Radiate Love

Minimalism as Simple Geometry

Minimalist Photography By © Prakash Ghai
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Radiate Love, to find it back. Yes and No. Yes, because that's the rule of nature and No, because when you do such a thing solely  for the purpose of getting love back in return, then it is more like a business transaction. The moment there is want or greed in your mind, what returns to you, is  usually "nothing".  

Why I mention this, is a) it took me some time to get this thing in my head, right.  Now, that I know about it, I am happy to share this with you all. And b) A lot of people today say, that the world is bad and abundant with selfish people.

Well, there is a reason for that. Most people want to do a transaction, rather than loving others purely. And because in return they usually get  "nothing" they, themselves have become selfish, and have labelled others as unloving and mean.  What I want to say is, that love purely, love completely, look for nothing in return. 

People say, I love her, she is mine or I love him, he is mine. Well, nothing is yours. Nothing was yours to begin with too, and nor shall anything be ever yours. You are living in an illusion, if you believe so. Tell me, what is it that you can actually call your own? Tell me, give me one example. I bet you can't, as there is nothing.

So, let's decide, that for whatever little time, we are in this world, lets love each other, without conditions, without expectations. Love heals. Let us heal the world together and for good.  

Note: I actually related this picture to love as "white as a color represents purity, and purity is something usually related to love." 
Also Note: Radiate pure love, make it your default setting. 

Back to the composition, this is Minimalism as Simple Geometry. What we have here is, one vertical rectangle on the left and its shadow casted on the right.

The composition is fairly simple as it should be. White Minimalism, is always more appealing as well as pleasing to look at.  The tough part here is not the composition, rather, the challenge in such photos is to be able to find these kind of white walls.

They have become so uncommon these days. I remember when I was a kid, usually on the Diwali Festival, my parents used to get my entire house white-washed or painted in white. But, later even that changed to "just any new paint" not necessarily white, it usually off-white now. 

At least, in the city where I live in i.e Jaipur, it is extremely difficult to spot such walls. The most usual wall color is, either yellow or orange(pink-ish orange).

The Tring-Tring Era

Minimalism as Parts of the Whole

Minimalist Photogrpahy By © Prakash Ghai
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If you carefully observe the shadow of the bicycle, you would find a small circular "cycle bell" with a lever on its side. This, acts as a horn and comes very handy on a busy day on the streets. These traditional Indian bicycles, still run on Indian roads, but now you can spot only a handful of them, thanks to the tremendous growth India as a country has witnessed in the last couple of decades. The "cycle bell" makes a really pleasant "Tring-Tring" sound, when the lever is pulled. 

When I was a kid, streets of Jaipur used to be flooded with such bicycles and this was the most common mode of transportation. Very few people had the luxury of owning cars or a two-wheeler. Those were the golden days. So less traffic, very little air and noise pollution. Less of buildings, more of farms and empty pieces of land, spread out over thousands of acres. Everything was slow, calm and peaceful. Indeed "less is more" or "being happy with less" was the default mantra then. I am talking about life that existed about 25 years ago.

No Television sets, no cellphones, no Air conditioners, only transistors to listen to FM radio. People used to visit their neighbors for recreation/chats, cooking food together. We trusted people so easily, also lent money to them without fear. If someone had an accident, we never used to think before we act, unlike today, for our default setting was helping others, being kind and generous. The doctors we like gods, so humble, so polite, so helpful.

The teachers were Gurus. Also food, milk and sweets, were mostly unadulterated, for people in that era were mostly honest, ethical and full of virtues. The most popular evening hangout, I remember, used to be, walks in public parks. Gardening/watering the plants, was also one of the preferred passtime. 

Now, things are completely different. The world has changed so much. Sadly, it has changed for the worse. I miss those days and wonder, if we could somehow, return to that "Tring-Tring Era". 

Wouldn't that be fascinating? Returning back to an era, when even "Mondays were beautiful".

This photo is Minimalism as Parts of the whole. Here the photographer shows only a cropped part of the central subject in the photo, and makes the viewer imagine, how the subject would have looked in entirety, if it hadn't been cropped. As you can see, a semi-circle has been carefully carved out from the front tyre of the bicycle to achieve such a purpose. The crop has been placed on the extreme right, following the rules of thirds. The shadow of the bicycle on the wall acts like a hint given, in a quiz contest.

Also note, that the triangle made with the crop of the floor, on bottom right, is also on purpose. Our minds sub-consciously reacts in a more favorable manner to geometry. The photo becomes more powerful, with the semi-circle and triangle in conjunction.

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The bird that wished she never had wings

Minimalism as Less Elements

Minimalist Photography By © Prakash Ghai
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Minimalist Photography of a Bird Silhouette on a Wire Fence at Jal Mahal Jaipur

She was leading a simple life. It used to be fun to fly to unexplored places every morning and be back by the evening to rest in the nest. The nest that she had rebuilt with a lot of effort. When she was young a vulture had killed all her family and destroyed their nest. She was the sole survivor. 

