene...and run across it by ‘chance’...the very composition you’d seen in your

mind’s eye? Did you ever have a hunch that it was going to be a bad day at

work...so you are prepared for ‘one of those days’?

Do you believe in a Guardian Angel? You don’t think an angelic

being made of Light and Happiness watches over you all the time? Many do; I’m

one of them! I once wrote an autobiographical piece called ‘Gently Falls the Rain’

in a sort of trance, after I’d fallen into a reverie thinking about something that once

happened to me, something well nigh impossible...or so I’d think, if it hadn’t

happened to me!

Did you ever hear someone say something...and be overwhelmed by

a feeling that you’d heard it before, in the very situation you were experiencing just

then (the sense of déjà vu that we’ve all had but can never explain)? Did you ever

have an eerie feeling that something was about to go wrong...very wrong? Though

you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, you took all precautions...and were more or

less prepared when it befell you. (You didn’t? Then you dismissed your intuitive

knowledge as hogwash...and probably paid dearly for having done so).

Did you ever ‘know’, even before you opened your mailbox, that an

email from a certain friend was about to appear in your in-box? Did you ever wave a

reluctant farewell to someone...a day before she died?

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Did you ever visualize (I mean that literally: did you ever ‘see’ it in

your mind’s eye?) the work environment you felt you’d be most comfortable

in...and have it came true, right down to the very last detail? Have you ever dreamed

of finding the perfect friend—such as you’d never met in your life—one who’d

open your mind to vistas never glimpsed before, one who’d show an interest in what

made you tick, one whose boldness and candour would snap years of mental

stagnation, one who’d help you to unearth whatever little latent potential for self-

expression was submerged in you...did you ever find such a friend?

Did you ever have a dream-like experience where you see yourself

meeting your soulmate...and actually come across the very person who—the only

one out of all the other people in the universe—is the one you seek? Did you ever

feel that you meet that person life after life?

Did you ever have a gut feeling that the money you needed to meet

an urgent expense was about to arrive...even when there were absolutely no

indications to that effect...till it suddenly appeared! Did you ever sense that the

package your favorite uncle handed to you on your birthday contained the very

watch you craved, the one your best friend had? Your uncle lives in a distant city,

you hadn’t met him for years, and it was an impulse purchase he’d made on the way

to the airport; he couldn’t have possibly known how badly you wanted that

particular gift—or did he? But how could he have known? You’d never told a living

soul about that dream watch!

Since all this—and much more—has happened to me, I often

wonder: am I psychic? Or is it simply that, in some funny way, I’m sometimes able

to tune in to things before they happen? Was my constant daydreaming about a

sophisticated SLR the reason why it materialized in my hands, the real reason why

Señor Tomās got me the MinoltaMinolta XE1…as a surprise gift?

What does ‘intuition’ mean? And what exactly are coincidences,

hunches, gut feelings, anyway? And what about visions? Out-of-the-body-

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experiences? Dramatic dreams that seem to foretell the future...a future that catches

up with you? NDEs (Near Death Experiences)? Where you float out of your body

and see—to later remember in vivid detail—what was happening to you and the

people who mattered to you? When these things happen, do we link into another

dimension where there is no distance, time or space? Are there biological or

physiological reasons that enable us to have these weird experiences?

There are. It’s in the brain, and it’s located in the right temporal lobe,

although medical textbooks of today have little to say about it except that it stores,

processes, and interprets memory. It is still too early—despite the enormous body of

research that points conclusively to its role as a unique instrument—for medical

science to accept its role as a receiver/ transmitter for tuning into a Greater

Consciousness, call it God if you will.

Yet we all possess a highly refined instrument that has the ability to

connect us to what Jung called the Collective Unconsciousness—the Universal

Mind of the New Age philosophers. I am talking about the brain; more specifically,

I am referring to the right temporal lobe, an area of the human brain that more and

more scientists are the calling The God Spot. Through this lobe we access the place

where all knowledge (as many an inventor maintains), all memory resides,

everything that ever happened, is happening, and everything that will ever happen in

a finished, complete universe that science today acknowledges is no longer a myth

created by mystics and philosophers.

