A.J.Rao's Photoideas

The aesthetics of nature photography

2006-04-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

The vastness of canvas available in a digital photograph adds a new dimension to appreciation of the beauty of nature in two ways :Firstly the photograph releases you from the limits of your own awareness of the environment . Secondly the digital phototograph explores the interrelationship between the different components of the picture which play on one another in a most symbiotic fashion . It is as though the tree , the grass, the lake , the paddy fields , the sky and the clouds are singing in a chorus of joyful melody. The individual components add up to the totality of the beauty in a manner that does not happen in the real world . Thus there is no rice field without the mountains, the sky, the bush, the mud track, the palm trees and the sunlight; there is no moon without the customary coconut tree. Many times we are unable to appreciate the beauty inherent in a natural scene because our senses cannot focus enough on the essential nature of things , the luminiscence that emerges from the objects of nature acting on one another.

Digital photography expands our consciousness pushing the borders of visual awareness like nothing else does. More particularly vast spaces captured in panoramic views . Normally we have only a fleeting glimpse of expanded horizons when we are on the move , that is when we are travelling by a car and we stop by on the highway . The spaces release us from our own limits of visual awareness . We have seen such vast spaces only in paintings. For the first time , after the advent of digital photography we are in a position to capture such vast spaces

Stray images

2006-02-26T02:30:00.000-08:00

Stray images are beautiful in themselves when they capture a single moment in human history .While photographing the ruins of a 7 th century temple near Bilaspur I came across a beautiful scene of two villagers doing a winnowing operation by the side of a village tank .The villagers improvised a two-blade fan for blowing the wind on the wheat for separating the grain from the chaff. The scene was wonderful brooking no delay in capturing the moment. A warm sunset accentuated the brilliance of the moment :

The Leaves

2006-01-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

This broken statue of Buddha stands among the ruins at Sanchi. The smile on his lips can be seen from a distance through the leaves.Here is a poem:

Leaves

Here, the man went inward and wise,
Reluctant teacher, about to enter light
The leaves about him had a faint aura
Not a pall of dust but of wisdom’s light,
The why of all including our nothing-
We who had liquid origins and trauma.
He had an answer to all our questions
But no questions to our lucent answers
His ears were long and unhearing
As were his eyes small and crinkly.
It was not he who patted his tummy
And laughed to the vulgar crowds loud
Just a yellow figurine on dusty shelves.
Did you say he had frozen in bronze
With an enormous stomach side-splitting?
Actually our fears froze behind his ears
I can hear their crunch in these leaves.

Capturing the drama of human actions

2005-06-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

Capturing the drama of human actions

The drama of human actions

The ritualistic actions of the human race provide a fascinating insight into human nature. Our attempts to capture them in art will help in perpetuating the poignancy of the moments whose meaning is very short-lived and will not last beyond those moments. While traveling in Karnataka I came upon a fascinating sight of some people performing religious ceremonies for their dead kin at a holy site of the confluence of two rivers. From the vantage of a narrow bridge I could capture the whole scene on my camera- an extremely poignant moment indeed. I have come to like the picture very much.

Ashes

Then the drama continued
The words were spoken
From the guttural depths
Of a middleman’s throat
And washed by drops
Of sanctified water
The pursuit of silver
Went on in the waters
With sonorous words
Chasing multitudes of
Life-death shadows
The waters flowed silently
Over the rocks nurturing life
And its golden-brown ashes.

The photograph is given above. My poem tries to capture the moment in a similar fashion, once again bringing to focus the essential similarities in the treatment of a subject in both poetry and photography.The only difference is that the poem has been able to capture the delicious irony of the man standing in knee-deep water trying to fish for the coins dropped by the relatives of the dead.The poem counterpoises the essentially tragic moments of the relatives paying homage to the dead with the worldly actions of one of the priests trying to gather the coins from the running waters.

2005-03-31T07:30:00.000-08:00

The magnificent Hampi ruins

The changing motif

2005-03-30T03:17:00.000-08:00

A.J.Rao's Photoideas
Some times , in a photograph, a perfectly strange element creeps in assuming the central role in defining the moment . I have always wanted the photograph the way I wanted – keeping the theme I had in mind as the central motif but this does not happen all the time . Sometimes an innocuous element surreptitiously enters my consciousness before I click and some times it is a post exe affair , the element not being there in the original scheme has somehow usurped the central position after I click . A similar thing happens in poetry .

