Ben
On Thursday I got a text from Karo: “I am coming back. Are you at home in 1,5 hours? Is there a place for me and a friend in the flat?”
Thinking that once upon a time we would have to get some extra mattresses to be able to host people even when we are full: by far this issue is left for the resourcefulness of the generous hosts… I texted back: “Come! I’ll be here if you need me. I can offer a beanbag and my mattress for you two”. She replied, “I love you! ;o)”. “Come, come, girl!”
This is how I got to know Ben, the guy who Karo met on her trip to Varanasi. A medical student in UK he came to work for a hospital in Assam. He was briefly traveling after that and now came to Delhi to take flight back home in a few days.
The thing came up when he asked if he could download his pictures on my computer so to burn CDs later. That night he joined us for the dance festival and at some point headed to the stage where he kept taking pictures with his digital camera looking way more sophisticated than both ours – with better lenses and greater zoom. So, I was particularly anxious to check out his pictures from tonight show.
So we were downloading those along with his shots from Varanasi and on the way were watching my snaps that randomly pop up on my laptop in the screen-saving mode. Ben showed appreciation for quite a few shots I took and I was happy to tell the stories behind those. The conversation brought the memories about the times when I was excited about the new horizons my digital camera had brought into my life. I was exploring the settings, experimenting with exposure, making those solo sallies in the mountains, woods and town of Bergen, all around my home town in Russia and the wide avenues in the hospitable Moscow and then later in the streets and lanes of Delhi. I derived particular fulfillment from the artistic or just aesthetic shots I managed to take and I was glad to hear wows during the multiple demonstrations of my shots to the family and friends. Later on I found out how rewarding the sharing on the larger scale can be: I joined trekeath, treklens and photosight where I could view and comment all sorts of works by all sorts of keen photographers; where I could upload mine too and hope for some interest and feedback on those. However, soon after leaving Norway I discovered that another passion of mine is craving to come out and get exposure. I started writing my journal and then this blog. Initially, I believed in the possibility of the intimate dialog of text and image. I felt images are too bare to tell a story unless accompanied by an account. So, along with those lines I made my blog on the last trip in Norway and I think even later I had a couple of decent samples of the concept . Yet, more and more text was taking over and photography and story telling took separate paths in my life. I am still endlessly clicking to treasure the memories of moments, people and places. Yet, I feel that to share on the same I can do much better when resorting to text. I just do not have enough patience to master the technicalities of photography: every time I would sit down with a book I would get bored too soon to memorize anything. So, technical excellence is beyond my reach then. And if I cannot get close to what I think is perfect why to venture at all. Moreover, I realized that rather than calibrating the exposure I enjoy playing with the words. Here I have got patience for continuously fine-tuning my sentences, exploring my vocabulary and pushing the limits of my narrative skills. This was my part of the story to tell Ben about.
We started the slide show with his shots. I got struck by the abundance and quality of portraits he had taken. Portraits are my unfulfilled dream, as I do not think you can really fulfill it when the camera with 3-fold zoom. A better camera with a decent zoom – that would do, I thought. I started questioning about the specific portraits and Ben started narrating his stories. He was explaining how he interacts with people whose portraits he takes. “Once they see you with a camera pointed at them, they start smiling, yet if you haven’t adjusted your settings properly from the first go and keep trying, they lose their interest soon and you may never catch the same face”, shares he. “This one was not cooperating at all”, says Ben while we go through a dozen of shots of a potentially very interesting character in yet very unappealing postures. “These guys played volleyball with a plastic bag and I ended up joining them – it is so easy to take pictures of the people once you get to spend some time with them”. And he shows me a bunch of pictures with openly smiling guys who seem to joke and tease each other. “And with beggars”, continues he, “you can just give them ten rupees and take infinite number of pictures. Yet, I do not think all the pictures should be taken for money”. I was wondering how close I could get to such sort of interaction – being a woman in this country (again, gender-sensitive me, what to do people?). I was recalling the portraits that Juan Mi took in the markets of Jaipur – smiling men happy to be photographed and maybe make friends with a white man. And I was so frustrated with mine taken in the same town – puzzled and suspicious faces came out on my snaps clearly saying “what is this one doing here?” Ben and me were going through the hundreds of his snaps – people of all sorts, yet majority being children and enders. Faces of old people looked particularly striking with every wrinkle holding a story to tell. “I used to treasure those portraits, but now when I’ve got thousands of them they hardly have the same value for me”, confessed Ben to my great astonishment. “I really envy your portraits however much you yourself undervalue them”. At the end of the day, it is far more than just a decent camera with a zoom: those portraits are owed to Ben’s ability to immediately build and masterly capture human interaction. Thank you so much for sharing and inspiration!!!
