Clicking the Rajarathinams together ‘poses’ a bit of a problem – the four of them are usually the ones behind the camera, capturers of moments that could become memories or adorn the pages of brochures and websites.
“People ask me if I’m bored, but I love what I do,” says R. Komala, an event photographer with hundreds of weddings, parties and arangetrams in her portfolio. “I learned photography from my husband, who had a Yashica SLR camera in the 1980s and used to experiment at home with angles and shots.” She started out professionally in 1997.
Husband P. Rajarathinam is an assistant engineer at Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Kailasapuram. “I qualified as an engineer, but am now an industrial photographer for the company, because photography has always been my passion,” he says. “It is an ideal profession for women, if they have the talent for it. Our daughters too, were keen to follow us.”
Elder daughter Vibitha, now married and based in Chennai, was an early bloomer. As digital cameras took off in the new millennium, she had already ventured into photography as a senior school student from 2003. Her younger sister Abinaya was not too far behind either. In 2005, the siblings were two of four photographers awarded the first prize in a contest organised by the Government Museum and Tiruchi District Video and Photographers Association.
“Appa started us out, but it was Mum who taught us the techniques,” says Vibitha in a telephone interview. “At first, there was a tendency to underestimate my work, because I was young, and a girl,” adds the former Holy Cross College student, “but once the professionals understood that I was serious about photography, I got accepted more easily.”
Already a veteran of several professional projects in her student days, Vibitha likes photographing kids. “Children are very natural and innocent in their attitude, so it’s easier to photograph them, compared to grown-ups who are more camera-conscious,” she explains.
For Abinaya, a Masters student by day, the camera is a ticket to “boundless creativity. Sometimes pictures work better than words to explain an idea,” she says. But she is not for formal lessons in the subject. “It’s more about trial and error. You’ll learn more through your mistakes, and this should be a process without any interference,” she says.
Regular visits to the villages around Tiruchi helped the family hone their photography skills. Also, the squirrels, ants and other critters that visit their Warners Road apartment often become models for their snaps.
Behind-the-scenes
But an event photographer’s life is not always about Kodak moments, avers Komala. “I have seen ugly fights between families during weddings,” she says. “There was a case when bride got manhandled by the groom’s side while the ceremonial clothes were being exchanged on the engagement day. We’ve heard arguments over food, hospitality, delays, decorations and accommodation between the new in-laws. Weddings these days are about jealousy and one-upmanship. And the snide comments we hear while clicking photographs of the newlyweds …
“These days, nobody really wants to attend a wedding – they just want to get snapped with the couple. So we take all the shots of the people before the actual event, because they may not be there throughout the celebration. At the post-wedding reception, you usually get only empty chairs.”
Being a woman in a male-dominated field has thrown up its share of challenges. “I was filling in for my husband at an arangetram (debut dance) in Thanjavur, when the grandfather of the dancer shouted at me for blocking his view, because he didn’t think an event could have a lady photographer,” she recalls laughingly.
And she’s learned to take a stand with obtrusive wannabe photographers wielding mobile phone cameras too. “I don’t hesitate to push people out of the way when the wedding is on,” she says.
“Most of our fights for the right angle are with the videographers. We cannot re-conduct rituals for the camera, so every moment is important.” She is assisted by Abinaya who takes the candid shots for the function. Operating just by word-of-mouth, Komala covers around nine to ten events in a year.
Photographic memories
With weddings and social events assuming grander, more cinematic proportions, where does the photographer stand in the food chain? “It varies from person to person, and their appreciation of photography,” says Komala. “We’ve been paid for our work after a year. Sometimes the parents pay us the entire amount before the function starts, based on our samples. There are people who pay in instalments too.”
A wedding album, which has become less about photographs and more about skilful photo-editing and collage-style layouts, takes Komala around a month to put together. “I’ve got back-up secure drive (SD) cards and two hard-drives to store my work – not to mention all the negatives and compact discs from the earlier days,” says Komala.
The high-end cameras they use need regular maintenance, a two-hour job delegated to Abinaya, who cleans up the equipment once every 10 days, to prevent fungal build-up. “The shutter life goes down with use, so that’s the part we have to replace most often. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated your camera is, your own interest and talent are more important,” says Abinaya.
What about the selfie trend? “We don’t like it, but it’s always happening on the sidelines of an event,” says Komala. “Actually my husband was doing it even in the film camera days – at the end of the 36-picture roll, if there were unused shots, he’d click pictures of himself before developing it. We just didn’t have a name for it then.”
“Perhaps it’s not compulsory to take pictures,” says Abinaya. “But these days nobody has memories, they just have photographs.”