The theme before I clicked was “ the red hills “- the hills being excavated for iron ore for export.

The theme after I clicked was “ the shrub“. For some unknown reason the tall shrub has assumed the central role in defining the moment.

The picture depicts the utter devastation of the hillside wrought by the greedy iron miners. May be , the shrub is the only element that stands for hope in the bleakness of the mountainscape !

My poem tries to capture the despair of the situation :

Wounds

In the recent monsoon
Our rivers felt as if
The mountains had bled
From fresh wounds
Their flesh has gone,
Across the green seas,
To the distant Chinaman
To fill out his bones.

But this is not the poem where I set out to do something but landed up with a different theme. Here was another of my poems which happened out of a photograph . I tried to take a picture of the cluster of dwellings in the lower heights of the hills seen from the elevated plains where I was standing. It was a beautiful scene more particularly due to the wistfulness of the rural scenery of a tribal village . There was smoke rising up above the houses .Unknown to me the theme transformed , as I went through the creation of the poem, to death and the cremation rites of an aboriginal settlement.
Here is the poem :

Smoke

Beyond the grey hills
Thick white smoke
Rose in a column .
From my vantage
My glass eyes saw
Veiled habitations
I heard voices rising
In musical supplication
As drum-beats quickened
Existence went up in smoke.

2005-02-03T03:53:00.000-08:00

A boy pops out of a tree on the cliff !

Surrealism in Photography

2005-02-03T03:28:00.000-08:00

Photography of the surreal kind produces almost a similar effect as in painting and poetry . However the viewer is not usually likely to approach the object with a similar receptive frame of mind as in case of poetry or painting. Surreal images in photography are likely to be more amusing , and less critically appreciated ,on account of a bizarreness which may or may not be intended by the photographer . In the above photograph a bizarre effect is created when you look at the figure of a boy popping out of a tree on a cliff . The bizarreness is , however, not intended .

Stray Images

2004-12-21T02:21:00.000-08:00

Not a care in the world !

The above photograph captures a beautiful image just like a poem does. Some times we create images which are sought for their intrinsic beauty , not because they are a part of the motif of a poem . Single images , which suddenly strike you either while you are pursuing a bigger theme or even while you are going about your daily routine are beautiful in themselves and are used , much later , in a poem or a painting.

My poem on the old man sleeping in the temple goes as under :

Sleep

This creature of the earth
Sleep-talks to himself
Nobody has heard him.
As the temple bells ring
The earth burns slowly
And goes up in swirls of smoke
These lights hurt him
But the smoke does not.
It is just like then
Of comforting mother-softness
Of all-around emerald aqua.
His limbs do not move.
Nor do his eyes see.
At the tunnel’s beginning
It is like what it was
When it all began.

Capturing a mood

2004-12-12T22:37:00.000-08:00

Look at the photograph below depicting the delicious moments of a lazy afternoon on the river bank. Notice the thoroughly relaxing fame of the man sitting on the cement bench and the man on the cycle turning his face to look towards the river. The air is full of joyful inertness . The river , the man squatting on the bench, three people gossiping under the banyan tree and the man on the cycle with one leg on the cement bench - all are components in the all- pervasive luxurious feeling of not having to do anything ! In this respect the photograph is very similar to a painting .

A poem recreating a similar lazy afternoon is given below :

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Yesterday evening, as on all evenings,
The banyan briefly dallied with the river
Its tiny red fruits floated on the waters
Glistening in the sun like rubies
The woman-bather, busy disentangling
Flickering stars of pieces of driftwood
From her floating amavasya-like hair
Took no notice of the fruity overtures.
The last ferry did not bring him
Nor did the five 'o clock circular train
Which disgorged people in sweaty shirts
Onto the dusty Bagh Bazar platform
The mongrel got up from its disturbed sleep
Sniffing at the coal-smell left by the train
Went back to its sleep under the cement bench.
The beggars on the river steps ate their dinner
And retired for the day on the platform
Somehow they had prior knowledge
That nobody was actually expected
On the train or by the ferry on the day
Or for that matter , on any other day.

