Big Junction Jam was a good fest with more than 25 bands playing from morning to late night. The list of bands that played on Day 1 included Evergreen, Old School Rebels, Bourbon Street, Joos, Mad Orange Fireworks, Black Sun, Indian Blues, Khalihann, Pralayh, Live Banned, Indigraffiti, Paradigm Shift, Bridge, Agam, Parvaaz and Beat Gurus. The list of bands that played on Day 2 were Dark Desolation, Amethyst, The Renegades, Verses, Corrode, Mechanix, Audi-o-file, Heretic, Jekyll and Hyde, Brahmm, Flee, Chronic Blues Circus, Blakc, Kryptos, Ministry of Blues, Sulk Station and DJ Vishnu.
There were several good and talented bands and the light and sound system was fabulous. Unfortunately the event was not very well marketed and attendance was thin. On the flipside, that was good as few photographers including me got stage access and could get good photos in the brilliant lighting. In this gig, I experimented a lot with the square format, B&W post processing and triptychs. Below are few samples of the three formats. Click on the photos to make them bigger. You can see the complete set on flickr at Big Junction Jam Festival 2011 slideshow.

Square format is fairly uncommon in photography but in this cases it looked apt like CD covers.

Meanwhile my camera (Nikon D80) should be back from repair and servicing tomorrow from the Nikon service center.

Recently London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) – Renga Ensemble performed with Karnataka College of Percussion Quartet (KCP4) at the Chowdiah Hall in Malleswaram. The pieces played were a fantastic blend of Western Classical and Carnatic music. The last three pieces played were the finest (“17th Cross”, “Bangalore” and “Guru”). This was also the first time I heard the instruments – The Basoon and the Double Bass. The beautiful compositions got a standing ovation from the crowd (twice). Sadly their music is not available on a CD. Otherwise I would buy it in a jiffy. Leave a comment if it is not so.

Last year I had been to a friend’s place and seen a painting at her place which I liked a lot. She said she had bought it at Chitra Santhe. Chitra Santhe is typically held on the last Sunday of January every year along the Kumara Krupa Road. This year it was crowded and buzzing with activity and I saw several people carrying cartloads of paintings. This year, Chitra Santhe attracted more than 1300 artists and the road was choc-a-bloc with paintings of various styles. Also every other person seemed to carry a DSLR to take pictures of the artists and paintings. I did not carry my camera but the fair was a treat for the eyes. I bought a series of paintings depicting dances of India – Odissi, Bharatnatyam and Kathak. If you are in Bangalore during that time of the year, this is one event you should not miss.

Yamini is a annual Dusk-to-Dawn Cultural Festival at IIM Bangalore. Last year, I went to Yamini and it was a fantastic experience. It is conveniently scheduled on the eve of 26th January. Yamini 2010 continued till the wee hours of dawn and featured perfomances from :

• Carnatic Vocals by Nityashree Mahadevan
• Veena performances by Vidushi Gayathri
• Kathak Performance by Shambhavi Vaze (and troupe)
• Hindustani Vocals by Anand Bhate (from the Kirana Gharana)

Some of the strains of earlier songs performed by Veena Gayathri reminded me of the early blues and distortion guitar (One of the songs performed eerily reminded me of Jimi Hendrix’s guitaring). Anand Bhate’s hindustani vocal was the standout performance and had the audience begging for more. The performance continued well into the morning as Anand Bhate sang the Rag Malkauns, kannada bhajans and marathi abhangs. His was one of the best voices I have heard in a long time and the amount of control and range he had was amazing. The performances were co-ordinated by SPIC-MACAY IIM Bangalore sub-chapter.

Some of the photos from the Kathak Performances by Shambhavi Vaze and group are posted below. The complete set on flickr .

One of the few things that I remember from my childhood when we first got a television home (in time for the ’87 World Cup) was a Kathakali performance. The other things I remember (other than cricket) were the Megaserials – Ramayan and Mahabharat. Ever since I saw that Kathakali performance as a child on TV, I always wondered how the elaborate makeup was done.

Kathakali is the classical dance form of Kerala which originated in the first half of 17th Century. Kathakali is derived from the Malayalam words for Story (“Katha”) and Performance (“Kali”). Kathakali stories are drawn from the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Bhagvatha Purana. Kathakali is generally performed in temples during festivals. The performance starts around 9pm in the night and continues all through the night till early morning.

While at Thekkady, I booked tickets to see a Kathakali performance. I reached 2 1/2 hours earlier than the scheduled performance to see the makeup being done. All the colours used in the Kathakali makeup are made of various kinds of rocks found in the region. Oil and rice flours are used a binders to hold the natural colours together. The rice flour (along with a bit of lime) is also used as glue to hold together the “chutti” – a series of white ridges (made of matte paper) on the cheeks on both sides of the face. The “Chutti” are a distinctive mark of Kathakali along with the elaborate head-dress. The different colours of the makeup depict different attributes of the characters. Green depicts righteousness / godliness, red depicts regality and black depicts evil.

