An old piece

The continuation on the post – “The Beginning” is pending. Have to do that some time and soon. Well, my Father used to say that “Procrastination” is my middle name. I would rather just say that I am plain Lazy. Well that apart, I guess it takes a lot for me to get going and once I get going, I am in overdrive. Good or bad, I do not know, but that is how I am.

For some unknown reason an old piece I wrote back in 2004 came to my head last night and I had been searching for it since then. I finally found it – at a place where I should have looked at in the first place – my old blog!!!

So here it is, copy pasted as is, when it was written way back on 28^th of September, 2004. It was titled:

The Stormy Night

The storm clouds loomed ominously over the horizon. The wind whipped up dust and the dried leaves in mini tornadoes. Man and animal, both weren’t safe, out on a day like this. The winds blew the clouds in and the almighty downpour began all of a sudden. It wasn’t like the normal rains that one sees starting out in a gentle note. No! This was a deluge whose kind of which had never been seen before. The clouds were now directly overhead and it began their downpour. Thunder rolled, lightening flashed and the rain came down in torrents. Within minutes the waters swelled and overflowed the banks sweeping away everything in sight. The fury of nature was resplendent to watch, if the destruction caused by this cosmic dance could be ignored.

It looked like it was the coming of the end of creation. The little pigeon with his mate, took shelter in the low hanging branches of the giant oak. He was sick, wet and cold. At each flash of lightening and peal of thunder, he trembled, wondering if he was going to survive the night. He held on to the branches along with his mate for dear life. The wind whipped the mighty oak like a blade of grass. Fortunate were the blades of grass, for they bent at will to the onslaught of the wind. The oak stood upright and majestic in the face of the wind like he had done so in the past. But this was not an ordinary storm, none like the ones he had faced before. The wind whipped around him, like it was bent upon uprooting this defiant tree that had withstood his onslaught for centuries. The oak creaked and moaned. The pigeon looked around fearfully. The wind blew harder and harder, finally in a mighty heave ho bust of its breath, the oak gave a long heart rendering creak, as if it were crying out and bemoaning its fate and fell down on its side with a resounding crash. The pigeons flew up in fright to save their lives, but the torrential downpour forced them down again. They looked at the mighty oak, which had been their home and home to countless, others before them, now lying on its side like a vanquished warrior. The pigeons still never lost hope. They clambered onto the fallen branches, fighting the wind, which threatened to blow them away, taking shelter again in them, holding onto each other with eyes tightly shut.

They rode out the storm in the safety of the fallen oak, to open his eyes to a splendid dawn, with dewdrops glistening in the early sunshine and a beautiful rainbow in the horizon. They flew up and out of the tree, cooing, heralding the arrival of another beautiful day, basking in the glory of nature; whose fury of last night was forgotten. Hearing their cries, the other animals that had been hiding from the storm peeped out and emerged slowly. Life began again, together, with the ever-warm embrace of Mother Nature protecting them, watching over them.

So ‘Long
~Lazy!

The Beginning...

I have been fooling around with a camera for more than 16 years now, with a few bouts of seriousness striking me in between, when I’d seriously go out to take photographs, study them and get them critiqued and so on. I used to work on a Yashica Fx 3 Super 2000. (Never did figure out what the Super stood for - guessing that it was for the 2000 that came from the highest shutter speed it has). Those days, it was more of prudence than laziness that made me go slow.

After I shifted to Bangalore, and after more than 7 months of deliberation (read that as laziness) I was the proud owner of an Olympus E 500, the kit of which had a Zuiko 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens and a Zuiko 40-150mm f4-5.6 lens. And for the longest time, I used it as a point and shoot camera – simply because I didn’t have the patience to read the manual. Having used an SLR which had straight forward controls – an aperture ring and the shutter speed dial, this was an alien piece to me. So much so that I discovered how to change shutter speed after about four months and that too accidentally!

I hadn’t done much shooting with it, except for the occasional trips with the team, riding into the markets for some portraiture and so on. Riding out or setting up some still life stuff at home was regular – if once a month could be termed as regular.

Photography was and is a love for me and it still continues. Wildlife is another love, having grown up with, among other books, Gerald Durrell, Jim Corbett, Kenneth Anderson and though cannot be termed wildlife proper, Jim Herriot too! Having had two elder brothers who loved reading helped. And it did help that they were into photography as well. So when my eldest brother bought a new camera, I got the old one, which was the Yashica I was talking about.

It happened in 2008 when I went on a trek into Bannerghatta National Park, when I realized that this is indeed calming and satisfying. And a good way to satisfy my armchair wildlife cravings as well, and marry the two loves. And I started going out on trips to sanctuaries and parks – either alone or with friends. I used to do treks into the forests of Kerala earlier, before I joined the big bad ugly corporate world, but then, a 3 day trip would produce, at the most 10 photographs in total, of which, if I was lucky there would be 2 noteworthy frames. Each frame was clicked after lot of thought and deliberation. Then there would be a wait till I would have used the roll up, unless I was super excited about any particular frame that I’d have clicked, then, I’d go to my regular studio, and get the guy to cut out that bit inside a dark bag and process it. Well, the excitement those days were different. The wait, the anxiety, the despair at a bad frame, the exhilaration on getting the frame as you would have visualized it and so on. I still remember, thinking in despair, as to how I am going to get the roll developed, and large prints taken!

What I used to do those days were to get what is called a contact print, and use a watchmaker’s loupe to scan the prints and then choose the ones I wanted blown up. Being a person with low patience threshold also meant that I would get very little good frames.

Then came the digital cameras. The digi-SLRs which had digital controls and used films, and after which came the simple point and shoot digital cameras. Those were like the Ferraris and Porches for me – completely out of reach. A brilliant example of “Sour Grapes” – I used to keep saying that that digital camera’s are not for the true photographer, because its not the Photographer taking the photo in that case… and so on… a misconception that I carried for a very long time, even after I took my E-500! How I changed that opinion is for another post. The closest I got to being “digital” in those days was that I had a high end flatbed scanner, and I used to scan my contact prints at high res and then look at the ones I wanted. Also, I used to scan both the prints and the negatives in and work on them through Photoshop and or any of the other programs that used to come in the PC World CDs.

Well, Guess I will continue in another post. I can feel the laziness creep in slowly… No guesses now as to why I call myself the Lazy Photographer!

Cheerio

Lazy!