photo.graph.art.design

 The history of 20th-century street photography is incomplete without recognising the monumental contribution of Fan Ho. A master of light, shadow, and human connection, Ho captured the soul of mid-century Hong Kong , transforming everyday moments into timeless works of art. His unique vision blended a keen eye for geometry with a profound understanding of human dignity, leaving behind a body of work that continues to inspire and resonate. Fan Ho was born in Shanghai in 1931 and emigrated to Hong Kong in 1949, arriving at a moment of profound historical rupture when the city was rapidly transforming into a modern metropolis teeming with refugees, traders, and labourers. Armed initially with a simple camera given to him by his father, he began photographing the street life of the city as a teenager and would continue refining this practice over the course of six decades. Study the PDF below (for academic use only) Fan Ho's Street Photography PDF To fully appreciate Fan Ho’s photogr...

  I share birthday with Robert Frank , 9 November. He was a trailblazing Swiss-American photographer and documentary filmmaker. After being a fashion photographer, Frank freed himself from the rigid demands of technical perfection, teaching himself to capture the emotional truth, messiness, and patterns of everyday life. Robert Frank’s photographs were cut from the living fabric of American life. When he arrived from Switzerland in 1947, he brought with him not only a handheld 35mm Camera but also a clear, unburdened eye of an outsider. Frank saw something simmering beneath the glossy varnish of the "American Dream." The result was The Americans , a photobook that did not merely capture an era, but redefined the entire potential of photography; and its realism still has the power to tremble the ground beneath our feet. The Americans , first published in France in 1958, is Frank's undisputed masterpiece. Funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship , he took a series of road trips a...

 Nicholas Nixon's "The Brown Sisters" stands as one of photography's most compelling longitudinal portrait studies, documenting four decades of sisterhood through annual black-and-white photographs taken from 1975 to 2014. Using an 8×10 inch view camera, Nixon captured his wife Bebe and her three sisters—Heather, Mimi, and Laurie Brown—in the same order each year, creating a remarkable visual meditation on time, aging, and familial bonds. For the full set of images see the PDF below (for academic use only) Forty Portraits in Forty Years PDF What began as a spontaneous family photograph in 1975 evolved into a profound artistic documentation of human transformation. The project's strength lies in its methodological consistency: the sisters maintain their positions, with the sequence remaining unchanged throughout the series. This rigid framework paradoxically highlights the subtle changes that occur year by year, creating a powerful commentary on the passage of time...

 I love Kaziranga ; because here they are not caged or fenced as an exhibition item for the homo sapiens . The rhinoceros, elephants, wild buffalos, deer, the occasional tigers, and many other smaller animals roam free in this 430 square- kilometre expanse across the flood plains of Brahmaputra . Kaziranga lies between the Brahmaputra and the Karbi Hills . Much of the park is marshland interspersed with large pools fringed with reeds, patches of elephant grass, scattered trees, and thickets; inhabited popularly by the great Indian one-horned rhinoceroses . I took an early morning walk around the park with my lens, and the woods there is bustling with birds, both resident and migratory. Sighting rare large birds, like, wooly-necked stork , grey-headed fish eagle , the lesser and great adjutant , which
are declared vulnerable and threatened by International Union for Conservation of Nature , is very satisfying. Kaziranga and its one-horned rhinos We took a safari in a private Gypsy ...

  The western coast of India is a range of mountains and their valleys embraced and washed by the Arabian Sea . The western coast runs between Kerala and Gujarat and extends from the Arabian Sea to the Western Ghats . Its total length is 1400 km, width ranges from 10 km to 80 km, and the elevation (mountains) ranges from 150 m to 300 m above sea level. It includes the Konkan , which is the Northern part of the coast that includes Goa and Mumbai and extends from Daman to Goa; Kanara , which is the central stretch of the coast that comprises three coastal districts, Dakshina Kannada , Udupi district (South Canara), and Uttara Kannada (North Canara); and the Malabar Coast , which is the southern stretch, a long and narrow coastline that extends from the South of Goa to Kanyakumari . Western Coast: Photo Story For the people of inland India the sandy beaches of Western Coast is a haven of entertainment and rejuvenation. Take a road trip from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu to Bhuj in ...