2004-12-12T22:34:00.000-08:00

A lazy afternoon on the river bank

2004-11-28T02:27:00.000-08:00

Thinking in flowers

2004-11-28T02:16:00.000-08:00

The sun rises over the sea at Chennai

Thinking in flowers

2004-11-28T02:09:00.000-08:00

"At the unlit corner where awareness takes a blind turn " ,the ghosts of the past hurts some times haunt us in all their smokey whiteness.That is when we may start "thinking in flowers" , if I may use the phrase .Just think of flowers in multitudes ,on the trees, in the vases, in the florist's and everywhere else. A digital photograph you have taken recently of the bunches of flowers in the park can be imagined to produce those images on the screens of your closed eyelids.I give below my poem written in such a moment :

Sunrise and flowers

In my nights of waiting
For sunrise and flowers
I look pain in the face
I struggle to think in flowers
And rising orange suns
My night then fizzles down
With its false props to pride
At five I wake up bleary-eyed
Trying to catch beach suns
Before they turn white.

The photograph in which I captured the sunrise on the beach is given above.

2004-11-23T01:30:00.000-08:00

Big against the Small

Minimalism as an artistic device

2004-11-23T01:14:00.000-08:00

In photography , as in poetry, minimalism can be successfully employed to convey something with starkness and without frills . A lot of course depends upon how you compose the photograph .In the above photograph I tried to pit a man-made light-bulb against the sun by eliminating all the other surrounding details .

In the following poem I have used the same technique to describe a moment in the early morning in the Grand Hotel, Kolkata .I have tried to create the moment without the usual 'haze' that a poet usually creates :

AT THE GRAND HOTEL, KOLKATA

The morning crystallises
Pure and silver. At seven
The moment swells
To an iridescent event
Amid outcry of cutlery
And bone-clatter of china
Sparrow-love on the lawns
And aromatic hotel smells.

Capturing fleeting images

2004-11-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

Like poetry , a photograph can capture fleeting images in space and can even explore their inter-relationship in a spatial situation.A photograph cannot capture their relationship across different planes of existence ,in space and time,except through the viewer's own present level of consciousness . A back-and-forth movement in time or dynamic switches between reality and fictional situations are not possible in photography.

Take a look at the following poem :

Images in a train

They lived outside the pale of my existence
Just a few images that touched the fringe
“Hello image” :Mersault addressed Marthe
Just like only one of her other lovers did
The woman here was a mere image
The way her eyes flashed at her husband
As she changed the nappies of the child
The child swung in the cloth-cradle, gently,
Like a weaver bird swings in the fibrous nest
He cried , he gurgled ,he knocked about
A mere image in another image’s existence
Mersault knew Marthe was a mere image
Flesh-and-blood Marthe did not know this
This woman did not know she was an image
Only I knew she was an image ,like Marthe.

In the above poem the characters have been invested with a certain halo which is a product of the poet's own mind. A photograph cannot produce a similar effect.

However , depending upon the state of the mind of the viewer and the sensitivity of his perception a photograph can almost reproduce a typical human situation much like a poem does and can produce almost the same effect in the viewer.

Panoramic photography

2004-11-12T23:55:00.001-08:00

I have tried to explore an insane mind in one of my poems . I have imagined the ever-expanding consciousness of an insane woman flowing in the form of a continuously extending line from her consciousness towards the universe , going over trees , houses , mountains and into infinity.

The Insane Woman

With a cloth bundle
In her fragile arms
She looks through
Your eyes vacantly
Her eyelids fall lightly
Amid buzzing flies
The whites of her eyes
Glisten with moist laughter.
I remember her artistic
Scrawls on the walls
And the finest lyrics
Set to taut music
She had composed
In her early married days.
She made a fine home
For her husband and
An open house for visitors.
Here on the footpath
She sits hunched up
With her unwashed head
Between her drawn-up knees
Her thoughts beam
In a thin straight line over
Tall buildings and treetops,
Piercing the mountains
And onward, into the Infinity.
Scores of busy people
Go past her every minute
The dust from their vehicles
Forms a smooth layer on
Her rain-drenched face.

