Charas, aka Charsi, is my friend, colleague and neighbour. Lot’s of responsibilities for a single person, eh? Yes, and he does them all with elan!
Our friendship goes back about 2000 beers, 1 bar brawl, 3 jobs, 3 cities and 6 years. And despite this rich experience, he still doesn’t kick me out of his home; in fact, he occasionally drops by mine too!
Charsi is a person who is literally ‘game’ for pretty much anything. He lives, breathes, eats and sleeps sports; and when he’s not doing any of the above, well, he’s perhaps reading up on sports. To the people who know him, he’s best personified by this cursor that I am seeing blinking as I type this…forever in motion. His enthusiasm and energy in everything he does is so contagious that there ought to be an antidote for it. And speaking of antidotes, as with anything that suggests motion, my body seems to have naturally developed immunity against Charsi’s influence. For people familiar with my athleticism would recognize now how shamelessly M. Night Shyamalan stole the entire plot of his 6th movie from this friendship of ours; well, almost – I’ve given up playing with explosives, and don’t have much time for comic books either.
Okay, now that the sponsored intro is out of the way, let’s get down to business. After the perfume bottle incident, the Governing Body in the house has put our 1-2-3 agreement on hold: so, no more clicking pictures of the Missus or her belongings (alas, I had a great light set-up for her dressing mirror). Suffice to say that for a brief period of time, my bottled up artistic exuberance was suffocating me from within.
And finally, I said no more. It was time for me to be a man, for me to stand up for my sovereign rights, to show the world who’s the boss, to finally put everyone else in their rightful places. No more of the snide remarks, out with the long soliloquies of being ‘productive around the house for once’. Even the meek had to revolt some time. It was time…time to fight back. The camera stayed safely out of sight, over the book-shelf for 2 weeks.
For some time, I played around with the idea of hiring some pretty models and getting them to pose for me. I mentally played out the scene: I was adjusting the tuft of hair on my nude model’s forehead, when the missus walks in. Chin high, I resolutely nod my head, as if to say ‘ha-hah! take that!’ As comforting as this seemed, I knew the scene would have certain deviations in real life: ‘Honey, please…please darling….I swear I don’t know who these people are. I just woke up and found them in our living room. As I asked them to leave, they started stripping, and threatened to castrate me unless I took pictures of them with a three light setup (one for the background, one on camera right through a huge softbox, and the third just out of the frame on camera left, bare, as fill-light).’
Alas, I get carried away at times.
I can’t quite explain it, but as I sat there thinking about my imaginary nude models, I started thinking of Charsi (huh? told you I can’t explain it). As in, no, I do not think he’s an ideal stand-in for a pretty female model. But he had something that trumped everything else – proximity! And of course if the Missus does happen to walk in, there wouldn’t be a scene. That being the case, I convinced my mind to squint its eyes, and overlook some minor details.
The first picture is a standard portrait that I’d been meaning to try out since quite sometime. Umbrella on the right, shining a Vivitar 285hv at 1/2 power. Another Vivitar at the back as background light. Simple. Well, not quite. My living room has dull, off-white walls. Shining background light on them would not amount to much in terms of colour effects. So, what do I do? Gels, you say? Yes, you are absolutely right. But, er….don’t have none (thanks, Montu!). What I do instead, is snoot the flash and shoot it through a green-coloured water bottle. It more or less has the same effect. It’s not something that hasn’t been done before (in fact, there might even be a flickr group for this: SNOOT FLASH THROUGH GREEN BOTTLE – SUBMIT 1, COMMENT ALL!). But it was definitely something I hadn’t done. And I am pretty thrilled with the result. Awesome expression by Charsi just adds to the appeal (of the photograph, I mean 
).
This one was more or less the same setup as far as the main-light goes. No background light, though. Instead, we have a gobo’d Vivitar shining in from the back and on to the left side of his face as separation light. I really like the catch-lights on this one. Nothing like big round catch-lights to infuse life in to your portraits. Just imagine this image without them. Wouldn’t be the same, right?
By now, I wasn on a roll. I had clicked atleast 2 photographs that I knew I would be proud of. So, had to try something different. Enough of those standard, dull expressions. Let’s do something conceptual. And just as I was thinking aloud these thoughts, Charsi surprises me with this.
For once, I really like the post-processing I did on this. It’s nowhere near perfect (look at his wound – looks like paint), but it conveys the idea behind the image quite well, methinks. But his expression, of course, is the core of the image. It’s just awesome! I’ve been meaning to blog about the PS work as well, but taking those screen shots requires way too much effort. I mean, who asked those morons to put the print-screen button way up there…!
By now, I was just way too excited about the pictures I was getting. I had taken at least 5 good images (had clicked about 50!). I walked up to Charsi – a tuft of hair on the right-side of his forehead was disturbing me. I tried combing it down with my right hand.
Door opens, Missus walks in, shopping bag falls, jaw drops.
‘No honey, I have nothing to tell you…no, I like rock. Yes, Katrina Kaif is pretty…no, Salman is not. Fights, of course I’ve been in fist-fights. Yes, I hate flowers…!’ Sigh!
More Charsi pics here
——————————————————————————————————————-
DISCLAIMER: No one involved in the making of this blog-post is homosexual. I mean, i’ve nothing against being gay, but Charsi isn’t. Nor am I. No, no flowers. Yes, Katrina Kaif is pretty. Yes, I get into drunken brawls regularly. Who Stephen Fry? Yes, Iron Man was awesome…pink is the ugliest colour…
Browse Timeline
Comments ( 2 )
Of Pretty Nude Models and Sexual Orientation | rOllon…
a funny, informative post on portrait photography and lighting…
photographyVoter.com added these pithy words on Sep 20 08 at 1:15 amVery very well written and obviously very very good photography. You should seriously think about writing as an alternate career. Trust me, you will be 10 times better and more successful than the likes of Chetan Bhagats. And this praise isn’t sponsored by anyone.
And btw,thanks for the clarification in the end.
Chanakya added these pithy words on
Sep 20 08 at
9:29 am
