JOIN USHarry Potter magic comes to quaint Himalayan village
A staunch Potterhead, 26-year-old Anshu Agarwal was recruited as a teacher to work in a remote village in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region by an NGO last year. During one of his English classes, he decided to share his love for Harry Potter with his students, and organised some reading sessions and movie screenings of J K Rowling’s fantasy novel series.
“And in no time,” he says, “I found them absolutely smitten by the world of magic.” So, as a follow-up fun activity, the photography enthusiast planned a shoot showing the children receiving flying lessons, just the way it is at Hogwarts, the school of witchcraft and wizardry from the books.
“They were exuberant when I told them I could give them flying lessons for real. The technique I had in mind is called ‘Levitation Photography’ — one I had considerable hands-on practice in. In this technique, with the help of high shutter speed, subjects are captured as they’re suspended in air. Subsequently on Photoshop, the object, that supported the subjects on which they are perched, is hidden. In the final image, the subjects appear as if they are floating in air,” he says.
And voila! The photo shoot resulted in some mind-blowing images of the children playing Quidditch, a competitive sport in the world of Harry Potter which is played on broomsticks, in the Himalayas. He says that about 40 children participated in the shoot which comprises of images with titles like The Golden Snitch, Ravenclaw Scores, Slytherin Scores and The Beaters’ Revenge.
“They clustered around in different locations for four consecutive Sundays as I captured them hopping on their broomsticks. The final photos evolved gradually from a preliminary try-out shoot in which the children held their broomsticks between their legs and jumped on the ground. The postures of kids in the photos looked fascinating. It struck me that if the ground beneath their feet could be concealed, they wouldn’t appear to be jumping but riding their flying broomsticks,” he tells
Metrolife.
Kalap, the village where the photoshoot took place, is situated at a height of about 8,000 feet — a fact Agarwal put to best use for his project to get the perfect shots.
“At a low angle, the subject’s feet are above the horizon level. Also, the surrounding mountains helped in creating the illusion that the children are flying at a great height. I gave the shoot another try. This time, I asked a student to construct a foot-high wooden bench on which they could hop. This eliminated the ground from the frames. And in order to add more essence of a real Quidditch match, more props like crude wooden bats that looked like the beaters’ clubs , a volleyball instead of a quaffle, and bath towels to serve as elegant capes were added. The camera was mounted on a tripod. And in almost all the images, each child was clicked separately. For each image, one frame was clicked without the children and the bench,” he says.
Agarwal, who hails from Purulia in West Bengal, says his plan was to build a Quidditch showcase that gives the impression of a proper match coverage. He says that for about five sessions, spread over a period of two-and-a-half months, the children and him scuttled around the village — hopping and clicking. And then, as soon as he had adequate material to work on, he sank behind this laptop to work on the final images.
“On Photoshop, all individual shots of kids with the same frame were stacked as layers. The image without the subjects and the bench was used as the background layer. Each layer was masked. Using the brush tool, unnecessary background was removed. In order to get a well-defined subject-background distinction, I incorporated a few image compositing techniques as well,” he elaborates.
He says that one of his students had a small transparent marble ball which was used to create the image of the Golden Snitch, the ball used in the game. The colour was turned from green to golden using the hue slider, and shapes, image transform and motion blur action were used to design the wings.
“My sole objective was to make the photos as natural as possible. Essentially, it’s the juxtaposition of the fantasy game with genuine expressions and zeal of the kids that makes these photos stand out. Every aspect of the photo shoot was personalised, which is what led the children to get an adrenalin rush of the kind they would get if they ride actual flying broomsticks,” he says, adding that on seeing the pictures, the kids’ eyes popped out.
“...And even I couldn’t stop grinning as I knew I did manage to rope in some more magic in this already enchanted village,” he says.