Unlike information, Time is not indispensable to a universe where,

say the physicists, everything—every last atom and sub-atomic particle—is

inextricably and eternally interlinked in a sequence of events that’s not a sequence

at all but a one-off event! If you’ve read John Donne’s words about for whom the

bell tolls and of no man being an island, you might see what that means. I don’t

think I need to again repeat Blake’s ‘To see a world in a grain of sand’ verse to get

my point across.

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Sometimes, it’s the poets, rock-stars, philosophers, and mystics—

heavily dependent on their right temporal lobes for ‘inspiration’ (read ‘the ability to

access the Universal Mind’)—who understand, far better than most scientists, the

basic, underlying unity of everything...peering unerringly into the future (Bob Dylan

is one). Tennyson (‘Locksley Hall’) and Walt Whitman (‘Leaves of Grass’) are two

more examples. It is no wonder, therefore, that when we access the Universal Mind

through the good offices of the right temporal lobe (through the intervention of a

Master or with the aid of LSD and other hallucinogens), we encounter another

reality beyond the limitations of spacetime (a theme I happened to use in my novella

‘Another Time, Another Place’).

Working through a different frame of reference to the one we

normally operate from, we can use the right temporal lobe to access what we regard

as the past, the present, and even the future. However, the compulsions and

obligations of the workaday world we live in compel us to neglect the intuitive right

lobe in favour of the more analytical, rational left temporal lobe.

This ensures that the individual ‘I’ predominates (giving rise to the

aggressive assertiveness that is so essential in coping with the individualized

challenges that are constantly thrown up by a highly-competitive and often dog-eat-

dog work environment). But this over-developed sense of the ‘I’ is also the undoing

of modern societies, responsible as it is for spawning much of the ills of that plague

men who have lost touch with the soothing sense of harmony and oneness with the

universe and everything in it.

As science and religion increasingly view each other as allies, as

physics and metaphysics converge and rush to meet on common ground where they

will see each other as complementary means of interpreting a shared reality, we see

the beginning of the end of the Dark Ages of the Soul. For as surely as Newtonian

physics crumbled before the incontrovertible theories of Einstein, and as quantum

theory unveils worlds at the sub-atomic level that question the very foundations of

the older physics, man is beginning to re-remember an old truth: that the mind and

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the body are subtly linked, part and parcel as they are of a universe that holds all the

answers...if we but care to look.

The key to looking, learning and responding, for a creative artist, is

the Right Temporal lobe. It can be electrically stimulated, it can be kicked into

responding by mind-bending drugs...but it can also be induced into action by

meditation (which could mean nothing more than sitting quietly for about twenty

minutes and fixing the mind at some neutral point, slowing down the frequency of

brain waves to about the pre-sleep level of 8 to 10 cycles per second).

Scepticism is both natural and healthy. It winnows the wheat from

the chaff, and, when finally overcome by overwhelming evidence and conclusive

repeatability, makes acceptance of new ideas and paradigms all the more welcome.

Old habits and ways of thinking die hard. Ulcers, for example, were always thought

to be the result of stress until it was proved that a simple virus causes them, and that

antibiotics can cure them. But even today, ulcers continue to be treated as though

stress was the cause, by doctors who refuse to change their thinking.

The story of science—whether astronomy, cosmology, medicine,

psychology, anthropology, or biology—is nothing if not a series of anecdotes about

new ideas that were derided when first mooted, examined, experimented with, and

ultimately accepted to the extent that they became commonplace. Ideas start as

heresies, mellow into self-evident truths, and finally live on as superstitions.

Doctors have long believed in their gut feelings. Many a CEO acts on

his hunches before rationalizing them with analytical studies and market research

(Akio Morita’s development and launch of the Walkman is a case in point—read his

book ‘Made in Japan’). Intuition, according to top security and police officials, is

often more valuable that body armour and guns. Any pilot knows the ‘feeling he has

in his bones’ about a flight. We know people know at once when they meet the girl

or boy of their dreams (sometimes)...the fabled ‘love at first sight.’ So what are

these signals, and where do they come from? How come they—and dreams,

properly interpreted—are often so accurate? It’s the right temporal lobe at work.

