There comes a time in every wannabe-photographer’s life when he has to rest his camera and ask himself, ‘what the fuck do I shoot now?!’

I went through one such existential crisis last weekend. Which is when my good friend Pradeep called. ‘So, what are you doing over the weekend?’, he asked.

‘Uhh, nothing much.’

‘So are you up for a shoot?’

‘Sure,’ I said. I am always happy when I am offered the opportunity to outsource certain parts of the photography process, like say, zeroing in on a subject, and emotionally blackmailing them into posing for me. I’d some very pleasant photo-sessions with Pradeep, and the opportunity was too well-timed to be ignored.

Which is until he turned up over the weekend, and revealed what he exactly had in mind. He wanted to shoot me. Gulp.

‘Ideally, I would do a ROFL right now, but the maid hasn’t swept the floor yet,’ said the Missus, as she passed by the living room. ‘Try not to break too many things.’

For the next couple of hours, I sat in front of all the lighting equipment, following instructions like ‘look to the left, now look at me, don’t slouch, intense expression, how about a smile…’ Surprisingly, these words sound simple enough when you’re behind the camera. But when you feel like scratching your balls and throwing up at the same time, and the photographer tells you to ‘hold that intense expression’, you know you’re having a bad day.

Mid way through the shoot, I realized that I needed some leverage to convince Pradeep not to make these images public. So, I suggested that he too pose for me. He agreed. Alas, he turned out to be a natural.

The above image is one from the shoot. Pradeep seemed to be following my instructions, but now that I think about it, he was probably just recalling my intense expression. He has a mean streak.

The lighting setup is one of my favorites. A beauty dish was used as the main light – this is basically a fancy way of saying that a flash was thrust into a steel bowl so that the entire inner side of the bowl acted as a light source. This makes the the light larger than a bare flash, resulting in soft, even light, since it falls on the subject from more directions. This, however, is not as soft as when you use a softbox (which is even larger, and hence softer). The result is a gritty lighting effect. The lights reflected off the subject’s eyes (called catch-lights) also come out as big circular disks – this adds a bit of punch to the image. A couple of portable flashes were placed on either side of the subject, lighting up the contours of the face. These lights were a little brighter than the main light, which is why you see the white patches on the forehead and cheeks.

In terms of post-processing, I followed the same method as detailed here.

In retrospect, the shoot was enjoyable, except for the times when the missus decided to peep in and say things like, ‘are you sure you don’t want a Digene?. So, we have decided to do this more often, but preferably with a third person as a subject. I only have so many intense expressions.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve been getting an unprecedented number of queries regarding the self-portrait I’d uploaded on my Flickr stream some time back. Mom called twice, and Dad rang up an hour back to ask if I was feeling okay. Even my brother called up and asked me to take down the image immediately – apparently, it’s extremely inconvenient having to explain to everyone why his brother has nothing better to do than to click flattering photographs of himself and uploading them all over the web. He’s just jealous. Anyway, here’s the image that has created such a buzz at MIG Block 2, Old University Colony, Guwahati.

Light Setup: Back to Joel Grimes/ Dave Hill territory here. A regular 3 light setup. Two rim-lights to light my sides, while a soft-box acts as the main light from over the camera. I used a studio strobe inside the soft-box. And since I didn’t trade my kidneys for that one, it didn’t come with any way to control the intensity of light. So, that pretty much meant that I had to adjust the rest of the lighting around this big, ugly light. The rim lights are our good old Vivitar strobes, set at 2 stops higher than the main-lights. That’s just a fancy way of saying that I played around with the settings on the Vivitars till the light they threw was brighter than my main light. That’s so that you can see that shiny highlights on the edges of the painfully handsome face. The simplest way to go about this is to first just switch on the main light, and take a decent image. Once you’ve adjusted the shutter speed and aperture as per this, you then add one side light. Then another. I know. Very complicated. I am a genius. Bow.

