I didn’t know it but yesterday (Thursday) was a holiday – a national day off no less so nothing was open – just another celebration of some dead guys birthday from the history of modern India, people I talk to say there are too many holidays in the calendar but what to do lah.
So instead of heading out to the students at NICC to give a seminar on turning pro in the exciting world of photography I spent the day mucking around at home with Vino and Mahesj Jha, his friend from Kolkata, who doesn’t speak much English but is a cool sports and cricket shooter. He also had a Canon EF400mm f2.8 which I borrowed for an hour and went out on the street to play with it.
Later in the afternoon, long after Vino had reduced me to tears with another of his spicy hot chicken curries, Raj K came around and we scoped out the entire length of Moore Road (I didn’t know that it went across the sludge pit they call a ditch/river at the end of the road and on down another half a kilometre towards the railway line) for our proposed shoot on Saturday whereby I am going to try and shoot a whole heaps of portraits of the people living and working on Moore Road – should be fun I hope.
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| raj in action |
Raj and I then wandered around the streets of Fraser Town discovering its back roads and saying hello to the people there – it always amazes me how friendly people are when you smile at them and say hello.
Sounds kinda lame and a waste of time but it was actually rather beneficial because I had thought Fraser Town while being an older part of Bangalore was just that - old, but behind the trees lining the main roads cutting through Fraser Town and hiding the place from Google Earth (you can’t see the streets or us because of them) there is a hive of new modern residential buildings all pushing the old out and claiming the place as the new face of Fraser Town – hmmm something to look at when the weather gets better. Yes it has been cooler here in Bangalore, the clouds are about but it doesn’t rain, making it for very flat lighting.
I watched as the building labourers on the worksite outside my window constructed rebar for concrete walls. They were so fast and fluid with their movements I just had to spend some time with them shooting their hands in action. No OSH here, no safety helmets, no safety boots, no eye protection just the clothes they are wearing today, jandels and or bare feet. They constructed the frames in two days and positioned them using just a tape measure, a length of string and a plumb bob. No GPS enabled computer programmed laser eyeliner here just the mark one eyeball to sight it all up. They hold it all in place with lengths of poles held in place by heavy stones. Basic but simple and cost effective, these guys work for about 200-300 INR a day, that’s just $7-10 NZD where as our trained professionals charge us $40 bucks an hour plus, plus, plus.
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| the building site just outside my window, watching rats and huge cockroaches running around |
Vino and Mahesj have slipped off on another IPL road trip down to Chennai again before they fly to Cochin and then later back to Bangalore. I guess by the end of the season they will be sick of travelling the same route and flying but it pays the bills.
You know sometimes a gem hides itself in plain sight just waiting to be discovered and today I finally spotted the work of one of the many talented students at NICC. Vaijayanti Varma’s work is enlightening, do a search on Facebook and check out her street photos as they are truly stunning. So today I will see if Veg- as she likes to be known as - has any more to show me and I will challenge her to shoot more.
Today I also have to buys some more DVDr’s as I am full up on both external hard drive and laptop HDD. I am shooting everything in RAW so it is sucking up the space.
Even I would like to come for such outings!!!
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