Karthik Srinivasan has captured the many moods of the stars in his role as a celebrity photographer, but he recently realised that he had never done a personal project featuring romance. And so, this year, his annual calendar celebrates love both on and off the screen. Moonstruck 2015 was launched by actor Karthi Sivakumar at a glitzy event at Park Hyatt, and for a weekday evening, the attendance was exemplary.
The calendar features 15 couples and 24 layouts in various themes and styles. Real-life couples include Srikanth and Vandana, Bharath and Jeshly, Prasanna and Sneha, Arun Vijay and Aarthi Mohan and Vishnu Vishal and Rajini Natraj. Ashok Selvan has been paired with Janani Iyer, Vijay Sethupathi with Aishwarya Rajesh, Mahat Raghavendra with Sanchita Shetty, Gautham Karthik with Priya Anand, Shanthanu Bhagyaraj with Keerthi and Aadhi with Nikki Galrani. Taapsee Pannu, Atharvaa, STR and Vedhicka are featured along with models Sujo Mathew, Keerthi Pandian, Sahithya Jagannathan and Mario respectively.
"Throughout the year, I work on advertisements and the goal is always to please the clients and make them happy. At least once, I wanted to do something that satisfied me personally and creatively. That's how my annual calendar tradition started eight years ago," says Karthik. With Moonstruck, he wanted to “freeze the moment of love.” “It's easy to show the emotion that is love in a few frames on screen, but ask a cinematographer to show it in a freeze frame, and they would find it very difficult. That was my challenge going into this project,” he says.
Working with the movie stars was not very difficult for Karthik, as he has built a great rapport with them over the years, and this is seen in the camaraderie they exhibit during the launch. "I know them all personally, and so it was more like fun, and less like shooting for a job," he laughs. Those featured in the calendar were not privy to which shots were being used, and only saw the final product when it was revealed month by month. A short video after each photo gave an interesting behind-the-scenes look at what went into the making of each shot.
While the calendar is a collector’s item and is not available for sale, those following Karthik's Facebook page had a chance to win the calendar by guessing who was in certain photos he posted over the past week. "I was really surprised that people were guessing the celebrity correctly even if it was a blurred and obscure photo! Just goes to show how cinema-crazy we as a nation are," he says.
The former model, who is also the brand ambassador for Sony Alpha cameras in India, also announced the launch of Moonstruck Wedding Creative Imaging Enterprises. Karthik says that it was Daisuke Kawaguchi and Hori Masaaki from Sony India who backed him in this endeavour to provide a premium photography service. Head of Digital Imaging, Masaaki, says that the company wants to be a frontrunner in the booming wedding photography market here, while also promoting the advances in technology as reflected in their products.