Step 1 (Preparation): On to the post processing now. Here’s how the image looked straight out of the camera. More or less. I added a duplicate layer and played around with the curves to give the contrast a bit of punch. Then, I went on to clone out some of the bumps and irregularities on the face – this took me around a decade. Once I was satisfied that I was looking human again, I went on to step 2.

Step 2 (Shadows/ Highlights): This is the most important step. Here’s where we start giving the image the final shiny look. A lesser mortal will use Dodge/ Burn. But that would be too simple. (I have to justify a blog post, no?). So instead, here’s what I did. I created two blank layers, and in a flash of genius, renamed them Highlights and Shadows. For the Shadows layer, I took a small, soft brush and ‘black’ as the foreground colour. Opacity was set to somewhere between 5 to 10. Then I went on to darken the already dark portions of the photograph. This would mean the creases on the t-shirt, the vertical shadows framing the cheeks, the laugh lines, etc. Also, you might choose to  darken out some of the distractions on the background. The result might not be readily obvious to you. In case you feel that the opacity is too low, be bold and crank it up to 15 or something – you’ll still be able to modify it later using the layer’s opacity. Anyway, the end result – you should just be able to make out the painted areas when you toggle the visibility of the shadow layer.

For the highlights layer, use the same setting as for the shadows layer, and choose white as the foreground colour. Now, paint over all the areas where the light from the flash was visible. This would include the extreme edges of the face, the hair to the left, the edges of the neck, and the creases of the t-shirt. I also chose to accentuate the sweat drop on the nose for some reason.

Step 3 (High Pass Filter): The next step is to select the original layer, and run a high pass filter on it. I went kind of nuclear on it, choosing a setting of around 200. Since it was a new layer anyway, it could do no harm. Also, I’d just been shouted at for not watering the plants. So, wasn’t in the mood for subtlety. Anyway, once done, I changed the blending mode of this layer to ‘soft light’ to tone down the disco.

Step 4 (HSL): I could leave the image here, but being the perfectionist, I chose to surprise you and add another layer of complexity – literally. I revisited the original layer, and added a Hue-Saturation adjustment layer. All I did here, was to change ’Master’ to ‘Red’, and brought down the saturation till the image started looking like one of those gritty, Christopher Nolan meets Guy Ritchie kind of images.

End Notes: For obvious reasons, I cloned out the logo from the t-shirt. You’ll be aware that my deal with Adidas has finally expired. And in the interest of artistic freedom, I’ve chosen to not renew it. Well that, and I just thought I’d look cooler.

If the above ileads to some horribly discoloured and zombie-style images on your computer, please note that the method is not mine. It’s actually a mix and match from a lot of sources. Chief among them are Joel Grimes, Dave Hill and Scott Kelby. If you love the method, on the other hand, remember that you read it here first and you owe me your kidneys.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

Having loitered around the Strobist blog for well over a year now had lulled me into a comforting complacency regarding my photographic skills. I was living a fairly satisfied existence, occasionally uploading a DIY-soft-box lit image of a frog here, and a bare 285HV backlit portrait of a grasshopper there. Accolades from such varied and credible sources as ‘Flickr Rose Awards – Post 1 Comment 8‘ and ‘You Are My Flickr Star – No Invites Required‘ helped perpetuate the illusion that I’d arrived. Also, the fact that David H. talks about lighting the same way I would may be  talk about making coffee didn’t really help infuse any realism into the situation. Photography is simple; don’t know what the big fuss is about, I’d tell myself as I clicked through pages and reverse-engineered another upload from Chase Jarvis.

Boot Camp Two, Assignment One was posted sometime earlier this month. The brief was simple: a headshot. Use all the learnings that you’ve been spoon-fed here, here and here. Even an idiot couldn’t get that wrong. I mean, headshots are to photography what nuclear tests are to North Korea – they should happen naturally, no? So, as with all previous assignments, I decided to do the exercise mentally. I’d prop in a light here, and a reflector there, the subject would be X ft away from the background, which would in turn be lit with a snooted strobe, gelled to a warm orange hue. The 5th strobe to the left would provide the rim light. Voila! A dazzling headshot of a corporate looking middle-aged guy gazing into the middle-distance shone through. But just as I was about to file another successful session into my extensive imaginary portfolio, an old nagging feeling made me pause. Somewhere inside of me was a kid that still felt a little less cuddled; it still yearned for the elusive pat on the back, or the nod of acknowledgement from the Gurus 1 & 2 themselves! So, I decided to give it a go. For real. What did I have to lose, after all?