2004-11-12T23:48:00.000-08:00

Expanding consciousness

Freedom of the mind

2004-11-12T22:11:00.000-08:00

A photograph of the verdant rice fields, on both sides of the highway, stretching to the distant blue mountains is an experience of freedom of the mind, of the ever-expanding consciousness in space. The beauty of the digital camera arises out of the freedom it affords to the consciousness to expand , much like the way you feel when you lie supine on a flat ground looking at the limitless space of the sky.

Look at the above photograph:

2004-11-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

Tempting the waves

Freezing a moment in motion

2004-11-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

A photograph can freeze a moment in motion and tell a story beautifully like a poem does.The spatial existence shared jointly by different things at a particular moment can be beautifully reproduced in a photograph with the object of re-creating the times gone by , or , more importantly, with a view to capturing a human situation.

I have come across a beautiful photo captioned "Expectancy" in a newspaper. In the photograph a woman is drawing the curtains to look towards the road for the return of her husband or lover or child .The photograph captures beautifully the "waitingness" in the way the woman's body is positioned near the window.

In another picture I have taken of a child playing with the sea the child is shown as running from the surging waves as though he is tempting the waves. Freezing the moment in motion here does not tell a story but has an appeal derived from the child's playfulness.

2004-11-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

Expectancy

2004-11-07T22:19:00.000-08:00

The story of our backyard wall

The story of a backyard wall

2004-11-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

Our Backyard Wall

Our moss-laden backyard wall played host
To hundreds of creeping-crawling creatures
A little Pipal with thick-green conical leaves
Spread its roots in its entrails leaving a crack
The widening crack soon became home
To a wild creeper with tiny red flowers
That set our entire backyard sky ablaze
The Pipal grew quickly in horizontal space
Little blue birds from far lands visited the tree
Hundreds of big busy black ants crawled
All the way to its top dangling in the air
Our proud Pipal swayed, blissfully unaware
That its burgeoning growth brought havoc
It is a matter of time before the crack widens
And the bricks give way spelling its doom .

The photograph of our backyard wall above does not express enough unless supported by a story . The story is contained in my poem .

Puddles of rain water

2004-11-07T02:26:00.000-08:00

Here the photograph of the inside of an ancient temple with elaborately carved stone pillars is highly evocative . This would surely have been a throbbing centre of activity two centuries ago when hundreds of devotees thronged the place for worship. The temple today , being devoid of God in the sanctum and in a state of neglect, has collected puddles of rain water and has become green and slippery with moss. A photograph is surely equal to a thousand words !
Capturing the phantoms

A photographic poem

2004-11-07T02:07:00.000-08:00

Hampi

Rows of elegant stone arches
Stretching before Virupaksha temple
Housed multitudes of shops that sold
Exotic oriental merchandise
Incense sandalwood oil musk
And rarest of the Mysore silks
Ancient Vijaynagar hawkers
Sold diamonds and pearls in heaps
The lost civilisation of Hampi lies
Buried among these weathered rocks
Here every rock is a canvas of many hues
Every boulder is replete with legend.
The rapid Pampa meanders among
These cyclopean masses and here
She takes an abrupt northward course
This was the Kishkinda of Ramayana
Where our monkey-ancestors lived
Yonder lies the Matanga hill where
Sugriva took refuge from wrathful Vali.
Hampi took birth in this wild country
Strewn with boulders of strange shapes
Worn down by the vagaries of weathering.
Larger than life , famed emperor
Srikrishnadevaraya walked tall
Handsome and athletic conqueror
A poet-king with an exquisite sensibility
(Flanked by bejewelled queens
He stands immortalised in bronze
At the temple gates of Tirumala
The mighty emperor conquered
The distant Kalinga and its princess
Brought Srikrishna's idol to Hampi .
Under the haze of the searing sun
Ruined Hampi sweltered through
Five hundred years of history
The artistic plenitude of the sculptors
Defied the ruthless savagery of
The vandalising alien invaders
The stone thali of the temple spoke of
Giant men with gargantuan appetites
The harmonics of the musical pillars
Resonated through five centuries
A monolithic stone chariot stood
Motionless as though it were Time's
Relentless chariot that had come to a halt .