 Travelling through Vedaranyam , Nagapattinam , at the eastern cost of Tamil Nadu , I was suddenly taken aback by the sight of the vast ex- panses of salt evaporation ponds . A salt evaporation pond is a shallow artificial saltpan designed to extract salts from sea water. I could not drive on. Seeking permission from my co-traveller, I took a walk through the salt fields. I met Bala, a worker at the salt fields. He spoke to me about the salt fields, owned by large companies; though working for them for years, and for meager wages; he had no much idea about the company that gets the benefit of his hard toil. Bala was very articulative about the tough nature of their work. The hardest is the heat. Scorching sun is beating on them directly; adding to it the white salt fields reflect light and heat back to them: like getting cooked in a slow fire. Salt fields: Photo Story It is the year of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav . My thoughts went back to Gandhiji , his companions, and the great Salt ...

  The Bengal tiger ranks among the biggest wild cats alive today. The beautiful, awe-inspiring tiger is one of our planet’s most iconic animals. The tiger is estimated to have been present in the Indian subcontinent for about 12,000 to 16,500 years. Today, it is threatened by poaching, loss and fragmentation of habitat . The International Union for Conservation 
of Nature (IUCN) has declared Tigers as Endangered species . The wild tiger population in the wild is estimated to be less than 4,000. This is down 96% from 100 years ago (with an estimated 100,000 a century ago). Between 2015 and 2021 there was an average increase in the tiger population. Bengal Tiger: Photo Story Driving through the forestlands of northern part of West Bengal is a pleasure. The mountains of Darjeeling , Kalimpong , and the plains and tea gardens of Siliguri take your breath away. The deep valleys are filled with huge pine, sal, and teak trees. Teesta River carries the rain waters down to the Bay of ...

  India’s Western Ghats , also called the Sahyadri , is a north-south chain of mountains or hills that mark the western edge of the Deccan plateau region .
It runs parallel to India’s western coast, approximately 30–50 km inland, the Ghats traverse the states of Kerala , Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it ranks among the top eight biodiversity hotspots in the world. It is home for some 139 mammal species , 508 bird species, 179 amphibian species and 250 reptile species. Western Ghats: Photo story It is well known for its majestic beauty. It holds a range of peaks, valleys, waterfalls, and wild life reserves; some celebrated ones are, Munnar , Vagaman, and Thekkady Wildlife Reserve in Kerala, Nilgiri hill stations (Ooty, Coonoor etc.) in Tamil Nadu; Dandeli, Coorg, and Chikmangalur in Karnataka; Mollem National Park in Goa; and Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra. The highest peak in this range is Anaimalai hills in Kerala, whi...

  Kites , like their close relatives eagles , soar high, and frequently hover over our cities. Winter is their breeding season; they descend down from the skies and spend more time in the comfort of the earth, trees, and their mates. Visiting a camp of kites during this season is not an intelligent decision.
Winter has set in; and a pair of kites got busy doing the annual maintenance of their old nest. Kite Family: Photo Story Their nest is a rough platform of twigs and rags placed in a tall tree fork. Both the male and female take part in nest building, incubation and care of chicks. I kept watch from distance. As they built their nest, they often mated. Slowly the mother settled down to lay eggs and hatch. I began to frequent this camp of kites at the far end of our campus in Bangalore , and watched them standing on the top of a tall building close by. They began to become hostile and protective about their space. It takes a little over 30 days to incubate. The male provides the...

 These are hard times for deprived children across the globe. Children perhaps are not the face of this pandemic, but they risk being among its biggest victims, especially those in already disadvantaged or vulnerable situations. Approximately 150 million additional children are living in multidimensional poverty – without access to education, health care, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water – due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the UNICEF . Children and Covid Pandemic I met one of them in a temporary camp for the migrant workers who were stuck and forsaken in Bangalore during
the Covid-19 lockdown. With the morning sun rising, he sat expressionless, tirelessly working with the oddly shaped pieces of plastic jigsaw puzzle . It wasn’t difficult to realise that many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were missing. Whether he knew it or not, he kept making effort. Then he grabbed them all in his tiny hands and walked away, perhaps hoping that someday he will have all the pieces...