Subject: K2. A friend from MBA days, who quit his job in an MNC to start off a microbrewery (the first in India). Looking at his track-record, it was unlikely that his risk appetite would be a factor in his agreeing to pose for me. Besides, he badly needed some decent shots to be circulated in the print media to accompany all the articles they were suddenly featuring him in. Done.

Location: This was a bit tricky, since I was spoilt for choice. I could do the shoot in Corner A, B, C or D of the living room. But the Pro that I am, I choice point E, which happened to be bang in the middle of the living room. The wall (background) was about 4 feet away from the subject, and gave me enough freedom to more or less do anything with it. Inverse Square Law, et. al.

Shoot: K2 was asked to sit on a chair. I would have preferred him standing, but he’s inconveniently tall, and shooting him standing up would mean the support beam on the ceiling of the living room would creep into the frame. I could have Photoshop’ed it out later, but since I am a Pro and all, I wanted to post this as is. Besides, it helps to have your subject seated and comfortable when his confidence in you is evaporating with each passing second. The original thought was that K2 would be holding a pint of his beer, and just benevolently beaming into the camera. But K2 and beer do not a model subject make. So, just a dignified look into the camera would have to suffice. As for lighting, I had two 285HVs, and my subject’s sparkling white teeth. I decided to place one of the 285s inside a DIY softbox that had mysteriously appeared in our house about the same time the missus had lost a sari, some earrings, a curtain, some cardboard that used to cover the hole that was left after the old AC was disposed off, and random pieces of furniture. This would be the soft light that would gradually fall of K2′s face from frame right to left. As for the background, there would be the other snooted 285 that would create a pleasant halo, which would perhaps match K2′s light blue t-shirt.

Surprisingly, doing an actual shoot adds various unforeseen dimensions to one’s thought-process. The simple case of the 285HV on the BG, for example. In real life, it just wouldn’t conveniently hang in the air, behind the subject. Similarly, the reflector would keep sliding down the chair just as I clicked, occasionally taking the 285 down with it. Nor do I remember having to answer the door for the milkman, the newspaper guy, the grocery salesman and the postman every time I thought I had the perfect f-stop figured. And, do any of you recall the strobist site ever mentioning anything about subjects that insist on calling up every person on his address book just as the shot is ready? I couldn’t help feel frustrated, not unlike the time I went around the city unsuccessfully looking for something called VALs in every photography store in Mumbai.

Anyway, back to the shoot. Things, as you can well imagine, weren’t looking up. My subject was getting increasingly restless and talkative, my lights were falling apart and my ego was taking a stroll out on the street waiting for the next SUV. But I wasn’t going to give up. Being the super-resourceful strobist that I am, I decided to give it one last try. Here’s the rather complicated lighting diagram for your reference.

One of the tougher decisions I had to make(apart from deciding between the postman and the newspaper guy) was to zero in on the number of light sources I wanted. I’ve noticed that if I go into a shot without having a definite idea of the desired output, I very often find myself unnecessarily adding light all over, till my subject begins to resemble the Eiffel Tower. If I have 4 strobes, for example, I somehow find a way of fitting them all into the setup, regardless of what the marginal utility is. It helps to have a tight brief in mind.

On a more sober note, THANK YOU David Hobby for giving us this!.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

‘Look,’ I said, proudly waving around the bundle at the missus. Inspired by strobist.com, I’d ordered myself a sample book of Lee’s color correction filters on the net, and completely forgotten about it. So, after a couple of weeks, when it was delivered to me, it was an awesomely pleasant experience and I felt like sharing my delight.

