On PORTRAITS....a piece of discussion.(post no.200)

It will be a great learning for upcoming photographers from any branch, as the subject is very common....People do not do mastery in it but never miss to portray their own relatives etc.

The lighting was wonderful, as in summer, we do not  expect this sort of higher lighting, that too for making portraits while the model is perspiring. Opportunity came to my hand and I utilized it with the discomfort of the daughter, as she was to leave for boarding train withing few minutes........

The teaching is clear....YOU have subject and lighting in all cases of photography, may be in five seasons of the year. This type of most relaxing lighting u will find in India from Septembet to March....that is why we hv more travellers during that period.....Any camera will do,as the market is studded with pricewise varieties, compact to prosumer (looking like SLR, BUT HAS FIXED LENS, costwise also, it is in the middle, but reliable).Besides for more of the enthusiasts, and professionals,  essentially a DSLR is the only option.
Read the MANUAL comes with the CAMERA and after experimenting few days, u are half PRO.

This is a PROFILE pic. i.e. side of the human being.....you have to do some homework on lighting, essentially in winter...I am sure u will be 100% sussessful.

Exposure with kit lens of Nikon D3000..................SS 1/500, aperture f5.6, ISO 400........As the light was brilliant I shd have lower the ISO setting for picture quality in large enlargements....Exposure on Aperture priority...........any query?

Portraying story of PHOTOGRAPHY...How difficult were our days...(POST no.199))

When color photography was in its infantile stage in India, 1985 onwards, there were small machines to print and almost raw way of developing films...20 films hanged in a long tank (film size 63'') by pegs moved to solutions till went to dry.

That was a golden period for me, as there were no softwares (Adobe came in 1998,as per my understanding) Then for a 5x7 studios in metros, as they cud afford, charged Rs 125/ for a 5x7....We were satisfied with 35 or 40/.  

Then color films or prints cud not be retouched, so my skill of makeup worked for me for hundreds  of  girls as the maximum photographs were for marriage proposals......and most faces of girls needed makeup on pimples, dark circles below eyes, nose, lips and more negative points which needed correction. There is lot to write for dresses, hairs etc, as the God put all natures' beauty in women.

The pic is one of them, duly makeuped. Her face is broad so needed short lighting thus I took several for my satisfaction. Here I kept it plain and flat, using three lighting as can be seen in the eyes, one at 45 degree and another near to camera and one top flash to light hairs,using Nikon soft focus filter....In total I had 5 lights, besides diffused daylight. There is no dearth of light anywhere, outdoors too...which sometimes I used with off-camera flash triggered by a slave or radio unit or otherwise a 10ft chord attached to camera socket....For stages I made a 20ft chord., so on so forth, as we dived into photography on all subjects (strangely enough without any modern gadget yet to be invented,as today), except underwater and ariel, as my town not a big one and these subjects were left for western highlife photographers.........ur valuable opinion will be welcome.

To Binoy Bhusgan:          It's good to see one from the good old days. I remember shooting film with my father's Konica Hexar and then waiting for the film to get developed and print. Somehow I feel the whole waiting process made the images all the more endearing. 

Coming to the image, loved the soft lighting and the classic 80s pose( though the flashing ring is a bit distracting but not a biggie).

Dear Binoy......it was a whole time work of 24 hours for we 4 persons, as I had a service in a company, not photography. The interest developed since my school days, with painting.

I took photography as trial and error, printing 6x6 neg. on a box of tea, fixing one red and one white bulb. Solutions in Kodak bottles from photo shops then bought enlarger,trays etc, later getting full fledged studio working off hours on week days and Sunday full day, covering weddings, cultural functions of schools, colleges, clubs, big factories, also Indian Oil etc for years and till today using all types cameras till day.......The story will go long.

thnx for taking interest and appreciating those good old days, the basis of today's technology. Reg. Ring her hand, that makes the pic more beautiful....Imagine  empty fingers how cud they look, besides it stops the eye and take back to her amazingly beautiful face..

To Hyperdrive........Sir ji, I shot with colour negative & slide films (Kodak or Agfa primarily) as a school boy back in 1979-80. Major camera labs in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was called back then, had machines to process & print the rolls. And even by the standards of those days it was really expensive to develop. Those lab machines were new and colour film was not so widely available. So yes, it was a bit of a niche market because most amateurs shot B&W to save on costs. By 1985-86 lab machine film processing was far more wide spread and was available in smaller cities like Pune (yeah, it was a relatively small city then) not just the metros.

I love ur appreciation, Henry.......Soft focus, yes used widely in 80s and onwards......
Why: There were good b&w studios, delivering glamorous work with 6x6 negatives, retouched with pencil and red color to control shadows. Then when the print came out of lab, again  very fine edged blade was use to scratch the remaing spots.......Two-three  studios were thronged with people coming from locals and other states,getting those results...Keralites first moved to our places and became good clients of those studios. Except for us the customer did not understand the technique, who originally with pitched cheeks went with full face glamoured looks in photos . and hanged proudly on walls.

This is how b&w were soft focused with TLR cameras, people not aware of original soft focus lenses with those TLRs,  ...The theme became more popular when 70s and 80s alongwith TLRs, 35mm came into being., using various lenses and filters, including Sft focus....In India Sonia filters and suppl. lenses were worth appreciating....though we were finding place for foreign filters.

(----To Henry...............)

---Dear friend......I was doing work almost commercially with a service of 9 hours at hand.....rest 15 hours to photography and cameras......Kodachrome was not developed in India and was sent to Australia.

I used Ektachrome ( tolerating sometimes a blue cast on some transparencies)....The film was sent to Central Camera Co, Fort, Mumbai....taking a month to deliver.

85 onwards we had got regular color film suplies, from Kodacolor, Agfacolor and a bit cheaper Konica color was in our bags in dozens. Actually Konica pro machine was established in our town in 90s.....(may be earlier in Bombat) with good enterpreneurs.....we were close to Delhi, so our purchasing system based on materials introduced/imported in Delhi........So our work was carried on with b&w and colors too. There was no machines even in 90s with newspapers to print from color prints. So side-by-side our work was daily printed in b&w for newspapers, as we worked journalists too for our commercial clients....getting published in  newspapers. Even Delhi sent b&w prints for newspapers as the technique was more later develpoed to print from color prints.

the girl's photo was taken in early nineties in color.

Somewhere above I hv written that being, journalists, semi-pros, we did our own developing in color and b&w that too thousands of films...since it was a 24 hr bread and butter......we had every subject  dealt with or processing knowledge of every thing.....even in 1983, We took pix of late PM Indira Gandhi, when she came for a day to inaugurate cong.session........Thus we handled all sorts of cameras in TLR-RolliefleX Rolleicord Yashi635mMamiyaC33,Yashica 124G with meter. and in 35mm-Nikons, Pentaxes, Olumpus OM1, OM2, CANON, MILOLTA SRT101, MAMIYA, Minox, Olumpus35, Minolta compacts. I AN NOT TIRED YET, SIRJI...THNK U VERY MUCH.....Who can forget their golden days.