Child’s Play – Akshara Rajaram

Kaas plateau near Satara is an amazing place to visit post monsoon. During these 2/3 weeks, the place is full of wild flowers. Last year was our first time and it was an incredible experience. This year, we were a week late and didn’t see as many flowers as the last. But that didn’t deter our mood and what followed was a photography spree, somehow avoiding the maddening crowds and the police barricades from creeping into the photos. Most of the photos are courtesy – Bindhu Madhavan

Akshara and Hari were in their elements and wanted to part of every photo being clicked.

Once the biggies settled down to doing better stuff like eating snacks, Akshara and Hari started exploring the surroundings on their own and started discussing about the various flowers.

When things start getting boring, there’s always Ring a Ring o Roses to the rescue. They tried hard to convince us to join, but all of us somehow managed to stay away. In a way, this was good. Otherwise, the nice photos below would have been spoilt!

All’s well that ends well. After a long day of chasing small flowers, we relaxed chasing bubbles on a hillside.

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 had been to Daman and Silvassa for the new year weekend. We stayed at Daman and the Jampore beach was a short drive from the hotel. I have never seen such significant low/high tides and the difference between the two here was more than a kilometre! So, that meant that there was lot of soft wet sand on the beach for quite a distance which added to the fun.

It didn’t take long for Akshara to realise that wet soft sand was actually a cool thing to play with. So, within minutes she started to do what kids love to do, get messy!

Seeing others around, i guess that she started feeling stupid being the only one with slippers on. Off went the crocs. Somehow, this delicate balancing act of getting her crocs off without tipping over made her feel very proud.

With Shriya for company, she began exploring the vastness of the shore. They were very curious about the reflection which made Akshara say “touch Akshara” (the reflection!), which made Vidhya say “Oh! No”.

We walked all the way to meet the waves. It was difficult to make Shriya and Akshara come back as they enjoyed the small waves hitting their even smaller feet. But, as always, the pretext of a photo session and some running around on the sand did get Akshara back.

All that running around on the sand did make Akshara tired. So tired that she wasn’t willing share a coconut and wanted one of her own.

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S