"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be 'happy'. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."

- Leo C. Rosten

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Launch Of My Website





Dear Readers,

For quite sometime I had been thinking of having a website on my photography where I can display my work with proper categorisation. It was necessary to have a site as there has had been several occasions where I had been asked if I had a personal site. But I was unable to furnish something like that. And a blog does not do much good from that point of view as a blog has its limitations in terms of displaying ones work. Moreover my blog is not only about pictures, but even beyond that. I do not want to use my blog as a platform for business or to get recognition. In my blog I want to interact with you all and ponder on important things like 'love' and 'life'. I want my blog to be on an intellectual level rather than commercial level. 

So finally I found out a way to have a separate site only on my photography. So I launched a personal website through www.wix.com. There I have displayed many of my pictures. You may go to the following link to have a look at my work. 


It was very hard work to make that website. I worked for complete 12 hours constantly with a break of only 1 hour for having my food. It was very complicated as I was a total novice. More than that, I did not use the templates offered by the site, and designed the entire thing myself. It was very hard work with frequent 'crashes' of the internet explorer and the internet connection. I will be looking forward to your feedback on my website. I hope you will like it.  You will get to see many pictures which you had not seen on this blog. In the mean time, I will go on posting new pictures on the website and also on my blog. We will do all our discussions on this blog. 

Thank you all for your cooperation and inspiration that you had given me so long. 

Regards,

Subhanjan.
 

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Little Girl and Her Smile



Here is a little girl from a nearby village. I like her expression a lot. I find her restricted smile hiding a life that is too hard for us to comprehend. Her eyes tell a story to me. 

Monday, April 13, 2009

Steps To The Ganges



Among the things that pull me towards Kolkata, one is the ghats. There is a life over there at the break of dawn that makes me feel one with something very beautiful. I do not know what it is. But somewhere inside I feel extremely happy when I see people taking dip in the Ganges, washing clothes, or simply sitting and looking at it. The ghats are not as congested as those at Benaras. But simple and attractive. It feels like I am looking at a culture that has been there not only for hundreds of years, but will be there for ever. Yes. I know it will be there. Mother Ganga will go on pulling us towards it no matter how gigantic a mall comes up. 

Monday, April 6, 2009

Photographing Children


A tiny tot with an ice cream. This is my favourite.

Photographing children is a delight for me. I love children, their straight-forwardness and their brilliant smiles. I have been doing a lot of street photography these days. So I do not get much time to come online and post my pictures. Here are three of my favourite street photographs of children. 

This following one is of a few village children. I made friendship with them at Joydev Mela and managed to get a lively picture. It is very important to become a part of them before you take their pictures. They must be natural in front of the camera. In this picture I like the shyness of the girls. It adds a flavour to the picture.


I shot the following one just three days ago. It was a pleasure to photograph these street children from the pavements of Bidhan Sarani. They ran up to me when they saw me with a camera. And I got a great opportunity. I entertained them a lot by carrying out a photo session of them and their parents. It was a wonderful experience for them as well as for me. I was happy to see their amusement when they saw their pictures on the LCD of my camera. It was something new to them. 



I hope my readers like these pictures. Photography, for that matter any art, is very hard to practise if you want to make it to a laudable position. It is not easy and mere 'eyes' is not enough. It is more than that. It is everything from people management and street smartness to good knowledge of your equipment and its limitations. It is a lot of hard work. Given the kind of time and hard work that it demands, ony those people, whose living depends on it, can practise it to the depth. So it seems that things are pretty bleak for me.