The best shot!

Earlier, cultural activities and fests in colleges meant either dance, music or art, but the fact that photography is fast catching up with youngsters was reflected in DU celebrating its first photography festival recently.

Ramjas college’s newly formed photography society held its first annual fest Focus ’13. In line were fun photography contests and events, the best-known photographers of Delhi as judges and workshop holders, and photography enthusiast students.

Focus ’13 was held over two days at the Ramjas college campus. Student-president of the society Abhinav Kakkar informs us, “We formed this group earlier this year in view of a large number of students either practicing or expressing interest in photography. It’s a fun hobby which allows you to explore the world around yourself. At the same time, it gives you the avenue to express yourself on any given issue. Therefore, we thought why not form a society and hold regular workshops and fests to share knowledge on photography?”

For a first event of its kind, Focus ’13 was a hit. The secret lay in the interesting line up of events. First, there were three online events. Interested students were asked to submit entries for Chachitra – the short film contest, Story hack – creating a set of photographs which tells a story and Captured – photography on given themes such as Expressions, Culture and Architecture.

Then there was Click it! whereby students were asked to take pictures within the college campus on a given topic and return to the venue within two hours. This contest brought up many interesting photographs. A talk by wildlife photographer Umesh Mehta followed where he lectured students on ‘The characteristics of a good photograph.’ There was a ‘Draw your imagination’ contest whereby the students had to draw a scene based on a given situation besides a Q&A session with photographers from the Delhi School of Photography.

Day two saw an event called Photostory whereby again students had to take pictures which would tell a story and then Ashwini Joshi of Nikon gave a workshop on ‘How to choose your camera and take care of it.’ Simultaneously, Nikon exhibited its range of photography equipments at the fest venue and Chroma also put its photography products on display.

A board exhibited photography specimens of students, faculty and staff of the college while Photobooth – which had fun props such as caps and moustache – allowed visitors to dress up quirkily and get themselves clicked. Even the principal of Ramjas college Rajendra Prasad couldn’t resist the temptation of getting himself clicked at
Photobooth.