JOIN USVeteran photographer goes down memory lane
The veteran photographer who loves black and white photographs even today, first got a camera in 1965.
After completing SSLC in those days, he completed photography training under Govind Rao, a photographer of Mysore palace. Besides, he simultaneously completed his diploma in painting.
There were three studios in the city in 1950s namely Tambiyar, Chandrakala and Minerva. But all the three were closed down in a few years.
Of the four studios started in the next decade, the Vijaya Stduio of Krishna Prabhu is still continuing.
“I’m the first person in the district to take photographs using flash bulb,” says Prabhu proudly. “One bulb was required to take one photograph. One bulb used to cost Rs 3. We used to charge Rs 6 per photograph. Newspapers used to pay us Rs 7,” he recalls.
“A photo used to take shape in our own hands in those days. Our responsibility was not ending as soon as the photo was clicked like today.
It used to take at least three days to deliver the photo to the customer. Today you get photographs within a second,” says Prabhu.
“There is a lot of difference between today’s digital print and manual print of our times. The manual prints were much durable. People in those times did not have much education but they were so specific about the photographs.
We had to lose customers if we had not met their expectations. Today most of the people have cameras and there is a sharp decline in the number of people coming to studios,” he says.
Colour prints could be done only in Madras or Bombay in those times.
Even I too used to send them there. In ’70s, Ravish Kasaravalli opened a colour lab on Naidu street. People remember that was the first colour lab of our place, he recalls.
DH News Service