Baby Step...

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 4

The day started with a question that Tanmay Sir asked, "Are you late?"

For the past couple of minutes all of us except Sreecheta (her's is a complete different chapter we will delve into later), were loitering around thinking we were waiting for Sir to turn up. We all gave slanted look towards the watch to find it is 10:10 am. We were not in class so technically we were late. So we all nodded. But the googly was yet to come. Sir's next question,"Am I late?" With a very confused stance we all kind of replied with an yes. And then came the next question, "Bosses are never late! So, who do you think is the boss here?" Except for me and Hindol probably everyone else got where this was heading but we stood at "All of us". It took time to realize that we all wanted to bosses but for the time being Sir was the boss- this led to a discussion about if we were seriously our bosses we would have known what to do with ourselves for the time when Sir was not there...but none of us had any clue. I realized what fools we all are, we try to claim that we want to be film makers- the head of the crew, knowing exactly what everybody is supposed to be doing at any given point of time and here we were standing like dodos not even knowing how to handle ourselves for hardly few minutes. 

Sir kept on saying we were late and then it seeped into all of our brains what he was talking about. We were physically in time but were we actually ready. We had it in our mind that we needed to be in time so by hook or by crook we made it on time- without brushing, without breakfast, without bathing etc. Was that being ready? Half of our attention was on food that we didn't eat or probably sleep that was incomplete. Half of us were still posting their blogs at the last moment. We were just being in time because we had to be. This was not a part of us and it would die the moment Sir left. So weren't we late? Yes, we were being very late. But, I just hope we were not too late to mould ourselves to what Sir was trying to teach us!

Once we established that who was the boss, Sir asked me to Salute my Boss and I did. Now he wanted all of us to salute him at once. We started our efforts to to sync our movements for the salute. Even in this simple things where all of us were out of sync, we were not stopping to point out and say that others were not in sync, in the process trying to hide our own fault. Sir compared Film Making to military regime and asked us to choose a leader and Hindol was chosen by us. Now started our training. Suddenly in front of the department door we were lined up in two lines and Hindol stood at front giving us commands of attention, at ease and hoping this would lead to a synced salute at some point. It was so difficult to fall into any physical routine. Everybody thought he/she was doing a perfect job when in actuality the group was performing as a team very badly. Hindol with his misplaced sense humility could not move ahead and passed the baton to Ashok. Though its started off in a better not, it unraveled again. Mainak was the next to play leader and did it for a long time but still did not reach the salute. Neither we were capable to lead neither to follow.

At this special juncture, "The Sreecheta Case" happened. We had to now collectively decide what was to be done with Sreecheta as she had chosen to be somewhere else in spite of knowing that there was class today. Not only that she had written a pompous mail stating how we were at fault as we didn't inform her of class early, she got it all wrong. The bigger purpose for what ever was going was eluding her completely. On a collective census it was decided that she was at fault and she should not be attending rest of the days of the workshop. Though the measure was taken to make her realize but we knew at that point that this will create a hell lot of hullabaloo.

I had always stated to myself that taking a stand was important. There can not exist a person who is neutral. But probably I realized yesterday to come up with the right stand is equally difficult. While everyone chose that Sreecheta should be out of the team, JJ and Ashok thought she should be given another chance. Sir asked a very important question to them. He asked that if that was their stand would they also be thrown out of the group along with her because of this stand. Immediately their answer changed. We as human beings are very self righteous. It's a process of stroking our own egos. telling to one self that we are above than the others. It is also a fear that we should not held responsible for someones misfortune. But when push comes to shove self righteousness doesn't hold good, and u run tither hither to save your ass. JJ and Ashok's case was a classic example of that. They immediately changed their stand.

We had just got that over with and Sir had just started explaining how our blog had dropped its standard. How we were avoiding discussing our problems. How we were not even up to the mark with the technical part of it too, when Sreecheta appeared. I was send to tell her of our decision. I was scared not of Sreecheta but of the situation this would lead to, but anyways I went forward. I told Sreecheta as a group this decision was taken. Even before I had a chance to explain anything more, she just left. I returned empty handed. I was sure Sir had sent me so that probably i could make her understand but that didn't happen.

