Random selections from the last few months. From Frog pond in Boston Commons to Charles River Esplanade. Living room goofiness to grandparents backyard in San Diego.
A few favorites from Vera and Alexander's Russian Orthodox Wedding at the Church of Holy Epiphany in Roslindale, Boston (with a sprinkling of 'getting ready' and reception pictures). Photographing my first orthodox wedding ceremony within the traditional church was true joy - a unique photographic experience in an intimate space embellished by colorful murals and ornamental finery, illuminated by the the mid-afternoon sunlight streaming through the tall clerestory windows,while the soulful music from the Choir in the mezzanine celebrated the union of the gorgeous couple and their families!
Choreography by Mariah Steele. Shots from the dress rehearsal, Simmons Hall, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Selected favorites from Santappa & Gayathri's wedding in Thiruvannamalai during the summer of 2012 while we were on sabbatical in India.
A few selections from Smt. Madhavi Mudgal's Odissi workshop in Boston in late September when she was demonstrating "Yahi Madhava", an exerpt from Geetha Govinda, composed by the 12th century poet Jayadeva - a scandalous string of accusations by Radha when Krishna gets back after wild night of partying. A comparable twenty first century exchange might probably go something this like "Get out of my apartment you jerk", but Jayadeva spins it differently
A sleepless night of passion, your bloodshot eyes express the mood of awakened love. Go away Madhava , oh! Go away Krishna, don’t you lie to me. Go to her Krishna, she will ease your despair; she will cool your burning passion- why come to me? Your bright lips darkened by kissing her kohl-blacked eyes-Oh! Krishna, at dawn they match the colour of your body. The scratches on your body tell of the battle of love, they tell of the triumph of passion like gold writing on sapphire. Oh Krishna, your heart must be blacker than your skin, how can you deceive me, so faithful in our love? Look at the bed of love-the flowers are no more fresh, the sandalwood paste has dried, the oil in the lamp has dried. Oh Krishna oh Madhav, go away, leave me-don’t lie to me. ( translation: www.srjan.com, Guru Keluchanran Mohapatra Odissi Nrityabasa)
Its the same piece that inspired me to start the documentary project on Dance Gurus when I photographed Sri. C.V. Chandrasekhar in early 2011. Juxtaposing two veteran artists expressing the same poetry in two different stylistic languages is perhaps something I should explore in a future post.
With thanks to Vanita Shastri from Meru Educational Foundation for organizing the event and for arranging the permissions.
Lets face it - photographing wedding receptions can be lot less exciting than ceremonies. Complete absence of daylight in most cases, long speeches, starving bellies, too much fiddling around with smartphones and an obstruction course full of circular tables with white table cloth...all untill alcohol takes effect and dancing starts. While a room full of wild dancers amped up by thumping music can make up for lost excitement during the first half of the evening, it also means hundreds of RAW images filled with awkward dance poses. So here goes my top 10 list to make the best out of dance floor photography.
Here is a selection of dance photographs from Priyanka & Sai's wedding in Boston this summer.
Celebrating 4th of July with my daughter and duplos !!
Rediscovered an interesting frame from a photoshoot last summer. Vannadil Pudiyaveettil Dhananjayan fine-tuning a new batch of students at the summer workshop in his Adyar Studio
A short selection of 'getting ready" frames from Tanmayi Vashist's Arangetram in Orange County last month. My favorite picture is that of the dancer in full costume sitting stark still in one corner of the room. As the veteran teacher in the foreground gets her make-up done with casual ease, barely half hour before the show, the student who will be formally ascending the stage for her first exclusive performance tries to remain calm and focused, her beautiful eyes giving away those tense moments with their blank stare at nothingness. Reminds me of athletes before the start of a decisive race. Except, in this case, the dancer is competing with no one except with one's own artistic expectations.
An amazing photographic experience in an auditorium with bizarre dimensions where the depth of the stage was probably three times its width. Just as I was capturing these awesome dancers during their dress rehearsal late at night at the Simmons Hall auditorium at MIT, a 23 year old police officer would lose his life in the hands of Boston bombers, barely blocks away in the same campus around the same time and the whole city would come to halt the following day. If grace and gruesomeness can exist right next to each other, this certainly was one of those nights.
"Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him."
Blaise Pascal
Photos from the Halloween parade at Hollow Reed School with an added bonus of gorgeous fall colors. These are just too adorable to be whittled down in the cutting room despite some of them not meeting my self-imposed technical and compositional standards for portraits
Fellow parents - feel free to right click on these to download them for your personal use. Do allow some time as some these images make take a while to appear on your browser screen depending on your internet speed. As always, I will be thrilled to see more "Likes" on my facebook page. Please note the facebook album with its slideshow interface has more pictures than this blog post.
There is not much of a garden left in Kilpauk Garden Road these days with its relentless traffic and a rapidly shrinking pedestrian realm. The graceful tree canopies that once lined most of these roads are disappearing fast making way for wider roads. The occasional stretches of sidewalk which sometimes seems more of relic raised on a foot and a half high pedestal is perhaps a collection of unmarked gravestones for those hundreds street trees sacrificed on the altar of urbanization.
The low point of my 6 month stay in India during the beginning of this year was going through a 2 month drill of applying for a replacement passport and missing my scheduled return flight to US with rest of my family. Perhaps the only upside to this expensive delay was that I finally had the opportunity to photograph the dancer-extraordinaire Ms. Alarmel Valli at her beautiful residence and studio in Kilpauk.
A few hundred feet from the busy main road, Ms.Valli’s residence and dance studio remains a welcome anomaly. A two story, single family residence and a classic example of mid twentieth century art deco influences in the city, its an oasis of serenity not too far from the madding crowd. Pavilions with stunningly beautiful life size bronze sculptures of Meenakshi and Sundareshwar with fragrant garlands of marigolds, tulsi and rose graces the front driveway and the path to the studio. As I make my way to the back porch, the sound of fast moving feet on polished terrazzo floor get louder as the new generation of dancers get trained by one of the very best. As human form momentarily transforms into fluttering butterflies, skipping antelopes and graceful birds, perhaps some part of the Kilpauk Garden are more alive today than ever!
A sweaty 11'x16' room with low ceilings and florescent lighting packed with two dozen dancers with varying levels of expertise, accompanied with an equal number of handbags and water bottles dumped in one corner. Sounds like a perfect recipe for a forgettable photo shoot – unless otherwise the subject of the images is someone as extraordinary as Sujata Mohapatra. A few selections from the Odissi workshop in Bangalore early June with generous thanks to Ms.Mohapatra for letting me photograph her at work.