As time passed she became very strong and everything was good for quite a while. Then one fine morning she decided to fly very far, to a place where she had never been. There she made friends with a bird and soon fell in love with him. Suddenly her life changed and it was all so very beautiful. She made up her mind and decided to fly back to him, confess everything and be together with him for the rest of her life.

That day was special indeed, everything was perfect until a storm hit and soon there was rain. They both decided to protect themselves and therefore flew to a nearby tree which had a hole in it. They both were lost in love and therefore they could not sense the danger that is always imminent from other predatory birds. There was an attack and it was a vulture again. She managed to save her life but the love of her life was lost. She was devastated and broken.

The fence she is sitting at is near the tree where the attack took place. Three days have passed but she hasn't moved an inch. She regrets flying to this place. This would have never happened if she never had wings is what she concluded. So she gave up on flying forever and decided that she will be at the fence, till she loses her consciousness. 

A few words on composition of the Minimalist Photograph of the bird.

The photo was taken at 7.17 am. As you can see the sun was pretty bright so to cut down the light I used an aperture value of f/11 on my camera. I was on my 50mm 1.4 canon prime lens. I was pretty close to the bird and therefore I dint want to go beyond f/11. To cut down the light further I set the shutter to 1/4000 sec. The ISO speed was 400. Since

I was shooting in the Full Manual Mode like I always do, I had to move my fingers very fast or else the bird would have flown away before I was at the right camera settings. In hindsight, I could have done better with an ISO speed of 100 and adjusting the shutter accordingly, If the subject wasn't a bird I would have delivered on that, just a slight miss but there is always a next time. 

Composition is Minimalism as Less Elements Here we have two or lets say three elements including the fence. Frame is simplistic with two thirds negative space on the top.

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Bicycle Bench Lines

Minimalism as Parts of the Whole 

Minimalist Photography By © Prakash Ghai
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As you can see, the photo contains three elements but here I am not trying to show Minimalism as Less Elements as a type here. The elements, although are decent enough for a minimalist photo but they are too zoomed-in, too big in size and give more of a maximal feel. The photo is still minimal though. 

Simple geometry(four vertical lines) as a Type of Minimalism in Photography has been used (partially) along with the type "Minimalism as Parts of the Whole". So you can say its more of a fusion of two types of Minimalism in Photography. 

Well, Parts of the Whole Minimalism is when a part of the subject is clipped on purpose and the viewer is made to imagine as to how the complete object would have looked like if there was no clipping/cropping done. Now, lets get into more detail, If I had taken this shot last year, I would have used only the four vertical lines in the frame along with the partial tyre of the bicycle restricting the elements to a total of two.

But since I have grown over time and have taken a lot of those shots earlier, this time I decided to include the bench as well and clipped that too so that the mind of the viewer is led into deeper imagination. If we look at the bench with a view to see shapes then it is a rectangle and the same way the tyre of the bicycle is an arc.

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The Other World

Minimalism as Less Elements 

Photo By © Prakash Ghai
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What if there are other worlds that co-exists along with ours right here on planet Earth. Maybe there are other objects or people/aliens who are not visible to us as we can only see objects or people that lie in our dimension. For Example we can only see things that are in a) 3D b) 2D c) 1D but not 4D, But those who live in the 4th Dimension or 4D can see all 4 dimensions including theirs but not sneak peak into the 5th Dimension or 5D and the chain goes on upto infinite Dimensions. They all talk of aliens/Ufo's or other beings visiting our planet or have visited our planet in the past. Maybe they all live here but some have the know-how or technology to do "Dimension Travel". Whenever I see shadows or reflections I completely get into a different state of mind and begin to ponder if there was a way by which I could visit the worlds of shadows or reflections at least.

Back to the Composition

This is Minimalism as Less Elements where my primary subject is the small bird sitting on the wire accompanied by its supporting subject or the co-actor in the movie ie the tree. To find such a shot one has to either go out post rain or find a place where there is water seepage. Its relatively easy to find such places In India as some of the local shopkeepers water the road right outside their shop and use cleanliness as a tactic to attract customers. I took this shot right in front of a cigarette selling shop in Jaipur.  The shopkeeper cleaned the area right outside his shop alright but he left the place next to his shop untidy with spare water having nowhere to go. One of the key challenges in reflection photography is to get the exposure right and be lucky enough to have clear water for visible reflections. Water puddles with a lot of mud should be avoided. I would suggest shooting in the RAW file format so that such tricky photos could be well edited. Also, it is a usual practice to flip water reflection photos to add in the extra magic but here at least in this shot, the flip wasn't looking nice so I kept it the way it is. Mind you, the bird is not as sharp as the tree, I mean that is your choice as to where you keep the focus point at but that did not change my subject and it is still the bird.