smit shah

Since Monday, our Photography course has started. In this two week course, the students are taught the basics of Photography. This includes setting the camera to the right setting of the aperture, shutter speed and composing the right frame to communicate the right meaning. The composition value of a photograph is stressed upon. The first 2 days we work only on a black and white film using an SLR camera provided by the institute. From the third day colour photography is introduced. We are taught how to develop the negatives and the prints. For two weeks we are supposed to work on one subject, which is 'the contrast in the city life.'

As a part of our Visual Language course, we studied majorly about the Androgynes. The Faculty for this course was Ms. Alka Pande, who has authored books on the subject of Androgynes. (one of the books bieng the 'Ardhanarishwar')
Vinu (Graphic design), Anita (Graphic design) and me decided to give our final assignments in the form of an animation movie.
We are telling a story about the mythological period when the Universe was created by Brahma on getting hit by the arrow of Kama, the god of sex (creativity). He made the Saptarishis and the Prajapatis but failed to create mortals that could sexually give birth to an offspring. He did Tapasya (penance) and pleased Ardhanarishwar (the half female god). Ardhanarishwar split into 2 mortals of different genders. From the right half (shiva), arose the male and from the left half (shakti) arose the first female. The male and the female sexually unite to achieve the state of completion and give birth to a new entity of life. Today there is a chaos and an unbalance in the situation. A male is in constant search of his other, the female, and vice versa. But just like the yin and yang coming together, like the night and the day coming together, they always unite to achieve a state of completion. We wanted to make the story visually look indian. Hence we decided that the look and feel of the movie should be that of a kalamkari painting originated in Andhra Pradesh. We plan to get it done by sunday night.