World Photography Day with Padmashree Raghu Rai and Google+

Date: 19 August, 2013
Venue: Tote on the Turf, Race Course, Gate 5& 6, Keshav Rao Khadye Marg, Mahalaxmi, Mumbai
Website: https://plus.google.com/photos
Yesterday, I was invited for the celebration of World Photography Day by Google+. The event brought together professional photographers and photography enthusiasts to celebrate World Photography day. The session started off with Padmashree Award winner Raghu Rai, who shared his experiences and anecdotes on the developments in the photography world and the transitions over the years. How photography has moved away from the isolated dark rooms to highly interactive social platforms. And with advanced technology tools, how photographers today are pushing the boundaries of creativity, and giving birth to new forms of art.



Padmashree Raghu Rai

Mr. Sandeep Menon, Director of Marketing, Google India, introduced us to the new Google+ Photos which offers many easy-to-use, compreshensive photo editing tools, which are accessible for free via Google+. He demonstarted on the intelligent photo editing features which includes:

• Auto back up: Google+ Photos automatically backs up all the photos in the cloud as soon as we click them, and they accessible from any device.
• Auto Enhance: This feature makes subtle improvements to the photos that help the people and places in the photos look their best.
• Auto Highlight: Selection of highlights from a collection of photos uploaded, which eases to share the best of the shots. Helps in sorting through duplicates and blurry images.
• Auto Awesome: This combines set of similar pictures into short animations, create panoramas from landscape photos, and even make group poto where everyone looks great.

This was followed by Prashant Panjiar's session on Delhi Photo Festival, on how India Habitat Centre and Nazar Foundation have brought photography, the democratic art form, into the public space, thereby creating awareness of photographic arts. The Delhi Photo Festival is a noncommercial venture which aims at learning, sharing, showing new work, giving voice to new collectives, interaction between photo practitioners and enthusiasts as well as popularizing the art of photography..

The session ended with a panel discussion with leading Indian photographers, Sooni Taraporeval, Sumit Sen, Mulchand Dedhia and Ketki Sheth, who shared their experiences as photographers and how digitization has influenced their work. Sooni Taraporeval(a screewriter and photographer), Sumit Sen(who uses camera to showcase the world around him, particularly on in-flight photography), Mulchand Dedhia(who moderates an online photography community called 'Mumbai Weekend Shoot', which reaches out to over 14,000+ photographers across all online platforms and has organized over 240 free photo walks since 2008), Ketki Sheth(a contemporary Indian photographer who has worked with bxw film and chemistry for over 20yrs. won Sanskriti Award for Indian Photography in 1992 and Higashikawa Award in 2006 in Japan for best foreign photographer)..

Sooni Taraporevala, Sumit Sen,Mulchand Dedhia,Ketaki Sheth, Paroma Roy Chowdhury-Head, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs at Google India

Got to meet travel/photography bloggers Deepak Amembal and Anuradha Shankar, and was introduced to Sudha Ganapathi and Unny. Thanks to Deepak Amembal for referring me for the event.