The missus immediately snatched the bundle from my hands, and gave it a thorough inspection, mentally scanning the repository of sarcastic comments she reserved for ‘look what my husband dragged in‘ kind of situations. But there couldn’t possibly have been much she could have said on this occasion. First, she had no idea what it was. Second, I’d not destroyed any of her ornaments or other stuff to make it (the incident involving my now defunct DIY soft-box using translucent cloth, held together with earrings still comes up every once in a while). I hadn’t been so proud of myself since quite sometime.

‘Wow, you must be very proud,’ she said, tossing the bundle back to me. ‘I don’t know of many people who have a collection of 1"x4" colored, semi-transparent paper.’ I felt like pointing out to her that the sample book had come completely free of charge, and all that I had to pay was INR 800 for the delivery, but I wasn’t certain that this too wouldn’t be twisted and turned into something that made me look bad. If ever I ended up murdering cute puppies, I would hire my wife as my lawyer. Am sure she’d have a way of making me look like the victim.

Here’s the thing. Apparently light has a temperature. ‘Hah!,’ you say. ‘Why on earth should I be bothered!’ Well yes, you shouldn’t. You see, this temperature bit is just a con, not unlike all the technical jargon that photographers keep blabbering about to make themselves feel important and purposeful. Everyone knows light has color, right? You switch on a tube-light – WHITE color. A bulb gives us YELLOW color. That concept is just too simple. Any idiot would understand that. So, instead of calling it color, why not just go around talking about temperature instead. And just to confuse the shit out of newbies like me, call it color temperature! Anyways, mercifully, we can get along pretty well without the jargon, thank you. All we need to know is this: Light has color. And, if there is a semi-transparent medium between the light source and the subject, the light would take on the color of the medium. Neat. But what is this medium? Well, it could really be anything that’s semi-transparent. A transparent plastic bottle of water, for example (as was the case with Charsi’s image on the left. Or a piece of colored glass. Or if you are friends with anyone from the United National Progressive Alliance of India, you could try placing his head in between (Caution: Vacuum is colorless). But there will come a time when you’ll run out of colored-semi-transparent stuff. That’s when you go here and order yourself a sample-book. What you get is a bundle of 1"x4" colored, translucent paper. They are called samples because that’s what they are supposed to be. They are like a shade card from a paint shop that you use to decide what shade of pink would go on the walls of your bedroom to go with the hot-pink curtains that your missus brought home. Only, in this case, you can actually use them. The size of the samples are just about enough for you to be able to cover the head of your flash. From thereon, you are only bound by your imagination. You can use them for some really nice effects. Coloring backgrounds, for example. Or adding a nice warm glow to your images.

But the primary use for gels is color correction. There are gels called CTO (which is a secret code for Color temperature Orange, but it’s much more intuitive to just pretend it stands for Change to Orange) and CTB (Change to Blue) that apparently every photographer should have inserted in tiny little capsules inside their mouth lest they get captured by the enemy. These gels help manipulate the light emitted by your flash to better match the ambient light, giving a more natural looking output. In most situations, you would want all your light sources (including ambient) to be of the same color, unless of course you are assisting Anurag Kashyap and going for the psychedelic-doped-out-of-body experience kind of mood lighting. If, for instance, you are shooting indoors, and your primary light is daylight through a window, while you are using a flash for filling the shadows, you would want your flash to have a CTB gel. Why? Because daylight is primarily blue, while the light being emitted by your flash is not. So, Change to Blue! If you are shooting with tungsten ambient light, you need to change the flash color to tungsten, or orange. So, you CTO. You get my drift.

As you can see, not only is this gel thingy pretty handy, it also comes pretty cheap. And having invested in all those fancy lighting equipment, you really need to ease your conscience, don’t you? So, go ahead and treat yourself to some cheap fun instead. The Canon EF 50-200mm lens can wait another couple of months.

Enjoy!