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It is important to consider the role of coincidence in our lives,

without becoming too nostalgic about Auric Goldfinger’s famous summing up,

occasioned after his third clash with James Bond...‘The first time it’s circumstance,

the second time it’s happenstance...the third time it’s enemy action!’ Scientists

prefer to regard coincidence as a lazy man’s way of reacting to a set of

circumstances. Some physicians like Dr Melvin Morse feel that ‘when you invoke

coincidence, you have only one in a million chance of being right.’ Many children

who have recovered from NDEs (Near Death Experiences) have gone on record as

saying that “there are no coincidences.”

There seems to be a deeper pattern underpinning the entire fabric of

nature that we can access with the aid of—not our everyday, humdrum five senses

—but the other ‘lost’ senses that tap into the Universal Mind with the help of the

right temporal lobe. According to Dr. Melvin Morse, MD, the interconnectedness of

life is real. This was one of Niels Bohr’s first major concepts. The founding father

of quantum physics discovered that there is a marvellous interconnectedness

between apparently unrelated subatomic events that scientists cannot explain. But

the Zen masters smile gently…they have long known this.

Physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung developed the

concept of synchonicity before Bohr proved it existed. The theory is that hidden

patterns in life can be expressed by seemingly coincidental events, and that these

patterns represent communication with a conscious, universal mind.

Mandell, who continued Jung’s work, demonstrated not only that

synchronicities have valid meaning, but occur at times of major shifts in our life

patterns...births, deaths, falling in love, marriage, intense creative work, or even job

changes. “This internal restructuring,” he stated, “produces external resonances...as

if a burst of mental energy is propagated outward into the physical world.” Looks

like what we call coincidence... or perhaps inspiration! Can you relate this to your

now shifting concept of photography as a creative medium?

Here I recount a personal experience. I was in my twenty-sixth year

and I knew instinctively that the time had come for me to marry and settle down.

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The clock within me told me that, the very air whispered it to me. But—to my

despair—I had no one to call my own. Long ago, in some distant past I couldn’t

relate to, I knew there had been a girl…but now she was nowhere to be found.

The stage was set for an arranged marriage, something I was not too

keen on but did not exactly buck, having seen the success of my parents’ marriage.

Proposals started trickling in, but none seemed right, although they were all about

bright, qualified, attractive girls from good families. My mother began to lose heart

as I summarily rejected one proposal after another. There weren’t too many such

girls of the right age just then in our somewhat exclusive Brahmin community. But I

was adamant: arranged marriage or no, until I felt like marrying a particular girl, I

was going to stay single. The trickle of proposals gradually dried up, to my relief.

Then one day, as my rickshaw pulled up outside my house, an eerie

feeling came over me. I knew – I do not quite understand how – that when I went

inside my mother would show me a letter that had arrived that very day. There

would also be photograph of a girl...the girl I was destined to marry. The

information was so smoothly grafted into my consciousness that I accepted it

unquestioningly. And it happened just as I had been told (forewarned?).

I use the word ‘told’ with full knowledge of its implications, but I

insist on using it. I had been ‘told’ to marry her...by ‘Whom’, I cannot say. Four

months later, I wed the girl in the picture, and was utterly, blissfully happy...really

so. For the first time in my life, I knew what companionship meant. Now, how does

one explain such a unique experience?

Five years ago, I wrote a short story. Entitled ‘Tabula Rasa’—it was

the outcome of a response to a challenge from a friend to see whether I could write a

story about a man who wakes up with apparently no memory at all...an amnesiac! I

wrote—in the span of a day—a tale about a Neanderthal man catapulted by a freak

time warp into modern times, who went on to display amazing powers of intuition

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and endurance to run rings around everyone else, and become very rich, very fast.

He seemed to possess senses far beyond those that modern man had.

As I read Dr. Morse’s book months later, I saw to my amazement,

that he had postulated that 200,000 years ago, primitive men relied heavily on their

right temporal lobes for the insights, intuition, and remote seeing that enabled them

to survive in a lethally hostile environment! Did my mind enter a ‘fifth dimension’,

stepping into a zone where there is no time, to read the future – Dr. Morse’s book –

and pen that yarn?

