By Richa Wadhera
I can’t do selfies. While I’m on the subject, I’ve been told time and again that I have a standard ‘pose’ {I hate that word} in all my pictures. Truth is, I don’t know any other way to be when someone is pointing a camera at me.
Imagine my hesitation when Tara, a photographer, asked my sister and me to ‘pose’ for her portfolio; she was doing a series of portraits, and wanted to shoot us for a 'sister' series. To be fair, in retrospect, she never used the word pose at all. Anyway, Rashi {my sister} seemed okay with it, and I figured it could be fun, so I agreed to suffer the awkwardness of facing the camera.
Tara came over one afternoon and after a quick recce of the house, took us, and our boxer Buster {the biggest poser} up to the terrace. She sat us down next to each other, and just started chatting with us about our lives. Rashi and I took off about school, love, sisterhood, the works – and neither of us realized when that camera took off. Tara did give us direction at regular intervals, but more along the lines of ‘sit closer to each other’ or ‘walk in my direction.’ She eased us into the shoot so effortlessly that for most of the time, we forgot she was even there. Come to think of it, she just sat there patiently, camera poised, waiting for a fleeting moment she felt was worthy of capturing. No fuss; she came armed with her camera and lenses, and using natural light, she let us be exactly what she had come to shoot - two sisters just being… sisters.
After doing some shots in the garden downstairs, she announced she was done. I made her promise she’d run these images by me before she added them to her Facebook page.
Thank god for Tara’s quiet confidence and friendly indulgence – she sent handpicked, corrected images a few hours later, and I was totally blown! Tara has an eye for human emotion, and had managed to capture so many incredible moments between my sister and I that highlight the close, relaxed, and sometimes hysterical relationship we share. Far from a stressful shoot with contrived compositions, the shoot was snappy {no pun intended} and so much fun! Needless to say, the pictures tell one everything they need to know.
Notes in Our Little Black Book |
Forget contrived, Karan-Johar-film-style family portraits – Tara keeps it clean and real, and her images speak volumes of her subjects, and the relationships they share. Glowing pregnant women, siblings, mother and toddler, romantic wedding mandap moments – she captures all these and more!
Find more of her work and get in touch with her here.
Image courtesy https://www.facebook.com/ShootingTaraPhotography%3C/em%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/p%3E?utm_source=LBB&ref=lbbpost