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

It seems obvious on hindsight, but it looked like a very good idea at the time. A break away from work to the salubrious climes of Goa was exactly what I needed. Of course there was the minor matter of me being employed by a company and required to attend office every weekday. So, when I cleverly asked for a well-timed (Thursday and Friday) leave for 2 days from work, judging from my boss’ expression I could just as well have been threatening her life with the stapler I was holding in my hands (which too is not beyond the realms of possibility, but that’s besides the point). Post the perfunctory gasps and sighs to make me feel like a miserable, irresponsible twat, she finally conceded, and made the supreme sacrifice of granting me 2 days leave in the last 2 years. Thus having completely tricked the system, I went home in a rather chirpy mood, and chirped the plan to the wife.

Now, regular readers of this blog (yes, I mean the loyal fan following that I seem to have developed in the region of Africa, who keep leaving me comments asking me to pick up strange packages containing regal jewelry from the airport) that I share a rather unique equation with my spouse. It would not be wrong to say that we complete each other. Without her, I wouldn’t know the things that I dislike, and without me, she would have no clue why she was fed up of her life. For example, something like the mode of travel would be a non-issue with her. But, she instantly knew how much she’s hated air travel all her life the minute I suggested we should fly down to Goa. Of course the knowledge that I was totally against wasting a good 12 hours of my vacation time on a train that seemed to stop at every pan shop on the way had nothing to do with it. I had had it. I decided to put my foot down.

Instead of taking a train that took 12 hours, we thus took the Konkan Express that added another delightful extra hour. I spent the morning clicking images of random strangers trying to look grave and reflective by the compartment door. The train delivered us early in the morning in a place called Thivim, ready to be ripped off by friendly taxi drivers who refused to recognize the independence of our country and kept asking payments in Euros and Dollars. After another hour or so, we reached the hotel that had been arranged for us by my dear friend DJ (more about him some other day). The negotiations on the rates went somewhat like this.

"How much for an economy room for 2?"

"INR 7000 for a day!", shouted back the clerk, obviously irritated at being disturbed by stupid tourists who’d nothing better to do than to check into hotels.

"That’s too much…any chance of a discount?"

"Okay, okay. INR 3000 with a complimentary upgrade to the Presidential Suite and free spa."

Exhausted with the fierce negotiation, I didn’t bother asking which President had the suite been originally meant for. But all said and done, it was a nice enough room, complete with an attached living room, balcony, bathrooms with bath-tubs, etc. I was pretty happy. Having had to spend one full night over me, even though it was on the upper berth, had taken its toll on my wife, and she went straight for her bath. I decided it was time for me to check out the white balance of Goa. Walking into the balcony, I was pleasantly surprised by a nice full view of the swimming pool below, complete with foreigners in all shades of pink trying desperately to turn different shades of darker pink. Moments later, I was surprised once more when I felt a tap on my shoulder while trying to manually focus the camera on a particularly attractive lady who was trying very hard to even out the color scheme on her body. Words not even present in the the Free Online Very Liberal Dictionary were exchanged. I gave her a piece of my mind, and then instantly went and made coffee for the both of us. The following image of her trying to reach out and grab me by my hair can also pass of as a nice little romantic snapshot. Vivitar 285HV from camera right, and fury from subject centre.

Later that evening, I found the conversation veering towards a rather uncomfortable direction. It was only when the suggestion of going and spending time on the beach was floated that I realized why my suggestion of coming to Goa had not been shot down (like the time we’d spent our planned Ladakh trip in Kanyakumari). For yours truly is not very fond of water. Don’t get me wrong, I am pretty okay with drinking water from glasses, et. al. But lounging around the edge of the Arabian Sea was a million light years beyond my comfort zone. The wife obviously knew that.

Thus having failed to convince the wife that a vacation to Goa need not necessarily be turned into a cliché with visits to the beach, et. al, off we went to the sea. A cool beer on a beach chair soothed the nerves somewhat, while the wife romped around mockingly in the water. Occasionally, I took a few snaps of her as well to convince her that she was the reason I’d insisted on bringing along the camera in the first place. And topless foreign tourists? Where? How?

