Smitten by the shutterbug!!
If we ponder over our past, we realize that some incidents which happened in our lives change our course of life or at least leave such a great imprint which paves the way for the greater good (generally) in the form of profession or passion. Such an incident near my house involving a Slender Loris (#Madhusudhan G K, do you recall?) fomented my interest in wildlife that I purportedly believe was latent in me since my childhood days. I say this since I was very much curious to watch birds, butterflies and lizards that were abundant in our garden when we domiciled in quarters specifically for KEB engineers of which my father was one. My brother and I used to be always intrigued by the urban wildlife that inhabited our garden. Ashy Prinia’s and spotted doves nesting in our garden amidst thick bushes, thin twiny climbers growing abundantly on bushes (to think of them now, they were perhaps epiphytes), the ubiquitous garden lizard swaying its head, grey musk shrews found concomitantly with mouse and squirrels (at that age, we thought that the shrews were another kind of mouse with an elongated snout) etc. This incident with the Loris whetted and revitalized my childhood interest. I reinvented myself to watching birds, butterflies and other life forms which became my serious hobby. It was more than a dilettantish endeavor, unlike many of my myriads of ephemeral hobbies that galvanized and pulverized even faster than it was inchoate (drawing, painting, hobby electronics etc). But, I was quite serious about this hobby, it was like an ineffable itch, the itchiness only became more unsatiable with time.
I was a bibliophile, voracious reader in that, devouring novels and autobiographies in Kannada and English, but now my newfound hobby replaced the yester genres and my petite cupboard was soon replete with books on wildlife. Handbooks on field identification of birds, butterflies, wildlife chronicles, natural history journals and magazines quickly added to my repertoire. I used to see beautiful pictures of birds and other fauna and hankered that I, one day, will be able to make such awe-inspiring pictures. An adage says luck favors the brave, and sometimes it showers on lesser mortals like me. Call it serendipity; I found that one of my uncles had an SLR camera just when I wanted the most. Do such fortuitous circumstances happen coincidentally or is it planned in the bigger scheme of things? This makes me ruminate over life’s conundrum; fate or free will? Anyways, the make was Olympus OM-2S, an electronic exposure camera with manual controls. It had a 50mm lens. This camera will now be anachronistic when juxtaposed with the latest gamut of DSLRs or mirrorless cameras or take for instance even the speck(s) on the revered phones.
That was just a preface. Here comes the crux. So started my entry into the celluloid world. Yes, that was the pre-digital era where photography was about aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings, darkroom processing, negatives, and slides. Ok, I was a student then, and all the money I could see was the mere pittance that I would receive as pocket money.
So here I mustered some amount and went to buy a B/W film from a photo studio. Buying branded films like Konica, Kodak was expensive. To save on the film expenses, the studios used to buy film rolls in bulk and then used to load the film strip into an empty film cartridge, which used to accept approximately 36 to 40 frames. Generally, standard film rolls will have 36 frames, but since the studio guys used to cram a little more while loading the cartridge, sometimes we could get close to 40!! We could get such DYI rolls at a reasonable price, which was way lower than the branded film rolls. I bought one such film and opened the back of the camera, placed the film in the film chamber, pulled the film slightly and tucked it into the take-up spool on the other side and closed the cover. There I was ready, the camera loaded with film and me loaded with everlasting gusto.
I was all set to take breathtaking pictures and join the ranks of famous photographers of the likes of Krupakar-Senani, E Hanumanha Rao, TNA Perumal, etc. There is no fault in dreaming big right? Me and my fried Vijaykumar (who is now an established press photographer) planned for a one day trip to the famous bird sanctuary Ranganathittu. On the planned day, we left Bangalore very early in the morning, reached the place around 9:00 AM, took a boat and started photographing the birds. Ranganathittu is one place where you can see the aquatic birds closely and appreciate their beauty. Spoonbills, painted storks, river terns, night herons, egrets etc may be photographed at close ranges. The stunted focal length is rarely an issue, but longer focal lengths are still preferred to not startle the birds by getting too close. During the breeding season, these birds exhibit lurid plumage and are a treat to watch.
Ok, carefully, I sequestered which bird to photograph. Each frame was precious, and I had to judge wisely before I could depress the shutter. Generally, these birds are gregarious and perch close to each other. Ask any seasoned photographer and I bet he would say isolating and shooting a single bird looks better. So I started photographing those birds which used to fill the frame with the 50mm lens I had at my disposal. The camera was a manual wind camera (no motor drive) and after each shutter press, I had to wind the lever so that the next film frame got pulled into position behind the closed aperture ready to be exposed. A small manual meter on the camera indicates how many frames are exposed. A normal cartridge can hold up to 36 frames, but a cartridge like I was using can shoot a little more like up to 40 frames or so. Ok after some time I checked on the meter which read 35!!. Ok, one more to go and I winded the lever and the supposedly last shutter was opened and closed. Knowing that such DYI offers you more than 36, I shot 2 or 3 more extra frames. My friend called out that the number was 39. Ok, I exposed the 40th frame and then muttered to myself that enough was enough. Curtailing my avarice, and heeding to my friend’s caution, I stopped and started the rewinding process manually. There the meter resets to 0 and knowing that the exposed part of the film roll would have been rolled inside the cartridge, I opened the camera and pocketed the exposed roll and the ensuing dreams.
I rushed to the studio the next day morning to have the roll developed. The studio guy asked me come back after 2 hours. 2 hours!! That was an inordinately objectionable time to wait. But what could I do? That one was a tremendously tormented waiting period. I don’t know how I passed each passing minute but I was at the studio even before the stipulated time. The processing was not yet over. After some time the guy at the studio entered the darkroom and came out with my strip in his hand and blurted “Sir, the film roll is exposed incorrectly; looks like the camera is faulty!!” I held the negative strip against a light source to make it diaphanous and observe the capured picture, but all I could see was a dark strip!!.
If I want to describe that feeling, it was like squeezing a cut lemon on an open wound!! Not only my pictures were rendered worthless, to add to the agony, the studio guy’s prognosis about the camera’s (in)fidelity devastated me. A wound on a wound!!
Time heals everything. My dear friend, the old pair of binoculars, became much more close to me than the camera!!. After recovering from my first breakup (I know you are laughing 😊), my uncle invited me to cover a small function with the camera. Ok, I thought. One last try before I am done with the damned camera. So callously I took out the camera, went to the same studio. I bought a film role but did something differently. I asked the studio guy to load the film as I watched him. He opened the back, placed the roll, tucked the film into the take-up spool and did one step which I had not done previously. After tucking the film into the spool, he wound the lever once so that the film got firmly fixed itself into the take-up spool!! At that very instant, I realized my inanity. I had not ensured that the film was firmly fixed to the spool by tucking and rotating once so that it pulled the unexposed part of the film every time it rotated when I wound the lever!! As a result, the film was never exposed!! Suddenly, the pain I experienced became pleasurable. The disappointment dissolved and the hankering to photograph wildlife got reinstated!
I did hold on to this hobby and have been fortunate enough to not only make some good pictures of birds and animals, but being amidst wilderness. It’s just not about photographing wildlife, but the proximity we get to the natural world of flora and fauna in all its glory is very inviting. I and my dear friend #Rajesh Puttaswamaiah have had the best time of our lives studying and photographing wildlife. I might have taken many pictures in the wild, but even to date, that pristine feeling of the first photographic adventure is so invigorating!!