****************

I have tried to capture the lives of the ancient men through a straight description through poetry without elaborate use of imagery . This way the poem almost approximates to a photographic representation.

Capturing the phantoms

2004-11-07T01:09:00.000-08:00

Photography of a dilapidated temple or any other ancient stone structure recaptures the presence of people that once existed in a spatial existence jointly with the structure. The beauty of the photograph stems out of the effectiveness of capturing the "presence" associated with the structure.

In the photograph below you can see the dilapidated structures of an ancient temple(now Godless ) which recreates very evocatively the presence of the people who frequented the temple two centuries ago .

2004-11-07T00:21:00.000-08:00

Capturing the phantoms

2004-11-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

The Firnagipani flowers

The firangipani flowers

2004-11-06T23:52:00.000-08:00

I have made a mental note to take a shot of this beautiful tree with fragrant flowers . This has stirred up my own memories of the trees in the temple compound with such beautiful flowers that I had invariably collected a few wilted flowers lying on the ground and carried them everywhere. We folded the petals and pierced each of the petals with the stem neatly to make a smaller flower .

My poem goes thus:

The firangipani flowers

The firangipani tree bloomed
In my village temple compound
And where it hurt it bled milk
Just like it had done in my childhood.
I smelt God through the peephole
Of a child’s memory enclosed
By the fragrance of the firangipani .

Here is a picture of the beautiful flowers I have recently taken in Hyderabad.(see above )

Photography of the personal kind

2004-11-06T23:47:00.000-08:00

I have just come across a beautiful use of a symbol in nature to recreate a poignant story ,an intensely personal experience that can be comprehended by others only with the help of a narrative.The picture shows a series of blooming firangipani flowers outside a nursing home where the author's father is lying on the deathbed .The narrative is so beautiful that it deserves to be reproduced here :

"It looks charming, and it is. A simple wooden gate, painted white, the typical "picket fence" attracts the eye, but looking around, the scent of the frangipanni flowers also attracts the senses. This is the gate that leads to my father’s room... beyond this gate, my father lies dying. It's part of a beautiful Nursing Home in Rockhampton, and I grow to both love, and eventually dread, this gate. The frangipanni tree offers me large clumps of flowers - their heads bowed in respect. The path is swept on a daily basis, so that any flowers that may fall are fresh and clean, unbruised, unlike my heavy heart. Will he remember me today? Will he still be there, in his mind, in his body? I pick a frangipanni and place it behind my right ear, so it shines out happily when he sees me. They have always been my favourite flower, in their pureness and simplicity, the heady, giddy perfume enclosing me within a safe world of childhood memories, of hanging upside down in a huge old tree, marvelling at the hugeness of the world in my front garden. Wonderful memories of reading books and eating apples, running around the frangipanni tree kicking up the leaves in autumn...waiting patiently for the first sings of new growth, the dark green tips sprouting from each barren stem, holding the promise of another summer, more glorious flowers, more hanging upside down to compare if my world had expanded during the winter. This gate, this white, simple gate leads to where my father lies dying. I took this photo as a precaution to a hazy memory, I wanted to savour every detail about my dad before stress and loss dimmed my memory. Now I look at it, and although I am smiling with my love of the tree with its daily offerings of fresh perfumed flowers for me to enjoy, I am reminded of a softer, sadder time, where breathing becomes a chore, where time not only stands still, but runs backwards, as we the children become the adults and vise versa. I push the gate open, and stoop to collect my flower... "

2004-11-06T23:45:00.000-08:00

Shadows

2004-11-06T23:40:00.000-08:00

The photograph of the shadows cast by the window also exemplifies how eminently suitable shadows are for photography. The shadows have always fascinated us all through our lives although they have no substance and have no independent existence . In this particular case the shadows are static. Even more fascinating are the moving shadows , gently gyrating in soft moonlight .

In the photograph of the tiled house look at how the shadows have so beautifully merged into the house to give it a fascinating depth, at once mystical and visually appealing.

2004-11-06T23:37:00.000-08:00

Corners

2004-11-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

The intersection of two or three surfaces or planes is interesting material for photography because of its intrinsic light. The light here is gentle and subdued and is a comforting blend of light reflected from two or three surfaces. As children playing hide and seek we all sought corners as though they were refuges from the harsh light of the world. Of course the most amazing corner that makes the best photographic representation is the horizon, the line of intersection between the earth and the sky or the sea and the sky.

