My roomie is a Super Model

DIVERSITY IS ALWAYS GOOD!

Wonder why I am starting with this phrase. My photography has now diversitified into a new field - "Portrait Photography". Hey viewers this post will discuss about the pre incidents that happened when I took this snap and the post production work that was applied on this. 

Frankly speaking, Portrait photgrpahy was the one I always used to associate whenever somebody talks about photography. The scene that comes to my mind will be - A smart man with a big camera in his hand and lots of gadgets around, with shooting super models. (Too much influenced by TV). I used to think what a cool and easy life they spend! 

But in my later years from some of my experiences I was convinced that " That is a damn work one can do". I will say you why. One, the person who we shoot should be fully cooperative and give the photographer a conducive atmosphere to think thru the lens. Second, there are lot of technical difficulties like lights, angle, editing. This blog is a attempt to express what I experienced during a portrait shoot. 

Time : Nov 2, 6:45 a.m

Location : Room 49

Characters : An ambitious photographer 

involved   and his helpless Room mate

It was a typical day for me getting up first in my house and searching for the newspapers. My roomie who was busy fighting and killing whole night in the guise of Counter Stike was deep in sleep. There were days when I used to wake him up just 10 mins before I start and ask him " Class ku pogalayaa??". His day starts with these as he bangs out of the bed and runs off to the classes. (Dont ask me if he will take bath). 

In the corner of the room I found that the sunlight was slitting through my room as a small strip. 

Wow! What a natural lighting setup I have in my room. 

The crazy photographer in me woke up and asked me "Come on.. snap it.". But then I had an alternate thought that I had been taking these kind of snaps many times and why should I stereotype it again. Now an idea striked me - "My roomie and the Streak of light makes a good combination"

This is how my room was looking like

"Roomie... Roomie .. Get up . Get up" , I said.

"Hmm... Hmm...", he said. 

"Get up .. I need a model" I said. 

He turned to the other side wrapping his face. I took his bedsheet off and made the statement again. Now words flowed out of him "@#$^%&^$#"!!!! 

Then Fifteen minutes of effort came to fruition. He finally consented. 

Now the challenge was ,"what subject am I going to convey with the portrait?". Considering his physique, retro style or some western rock style images would suite him best. I chose to use 2 artifacts - sweat shirt and coolers. 

The photo session was a tragedy. He must have posed for around 25 snaps with different different angles. In between all these things, my alarm was ringing inside my mind that this rays of light wont last long. I then managed to take some good angles. I remember once the Hindu Newspaper Photographer told me "There are 64 angles you can keep your camera to take a persons face". But I dont know which angle was the snap that I selected fianlly belonged to. 

My the model is relieved and he is now back to bed.  

Post Production:

Here comes the most creative part of a portrait photography. In the snap below, I would have used almost all the options in the Picassa tool like crop, B/W, Sepia, Saturation, Colour Temperature, highlights. Dont panic. These are just simple options that you can use in the tool. I had some objectives before using the tool to make the picture look better,

1. Cropping the image to the required portion so that my subject alone is noticed

2. Removing off the yellow shade and giving a altogether different colour pattern

3. Cropping the Window grills and the mosquito net grids which would make the snap very obvious

After all these post production here's how the snap looked like. 

So what are you waiting for. Come on BIMmites. Lets create more Supermodels :)