Twisted Indifference

From graffiti to flames to the downright eye-poppers; the artists had managed to create them all. Having spent a considerable amount of time as a photographer for an automotive magazine in India, an intense love affair with cars tricked out in custom paint jobs is inevitable. Of course covering an every inch of an Ambassador in white fur might be overkill. Even the interiors weren’t spared.

The graffiti art was on a Maruti Suzuki Swift. This car without the custom paint job can makes me want to get in behind the wheel and floor the throttle. Especially the diesel version. The throttle response is brilliant. But then this blog is about photography not cars.

The Royal Enfield, a motorcycle owned by those who dare to be different (and also love pushing the bike to the nearest garage at frequent intervals.) This bike has an undying affinity towards proving Murphy right. Given the new technological breakthroughs that the company has now adopted I guess things should be different.

Flames were largely popular with the Yamaha RX series in its heyday. So putting solid colours on a bike that is coveted for its acres of chrome is I guess keeping with what the bike stands for. Being different.

I just might be prejudiced in my opinion of the art work on the Swift. Apart from the fact that he used a car I really like, the canvas (body) is my favourite colour. Black. Narcisstic, the way the artist’s name is emblazoned on the car panels but it is acceptable. I am the last one who should point out to people marking their territory as far as their creations are concerned. I cannot really use protection of my intellectual property as an excuse.

Now we come to the reason why I spent almost an entire day working on this post. I was saving the best for the last. I do not claim to be any kind of expert with Photoshop. Whatever I do know about it is through watching a colleague of mine. He is a graphic designer and we worked together briefly. That and a little credit to online tutorials. I, however, do know what different techniques were applied when shooting on film. The one emulated here in photoshop is called cross processing. In photoshop, cross processing is done using the Curves function. Stick to non-destructive editing and use a Curves layer. Makes life much simpler. Adobe has certainly made mine easier by adding the Cross Processing action as a Preset.

All I had to do after selecting it from a drop down menu was to apply a little fine tuning. In this photo and in the photo that is used as the opening image in this post, the Dodge and Burn tool have been my best friends. I wish I could have taken a better angle for the car, I would love to do something similar maybe with a wide angle, taking in the rear three quarters of the car with the Gothic Revival Buildings in the background and then apply a similar effect. I think I will take someone along with me who has a thorough knowledge of the buildings and the architectural style.

This should do it for Art in the Financial Capital. Bid adieu to the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, let’s hope I can spend more time there the next time. The next few posts will be about the photos from the Auto Expo 2008 again. I am going to try and put up as much of it as I can by the week-end since I would like to start with something new next week.

This post will be a photo feature of the Tata Nano. As I had mentioned earlier. It failed to impress me. POV of a photographer of course. Economic aspects, I leave it to the experts.

Being at the launch of the Tata Nano was a brilliant feeling though. The split second after Mr. Ratan Tata said “…..because a promise is, a Promise” I knew the crowd was going to go wild and that he had just delivered the next day’s headlines for all the newspapers.

Regardless of what I might think about the car, the pure charisma and stage presence that Mr. Ratan Tata exuded was worth the jostling crowds and hordes of other photographers scrambling for a steady space to shoot from.

Sarcasm, wit and a much deserved reason to cock a snook at all his detractors. This of course following in the wake of the Tata Indica reaching sales of over a million cars.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.

I am pretty sure I haven’t pioneered this concept. Reason? I am a photographer and not a designer. It took me ages to do this (4 hours spread over 2 days). I guess the main reason bloggers (excluding the one’s running webcomics on theirs) would not want to follow something like this would be since it would screw up their SEO.

So why am I doing it? I am not going to say I that I do not give a damn about SEO. I would love it as much as the other guy if search results with photography as the keyword give Twisted Indifference Studios as the first result. Think of it as a burglar alarm. It may not be 100% effective but still makes the job a hell lot tougher for thieves. Not to mention the fact that I really like the way it has turned out.

Moving on to what went on while taking this shot. I wanted to shoot the scooter in an urban location. I agree this location is more residential than commercial but it suited my aesthetic purposes. Took the easy way out on the lighting. Sweet morning sunrise.

For this shot the sun was behind me, i.e. incident on the subject. Metering was on matrix but I shot a little to the right. Just enough that I could recover it in Photoshop. The histogram display has seriously become my new best friend. Shooting to the right ensured capturing the complete detail of the bike which I am sure you must have noticed is black. You might find it a little hard to note the details in the area a little behind the front mudguard. I am presuming this is on account of this being a low res photograph.

The colours underwent the maximum post processing (not to be read as dependent on post processing!). I shoot at the default settings without boosting saturation. Image Optimization is also at Normal. Please note that the nomenclature used for camera related purposes will mostly be unique to Nikon. Canon generally has different terminology. Semantics most of the time. Nikon has Vibration Reduction (VR) and Canon has Image Stabilizer (IS). I like how the camera sales people make it sound like that function is the lens’ USP.

I digress. Post processing involved playing with Levels a bit and a moderate hand with the Burn tool. It brought out the saturation required. I must also mention that while in Levels, I boosted yellow a notch. The result, a warmer tone on the buildings and a cool blue sky, is at the beginning of this post.

There are a lot of kinks to be worked out for a post like this. Suggestions and/or requests are always welcome.