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

If you are married (or in a similar relationship), you’ll surely know what I’m talking about. Waiting for your spouse to get ready for an evening out is no laughing matter. Of course, like everything else in a relationship, it doesn’t necessarily start off that way. In fact, I have a fairly accurate hypothesis that one can judge the health (or age?) of your relationship by observing what you do while she gets ready:

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

You casually lie in bed, savoring the scene in front of you: the way she checks herself in the mirror, playing with the two tiny strands of hair that gently frame both her cheeks. ‘How did I get so lucky?‘, you ask yourself, as she stands in front of her wardrobe and scans her dresses till the next general elections.

I UNDERSTAND YOU

Once the intoxication has worn off, you’d most likely be found on the chair in front of the TV. You are watching an episode of ‘Seinfeld’ on mute, while she fills in the soundtrack with, ‘I don’t have ANYTHING to wear for tonight! Can you believe it?‘, as she tries on her 3rd  dress for the evening. Kramer bursts into the apartment; you manage to squish your laugh into a smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll find something honey.‘ She must be very lucky to have someone as understanding as you. Pat yourself.

HOUSTON, WE’VE A PROBLEM

Finally, you reach the stage where you scratch your head and try to figure out what it was about waiting for 2 hours for your spouse to get ready that you used to find cute, sweet,  romantic or…tolerable. ‘What’s wrong with the dress you’re wearing?‘ you ask, carefully modulating your tone to sound concerned, with just a hint of the restlessness that wells up inside of you. If you are lucky, it wasn’t audible.

AM I REALLY HERE/ AM I TRANSPARENT? (OR VARITIONS THEREOF)

‘Are you done? Should I get the car ready? Should I wait for you downstairs? Are you sure it starts at 7PM? I hope we don’t get stuck in traffic…‘ And all this, while hoping that your wife is picking up these telepathic messages. ‘Hey, you’re looking awesome in that!‘, you exclaim, in a futile attempt at accelerating the proceedings.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

‘It’s not YOUR birthday, you know?!,’ you announce in an unfortunate moment of misplaced bravery. You spend the rest of the evening fending of enquiries like ‘Why are you looking so gloomy? Aren’t you feeling well?‘ from your friends at the party, while her eyes keep throwing cold stares at you like an eagle over a carcass. Back at home, you have a lot of time to ponder over what exactly snapped it…in the comfort of your living room sofa.

MATURED

Of course this need not be this way. There are millions of ways you can occupy yourself, while she makes the life-critical choice between bottle-green and XXX-green. For example, how many ways can YOU throw up the key chain and catch them behind your back? (If you are willing to use your legs, believe me there are hours and hours of enjoyment waiting to be had). Or, is your book-shelf arranged alphabetically, first in order of author, and then title. (If you don’t own too many books, you might try arranging them in order of ISBN number…unfortunately, you’ll be the only one appreciating the end result). How about reprogramming the TV so that you’ve all the movie, music and news channels together (you might also use this time to block all the GOD channels). With a bit of forethought and planning, I am sure you’ll come up with your own indulgence for the inevitable ‘getting ready’ period.

Of course having a real hobby trumps all of the above. The above image was taken while the missus was getting ready to go out the other day (apparently, men are always in a state of perpetual readiness regardless of the situation; hence comparisons are unfair). I was tinkering around with my photography gear (I think I was trying to label them ‘light’, ‘flash’, ‘tripod’, ‘cereal box snoot’, etc for no apparent reason) when I saw her in front of the mirror. She had  her back to the mirror, and every once in a while, she’d turn her head towards it as if trying to spot her own back of the head. I remember a time when this would have made me very curious. But 5 years is a very long time for me to realize that I am perhaps just not evolved enough to comprehend such complicated matters. Hence, instead, I clicked.

Please be advised that you need to exercise extreme caution (and it helps if you’re agile) when trying this yourself. In fact, after careful consideration of the dangers involved in such an endeavor, I’ve decided to also include herewith a lighting diagram for your help. Do study it carefully before trying it at home.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

Being in a particularly gracious mood, I did this image for my friend Charsi to send across to his fiance. And carrying on the philanthropic drive, here I explain to you how I did it.The source image is from the same session as this and this. It’s a fairly simple image of Charsi, lit from camera right with a Vivitar 285hv through an umbrella. There is another Vivitar 285hv (bare) at camera left (slightly behind the subject) to give some outline to the left side of the image.

