With the perpetrators long gone, was it wrong to ask the others.

Last month this date Germany paid its last installment on the interest it took on loans in the 1930s to pay the enormous reparation demands of the Allies who themselves were ridden in debts. An amount equivalent to roughly 100,000 tonnes of gold at that time.

It caused first disbelief and later acute bitterness. By the time Hitler became Chancellor, Germany had paid about one eighth of its debts. The reparations along with the global financial crisis bankrupted the country which surged unemployment and resentment levels which were used by Hitler to radicalize his idea and gain leverage. At a time when a country was singled out with the ‘guilt clause’, the people began taking refuge with a movement associated with national pride and radicalism – the Nazi party.

If Hitler really wanted to uphold his fight for a cause, he wouldn’t had committed suicide and would had boldly faced his repercussions; if he actually was the Führer and believed in his agenda. This might have changed the way Europe functioned today.

October 3rd 2010 quietly marked the end of WW I. Germany now the largest economy in Europe and a leading EU member state paid €69.9 million as the last installment which went mainly to private investors and institutions finally putting the 1919 Treaty of Versailles behind it which apparently shaped today’s world.

This won’t cease the symphonies of the World War II documentaries and will continue to resound the millions of lives lost and disoriented, bereft of their times.

What do you see when you look at a photograph? Do you scrutinize the subject or its portrayal? How do you differentiate shoddy work from a carefully orchestrated one? When do you begin to like the photographer’s take on it?

Some of us may have a lot of apprehensions on editing a photograph or in popular terms ‘photoshopping’ it. I had it and was totally against it until I recently entered into the world of imaging, as I would want to term it. Why should a photo be edited, what’s the need? Why the need to take it away from reality? Isn’t it more like GM food when it can be relished the way it is. I arguably was majorly against it.

But then when I got into it, I realized some things. No camera however expensive can simply capture the image as in what we perceive at that place. The best image captured is often quite far from the picture what our eye maps to our mind. Just to skim some of the technicalities, the highlights may be too vibrant while the shadows are too dark. Some areas might be a little under toned and some may not have captured the detail what the eye does at that point. This is where photo editing comes in where the photographer starts to make the photo look more ‘naturalistic’ or what he intends to portray to the audience. Some require extensive makeover with the artist probably weaving his side of the story; if there is ever an audience for it. Needless to say there are numerous times where the need to edit is nil, for instance in casual photography. And there are plenty of people with cameras and photo editing software who overdo things all the time.

All photographs needn’t be crisp and clean, although for many, these attributes are their holy grail; to get the maximum detail, to reproduce the colours, the sharpness etc. What maybe more needed is its story. One way to gauge the result of the photographer’s intention is from the caption of the photograph. The caption matters as that is a way one would know if it is what the he intended to seize, and even if it were to be just a fluke chanced upon, should be able to understand the story behind its spectrum. Of course all things framed cannot have a tale attached to it but can have a mindful thought to say the least.

Quite many times, the photograph just doesn’t strike a chord with the audience. This usually happens when the photographer is content and immersed in the stark effect of the subject and doesn’t budge. After all it is a record of friendship between the subject and the shutterbug. There is more in his drive than in the published image.

So sometimes it is absolutely okay to go quite blurred, quite out of crispness, out of colour but not out of elements. The camera gear, if there is one, assists you in capturing what you intend to. It constitutes a portion of the book. It’s you who is the storyteller.

“I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are; but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.”

– Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe

It is a wonderful and a spatial documentary by the environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

This link takes you to its parent website. The film is under a Creative Commons license and has no official copyright and is free to download and meant to be distributed.

Came across this quote from Scott Bourne “Think of your RAW file as a musical score and your final picture as the performance”. I think it’s superb. Makes one feel like an artist!

After customizing and playing with the HTML code for a week, I have no idea what should go here. Nor have I completely resolved the bugs nested in them. Hmm. Job done.