Another story—entitled ‘The Dirtiest job in the World’—concerned a

disgruntled army sniper who was compelled, by the very nature of his job, to gun

down distant, unknown men who happened to be labelled ‘the enemy.’ Just a few

days later, the Washington sniper shot over a dozen people! Another yarn called

‘Going Home’—written on 2nd November 2002—is about a pilot who crash-lands

his MiG 21 jet fighter (conscientiously rejecting an urge to bale out) and injures his

spine. The very next day, a MiG 21 crashed in Ambala, with the pilot suffering

spinal injuries when he baled out.

In ‘The Heart also sees’ I wrote about the way we perceive people by

means not solely confined to our five senses. I put it down to the fact that an

unknown agent—the heart, as far as I could tell—perceives reality in a very

different way, one quite opposed to our conventional notions of how we see.

Moreover, a lucid exposition of the ever-shifting quantum reality that is merely a

product of the way our brains are configured, and which we appear to ‘see’ and cope

with, was lucidly explained in Dr. Morse’s book—something I’d already sensed

intuitively!

And in ‘Through all Eternity’, I have woven a romance around the

reincarnation theme...a topic I later discovered Dr. Brian Weiss has examined in

depth. Was this the reason why I, who had actually gone to do a market survey,

found myself buying his books...and then not reading them for six months? It was

almost as if I was saving up this smorgasbord of paranormal delights for a better

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time...in this case, the Diwali vacations—long after I’d written the story!

Coincidence? You decide!

*

When the brain developed its current bicameral configuration about

200,000 years ago (says Dr. Morse), man had no need for the self-assertive ‘I’ so

necessary in our competitive modern times. Primitive man, deeply attuned to nature,

relied heavily on senses other than the conventional five we all have, to locate

distant game, communicate telepathically, and even undertake migrations (across

the land bridge from Asia into North America, for example) that would be daunting

even for us modern men. Each member of the tribe knew her or his role in it.

Individual functions were so clearly defined that the group functioned as a single

unit, with the tribal chief—the repository of the common mind—working at

achieving the common good.

Written and verbal communication developed with the coming of

civilizations (such as that of the Sumerians), based on agricultural advances that led

to disposable food surpluses and therefore the formation of stable urban

agglomerations. The use of the left lobe shot into greater prominence as the right

lobe’s intuitive, remote seeing, extra-sensory uses gradually fell into disuse.

The ‘other’ senses we had been gifted with withered away, even as

the Dark Ages saw large-scale persecutions of those who retained their powers;

many of those who relied on intuition and precognition were condemned as

‘witches’ who ‘consulted the powers of darkness’.

Man has always felt fearful of – or antagonistically inclined towards

– things he doesn’t understand, taking them to be witchcraft and magic. The science

of today would have been called magic in medieval times. We ourselves scarcely

believe in a future where men will be half-man, half-machine. But Kevin Warwick

of Reading University, U.K., the world’s first Cyborg, has ushered in a revolution

that will see man shape his own evolution as he reaches for the stars from which he

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came, and to which he will ultimately return. I have seen too much science fiction

come true in my fifty-plus years not to believe in this wholeheartedly.

Left lobe usage (which has reached its zenith today) increased further

in medieval times, as society gradually succumbed to forces of de-stratification.

New theories and attitudes challenged the old as use of the right temporal lobe

declined even more. The great flowering of art and culture we call the Renaissance

may have been a sudden despairing, defiant upsurge by the right temporal lobe –

now diminishing in importance – as it linked to higher reaches of reality and

triggered off a brilliant flowering of human capability…just as the Eastern mystics

do.

In fact, Eastern societies, more holistically oriented than the west,

have always given due importance to ‘right brain’ activity. It hasn’t served them too

well in the past, in ‘practical’ terms, but now, as the world shrinks and the global

economy integrates, it is no coincidence that the greatest advances in research and

electronics are coming from people of Indian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese origin.

‘Intel outside, Patel inside’ is a wry dig at the situation by western observers.

