31 January, 2016

T Point

Minimalism as Simple Geometry 


Minimalist Photo of T point made out of a ladder lying in front of a blue tent at Jaipur Literature Festival 2016
Photo By © Prakash Ghai
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At times in life we are faced with tricky situations or lets say some T-points where we are left with only two choices to a problem at hand. We have to choose one from them and it gets really confusing. I encountered one such T-point at age 22. I had a girlfriend whom I loved a lot and had plans to marry her. I had also been selected for my Post Graduation MBA (masters in business administration) by an MBA college in Bangalore and had the call letter with me. I had to choose one among-st "Higher Education" or "Marriage". I chose the former. And so my relationship turned into a long distance relationship and the girl just could not wait for me. Initially I thought that I made the wrong choice but later I realized if she truly loved me she would have waited. Anyways that was in 2003 but thank god (if he exists) I am still single because you get a lot of spare time for yourself, which you don't get after marriage. I am happy to be utilizing it for my art and photography. Of course I am looking forward to getting married but I don't think so I can do all this with ease and freedom later, like writing blog posts, taking photographs, buy expensive camera equipments, running multiple social media accounts, hang around with friends, come back home late nights. I do realize that once married I would only be able to give 1/4th of the total time I am giving to my photography right now, so I am making the best use of it.

OK, back to the Composition

This was shot at Jaipur Literature Festival 2016 which is held every year in January. I attend such events primarily to practice shooting celebrities and authors(although that's not my genre, I do it for the fun of it). I attended a few of their talk sessions as well and got a fair idea of what it takes to be there on the stage. I also look forward to the decorations at the venue i.e. Diggi Palace, which I already admire a lot for its heritage beauty. The colorful decorations along with some light and shadow throws up unique visuals that are a treat for Minimalist Photographers. For the shot, I first followed the patch of sunlight and then looked for some color. The blue tent was shortlisted. I knew now that my backdrop was ready and that now I only had to look for an interesting foreground object. A black ladder was lying right in front of the tent and was looking fabulous against the blue. I bent down on my knees and placed one of the T-points of the ladder's step on the top left double rule of thirds corner and my job was done. Editing the shot was extremely tricky as the blue wasn't coming out proper. Since I always shoot RAW+JPEG I switched over to the RAW file for better editing and that took me about 1 hour out of which 45 minutes just to get the blue right.