Open up the image of Charsi. If you do not know him, or for some reason, refuses to pose for strange photography enthusiasts who keep mailing him with the subject line: Proposal for Sad photo session with FlickrAddict123′, any other particularly melancholic individual, gazing into the middle-distance in the general direction of the camera should be okay (at this moment, anyone from Wall Street in any pose would do – recent developments ensure that they look nowhere but the middle-distance. Oh, and you might also want to steer clear of places where you’re likely to find happy people, like in a bingo hall or a park). Duplicate this layer – I’m awesomely confident about my PS skills, everyday I find new ways of messing up a perfectly decent photograph. If you are as adventurous as I am, you can continue working on the original layer. Name the duplicate layer ‘I’m a sissy’.

On the sissy layer, do all the cool stuff with the curves, saturation and color balance, till your ego is massaged enough to consider yourself a PS pro. Make sure that you have some dark portion in your image (more on this later).

Now for the background. Add some texture to your background. Add a layer mask, and paint out the melancholic stock-broker so that you can see his face through all the mess (how true). Play around with the opacity of the texture layer so that it doesn’t look like a close-up of a Van Gogh painting (you might be a Van Gogh fan, but you are almost certainly not talented enough to pass off thick layers of paint as work of art). You might also play around with the different blending mode. Here, you can let go off the edge of your desk, as these changes are perfectly reversible. Once done, lean back and wait for someone to walk into the room and say something like I’ll be damned, you’re a genius.’ Do not, I repeat, DO NOT proceed further till this happens.

Detour: We need a nifty calendar hanging on the wall behind the broker. For this, you can use any image of a calendar. But being the perfectionist that you are, you might want to use an image you yourself have taken, and make a calendar out of it using FD Flickr Toys. The website is self-explanatory. Once done, you would want to add a bit of texture to the calendar to give it a more realistic look. A quick and dirty way of doing it is to open a new blank layer (ensure your foreground – background colours are default black and white; for this, just click D). Now, go to filter> Render> Clounds. Repeat this a couple of more times. Now, pull down the opacity of this layer; play around with the different blending options (for me, Hard Light seems to work fine), and you are done.  Also, add a page curl to one of the bottom edges.

Now, open up the calendar file, and copy it as a layer onto the main file. Resize it, and place it such that some part of it is behind the stock broker. Rotate it a bit so that it does not appear geometrically perfect. Erase or mask out this bit such that it appears as if the calendar is on the Van Gogh wall and the sad broker’s body is obstructing your view of it. Now, in order to relieve your viewers of the anguish of trying to figure out as to why would anyone have a calendar painted off the wall, right click on the calendar layer, and go to blending options. Add an awesome drop shadow. Get some coffee.

Now, add a wet pane texture onto the top of the pile, and play around with the opacity and blending mode. After this, get your eraser out and delete out some text from the new later to make it appear as if the text has been written on the pane. If you’re using a stock-broker image, here is a suggestion:

“My Choices
1. Shoot
2. Hang
3. Drown”

There we go. You now are the proud creator of your very own Sad Stock Broker! Congratulations!

Note: Wet Pane Texture courtesy Grégory Millasseau

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

“From Clee to heaven a beacon burns,

The Shires have seen it plain,

from North and South the sign returns

And beacons burn again.”

Starting a piece of writing with a quotation is akin to downloading all your pictures on to your computer, and turning them into high-contrast ‘black and white’ images. Magically, regardless of the subject matter, the output instantly takes on an air of respectability. ‘Oh, black and white…must be a professional!’, mutters the unsuspecting viewer to himself, while the scheming photographer drags the saturation button all the way left on his next post. It’s a fail-safe way of garnering attention on any photography site – try it! The next best way is to have a profile name like ‘FemaleNudeYoga, but then again, it all depends on how desperate you are for attention.