The first part of the make-up is done by another artist who paints the artists face. In the second stage, the artist does the fine makeup around the eyes, forehead and the neck. After the facial makeup is done – the artist has to put crumpled starched garments with lots of frills around the waist tightly. This holds the lower part of the costume. The final stage is when the artist dons the costume and the headgear. Another trivia is that there is often a scarf like accompaniment to the costume. It has mirrors at the end of the scarf which hangs around the neck. The mirrors are used stealthily during the performance by the artist to check if he is makeup is alright and not running due to the sweat.

The story that was performed and shown in the pictures is as follows:

Narakasuravadham or The Murder of Narakasura

Nakrathundi, slave (maid servant) of the powerful demon King Narakasura, leaves for the heaven to kidnap the heavenly beauties, as ordered by Narakasura. On reaching heaven, Nakrathundi finds handsome Jayantha, son of Lord Indra. Nakrathundi, filled with lust on the sign of Jayantha disguises herself as Lalitha (a beautiful woman) and approaches with beautiful dance movements.

Lalitha (Nakrathundi) tells that she is rejoiced at his sight and by the grace of god, she will be getting a handsome husband like Jayantha. Jayantha in turn, asks Lalitha to reveal her identity and why she has approached him. Lalitha introduces herse;lf as the heavenly beauty and invites Jayantha for a sexual relationship. Jayantha humbly replies that he will not marry anyone without his father’s (Lord Indra’s) permission. Lalitha tells that she is unable to leave Jayantha and tries to embrace him with her lustful desires.

Jayantha becomes furious and orders Lalitha to leave the place immediately. Lalitha informs him that she came to kidnap him and shows her original form of Nakrathundi and tries to catch hold of Jayantha. At last, Jayantha becomes angry and cuts Nakrathundi’s ears, nose and breasts. Nakrathundi, roaring with acute pain, returns to Narakasura and Jayantha leaves the place to meet his father to inform him of the incident.

I did not have many plans in Tampere and had left it open-ended. When I was choosing hosts on CS I was looking for people who were interested in photography. Marek was a good photographer and offered to host me. I was lucky as Marek has two very talented friends – Alexsi and Tuomo who were good photographers too. In the evening, Marek and I went to TUT (Tampere University of Technology) campus where Alexsi was developing photos of their recent trip to Bulgaria and Slovenia. Alexsi was a film photographer and was manually developing the film himself . The film developing process itself is very laborious as you have to soak the film in water and then developer. Then made wet in fixer to fix the image. Finally the film is left to dry. After drying the developed film can be scanned into the computer. Quite a big difference from the digital photography that I am used to.

While Alexsi was developing the film, Marek called another friend, Tuomo who had just bought a couple of flashes and a reflector/diffuser combo (the round diffuser is seen in one of the images below). We moved to the TUT Campus to take some photos. First we shot some photos near a cliff nearby. As the natural light faded, we moved into the campus nearby which had bare concrete walls. Since I had never worked with external flashes, I was initially volunteered as the model. Some of the photos came out faurly stunning. Then we took turns being the cameraman, model and spotboys .The results were fantastic.

Me	Alexsi

The setup for the photo session is shown below with one flash getting triggered from above and one from the side onto the diffuser to cast soft light on the subject. We kept adjusting the intensity and the distance until we could perfect the light setup. The inspiration for this was the strobist blog. Do read it if you are interested in flash photography.

The Hawaiian islands are situated in the middle of the Pacific ocean and were formed by volcanic action. In fact even today new land is being created on the Hawaiian island due to lava flows and it it sno uncommon to see live lava flows “wash away” the ring road that circles the Big Island. The Big Island is actually the biggest island in the US and bigger than all the other islands combined.

This photo was taken in April 2005. More technical details about the photo at my photoblog (click on Image Info).

Everywhere we went on the South Island, New Zealand, we saw two things consistently, neat haystacks arranged on a farm and lots of sheep. New Zealand has the reputation for having more sheep than people by a large margin (it used to be 20 sheep : 1 person). Shot in Feb 2008.

More technical details about the photo at my photoblog (click on Image Info).

Recently a colleague bought a top, which had a elegant swivel mechanism and was made of wood and coloured with lacquer. It was aesthetically crafted to look like a dancer. I was playing around with the 50mm f/1.8 lens and decided to take some photos. It was a indigenous toy made in Channapatna. Searching I found that this craft was almost extinct and was protected by a geographic indicator. More on this in a detailed post by deepsan.

I had visited a similar factory in Thane near Mumbai as a child where tribals made warli paintings and lacquerware toys (though in a style different from channapatna). It is alive and well but as it is inevitable, the younger generation is not very keen on learning it and the art is slowly dying. One of the bad effects of globalisation is homogenization of communities.