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Vineet
Hello everyone and welcome back to Photosynthesis where we discuss the business and art of photography, videography, filmmaking in India and we talk to some of the best experts that we have come across in the field. Today we have with us Mr Ranjit Chetur who is the founder of He’s been working for a couple of decades or even more actually. He says he started with photography at the age of the ripe old age of 12.
And he’s worked in industrial photography, he’s worked in film making and a lot more. Ranjit, hi.
Ranjit
Hi, good evening, viewers. Thanks for having me on your podcast.
Vineet
I’m going to start off with, like you’ve got a very wide wealth of experience in the industry. I guess some of that just comes with spending so much time over the years in the industry like more than a couple of decades. What part of you enjoyed the most and what do you love doing the most?
Ranjit
Good luck.
Ranjit
Well, to start with, the most exciting part for me was, I started with very basic, you know, I had to learn the rudiments, the basics of the technology, the technical aspects of it. I just made mistakes and learned. And I started off by basically being, you know, just documenting stuff around me, life around me. I started
shooting on the street when I was very small, mostly in black and white. And so I had to learn basics like my camera did not have a light meter. So I had to learn things like how to judge exposure.
Ranjit
So, yeah. And so it went up, went on to a point where I was at this institute trying to study filmmaking.
And by then I’d built this portfolio work which was mostly portraits and people I knew. And I had this pretty irritating habit of just going up and asking people if I could take pictures of them, just random strangers. And I was lucky that most people kind of I think took a liking to me and they said, yeah, let’s take a picture. And so I had a bit of work and so it was when I
Ranjit
you know, FDII graduates and very experienced people in the industry who kind of encouraged me and they said, listen, why don’t you turn professional
one thing led to another and then at some point in time, I had to take it on as you know, a professional career. And so there I was.
Ranjit
I started doing some very simple projects for Hindustan Lever and
I think, Brooke Bond and so on So that period was very interesting
Ranjit
was working with products and products are very interesting mainly because it’s a huge technical learning area because every product, the surface shapes, they all react to light in a different way, you know, like black wood, silver, white fabric.
Ranjit
These are all surfaces and shapes, you know bottles, tins, watches, jewelry, all these products taught me a lot about how to light different surfaces and different shapes. Now why that is important is you got to put all that together to make the product dramatic. Okay, it’s got a hit.
when the product is going to jump off a page and grab the viewer’s attention. So that really was a very interesting period of discovery for me, which I mean, I think even today, every assignment I’m learning something.
Vineet
Oh.
Vineet
So I actually want to ask you, now you’ve got all these years of experience across different lines. Like because you mentioned earlier that you know suddenly you’re thinking in terms of focal length, aperture, right so it’s like a matrix, like you know you’re seeing the world from different lengths altogether.
Ranjit
Bye.
Ranjit
Yuh yuh
Ranjit
Right. Yeah
Ranjit
like to call it learning to see because you spend lifetime learning. You have to pick up certain things. Now how that to me it works because I had no formal education. I think even if you go to a photography school or a college or whatever,
It’s, I mean, you can’t make a mistake on a professional assignment, but what one, what, at least what we need to do and I think what a lot of photographers who…
in other parts of the world do is like say even in a very structured thing like advertising where a client gives you a layout and you have to execute the visual as per that layout. But so what many photographers do is you have the product or you have a subject or if it’s a model they will pay the model for their time from their own pocket and they will experiment, they will do the same assignment their way, the way they see it.
Vineet
Yep.
Ranjit
there have been cases where the client or the agency has accepted the alternative version that the photographer has got. So developing this, I think what happens is once the basic technical education is done with, I think it’s about developing this process of observation.
You know, you have to be constantly observing and if possible recording what light is doing. Okay, because light is constantly shifting and light for instance has very deep significance in how a picture turns out. Now if you look at something like you photograph a beautiful woman. Now if you’re using high-key lighting.
that woman is going to look in a certain way. If you’re using low key lighting, the vibe given out by the picture is totally different. So these are things you absorb as you go along. There’s a level up to which you can be taught these things. But how do you decide at a moment that this is how I want the picture to be? This is what I want the picture to look at, especially if you’re doing journalism and documentary photography and all that.