The Goldman Sachs report tells us that within a couple of decades,

India will be within striking distance (in spite of the ineptness and self-

aggrandizement of our politicians) of the material standards of the west. Provided

we avoid the pitfall of lapsing wholly into left lobe thinking, we will see a

flourishing of a civilization that will herald the coming of the New Age of

Enlightenment and the unfolding of what we today regard as miracles and mysteries

beyond human comprehension.

You can bet that Indian photographers will be in the thick of the

action, telling the world where it is and where it’s going…in stunning, iconoclastic,

right brain generated imagery.

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EPILOGUE

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Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward. ~Søren Kierkegaard


In this all-too-brief tract, I admit that I have been rash in attempting

to explore the whole universe of photography, then going way beyond optics and

aesthetics to discuss matters ordinarily never associated with photography as a

creative art…esoteric things such as Quantum Mechanics, the Universal

Unconscious and superluminal connectivity. In doing so, I have left myself open to

derision from puritanical, left-brain-dominated photographers for whom

photography is but a matter of seeing something, pointing the camera at it, and

pressing the shutter release button.

But I felt strongly enough about a distant yet inner junction where

physics and metaphysics converge – a place that, I feel, holds many of the answers

to life’s conundrums – to try and peel away layers of humdrum, everyday reality to

get at the ‘ghost in the machine’. My only excuse for highlighting the signposts on

the road to mastery is, that that’s the way I see things. Besides, as in any other

medium, the technical stuff has to be shoved out the way before we can get down to

brass tacks—taking pictures.

We need the technical know-how all the time, but we also need to

gently let go of it when it comes to taking photographs, otherwise it’ll only get in

the way of self-expression and, yes—self creation. When Arjun looks at the eye of

the fish reflected in the tub of water, he is not concerned with the bowman’s art. His

focus is only on the eye. We can grow with every picture we create, as we do when

we venture into other artistic fields. And to think that until people like Ansel Adams

and Edward Weston really got going, society refused to accept photography as an

artistic medium, even in the USA, where it first came to flower!

Ideally, technical knowledge should always be constantly and

effortlessly accessible, hovering unobtrusively at the outer reaches of consciousness

yet on instant recall, like a computer ROM. All well-embedded learning is like that.

Having managed that, you have to go beyond photography when it comes to

successfully interpreting and communicating your worldview, which is essentially a

process that has little to do with photography per se. It sounds paradoxical, but it’s

true. It was my need to bring this out, it seems, that made me write this book.

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Once the mechanical side is out of the way – once the technicalities

become second nature – the real fun begins. There are worlds within worlds in this

universe (as there are in ourselves, for we are all miniature macrocosms), some of

which can ensnare the unwary explorer, trapping her in the bog of equipment

worship, sometimes allowing her to escape only to plunge into the quicksand of

melancholia. Like everything else, practice maketh perfect, but an unshakable

confidence in one’s personal vision will help us pull through.

For that is what photography is all about, I guess: conveying our

special way of looking at our world to other human beings, interpreting our very

own reality for others to glimpse. Perhaps, the better we are able to do this, the

better the chances of our efforts being appreciated, for phoniness and plagiarism

will not sustain us for long. In the ultimate analysis, the camera is only a tool to

project our inner vision—realistic, imaginative or abstract images triggered by the

freewheeling unconscious mind. I have only tried to highlight some of the mental

and spiritual processes and inner realizations that assist in this process, to lay bare as

it were, the overriding program.

Many photographers spend a lifetime recording the changing face of

the land, of picturizing the misery of populations traumatized by war, famine or

natural disasters, the despoliation of the habitat as rampant commercialization and

industrialization get a death-grip on the environment. I also realize that really

successful photographers identify with – and interpret – great themes.

They paint on a larger canvas; they taste deep of the bottomless well

of life. Some choose to underscore human misery and chaos, while others celebrate

life, with all its pathos, romance, magic and timeless beauty…all equally valid

representations of their individual visions. But they all operate from a common

platform…and they all speak the same language, though the words are different.