Some of my favourite corners are:

An abandoned well with overgrown vegetation and stagnant water
At the back of the house where the house springs from the earth
Where the compound wall rises from the earth
Corners enclosed by a cave
Corners hiding behind a door(a child’s favourite hiding place )
Corners created by an awning
Corners created by the parapet wall on a balcony

My poem goes thus :

Corners

Those days we felt every corner
Light poured through them
A gentle breeze blew over them
The corners had their own soul
They were lying in a pool of light
Creating their own silhouettes
The jasmines whispered in the corners
Through soft jellied moonlight
Their fragrance held us in thrall.
Our old tiled house had its corners
Soft and purring like our family kitten
They cast such fine shadows
Dusky, deep and mysterious
We looked into our abandoned well
To fathom the depth of its corners
The water there was a mere shadow
The shadow of a reality that once was.

The 'No-story' photo

2004-11-06T23:22:00.000-08:00

Look at the following situation rich with poetic possibilities as well as ideal material for a good photograph :

The bench in the park

Sunlight sieved by the pipal tree
Played on the spread-out newspaper
And the trouser legs.

Here it is merely a static representation of a spatial situation without the story elements. As a poetic image it is a marvellous situation which has brilliant visual elements :sunlight , sieved by the pipal foliage, playing ,trouser legs , spread-out newspaper .

A photograph reproduces all the visual elements except "playing", a dynamic-visual element owing its source to the wind in the tree . Although there is no story element which makes the situation interesting the photograph is still , at one level, evocative because of the way it captures all the elements into a unique spatial existence carved in a narrow strip of time.

The Park Bench

2004-11-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

The empty park bench

He is not seen on the bench these days
A cigarette stub
Continues to announce him.

The photographer should , in this case, necessarily have a 'story' or any number of elements of the story which would make the photograph interesting. In other words what is needed is a premeditated plotline or a script .

In this case the elements of the story are:

A man usually sits on the park bench
He is not seen these days ;either he has moved out of town or is dead.
He was smoking a cigarette some days ago while sitting on the bench

The park bench (without the man ), the man and the cigarette formed the spatial existence . The man is not there now but the bench and the cigarette -stub continue to act as though he is there .A photograph of the empty bench and the cigarette-stub nearly accomplish a recall of the earlier spatial existence

2004-11-06T22:16:00.000-08:00

Capturing a different level of consciousness

2004-11-06T22:12:00.000-08:00

In the above photograph a 5-year old unnamed girl stares through another time , another space . The viewer's own recall of an early 1940's life will be an aid towards penetrating the different level of consciousness that one would perceive in the picture.

A comparatively easier understanding is through a piece of poetry. Here is a poem written by me about my dead father whom I have never seen while alive and have always dreamed about in all my life:

Reverse View

Up there a pair of keen eyes
An involuntary twitch of beauty
A taut screwing of eyeballs
Consciousness flowed this way
A white kurta, a speck of black hair
From behind the parapet wall
He sees me whole,flooding my being
My diagonal view is a rebounce
Consciousness reverse-flows
Reinforced by the fluid present
In horizontal ether-filled space
He happened half a century ago
While I exist ,here, in finite space.

Here I have looked at a different level of consciousness in time as a balcony where my father stood sending down some sort of waves to me who is standing in a different plane in time.

Capturing divergent levels of consciousness

2004-11-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

A group of things or beings together form a spatial existence , which is unique and does not bear repetition because it has existed in a narrow strip of time and owes its existence to the viewer's consciousness. Such an existence passes quickly and cannot be resurrected in space.The only thing that can be done is to recall it in the present consciousness.While recalling there is an overlap of the current mental state of the viewer over the recalled consciousness.

A photograph capturing such an existence will be like reproduction of a slice of human conciousness . The existence does not , however, independently stay outside of the viewer's consciousness .

Take a look at the following situation , as seen in poetry :

The empty park bench

He is not seen on the bench these days
A cigarette stub
Continues to announce him.

The recall is achieved through highlighting the continued existence of a participant in the spatial existence i.e. the cigarette stub .