All posts filed under: On Photography

Smile Professor Einstein : The story behind Einstein’s most iconic Photograph

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Smile for the camera, Professor Einstein! When the photographer Arthur Sasse asked physicist and scientist Albert Einstein to smile for the camera on his 72nd birthday on 14 March 1951 – this is the image that was taken. Einstein was tired of smiling at all the photographers and instead decided to stick out his tongue. Einstein himself later used the image on greetings cards that he sent to friends. And became one of the most famous and iconic images ever taken of laureate Albert Einstein, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 30 years before the photograph was taken. You may appreciate this memorable portrait as much as the next fellow, but it’s still fair to wonder: “Did it really change history?” Rest assured, we think it did. While Einstein certainly changed history with his contributions to nuclear physics and quantum mechanics, this photo changed the way history looked at Einstein. By humanising a man known chiefly for his brilliance, this image is the reason Einstein’s name has become synonymous not only with “genius,” …

Two Days To Many : Few Days to the Angkor Wat Photo Festival in Cambodia

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The newest feeling when you arrive in a new country, and not really to visit or to travel but you are invited. You are a fellow finding a story for a prestigious organisation. So active and pumped up i was that I had been walking everywhere for last two days in Siem Reap. But did not really reach anywhere. Concurrently It took me two days to understand that there are parallel roads running together through the Siem Reap central market, they looked very much alike. As it took me two days to understand two important Khmer words like Susrai/hello and okun/thank you, even though i am better with languages. I finally decided to rent a cycle with city tyres i.e. thicker than ususal as it was the best option I found then. And lord, it gave me wings. Today, I spent all day roaming around the outskirts of Siem Reap. Touching rural parts, unpaved roads, fields, seeing houses and realising the difference or the similarity with the huts there are in my country villages. Meeting …

A Visual Diary Of a Day In My Village

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I do not live in my village. Neither I get to spend time there any more. But there are days when the news comes like the fresh winds after Rains. That grandfather is calling. He turned 101 this month. And well who knows he could be even more or less as there was no way to document it in those days. On paper he was born in 1921. Rains. Photography has become like that elusive rain for me. I have stopped photographing like I used to. I do not use any of my three cameras and 8 old-world manual Nikon lenses anymore, that I had carefully and proudly bought. It was through my 20mm and 35mm lenses that I taught myself to photograph day in and day out. To an extent I always felt a sense of belongingness that they knew what I want to see every single moment and day of my outing with them. But times strangely changed or did I? More after I started using ‘Road to Nara’- my blog as a …