You just have an instant. Okay, like what Mr. Cartier-Bresson said, the decisive moment. It’s an instinct developed after years and years and years of, you know, it just comes, you know, light is a very important thing. You have to observe light. Then I think you should.
Ranjit
Coming along, one should also look at other art forms. Say like you have this concept called chiaroscuro. Now chiaroscuro, for instance, if you look at painters like Rembrandt, who are masters of using…
Ranjit
how different artists from different even photographers, the great photographers, how they’ve used color, how they’ve used light and shadow. These are things that you internalize those things. You make them your own and through the filter of your own. Why do you want to do something? It’s because it’s your own subjective interpretation of what you are seeing.
Ranjit
Like some people react to red in a certain way, some people react to blue in a certain way. It’s mood, it’s emotion. So,
Yeah, so you react the way, Okay. And the other aspect is also culturally. Now when you’re working in Europe, if you look at a lot of European photography, it’s just the way that society works with, uses colour.
There is a very subtle palette of colors that they work with. There is a certain harmony.
Vineet
I’ve worked for a Scandinavian company for seven years. It’s all very elegant, but whites and greys and whites and greys and whites and greys. And for variety, they might even go in some black.
Ranjit
Well, yes, yes.
Ranjit
Yeah, yeah, pastels and stuff. And it’s especially noticeable when you’re looking at their advertising photography. Whereas the Americans, for instance, it’s all like Starbucks and there’s Chrome and, you know, it’s like in your face.
Vineet
lens flares, 5 lens flares even when you are selling like a croissant equivalent
Ranjit
Absolutely. So it’s like hard sell, you know, they are hard selling even that color, like if you should look at the work of a guy called Pete Turner. He was like one of the seminal, what I think they call it hyper color students, people who are studying going learning the medium, it would be nice to see what and he had no computers to work with. He had his own particular process with which he did this, with which he worked on his pictures.
Vineet
Thank you.
Ranjit
So, yeah, so it’s also a very cultural thing. Now, for instance, in India, in India, you have a riot of colors. You will have magenta, you will have pink, you will have sometimes a mix of everything. So that’s a challenge, especially when you have very limited control, when you decide how you’re going to work with that palette. Now all those choices, these are eventually choices you make. You make split second choices.
And so it comes through this filter of one of learning, observing, learning, internalizing it. So that knowledge, then it just like making this little kichri in your brain, right? And you know, and then subconsciously you make those choices.
Vineet
Any other references? So this shadow, light and colour. Any other references you can give me, write them all in the show notes. What should, because like I said, you can’t maybe want to learn to see, but you can guide them. Like, you know, they can observe. What should they observe in terms of film, in terms of photographers, what would you recommend?
Ranjit
No, no.
Ranjit
Yeah, see, because I think where it’s now lighting, where it comes in very, becomes very important is that, is when you’re trying to both with documentary, with editorial documentary work in the field and when you’re doing, creating marketing messages, visual messages or whatever.
is to look at, to study how light works in different spaces, in different geographies. Like in the Northern Hemisphere, light has a certain color temperature, light has a certain quality. Whereas, if you go up to the higher altitudes, light tends to be a lot more diffused because of the haze in the air.
Whereas somewhere else you will find hard shadows under the eyes and all of that. So it all depends on where you are
Ranjit
And then you also have software with which you can intervene and smoothen out things. What happens is now if the contrast is too high, you will have say black areas and especially if you don’t have access to a supplementary light source in terms of a reflector or even another light or a wall where light is bouncing off, those areas start to get pixelated.
Ranjit
most often you will have images, especially if you’re using higher ISO speeds, you will have pixelated images in these black shadows. Now, the only way you can overcome it is either use a reflector or use another supplementary light or an on-camera flash bounced off a wall or whatever. So yeah, it’s…
So one is what is light doing in terms of emotional depth, the technical aspects of the light in use and eventually it’s about what are you trying to communicate.