These Masters live in another universe; they hear other pipers, they

march to a different drummer. The curious thing is that all the great themes flow

into One Great Theme…Life. Life is what the Masters seek to interpret, and well do

they succeed in their efforts, wrenching our hearts while simultaneously instigating

horripilation and bringing the blood to our faces with the exhilaration that comes of

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seeing the Truth through someone else’s eyes. A masterpiece is unmistakable; it

produces such a powerful neural reaction that it jolts us to the core of our being.

Masters are great encouragers, too. Instead of only looking for faults,

they are people who point out strengths and encourage us to excel. Like all

successful people, they look for positive qualities. They see potential where others

see failure. And they encourage success in others. Empower them. True leaders, as

Neale Donald Walsch says, do not have followers, because they are too busy setting

up other leaders.

True leaders – like all true Masters – serve. Mark Twain put it like

this: "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people

always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too, can become great.”

Masters teach us to how to learn, which is where the road to mastery begins; they

help us find our own road to where we want to go.

As we learn at the feet of the Masters and struggle to learn, initially

by trying to replicate their efforts, we should be using our skills to develop our own

‘signature’, so that our images begin to show signs of a new maturity and a

distinctive style…not being different from others just for the sake of being different,

mind you, but different in spite of ourselves (for men usually prefer to go with the

herd). It takes courage initially to step away from the beaten path, but those who

take the road less traveled are always the ones who fulfil themselves.

In encouraging us to shy away from tradition and to explore new

worlds both visual as well as non-visual, including the abstract or even the

submerged parts of our psyches, photography helps us to realize and project our

uniqueness as human beings negotiating the astoundingly diverse, desperately

misunderstood and yet magnificent experience we call life. Whether it involves

breaking fresh trails in aesthetic endeavor or the innocent joys of immortalizing the

family picnic, it is a great way to circumvent time and project our thoughts and

vision into a future that will know us better for the images we leave behind.

NEVER MISS AGAIN! TIPS FOR BETTER PHOTOS

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Just as a composer uses all the instruments in a symphony to create a stirring piece of music, you should compose each picture so that its parts work together to create a work of beauty.

Each item in a picture has an effect on the whole, so don't just point and shoot! Take a little time to compose each picture into the masterpiece it could be.

You do not always want everything in your photographs to be in sharp focus. By using selective focus, you can emphasize the main subject and draw attention to it. Selective focus means the use of a shallow depth of field to isolate or emphasize the subject (fig. 4-11).

Selective focus is the control of the zone of sharpness, or depth of field, in your photographs by using the zoom lens at its maximum tele setting (80 mm).

Also try to keep the following options/ actions in mind while composing your picture:

Shooting vertical or horizontal Choosing a main point of interest Adjusting your angle of view Placing the subject off-center Using leading lines Avoiding distracting backgrounds Including foreground objects

LOCK THE FOCUS

If your subject is not in the center of the picture, you need to lock the focus to create a sharp picture...

Most auto-focus cameras focus on whatever is in the center of the picture.

But to improve pictures, you will often want to move the subject away from the center of the picture.

If you don't want a blurred picture, you'll need to first lock the focus with the subject in the middle and then recompose the picture so the subject is away from the middle.

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CORRECTLY COMPOSED...BUT AUTOFOCUS HAS LET YOU DOWN!

BUT WITH FOCUS LOCK, THE SUBJECT IS SHARP.

You can lock the focus for taking such pictures, with your SLR!

First, aim at your main subject and gently depress (and hold) the shutter button about halfway down . It’ll take a little practice. So don’t be afraid to experiment.

Second, recompose the picture, i.e., reposition your camera (while still holding the shutter button) so the subject is off center.

And third, finish by squeezing the shutter button all the way down to take the picture.

This technique is especially useful when you are taking a snap of two people with a space behind them, with a distant scene in the centre (on which your lens would normally autofocus on, throwing your main subjects out of focus!).

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Here, the fence in the background is in focus!

USE A PLAIN BACKGROUNDAND FOCUS LOCK ON TARGET!

A plain background shows off the subject you

are photographing, making it stand out. When

you look through the camera viewfinder, force

yourself to study the area surrounding your

subject.