  Crows , often denounced as annoyance by city-dwellers , and as invaders and thieves by farmers , in fact are interesting birds. Fables associated with crows announce their intelligence. The fact that we can spot crows almost everywhere on this planet speaks of their adaptability. Crows eat anything; they live anywhere; back their folks for good and for bad. Yes. Crows are toughies; and they are survivors. They are here to stay. Crows have huge brains! They have the largest brain-to-body ratio of any bird. Their brain to body ration is even bigger than humans. Therefore they do a lot of intelligible things, like, making tools , making vehicles at traffic to help crack hard nuts, and others. Crows: Photo story Something that amused me as I was birding in Kalimpong, West Bengal , on a rainy day was seeing a crow gathering all remaining biscuits from the hotel yard and flying away. It came back again and again carrying away more and more biscuits. I followed it thinking that it ...

 Bird photography is finding birds, being as close as possible to them, clicking intelligent picture of them, identifying the name of the bird, and reporting/publishing them. Bird photography engages oneself with nature, it is a good leisure-time activity, and above all it is cathartic. Study the PDF below (for academic use only) Bird photography and mental health PDF A mental health disorder is characterised by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour. I am not a huge fan of lawn tennis but what happened at the French Open in 2021, in these postmodern times of liberty and individual freedom, troubled me. Naomi Osaka, the reigning world no. 2, had to leave the tournament because she was not able to have media interactions after the matches ended, or should we say that in Grand Slam, like in any popularity and profit driven businesses, matches don’t end with the last match point. Post match press conferences have its...

 Narrative photography proposes that an image or a series of images can make unfold a story; or make many stories unfold.  It is visual storytelling through photographs. Narrative Photography The question is whether photographs are capable of telling a story? Photography captures single discrete moments; therefore there is no narrative (that which has beginning, middle, and end. Narrative is irreducibly durative). Photography is only a face. How can one look at it and think, feel, or intuit what is beyond it? The camera's rendering of reality hides more than it discloses. Everything that we see hides another thing, Rene Magritte .  Only that which narrates can make us understand; photography does not narrate, therefore photography cannot make us understand anything.  In photography, the photographer invites us to get meaning out of the picture; in truth the viewers are getting only their meaning to the extant of what they have seen, heard, and read. Photograph canno...

 Digital Single-Lens Reflex Cameras or Digital Single-Lens Mirrorless Cameras are the most used professional cameras today. Study the PDF below For academic Purposes only Photography: DSLR | DSLM Cameras PDF DSLR Camera, as against compact/point and shoot camera, is bigger and more efficient. It has interchangeable lens; and the camera body houses the image sensor. It has a mirror that reflects the light/image to the pentaprism and then to the viewfinder. DSLM cameras are a relatively recent addition to the professional camera world. DSLM cameras have done away with the mirror and the prism unit; this making the camera more compact. Understanding DSLR Camera 

  Camera Obscura Effect The concept of photography began with idea of Camera Obscura. Aristotle (384-322 BC) had spoken about it as a philosophical idea, but never went on to build one. Study the PDF below For Academic purposes only Photography: Brief History PDF Pinhole Camera The first photographic equipment was the pinhole camera. It is a simple camera/box/chamber (light=proof box) without a lens but with a tiny aperture/opening. Invented in the 10 th century, by Ibn al-Haitham (Egyptian Scientist). Here the Light from a scene passes through the aperture and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box, which is known as the camera obscura effect. Camera Obscura A pinhole camera with a lens for its tiny opening. Artists used it to get the shape and proportion of images right. Scientists kept discovering and using better optics and lenses to manipulate the image. Images kept improving, but not able to retain images permanently.     First...

  Photography is drawing with light.  If you miss light you miss photography.  Photography is seizing the moment. One must be at the right place at the right time. The photographer must anticipate action by constant observing; And wait for action with patience. Photography Beginning Study the PDF below (only for academic use) Photography: Introduction PDF Photography means “ drawing with light ”. From the Greek words phos , (phōtós) meaning “light”, and graphê meaning “drawing or writing”. Coined by the British scientist Sir John Herschel in 1839. Photography combines two distinct sciences Optics: to gather and converge light rays to form an image inside a camera/box Chemistry: to enable that image to get recorded permanently onto a photosensitive (light-sensitive) surface. A photograph has Format - JPEG, TIFF, RAW, etc. Aspect Ratio - 16:9, 6:4, 1:1, etc. Orientation - Landscape, Portrait. Image Resolution/Quality - Mega Pixels (1MP = 1million pixels ...