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Museek
Mag
SK - After that , you worked under PC Sreeram ?
KVA - Yes , that was like a different university !
SK - But , the current trend is like , there are cinematographers in the industry who have not done much earlier , have not gone to a film school and not been under any DOP either . They see some tutorials in Youtube and they boldly take their DSLR cameras out and shoot , yet they do good work . How do you see that ?
KVA - Yeah why not ? Let them do . Earlier , there was actually a lot to study about and get experience while shooting in a film camera .
This had to learnt in film school , where you had to know about the internal parts of the camera , film processing , zoom system and many more . It required a lot of time and energy in perfecting the technique . But now , I feel most of the things are taken care of and you can concentrate more on aesthetics . When I was working as a photo journalist in magazines , in some instances I had to photograph VIPs in a low light . I tried not to use flash often as it would disturb the atmosphere of the interviews or other events . Alternatively , I photographed in available light with ISO upto 800 or even upto 1200 , using a Kodak Tri-X film .
Later , I used to explore in black and white processing using pull and push process methods . So , we had opportunities to manipulate the photographs with our own learnt techniques . But these days , all the work is done by the softwares , even in a good smartphone . I recently came across an app called Darkr in iPhone , which nostalgically makes you feel you are inside a dark room . You can dodge , burn or do anything on a black and white image ! So , I really feel the technology takes care of most of the work you do today . But , legends like PC Sreeram , Santhosh Sivan , Rajiv Menon and Ashok Mehta had experiences of
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