A photo finish

Karthik Srinivasan talks about how he clicked in Chennai’s photography scene

May 30, 2014 06:34 pm | Updated June 28, 2014 03:45 pm IST - chennai:

Karthik Srinivasan is busy getting ready for a photo-session in his modest studio at Krishnaswamy Avenue, a quiet street off the busy Luz neighbourhood. His assistants — a few of them his photography students — are ensuring that the lighting is just perfect. When he walks in, he checks if everything is fine, and strides away from the camera… and poses for a picture. “This is a special shoot we’re doing for you,” he tells me.

Whoever said that photographers usually prefer to be just behind the camera might change their mind if they met this Chennai photographer, who has recently been signed by Sony as a brand ambassador for their Alpha series of professional cameras.

Karthik’s love affair with the camera started long ago when he was growing up in the picturesque town of Cumbum, located in the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border. It was when he was in Class X that he chanced upon a camera — a Pentax — owned by his uncle. A few months later, he knew that his heart was in photography. As most  filmi  stories go, he took a train bound to Chennai to pursue a career.

Chennai jolted him out of his dreams. “I didn’t get through to any of the film institutes or colleges,” he says, “I had no godfather or any contacts in Chennai. I felt quite miserable then.”

“Those days, we couldn’t even get into the studios,” he recalls, “Most photographers feared that we’d learn lighting techniques if we were around.” In that non-digital era, minus YouTube and Google, it was a challenge to learn photography techniques and get work as a photographer.

During his rounds to photo studios and agencies, he’d get the ‘You-could-be-an-actor’ line thrown at him. At 6’3”, he was certainly taller than the average Tamilian. “That was the time when  Made in India  was very popular and a lot of people said I looked like Milind Soman. I started fancying myself as a model, not just because of what they said, but also because it’d give me access inside the studios.”

An incident with a model coordinator at that time left Karthik scarred. “I’d walked in, hoping to become a model,” he recalls, “It was a hot day and I went in to the office with sweat dripping from my forehead. I just wiped it with my handkerchief and presented myself to the coordinator. She took one look at me, made a face and asked me how I’d come. I chirpily said, ‘12 B’. She started laughing, and said that I was not meant to become a model. I was thrown out of the office in no time.”

This unsavoury turn of events made him determined to make it big. “I started working on my physique and my language,” he says, “I developed a sense of style. Thanks to my height, I was able to get a few offers.”

Few turned into many, and soon, Karthik was walking the ramp and making appearances in the national fashion circuit.

“Even at that time, I was looking at how the place was being lit and what the photographers were upto,” he says. It was around this time that he started his own production company (Dreeamcast) that coordinated film shoots as well.

International photographer Michael Kenna, on a visit to India for a shoot that was coordinated by Karthik’s production company, noticed his keen eye for pictures. “Working with him taught me a lot and helped me decide to give up everything and focus on photography,” he says.

His friends were shocked when he took that decision. They chided him for leaving behind a prosperous career in front of the camera for one behind it. But that was not the only hurdle. “Wherever I went, they saw me as a model and not as a photographer. Without much work, I went to Thailand and China, thanks to the contacts I had from my production days. There, my baggage wasn’t important; only my work was.”

After working abroad for a while and then shooting big brands in Bangalore, it was Chennai calling for Karthik again.

Now a familiar face at the city’s social circuit, he shoots top celebrities from different fields and works for major advertisement campaigns too. “My recent signing with Sony is a great opportunity,” he says, “It’ll help me interact with Japanese engineers and other talent from the industry. It’s also a huge responsibility… I need to improve my technical knowhow.” Another way he’s doing that is by teaching at the HITS Academy of Photography which he has setup along with Hindustan University.

With a recent ad campaign in which he appeared as a photographer shooting Kajal Aggarwal, it looks like Karthik is on course for a career in acting as well. Is he game for that? “Oh yes, if a nice project comes along, why not,” he asks, “I have been getting offers of late. Someone recently approached me to play a cop in a Tamil film. Let’s see if something nice comes up.”

  

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