Back among the group, Sir showed us a video he had made about us. It started with the footage of our first day's Stick finding, then went in to the part where we were using our pin hole cameras outside and the last parts had a voice over to it. It was Himel's voice. Himel had somehow confided in Sir what he felt. He spoke of his friendless situation and his craving to make more friends. And it struck me how all of us were in the same situation. Maybe some of us had few people the spoke with, maybe some other had few more people and then there was Himel who said who didn't have any friend- but the crisis remained same. This institute is actually too big a place for us. We all have our idiosyncrasies and quirks. Some of them we r comfortable to showing others but for some of the other ones, we are not even comfortable to admit to ourselves, thus in the process we have all made ourselves into an island each. And to justify we have erected so many walls of reasons. Until and unless we were to break it like Himel did, probably we wouldn't move an inch.

Sir stated clearly if we do not finish our blogs we don't proceed. So we started with our blogs. Hindol and me were sharing a smoke when JJ came over and asked us if we thought if What was decided about Sreecheta was justified. We tried to explain to him that it was because she needs to understand certain things and if she did it would be her success. So by stating whatever we did to her case we were actually rooting for her to rise above the situation. JJ was confused and said for him this work shop was very important and we stopped him there and simultaneously said that it was not about the workshop. it was about life. And suddenly JJ understood. He turned as if in slow motion talking to himself that it was about life and he hadn't realised it yet. JJ was a transformed man!

For the first time in SRFTI 12th batch history, the whole direction batch went to have lunch together. As we crossed the bridge in front of the guest house, I instinctively knew that Sir would be definitely looking at us from his room balcony and like in movies right in time he came and stood in the balcony. It was a nice sight, the commander looked on as his soldier marched together for the first time.

We came back and started finishing taking pictures for the previous days blog. We needed to brush up the previous day's blog. Sir came by and we started to go through the different terms that we encountered while using our cameras.

Metadata is the information of every image that we take - it consists of the aperture, f stop, histogram etc, there is a little button to guide us there.

Modes on a camera are the different modes in which we can shoot – it is like how we want our camera to work – do we want to shoot it in aperture priority mode? or automatic mode? or manual mode? 

Shutter speed is the time for which the shutter is open – and is represented in fractions of seconds or in seconds. This is a factor in controlling the light of the image. By controlling shutter speed we can also do motion blur and motion freeze photography.

F stop is the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the entrance iris. Exposure is measured in terms of f stops. 

Aperture is the opening through which light travels, greater the aperture the lesser the depth of field. This we already realized in the pin hole experiment when we increased the diameter of the hole. 

In traditional (film) photography ISO (or ASA) was the indication of how sensitive a film was to light. It was measured in numbers (you’ve probably seen them on films – 100, 200, 400, 800 etc). The lower the number the lower the sensitivity of the film and the finer the grain in the shots you’re taking.
In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The same principles apply as in film photography – the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain.
Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations to get faster shutter speeds.

Exposure meter is the scale that tells us the exposure. It is a linear scale which has a pointer and it can move left and right showing if the picture was getting under exposed or over exposed depending on the various setting of shutter speed, f- stop and ISO.

Picture style are some pre set styles that can give the picture certain look, like monotone, duetone etc.

White balance is how the camera treats white. Now white is a color that is usually not confused. We need to pre decide how we want the camera to identify which is white. We did a small experiment on this – We tested shooting a tungsten source of light with tungsten white balance and then with fluorescent white balance. The result was – the one we did with fluorescent white balance was much better. 

Taken with white balance as florescent

In this video what happens is that, the light from the from the tube light is taken as white. So, we can still see the tungsten light as yellow and thus the skin colour also remain the actual skin colour.

Taken as white balance as tungsten

But in this video what happens is that the camera takes the tungsten light as white.

This is till where I have been able to explore. Maybe as I explore the other terms which still remains I would be able to understand them as well.

This was followed by our truthful and whole hearted attempt to started our journey of getting ourselves exposed. We made up our mind to hide nothing to go for the whole log! 

I know there would be many more hurdles along the way and this was just a Baby step but still I am very very proud of us for getting this far. Kudos ORGANISM........ one baby step at a time and we would reach a long way!

NB: The biggest congratulations of all to Himel, not only for buying the brand new camera for making so many friends!