Make sure no poles grow out of your best

friend’s head, and that no cars seem to dangle

from her ears!

USE FLASH OUTDOORS: taking pictures against the

light

Bright sun can create deep, unattractive facial shadows. Eliminate the shadows by using

your flash to lighten the face. When taking people pictures on sunny days, turn your

flash on.

You have a choice of fill-flash mode or full-flash mode. If the person is within five feet,

use the fill-flash mode, beyond five feet the full-power mode may be required. (With a

digital camera, you’d use the picture display panel to review the results).

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On cloudy days, use the camera's fill-flash mode. The flash will brighten up people's

faces and make them stand out. Also take a picture without the flash, because the soft

light of overcast days sometimes gives quite pleasing results by itself.

WITHOUT FILL-IN DAYLIGHT FLASH!

WITH FILL-IN DAYLIGHT FLASH!

MOVE IN CLOSEIf your subject is smaller than a car, take a step or two closer before taking the picture and zoom in on your subject. Your goal is to fill the picture area with the subject you

are photographing. Up close you can reveal telling details, like a sprinkle of freckles or an arched eyebrow. But don't get too close or your pictures will be blurry. The closest focusing distance for most cameras is about three feet, or about one step away from your camera. If you get closer than the

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closest focusing distance of your camera (see your manual to be sure), your camera’s shutter will lock.

CLOSE...

AND CLOSER...!! SEE THE IMPACT!!

MOVE IT FROM THE MIDDLECenter-stage is a great place for a performer to be. However, the middle of your picture is not the best place for your subject. Bring your picture to life by simply moving your subject away from the middle of your picture.

Start by playing tick-tack-toe with subject position. Imagine a tick-tack-toe grid in your viewfinder.

Now place your important subject at one of the intersections of lines.

You'll need to lock the focus. You have an auto-focus camera that focuses on whatever

is in the center of the viewfinder.

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CENTERED... PRETTY DULL.

...AND OFF-CENTER...!! FEEL THE IMPACT ?

KNOW YOUR FLASH’S RANGE

The number one flash mistake is taking pictures beyond the flash's range. Why is this a

mistake? Because pictures taken beyond the maximum flash range will be UNDER-

EXPOSED (too dark). For many compact cameras like yours, the maximum flash range

is less than fifteen feet—about five steps away.

What is your camera's flash range? Look it up in your camera manual. Can't find it? It’s

about ten feet with 100 ASA film. Position yourself so subjects are no farther than ten

feet away. Film users can extend the

flash range by using any films faster

than 100 ASA, such as 200 ASA or

400 ASA film.

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OUT OF FLASH RANGE...UNDER-EXPOSED.

WITHIN FLASH RANGE...CORRECT EXPOSURE

WATCH THE LIGHTNext to the subject, the most important part of every picture is the light. It affects the

appearance of everything you photograph. On a great-grandmother, bright sunlight from

the side can enhance wrinkles.

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But the soft light of a cloudy day can subdue those same wrinkles.

If you want to show a wrinkled face full of character, use harsh sunlight.Don't like the light on your subject? Then move yourself or your subject.

For LANDSCAPES, try to take pictures early or late in the day when the light is

orangish and rakes across the land, highlighting the contours. This emphasizes depth,

adding a 3-D quality to a picture.

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TAKE SOME VERTICALLY FORMATTED PICTURES, TOO !

Is your camera vertically challenged? It is, if you

never turn it sideways to take a vertical picture. All

sorts of things look better in a vertical picture, from

a lighthouse near a cliff to the Eiffel Tower to your

four-year-old niece jumping in a puddle.

So next time you are in the field, make a conscious

effort to turn your camera sideways and take some

vertical pictures.

LANDSCAPES:

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LOOK FOR ATMOSPHERE

LEAD THE EYE INTO THE PICTURE POSITION AN OBJECT IN THE FOREGROUND

DIVIDE THE PICTURE INTO UNEQUAL HALVES

(BUT BREAK THIS RULE WHERE JUSTIFIED – SEE EXAMPLE OF LAKE PICTURE, BELOW)

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BE A PICTURE DIRECTORTake control of your picture-taking and watch your pictures dramatically improve.