Photography, I feel, is one of the trickier forms of art (but then again, I can imagine someone write now sitting on his laptop, writing ‘XXX, I feel, is one of the trickier forms of art). Since its representation of the world is so visually realistic and unambiguous, it is very hard to ‘allow’ within it the space for the viewer to read in his or her own interpretations. So, it’s somewhat of a fine balance between nudging the viewer in the general direction you want her to go, and yet allowing her to ramble around and find her own spot. Most of the black and white photographs that we see today are like a huge billboard saying ‘PROCEED TO POINT X.’ So, the challenge seems to be more in COLOR!

Which brings me to today’s post (actually it doesn’t, for the preceding paragraphs have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but what the hell, they still sounded good, right? I am a sucker for the occasional black and white too!). If you’re amongst the millions of loyal readers of this blog (well, it’s more like 117 readers, but we’re getting there…), you’ll be aware of the minor misunderstanding that had cropped up between the missus and me. I’m happy to inform you today that the matter has finally been resolved, and there is relative peace and quiet at home. And not unlike resilient Indians dropping in on to a bombing site hoping to catch a glimpse of some devastation at someone else’s expense , the camera and other photography equipment are beginning to crawl on to the scene once more. The following images form part of the elaborate confidence-building-measures (CBM) that were drawn up following the truce:

This is one of the first shots from yesterday’s session with the missus. It was shot in the bedroom at around 6 PM. The room was fairly well-lit, but since I was using external lights, that doesn’t really come into the equation. The shutter speed is at a maximum of 1/200s (sync speed – any faster than this, and it wouldn’t be open long enough for it to capture the flashes), and the aperture was at F/20. The aperture was kept low as the softbox on the right of camera was too close to her, and would have blown out the highlights otherwise. The post-processing is fairly straight-forward: after the regular spot-healing, curves, etc., a solid color layer was added, the opacity brought down to about 40% and the blending mode changed to ‘Hue’. That’s what lends the image the warm, glowy look. The background was lit with a Vivitar from camera left, through a brown water bottle. On top of this is a simple texture courtesy Jerry Jones, aka GhostBones. It was inserted as a new layer, and a layer mask was applied to let the original image come through. After a minimal level of color balance, a vignette effect was applied via Filters>Distort>Lens Correction. All this might seem kind of complicated to you if you are as proficient in PS as I am. But believe me, I was almost as clueless about the various steps while doing them. I just knew how I wanted my missus to look like – with a lot of trial and error, I tried filling up the missing steps in between to get that image (including the regular groveling on the knees, and pleading her to pose for me, sigh!). Also, if I were to re-do this, I would crop out the empty space on top of the missus’ head – the image would look much better with a tighter composition, methinks.

This one was taken at f/10, and quite frankly, it was fairly blown out (for the reasons specified above). But since I click in RAW (Google that if you don’t know about it, and liberally sprinkle it in your next conversation with friends and family), I retrieved a lot of the detail PS. Thereafter, the PS work was more or less similar to the last image. The only difference in the look that I wanted a bit more directionality in the lighting of the scene. If you look closely, the lighting on the background in the previous picture is fairly even from left to right, although it falls off pretty sharply on the missus. Also, the light appears very soft. I wanted the light to be a little harder, and fall off equally on background. For this, what I did was use the crop tool to select the entire image, and then drag the right border such that the image doubled in width (the image itself would of course remain the same width, but there would be some blank space to the right that PS would think is part of the image. Post that, I applied a sharp vignette. The vignette on the right-side hence was applied to the blank space that was created in the last step, which I then cropped out. I am sure there are much better ways of doing this kind of thing, but this works too . If I were to re-do this, I would have not reduced the exposure of the image in PS by as much. That would have helped retain some of the glow that you see in the previous image. I did try getting it back via curves, but was losing a lot of detail in the shadows (and I was too lazy to start all over again).

And if you’re still wondering what the heck does the poem at the beginning of the post have to do with all of this, well it’s absolutely nothing. It just looks good, like a perfect black and white image.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

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

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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…

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.