Ranjit
You have hard light, you have soft light, you have reflected light. When I said soft light, I mean diffused light, you have reflected light. And then the other very important aspect of light is the size of the light. Now when you’re working in nature, obviously the sun is the largest light source known to man. And there are ways of manipulating.
modifying the light of the sun to suit your what you want to communicate. So when you’re using artificial lights that’s another aspect that’s important the size of the light because that also defines the quality of the light and then the area around which it’s going to be spreading.
Vineet
I’m going to come back and ask the same question. References. What can someone see? What can someone read? What photographers or filmmakers can one follow? If they want to get better at using light, shadow, colour in their work.
Ranjit
I would say look at the work of other photographers and try and understand what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. I mean there are no absolutes. Nobody is right in this whole thing. Everybody is doing their own thing.
But there are certain things that work for you and now then ask yourself why and once you start trying to find those answers, I feel that again you are internalizing that knowledge. So the next time you are up there and you have a similar, you say hey this work for that guy and it works for me because this was the end result on the image. So again it’s a…
It’s trial-error internalizing it and practice makes it instinctive. I mean you don’t spend too much time thinking. I mean for instance landscape photographers, they spend hours, minimum two or three hours waiting for that perfect light because there is a window where you can see it happen. I mean I have not shot too many landscapes.
few times I tried to write it out. It’s a spiritual thing because number one, you’re not on the phone, you’re not talking to anybody, it’s just you and that scene in front of you, right? And you watch the sun and you’re probably sweating, there are flies buzzing around your head or whatever but suddenly the magic happens, okay. I think they call it the golden hour where the entire landscape comes alive as the sun kind of say dips to the west or in the case of a sunrise.
Vineet
Yeah.
Ranjit
you know, when it’s rising, it’s fabulous. I mean, I remember once, we were shooting a film. I was with my cameraman on a recce. And so we were high up in the mountains and down below you could see the horizon, you could see the curve of the horizon. I mean, a bit of the curve, the curvature and actually the first light of the rising sun.
And it was electric blue and there’s this crescent shape and just lasted a few seconds. Okay. I said, man, we’ve got to go and try and get this. Okay. And so the opening shot and that particular film, what we visualized was like you have this drone right up above and you have a, the drone has this very wide, extreme wide angle lens. And what we wanted was like the drone is in place.
Vineet
Yeah.
Ranjit
And the mountains are dark, right? And as the sun is coming up, you can see this crescent color, crescent of color forming on the horizon. And then slowly the mountains come alive. There’s what you call a brush light. It comes in from the side, and it’s turning warm. But we couldn’t get it because the day the guys went to shoot, I think they don’t even take the camera out till about 8.39 because of fog and rain and whatever.
So sometimes that happens as well. You work with, you try and come back with images in a very bad situation, in a very hostile situation.
Vineet
And there’s a lot of happenstance also, looking in the right direction versus looking in the other way when it happens.
Ranjit
Totally and the thing is not to not to let it get you down. It’s difficult, especially when there’s a lot of money riding on it. You know, and but yeah, that’s what’s kept a lot of people going. For instance, is very famous. It’s a classic. One of the first early films made called Nanook of the North. And Nanook, actually, the first time they shot in those days, they would.
they would shoot and they would have these barrels filled with chemicals and they would process at the end of the day. And when he came back to the US, they found that I think about 70 or 80% of the footage couldn’t be used. Yeah, and he obviously ran out of the money that he put together for that expedition to the North Pole.
Vineet
Wow.
Ranjit
It’s basically about a community of Eskimos living near the North Pole. And the spirit of the man, I suppose pioneers of the world like that, he begged, borrowed, crowned, put another expedition together and the film we, the world knows today as Nanook of the North Pole is actually re-shot. So yeah, sometimes yeah. So that’s the challenge for professionals.
Vineet
was the issue.
