Thursday, November 22, 2007

Photography Course

Our Professor was Mr.C.V. Gopal and Asst Professor was Mr. Jaiswani. The Lecturers were M/s.G.B.Kulkarni, J.R.Edwards, K.P.Rajagopalan Nair and K. Ramanathan. Prof.Gopal and Mr. Jaiswani took mostly theory classes and M/s. Kulkarni and Edwards were in charge of Practicals. Nair Saab was taking classes in Special effects from second year onwards and Mr. Ramanathan was also taking charge of the practicals from the second year.

Kulkarni Saab was teaching us lighting, composition, exposure etc in the still photography studio while Mr.Edwards was dealing with the developing and printing in the dark room. We were working with Black and white images only handling various cameras like Peco Monorail, Speed graphic, Linhof Technica etc. It was quite thrilling to try out various techniques on the camera, developing and printing done by ourselves to see the results.

Kulkarni Saab was an expert in repairing cameras and lenses and most of his free time you can find him fumbling with some lens or cameras. My friend K. Ramachandra Murthy who is mechanically minded used to observe him and became his main disciple in camera repairs. After retirement Kulkarni Saab settled in Chennai and started a Camera service centre and we both used to visit him often and some times Murthy will also join with him on the job. Kulkarni Saab was an excellent teacher as well as a great human being.

Professor Gopal had great sense of humour and even the most difficult things he will explain very lucidly and thoroughly. As a principled man he always stood for his students. Mr. Edwards though had a rough exterior was really soft inside. About Nair Saab and others I'll write when I come to the second year.

We were lucky to have such good teachers.

2 comments:

The Spicy Kitchen ! Fiery dishes from India. said...

Sir, this is fabulous ! It really took me down memory lane for myself, and surely, I would not be able to remember so much !

Those were the days..

and of course, those paintings are lovely. I want to meet you sometime. I hope I will be able to meet you in trivandrum, as my film has been selected this year for the IFFK.

anand subramanian
direction, '93

Ramachandra' Babu said...

Thank you Anand, we will meet in Trivandrum