Become a picture director, not just a passive picture-taker.

A picture director takes charge. A picture director picks the location: "Everybody go outside to the backyard." A picture director adds props: "Girls, put on your pink sunglasses." A picture director arranges people: "Now move in close, and lean toward the camera."

Most pictures won't be that involved, but you get the idea: Take charge of your pictures

and win your own best picture awards.

PHOTOGRAPHING BIRTHDAYSWhether it's baby's first, junior's sixth, or great-grandmother's ninetieth, these tips will

make your birthday photos special.

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CAPTURE THE EMOTIONCatch the grins, tears, surprises, and hugs that make for memorable pictures. Keep your camera handy and turned on so you'll be ready for those spontaneous expressions.

SHOW THE CANDLES AGLOW To capture the light from those burning candles, turn off your flash. Hold the camera extra steady on a railing, the back of a chair, a table, or against a door frame to prevent blurry pictures. Or use a tripod, such as an inexpensive tabletop one.

GET CLOSE

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Fill the viewfinder with your subject

and create pictures with greater impact.

Step in close or use your camera's zoom

to emphasize what is important and

exclude the rest. Check the manual for

your camera's closest focusing distance.

AVOID RED-EYE

Red eye is easy to remove these days with picture-editing software or at a professional

studio. But why not prevent red eye in the first place? You can’t always ask your

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subject to look at your shoulder rather than directly at the camera. Turning on all the

room lights helps. If your camera has a "red-eye reduction" feature, use it.

STAY WITHIN THE FLASH RANGEThe typical camera flash range is 6 to 10 feet with 100 ASA film, up to 15 feet for 200

ASA film. Range is more indoors than outdoors, because of light reflecting off walls

and ceilings. Subjects that are outside the flash range will be either too dark or too light.

Check the camera manual and try to keep your subject within the flash range.

PHOTOGRAPHING PEOPLE... A MAJOR RULE…HAVE FUN!

Don't work too hard to position your subject. The goal is for him or her to relax and fall into a natural pose....to have a natural facial expression.

TAKE CANDID PICTURES ...

Try shooting in your subject's

favorite place, or at least a

comfortable one. Meaningful props,

like a trophy, a musical instrument, or even a fish, can add interest.

GET CLOSER...or zoom in!! It sometimes helps to fill the viewfinder with your subject. This can create pictures with

greater impact.

Step in close or use your camera's zoom to emphasize what is important and exclude the

rest. Check the manual for your camera's closest focusing distance.

Fight the impulse to force your

subjects to always pose staring at the

camera, as in this snap. Variety is

important.

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Take candid pictures, showing them working, playing,

leaning against a banister chatting...or simply hanging

around.

USE NATURAL LIGHTYou may be surprised to learn

that cloudy, overcast days can

provide soft lighting that’s

good for pictures of people.

Bright sun makes people

squint, and it throws harsh

shadows on their faces. On overcast days, the soft light

flatters faces. Indoors, try turning off the flash and use the

light coming in from a window to give your subject a soft,

almost glowing appearance. But watch out for the shadow side – fill-in flash will be

necessary.

AVOID HARSH SHADOWSAvoid harsh facial shadows by using the soft lighting of a cloudy day or a shady area.

Your camera has several flash modes... on sunny days, select ‘Fill-Flash’. This will fire

the flash even in bright sunlight. This "fills" the shadows on nearby subjects, creating

more flattering portraits in direct sunlight. Check out your camera's manual.

USE THE SELF-TIMER

Don't forget to get into some of the

pictures yourself! Set your camera on

a flat surface or a tripod. Check what

you're aiming at in the viewfinder,

then set the camera's self-timer so you

can join the scene after you press the

shutter button. Read your camera

manual for detailed instructions on the self-timer.

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Meaningful props, like a trophy, a musical instrument, or even a fish, can add interest. Use your camera intelligently, and you will capture the essence of life. Always remember—it’s the photographer who makes the pictures. The camera only takes them.

The End

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You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something. ~H.G. Wells

Beyond Photography - Ms Word version

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