Last Sunday (that is six days ago), I took a long flight from Goa to Nagpur (with a change at Mumbai – the reason the flight was long). I have been in Nagpur since then. There were two weddings to be shot, with a gap of three days between them. Going back to Goa after the first shoot would have meant more or less wasting two days traveling. Didn’t think it was worth it. So just booked myself a room in a reasonably good hotel in Nagpur. And pretty much stayed inside for three days. The next wedding starts today and ends tomorrow and then finally, the day after I will return to Goa. After having spent 8 nights and 7 days in the city.
In the three free days that I had, I had thought I would do a lot of ShaadiGraPher related work (mostly processing pictures from December shoots and dispatching off pictures to the clients). But I did absolutely minimal work. May be 2/3 hrs of work overall from all three days! I also though I would run regularly. But I did just one 8 Km run on one day. That doesn’t mean I kept sleeping all day. On the contrary, I used to sleep late and still get up early enough (at least early enough to not miss my free breakfast). 😛
The hotel (Nagpur Ashok) was pretty nice and all that (in terms of hospitality, room-size and ambience, cleanliness, location, promptness of service etc.) but the room did have a basic problem. It did not have any window in it. There was absolutely no natural light. Reminds of that room Neelabh and I shared in our cruise-shoot last year in Singapore. What it meant was that you could never make out what time of the day it was, unless you saw the time on ph0one / laptop. Or unless you stepped out of your room, which I hardly did (room service zindabaad). No wonder I lost the discipline to sleep or get up on time (it’s always good to blame something else, anything else, for your failures 😛 ).
I sometimes get in these phases, where when I am doing something (especially reading things on internet – including updates on FB of course), I just don’t feel like letting it go for a long long time. And that long long time is significantly greater than the typical hours in a day. And that means at some point I do have to let it go so that I can catch some sleep or have some food. But that also means, I let it go only when it becomes almost unbearable to stay awake any more (or hungry as the case may be). And that is what fucks up my routine. So all these three days, I was reading (and watching videos) on a lot of other lenses (yes it is like an addiction to imagine that one more lens that you may have and what value can it bring to your pictures), microphones, Gopro aerial flying systems and all that stuff. There are two important things happening in December where I can leverage upon any new film-making skill / techniques / equipments that I can gather – 1) Subbus’ wedding and 2) biwi and mine New Zealand trip.
For Subbu’s wedding I want to focus only on cinematic movie – it’s been a long time that I shot one myself. I made Subbu shoot three cinematic movies over last two months and I think it’s time I make him see how it’s really done (for his own wedding). I also plan to take Neelabh’s help. So a lot of time I mentally keep thinking about how to take a particular shot. Wedding film-making is absolutely fascinating and the more you shoot, the more you learn. After not being very happy with just one person shooting cinematic video in a wedding, I have even changed the policy at ShaadiGraPher. We have increased the fee for cinematic move and will shoot with two of us at the venue (compared to just one person earlier). I think that’s the first step towards improving the production value. With one person, we are simply not being able to effectively utilize all the awesome equipments that we have. And to add to the list of equipments, guess what I ordered today? A RC quadcopter that can fly a gopro and take aerial videos. And that means Subbus’ wedding and our NZ trip will have some kickass aerial footages.
I often tell people that I am good at photography but it is definitely not the thing I am most passionate about. However, I must say I have become very very passionate towards cinematography and film-making at least. Creating stunning moving shots and weaving them together to bring out a story is as fascinating as anything can get. And it’s so easy to do a bad job. Even with all the equipments that you may have. I am loving its challenge. And I am so glad my photography is helping me with both time and the money to indulge in these otherwise costly experiments (the quadcopter to fly the Gopro came for 1.5 lakh for example). I would never had done these wicked-ass cool things had I been working as a consultant and they are days like these, here in Nagpur (where I can afford to lock myself up in a hotel room and do whatever I get driven by) that keep me so happy and so excited!
Alright, let me go back and process some pictures till its time to go shoot the Sangeet in the evening. I will have to see when the wedding starts tomorrow morning and if I have time, I will probably go for a run at least tomorrow. See you guys soon.
