Taking dirty pictures is my job

Newspaper photography is a grind on more occasions than it is glamorous.

If there’s one thing my professional visits to drains and cess-pits has taught me, is respect for those who wallow in them every day

It was during one of my morning walks that I overheard two 40-somethings yabbering on, between rasping breathlessness, about how media photographers have a field day shooting celebrities day in, day out.
But, it got me thinking…do most readers share this sentiment? If they do, then I have to set the record straight. Newspaper photography is a grind on more occasions than it is glamorous (if it ever is).
Recently, during the tragic incident of the young Abhishek who was swept away in a storm water drain, DNA’s photographers had to get down and dirty in a storm water drain in order to convey to readers the dimensions of these uncovered dangers.
Later, after a daring robbery, the same photographers clambered down a narrow hole — used by the thieves — to bring the derring-do of the act into focus. Apart from our grossly under-appreciated conservancy workers and intrepid fire-fighters most Bangaloreans would baulk at the idea of clambering into a stench-ridden canal of slime, but for photographers it’s just another day on the job.
The thing is, the images that these forays into the garbage-filled underbelly of the city provide are not exception — rather, they are the rule. Following the BBMP around as it makes its circuitous course of the city — above and below ground — doing and at times, shirking its job of keeping the city hygienic is a photographer’s job, for most of the time. After all if you don’t walk by their side, how will you be there to document it when they fail.
Which brings me back to the two ‘dialectics’ pondering the ‘glorious job’ of the city’s news photographers. To simply stand by and listen to their ill-informed opinions was far beyond my natural instinct. So I walked up to them, introduced myself, and told them that I too was a photographer.
I asked one of the men what he would do if he had the misfortune of living or working next to an overflowing sewer or a pile of uncleared garbage. He told me he would go to the nearest civic office and request the authorities to clear it up. And if that failed? I asked. Well, he said, then he would go higher deeper into the bureaucratic labyrinth. And if that too met with failure? He would then go to his local newspaper, so that they could highlight the issue.
I smiled and told him that in order to highlight the issue at hand, the newspaper would first need a photograph of the errant stick-pile, and that brought us right back to the ‘glamour boys and girls’. Dirt and delving into it, I told him, is part of a photographer’s life. Celebrities and hip parties were merely the sideshow.
If there’s one thing my professional visits to drains and cess-pits has taught me, is respect for those who wallow in them every day, out of compulsion, rather than choice. Our conservancy workers get no bylines for their job. They don’t complain about the sorry lack of equipment, and they are rarely recognised by the people they serve, which is you and I.
So although I may love to correct someone’s facts, I also know that there are those who can’t. And this column, more than anything else, is a salute to those brave souls.

I once saw the sun, but not anymore

As Bangalore metamorphosed from a farming community to a tech-savvy metropolis, out ability to view the solar orb from every roof top in the city soon diminished

On most occasions interacting with old friends from the same fraternity is an enriching experience. During one such discussion a friend asked me if today’s photographer had the wherewithal to capture a sunrise or sunset, as his compatriot could back in the 70s and 80s? I shook my head in the negative.

As Bangalore metamorphosed from a farming community to a tech-savvy metropolis, out ability to view the solar orb from every roof top in the city soon diminished. As realtors and those flogging an Icarus agenda reached for the sky, the city’s skyscape was soon blotted out by concrete giants.

My mind meandered back to childhood days when I watched the sun rise and set from my Baldwin Boy’s School hostel window. Later on, in the 80s and 90s, I would sit on the banks of Ulsoor Lake, along with many victims of Cupid’s arrow, and watch the setting sun.

It was during one of these pensive moments that I captured an image of the sun setting ‘neath the horizon. It may have made the front page, but when I was asked by the editor to shoot another ‘city connect’ picture with a touch of twilight in it, I was nervous. In the 80s the era of the all-colour newspaper was just a glint in a publisher’s eye. I was stumped as to how I was going to get the twilight spectrum conveyed through greyscale.

I left the office at 5.15pm and wandered the streets looking for that definitive, and far too often, elusive, picture. At last, around 6pm when I reached Ulsoor Lake I photographed a couple in a paddle boat, with the setting sun looming over them like a protective saint. It was good enough for me, and thankfully, good enough for my editor too.

Years later, when I returned to the city after a series of jaunts that took me across the country, I returned to Ulsoor Lake. I was hoping to capture the past in the setting sun, and in doing so return to the less frenetic roots of the photographer. But where once I could see the lake sprawled, glistening, before me, I now had concrete behemoths blocking the last rays of a sun bidding us its daily farewell. The colours were still there, the vibrancy still pulsed, but it was no longer seen by any mortal. It was now meant for the stone guardians of the city. I realised then, that in the new Bangalore, nature’s colours would only be appreciated in memory.

I return home and reach for my old photographs, they show a city I once knew and still love. My memories are intact, my son, however, will just have to take my word for it.

Snapshots of destruction: Photographing the floods

DNA’s photjournalists ran, walked, drove, and paddled their way across North Karnataka, pipping everyone to the pictorial post

The drizzle became a downpour, as levees broke across North Karnataka and floods washed away a million hopes and dreams. Newspapers awoke to the calamitous news beaming from every TV, and the race to find the best angle to a story already told began.

It was then that my colleague Mohan Kumar BN came up with an idea that eventually proved to be brilliant, in that it gave us the edge over our friendly rivals. “Send us out there,” he told me, “and let’s go now.” He, of course, became the first to volunteer to go out into the maelstrom, as it were.

Over the next six days, DNA’s photojournalists ran, walked, drove, and paddled their way across North Karnataka, pipping everyone to the pictorial post. Images flooded in from Raichur, Bellary et al, encompassing the human tragedy that unfolded.

Sending photographers into the field is only half the job, ensuring that their images get through to the office via water-logged lines and unreliable power supplies is the other half. Most of the districts they visited had lost electricity, and many villages had been sent back to the pre-Internet days

The day after Mohan left, the full extent of the flood damage became apparent and we decided to send in another photographer. Anantha Subramanyam K was rushed to the site in an IAF chopper ferrying relief material. Road were virtually non-existent.

And as the images ‘flooded’ in another problem began to rear its irksome head. When selecting photographs that depict a natural catastrophe, a photo editor must keep two things in mind: the context of the picture and the Breakfast Test. The context must suit the news; gratuitous images of sorrow and devastation don’t always match the context. The Breakfast Test is quite simple. You imagine a family sitting at their breakfast table, and then ask yourself: “Would you like to see that image while you’re eating your breakfast?” If not then the picture doesn’t make the front page (there are exceptions to this rule, however, but that’s another column).

Ensuring that our paper stood out from the rest of the print pack was a tough task; it was one of those times when everyone is bringing their A-game to the table. I learned the art of picture editing from Julie Elman, former picture editor at The Missourian, and AFP Picture editors Emmeanuel Dunnand and Christophe Archambault, and this proved to be time well spent. All three told me that picture editors have to chop, crop, and many times drop good images to suit readers’ interests. And with photo essays this maxim is even more important as one has to look at the overall sequencing of images, which in the final output should complement each other.

After Anantha and Mohan, Nishant Ratnakar and Selvaparakash L were dispatched to capture the human angle to this catastrophe. They did so with aplomb.

An editor is only as good as his team, and I salute my boys and the job they did during these dark hour in Karnataka’s history. I also take this opportunity to thank the IAF and others who pitched in to help us out.