Child’s Play – Akshara Rajaram

After many months of deliberations based on the dates suggested by Georgian, Victorian, Tamilian, Google, Flight and What-Not Calendars, we finally ended up at Tirupati for Akshara’s first mottai/Tonsure of head/Mundan/haircut. We were in for some royal treatment, thanks to some high-profile connections. So, the barber came over to our room rather than we going to the common area for the mottai. Akshara had witnessed Laya’s (her cousin) mottai and after having seen what Laya went through, she was very clearly not interested in the whole thing. But, after explaining her the benefits of a haircut (e.g. you get loooooong hair) and many such fictional stories, she was “ok” with the idea and was eager (presumably) for her first mottai.

But, it was much smoother than expected, thanks to modern technology. We showed a video of Laya speaking/singing a rhyme and Akshara thought that she was having a video conversation with her and got distracted. The mottai was done and Akshara was happy about it to the extent that she didn’t want to have a head-bath as she felt that the “mottai” would go away!

Her hairless condition meant that she could get ready at a moment’s notice to go out

Couple of weeks back, orbis school had organised a fancy dress event with the theme being “A community helper”, which incidentally was one of the themes in Tree House last year, when she went dressed up as a police woman/security guard. This year, she dressed up as a Dhobi/Laundry Wala, which kind of blended with her current hairstyle (or the lack of it).

written by Rajaram S

A weekend with the girls. Enjoy the photos!

written by Rajaram S

Akshara doesn’t need much prompting to pose for photographs and using props seems to come naturally to her . We had just got down for lunch at a road-side restaurant. I was commenting to Vidhya on how good the evening light was and there Akshara was, ready for an impromptu photo session along with the pot.

Laya also joined in and was initially pretty confused at what was happening. She needed a bit of reassurance from Akshara that all such twisting and turning was part of the “fun”.

Once Laya understood the purpose, her smile came out and the pair were up to what they do best!

written by Rajaram S

The Model:

Name: Akshara,    Age: Old enough to realise that photographs of models standing in attention doesn’t work nowadays

The Photographer:

Name: Hari,    Age: Old enough to understand the nuances of photography

Tool: Not an expensive digital SLR, but a plastic camera gifted by Santa for Christmas

Let the shoot begin!

The model is ready, but the photographer doesn’t seem to be. But, then what do models know about photography? There is lot of tweaking around required according to the light’s intensity, direction blah blah blah…

Ok, now we are set, let’s get shooting…

Now some lessons to budding photographers. To get a halo or the golden light around a model’s hair, keep the sun to the side or behind the model. Also, don’t always expect the model to contort her body. You can achieve the same effect by a simple tilt of the camera.

The model suddenly feels that this location is not interesting enough and decides to apply her experience in finding a better spot.

The model suggests that the tree would make the photo stand out. So, the photographer decides to get a first-hand view of the light from various spots around the tree.

Once they agree on the perfect conditions, a beautiful photo is just a walk in the park for this photographer-model pair. A perfect end to a perfect day!

written by Rajaram S

We have been trying to teach Akshara to smile for photographs for quite some time now. She smiles normally during regular conversations, but her smile takes a totally different flavour when done for photographs! Neither i or Vidhya smile like this, so she definitely didn’t pick this up from us.

We do hit the purple patch sometimes, but that depends on the combination of the luck of the photographer and the camera! Also, it does help if Laya is next to her to get her in the good mood for photographs.

So, we started trying out different things when the smile just doesn’t get going. Thanks to one of Vidhya’s cousins, Akshara was introduced to the “surprise” look. Though this is not the equivalent of a smile, this definitely looks better on a photograph.

But, this too doesn’t guarantee results, as the “surprise” sometimes becomes extremely contorted.

We were at the grahapravesham function of my b-i-l in Chennai and Vidhya wanted a lot of the girls-only snaps with many of her cousins and their kids at the function. This was easier said than done with every kid wanting to do its own thing (actually everyone other than Laya and Akshara were a bit older and co-operated with the requests).

All of us were munching on some snacks and we gave some to Laya and Akshara too. Then, we noticed that they were so busy on the snacks that they readily agreed to pose for all the photo requests and that too with a smile! Ok, it doesn’t matter if their hand is always in or close to the mouth in all photographs.

So, there it was, the perfect trick to getting to do all the things you want for a photograph. But, there are some finer aspects to take care, as we learnt along the way.

Always ensure that the size or the quantity of the snack you give (in case there is more than one kid) is same or at least looks the same from the viewpoint of the kids. There will definitely be an investigation as to whether the other one is bigger and if it happens to be so, you can just forget your nice-smile photographs and look forward to some war footage.

If you have seen the eclairs ad running currently on the channels, the drummer keeps feeding the bald guys to ensure that they have their mouths full. Similarly, always ensure that there is an ample supply of snack for all the kids. On thing you can do is to strategically get an adult to keep the supply chain on , away from the view of the camera , but caught by the other camera in the second photo below.

written by Rajaram S