THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
by Priyanka S
The month of April not only welcomed the mango season, but also opened new avenues to lesser understood creative avenues for influxians. Frankly Speakin’ Fridays, an effort taken by Influx to make work fun and informative, brought its employees together on the eve of 22nd to listen to VS Raghavan Chellam (RAGS), a passionate street photographer who shared his experiences on observing human behaviour through the photography lens.
Through his lecture, we understood that for street photographers there is no specific subject matter - only the issue of ‘life’ in general. They don’t leave the house in the morning with an agenda and they don’t visualise their photographs in advance of taking them. Street photography is about seeing and reacting, almost by-passing thought altogether.
Taking us through his street photography collection, RAGS elucidated on the common misconceptions people have with this genre – “Many people today think that street photography is a genre that’s only about random shots of crowds of people walking up and down busy city streets. That’s so cliché. It is so much more than that. It’s about finding the extraordinary, strange and beautiful in what may seem ordinary at first glance.”
RAGS believes that anyone could be a street photographer as it involves capturing emotion-evoking images with human interaction, gestures, decisive moments, sometimes vivid colors and more. While sharing his views, he kept reiterating that street photography is a waiting game. As long as the photographer is patient and focuses on a particular frame, some drama will unfold rendering the perfect picture. Of course, the person behind the lens should be attentive and capture the shot instantaneously.
While RAGS states that although he is a passionate street photographer, not many of his subjects understand the nature of this art. Privacy is one of the predicaments. He says, “If your subjects have a problem with you shooting them, just back off. Just delete the photographs and tell them that you have done that. And if your subjects are happy with your shots, take the effort to print them and give it to them. It will go a long way.”
We at Influx were inspired by RAGS’ passion for photography. And now we are street selfie-photographers (self-proclaimed, of course) with stories to tell through our candid shots.