How I C it

It wasn’t my birthday. I hadn’t accomplished a feat. And I was in for a real treat. Tired of watching me click pictures on phones and an ancient Sony camera whose mega pixels were lower than that of a mobile phone’s, my mom decided to upgrade me. And that too, to a gorgeous DSLR. The camera was a being with a mind of it’s own, to me. I even named her ‘C’, a play on ‘see’, short for Canon, the model and my meister of photography, Mr. Conz. Since that day, that beauty along with the cute old man has changed everything, including how I see the world.

Mr. Conz had carefully planned our outdoor photography lessons – some places I would never have ventured into, let alone with a pretty expensive piece of equipment. C would stay close to me, talking to me on these little trips and often urging me to see through her. And how I would fall in love with her and the world around me all over again!

An assignment included ‘seeing’ alphabets in objects. I looked far and wide, twisted my neck around and slept flat on the ground and yet, when I looked through C, I’d find a perfectly curved ‘S’ or a tall, straight, ‘T’.

7 AM, on a cold, freezing, Sunday morning Mr. Conz decided to test our creativity in a Christian cemetery. Teeth chattering as it already were the open graves and freshly dug ones made my insides squirm. C seemed to be unperturbed however. She would make me see past the place, at the things that made it. I looked through and the squirminess went away. I instead, looked at towering marble figurines with tomb stones dating back to the 1800s to a snail, lazily lugging along the wet soil. An old man, walking, lost in thought caught my attention and I just captured that image, charmed by how beautiful it looked and C would chime her approval through her shutter screech. That picture has been my favourite so far.

The next day when Mr. Conz said Dhobi Ghat, I just had the Kiran Rao film in mind. My bad, of course. After a 100 rupees auto ride across the city (the first time having seen the meter tick a 100), I reached my destination. The smell of detergent and the moisture wafted through the air and greeted me. I carefully treaded on little puddles of water, clutching tightly to C. What if she slipped and fell into one of them? She wasn’t made to swim, much like a piece of paper. She however dragged me to some of the most spectacular sights I would never have seen before that day – a water pipe tied with strips of bright coloured cloth, Dhobis sipping hot tea after a dash with their element, a knotted rope, a bundle of clothes lying in the middle of the chaos, in isolation, and water gushing down clothes being twisted to dry. The simplicity of these objects and actions thrilled me. And of course, C chose to click a few pictures of everything, leaving me room to choose the best.

Mr. Conz had a few other assignments in mind. M.G Road, at its busiest at 8 on a Saturday night, Russel Market in all its grandeur amidst the yellow imitation lights and pottery town in the buttery glow of the day. Imagine practicing the panning effect, a capture of movement in light, beneath a metro under construction, almost in the middle of the road. Horrifying. I’ve always lived with inhibitions and for me, it was liberating. A few of my acquaintances even spotted me and I didn’t shy away. I just waved and clicked with C in my hands. The only person I wasn’t happy to see was the traffic police who chose to intervene and threatened, to take C away if I didn’t back off! Nothing much I could do with her making me snap away at the red headlights. That’s the day I even realised vehicles looked like people. Alien people. But people nevertheless. What with their slant eyes and bumper mouths!

At Russel Market, hanging from curled metal fingers, meat never looked more aesthetic. Once C showed me what to look at, the stench didn’t bother me much. The eerie green lights of the mosque and the red glowing cross of the church against the dark sky, the fruits, cut open and jackfruit, exposed under a kerosene lamp. What a visual treat!

Mr. Conz seemed to have a thing for the pottery town and so did C. The clay lamps in arrays and pots cluttered artistically on top of one another, glowed with hues of red, brown and yellow in the sun, that only seemed to peep. I’d never known there were that many bullock carts employed in the city – I saw about eight while I was attempting a panning technique. Children ran in shorts, half naked, chasing tires. Solemn expressions of the traders came to life. I captured them and C giggled amidst screeches, excitedly.

Makes me happy to be with her and to see things the way she does. If not for her, I would have never been to these places or watched things unfold the way they did. She is something special, something to thank for. Thanks mom. You brought me to life and C makes me see it.

Someone once said, "You and your camera."

So, a few weeks back, it so happened that my generous mommy bought me a DSLR camera. It seemed like a course requirement at that point in time and then it developed into something else entirely… Before I get into that, yesterday, I came across a ‘tumblr’ post that ranted about DSLRs and people who possess them, in a derisive manner (although it was stated that it wasn’t meant to be.)

I have to rant about this post, now.

It began with the aspect of ‘possession’ itself. It read, ‘Anyone can have one, without knowing how to expand a DSLR.’ I’m sorry, but I happen to own one and I pretty much know what it stands for, thanks to Hellmuth Conz, the cute old man, our Meister of photography. Digital single – lens reflex camera. Period.
The post continued to talk about Facebook, uploads and updates. And how the ‘like’ers become assassins and the followers, follow the cute girl who just liked the post. These people are reduced to bored individuals and all these ‘people’ are equated with a hound of wolves. So, is sharing a photograph, an object caught on camera, through a lens, in all its splendour, for others to see, a bad idea? Not all of us want to be ‘praised’ for this skill apparently acquired due to a DSLR. It could be as simple as sharing an image, a perspective, enabling the ‘sharees’ to see it the way you just did. Amen to those sweeping generalizations, the apparent sense of humour and so much for the aspect of humanity that was pretty much heralded throughout the ranting session. You just called your fellow men a wolf and people ‘follow’ a post based on how cute or hot their profile picture makes them out to be. Funny right?
According to the author of the post, subjects of photography who were never really bothered about to begin with, say for instance a potter or an old man in a piece of loin cloth, suddenly become objects of interest and fascination. That might probably be true, but the overlooked point is that, it feasts your eyes and opens them to a ‘way’ of looking at things and this, with the help of that poor camera being blamed through and through. Your ignorance blissfully ends. Whether it is the camera that is trying to make you envision a new world, it still does things that people can’t possibly do with their conferences and commitments. Just saying.
At the end of the day, your eyes have lenses too and they are worthier than the most expensive DSLR there is. And because of the camera, your eyes begin to see things in a new light. In terms of colours and textures, music of light and darkness and the beauty that can come through, even without manipulating the subject’s position; probably something only an artist of some sort can appreciate. A ‘point and shoot camera’ or a DSLR doesn’t make much of a difference, really. It is just how you look at things that make all the difference.
And oh! Coming back to that ‘tumblr’ post, the author was particularly offended because someone who owned a DSLR decided to impart some basic knowledge about photography to him on how to make an image better. Seriously, is one so naïve as to not take some harmless suggestions and some more knowledge into his system, transcending all that smug egocentricity? Unless, of course, if it hurts so much.
So, having a DSLR, showing off that you have one, taking a course in photography, sharing images on a social networking site for others to see, looking at subjects the way you just did, is it all a bad idea?
Because, I just committed every single one of those ‘sins’. I say, oops.
(Going off to absolve them now by clicking some pictures on my DSLR.) I say, oops again.