Kahaani 2019 // Photography

Kahaani is a dance performance held at the East Campus, not only is it a showcase of students performance and dance skills but also aims to support the Kolkata GC. Kolkata GC supports an organisation called Voice of World that helps visually impaired and orphaned children in the city of Kolkata.

I was given the wonderful opportunity to attend the dress rehearsal and take photos for the school. The rehersal was held after school so I had to be really organised with my other work and make sure I had done all the work due the next day, which was a small challenge. I worked with Vincent Smithangura (Grade 12 Student) and Sabrina Rech (Communications and Marketing Department), both who are much more experienced than me in the area of photography. Therefore I learned a lot from them; by observing things they did and copying, I was able to expand my knowledge on the hobby.

The actual experience was much like the one I had at the Culturama Dance Showcase 2018, so I was able to transfer things I had learned from there, such as stage movements, lighting angles, and focusing correctly. Dispite being similar genre of performance, there was also a huge amount of differences, firstly was the location. The main hall allows us photographers to roam freely all around the performers and get really up close and personal. This means we’re all frantically running around the hall to get the best shots, but also being aware of the other photographers (especially Sabrina) and the dancers. The second was the lighting was really different, I won’t get super technical but I can tell you it wasn’t very good for photography. Heavy downlight cast strong shadows and created a difficult contrast across many of the faces, which was hard to bring back in post, it was also really dark so the camera settings needed to compensate further complicating things. But I think in the end it turned out fine.

Over the two runs, I took over 700 photos, which is significantly less than Culturama but the quality per photo was much higher. After editing, which always takes the bulk of the time (8+ hours), I was left with 215 photos. Overall I’m quite happy with how everything turned out and I look forward to having more opportunities to further develop my skills with the camera in the future, such as the dance showcase.

 

Taking photos for Kahaani 2019. Photo Creds: Vincent Smithangura

Learning outcomes and reflection questions topics included:  

  • Big picture (Goals, Action and Learning)
  • LO 1 AWARENESS (Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth)
  • LO 2 CHALLENGE (Undertaken new challenges)/NEW SKILLS (Developing new skills)
  • LO3 INITIATIVE (Planning and initiated activities)
  • LO 4 COMMITMENT (Showing perseverance, resilience and commitment in activities)
  • LO 5 COLLABORATION (Working together to achieve an outcome)
  • LO 6 GLOBAL VALUE (Engaging with issues of global importance)
  • LO 7 ETHICS (Considering the ethical implications of actions)
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