A new photography contest encourages participants to revert to film cameras.
I was nine when I took my first photo. Squinting through the view-finder, tongue sticking out in concentration, I tried to frame my seated parents, the sofa, and the painting behind them into one photo, all of it about a square centimetre large. After a month of waiting while the roll was exhausted, I saw the result: my parents’ neckless heads rested off-centre at the base of the photo, below a wide expanse of white wall.
Today, even toddlers know that right after their parents have clicked the nth photo of them doing something cute, they can stumble over and see how the photo turned out. Miracle? Technology? Both.
So where does the film camera stand in these times of immediate knowledge and instant results? Who can wait months for all 36 frames to be exposed before sharing photographs from a near-forgotten vacation? Facebook friends want it now.
But there is still romance in film, believes K Madhavan Pillai, Editor of the popular Better Photography magazine. Not only are film cameras cheaper than digital cameras and still more accessible in India, the process itself has an inherent joy. Pillai likens it to “enjoying the journey, not just heading for the destination.” A film photographer has to be much more focused, carefully framing the shot in his mind before clicking just once.
That is the “joy of film,” says Pillai, who firmly holds that it has not gone out of fashion. While the spontaneity of digital photography may bring “greater honesty” to each photo, film will endure. Just like music LPs, once outdated, but now expensive and in demand.
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In honour of film, Better Photography collaborated with Kodak, a leading producer of imaging and photographic materials, to celebrate film cameras with the Golden Roll “Special Moments” Contest, winning entries of which are to be displayed at an exhibition in the city.
The rules permitted participants to send in any photo, no matter when they had taken it, as long as it was shot using a film camera. And 6,000 entries poured in — significantly fewer than the 58,000 entries that flood the magazine’s annual Photographer of the Year award (which does not restrict entries to film use) — but, says Pillai, “we found a very high proportion of quality pictures, and we were impressed that people remembered the exact settings they had used to take a photo, even 20 years back in time.”
Contestants ranged in age from nine to 89 years. Entries were judged by the jury consisting of Gautam Rajadhyaksha (a renowned celebrity photographer), Sherwin Crasto (photo editor of DNA newspaper), Mukesh Parpiani (head of NCPA’s Piramal Art Gallery) and K G Maheshwari (2010 National Photo Award winner for significant contributions to Indian photography). Seventy entries will be on display at the forthcoming exhibition, and the winners will be announced at the opening ceremony on February 17.
The exhibition also features original, hand-picked favourites from the judges’ own portfolios, as well as prints of some of the legendary masters of Indian photography: S Paul, A L Syed, R R Bhardwaj, Ashwin Mehta, and many others. Professionals and amateurs will merge in this fascinating exhibition of many interpretations that celebrate the enduring power of film. Don’t miss it.
February 17-22, 12 noon-8 pm daily, at Piramal Art Gallery, NCPA