There are some people in this world who have that certain indescribable spark that lightens up the entire room wherever they go. They seem to have this invisible aura around them that compels anyone and everything around to gravitate towards them.

Karthik is NOT one of these people. Unfortunately, he thinks he is. So unless you are familiar with Karthik, time spent with him could be like a series of disturbing pauses, wherein he performs a string of randomly ordered secret-service type squint-eyed glances into the middle-distance. If you were familiar with him, you wouldn’t be spending too much of time with him anyway.

So, there I was the other day romping around, camera in hand, for some inanimate objects to photograph. After an hour of brainstorming, I’d zeroed in on Karthik and a flower vase. The gaudy floral motif around the vase seemed a tad too alive, and tilted the scale in favour of the ever-reliable, ever-vegetating Karthik.

The lighting setup was pretty simple. There was a Vivitar 285HV shot through an Umbrella from camera left (around 8 ‘O clock) triggered via radio trigger. There was another light behind and back of the bearded vegetable from camera right – this was basically to throw some light onto the phone. For those of you who’re wondering how to get your subject to emote like in this image, generally phrases like ‘did I tell you your boss called again to remind you you were fired last month and need not keep coming to office‘ or ‘did I tell you your GF called to say she’s running away with that guy who keeps tweeting about his epic struggle with erectile dysfunction?‘ seem to help. For Karthik, however, just asking him to look happy did the trick (yes, that’s him being deliriously happy).

The second photograph has more or less the same setup, minus the second light on the background; here, the background is lit with light from the window to the left. There was a reflector to the right to fill the shadows on that side and decrease the contrast, but alas  I should have been more specific when asking Karthik to HOLD IT in place).

A steaming hot plate of yucky south-Indian food was placed next to camera to suitably dilate subject’s pupils (yes, still trying to figure out if those catch-lights are actually idlis…) and add the semblance of a smile. I would have liked to have taken more shots, but a salivating, frothing-in-the-mouth Karthik doesn’t a very pleasant portrait subject make. To complete the image, some tweaking was done in post: played around a bit with curves, hue-saturation, colour balance, etc. to soak up the remaining traces of life from the image.

The shoot wasn’t very ambitious. It was just a regular portrait session. But I like the end results because they are very close to how I’d visualized I would want Karthik to be shot. At times, one tends to get carried away with the technical side of things, and forget what’s being photographed altogether. It helps to stay true to the subject and go in with a clear idea in mind. I’m learning to see light as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. That being said, I also hate those boring as-is black and white portraits that one gets to see a lot on Flickr masquerading as portraits. Black and White is grossly over-rated!

View another image from the same shoot here.

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