Thinking that once upon a time we would have to get some extra mattresses to be able to host people even when we are full: by far this issue is left for the resourcefulness of the generous hosts… I texted back: “Come! I’ll be here if you need me. I can offer a beanbag and my mattress for you two”. She replied, “I love you! ;o)”. “Come, come, girl!”
This is how I got to know Ben, the guy who Karo met on her trip to Varanasi. A medical student in UK he came to work for a hospital in Assam. He was briefly traveling after that and now came to Delhi to take flight back home in a few days.
The thing came up when he asked if he could download his pictures on my computer so to burn CDs later. That night he joined us for the dance festival and at some point headed to the stage where he kept taking pictures with his digital camera looking way more sophisticated than both ours – with better lenses and greater zoom. So, I was particularly anxious to check out his pictures from tonight show.
So we were downloading those along with his shots from Varanasi and on the way were watching my snaps that randomly pop up on my laptop in the screen-saving mode. Ben showed appreciation for quite a few shots I took and I was happy to tell the stories behind those. The conversation brought the memories about the times when I was excited about the new horizons my digital camera had brought into my life. I was exploring the settings, experimenting with exposure, making those solo sallies in the mountains, woods and town of Bergen, all around my home town in Russia and the wide avenues in the hospitable Moscow and then later in the streets and lanes of Delhi. I derived particular fulfillment from the artistic or just aesthetic shots I managed to take and I was glad to hear wows during the multiple demonstrations of my shots to the family and friends. Later on I found out how rewarding the sharing on the larger scale can be: I joined trekeath, treklens and photosight where I could view and comment all sorts of works by all sorts of keen photographers; where I could upload mine too and hope for some interest and feedback on those. However, soon after leaving Norway I discovered that another passion of mine is craving to come out and get exposure. I started writing my journal and then this blog. Initially, I believed in the possibility of the intimate dialog of text and image. I felt images are too bare to tell a story unless accompanied by an account. So, along with those lines I made my blog on the last trip in Norway and I think even later I had a couple of decent samples of the concept . Yet, more and more text was taking over and photography and story telling took separate paths in my life. I am still endlessly clicking to treasure the memories of moments, people and places. Yet, I feel that to share on the same I can do much better when resorting to text. I just do not have enough patience to master the technicalities of photography: every time I would sit down with a book I would get bored too soon to memorize anything. So, technical excellence is beyond my reach then. And if I cannot get close to what I think is perfect why to venture at all. Moreover, I realized that rather than calibrating the exposure I enjoy playing with the words. Here I have got patience for continuously fine-tuning my sentences, exploring my vocabulary and pushing the limits of my narrative skills. This was my part of the story to tell Ben about.
We started the slide show with his shots. I got struck by the abundance and quality of portraits he had taken. Portraits are my unfulfilled dream, as I do not think you can really fulfill it when the camera with 3-fold zoom. A better camera with a decent zoom – that would do, I thought. I started questioning about the specific portraits and Ben started narrating his stories. He was explaining how he interacts with people whose portraits he takes. “Once they see you with a camera pointed at them, they start smiling, yet if you haven’t adjusted your settings properly from the first go and keep trying, they lose their interest soon and you may never catch the same face”, shares he. “This one was not cooperating at all”, says Ben while we go through a dozen of shots of a potentially very interesting character in yet very unappealing postures. “These guys played volleyball with a plastic bag and I ended up joining them – it is so easy to take pictures of the people once you get to spend some time with them”. And he shows me a bunch of pictures with openly smiling guys who seem to joke and tease each other. “And with beggars”, continues he, “you can just give them ten rupees and take infinite number of pictures. Yet, I do not think all the pictures should be taken for money”. I was wondering how close I could get to such sort of interaction – being a woman in this country (again, gender-sensitive me, what to do people?). I was recalling the portraits that Juan Mi took in the markets of Jaipur – smiling men happy to be photographed and maybe make friends with a white man. And I was so frustrated with mine taken in the same town – puzzled and suspicious faces came out on my snaps clearly saying “what is this one doing here?” Ben and me were going through the hundreds of his snaps – people of all sorts, yet majority being children and enders. Faces of old people looked particularly striking with every wrinkle holding a story to tell. “I used to treasure those portraits, but now when I’ve got thousands of them they hardly have the same value for me”, confessed Ben to my great astonishment. “I really envy your portraits however much you yourself undervalue them”. At the end of the day, it is far more than just a decent camera with a zoom: those portraits are owed to Ben’s ability to immediately build and masterly capture human interaction. Thank you so much for sharing and inspiration!!!
posted by Olga Tikhonova | 5:53 pm
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