Ranjit
that your experience eventually teaches you how to, yeah, you know, you’re in a bad space, you learn to improvise, you know, all that again, I again come back to the point that I wanted to make was this learning to see is not all about the art aspect. It’s also about internalizing these practical experiences that you have, which teach you.
Ranjit
No situation is without a solution. I mean, unless you’re dead or incapacitated or whatever. And for young people wanting to be professionals, I think what happens with digital cameras is, with digital technologies, it’s made it so easy to take an image, okay? Because it doesn’t cost anything, right?
Vineet
Yeah.
Ranjit
On the other hand, it has its pluses as well. But yeah, we couldn’t afford to waste film. Every frame was, you know, it cost a lot of money. So yeah.
learning to see is yeah, in my opinion, it’s about absorbing as much from any from day to day life, from the work of other artists, other photographers. I, like I mentioned earlier, I think, even good writers, because writers write about, you know, they discuss, there are so many writers who write so evocatively about the atmosphere in a room.
you know, the how those characters, the characters or the protagonists look in a particular situation, expressions you know, their faces and stuff. So when you’re reading, I think or you’re listening to an audio play or whatever, it forces you to think visually, you know, and I think that’s very important because you’re visualizing things.
Vineet
Yeah.
Ranjit
And a lot of images, even in the field, you say in an editorial or a documentary or shoot, when you’re there, you know exactly when something’s going to happen. It’s an instinct developed over years and years of practice and you go into what experienced photographers call the zone. You switch everything off.
You’re taking a long shot, you’re going in closer, you’re using a longer focal length or you’re going in for a wider wide angle, you know, shorter optic. So, and if you’ve got the ability, if you’re designing a frame in a studio, that’s of course, you have the liberty of taking time and you trial and error and all that. But still, it’s what your mind’s eye is.
Vineet
Yeah.
Ranjit
Seeing that’s what should come out and that’s what makes that image uniquely yours. Because no other person can see it the way you can. They can copy you but they can’t, no way they can. Yeah, they can’t make it their own which is why I still have this thing with AI for instance.
Vineet
They can’t make it better.
Ranjit
A lot of people are very afraid that AI, yes, in the short run, yes, a lot of work will go away and people are going to, this is a very easy way to, so people are going to lose a lot of business and work. But I don’t know if AI, can it replicate what is in my eyes?
Ranjit
Yes, I had a picture, right?
Vineet
I don’t think so. My thinking now, I think over the last few months has actually solidified as far as the AI stands right now. Because there are a lot of these tools experimented a lot and they’re using AI as a business. Like they’re using chat GPT, they’re experimenting with mid-learning. It absolutely cannot replace a creative expert. Or it can do. It can make the creative expert so much more efficient. He can do so much more.
Ranjit
Yeah.
Ranjit
Yeah.
Ranjit
Absolutely.
Ranjit
Absolutely, absolutely, exactly.
Vineet So if creative people can become much more efficient at what they’re doing, and which we’ve baked into what we’re doing as a company, as a startup, then that’s great. I don’t think it can replace creative people at all. That as I got into the future, so far no.
Ranjit
Yeah.
Ranjit
Because what we are able to express what our minds eye sees, it’s basically an expression of our soul. The soul is an abstraction, but it’s part of who we are.
Vineet
Yep.
Ranjit
You know, work that is right up there. I mean, cutting edge work, legendary, you know, iconic work. Uh, yeah, those people have just kept pushing.
Ranjit
boundaries, not stopping at, yeah you make your first million and then you say, yeah I’ve got this formula, it’s all done. Which is okay, fine. I’m not complaining about the one million but when it becomes a formula and you’re repeating the same old thing, even with photography I feel that’s it. You’ve got to develop your own…
Vineet
Yeah
Ranjit
your own unique responses to different challenges that image making throws up and that is what is going to set you apart from your colleagues or your competitors or whatever you want to call them.
Ranjit
I think it’s also what focal length does to an image. You need to really internalize that before you make the choice of lens that you’re going to deploy. Sometimes you don’t have a choice because you don’t get another chance and you can’t even switch a lens. So you do what you shoot. But if you can, you need to develop a…
a very intuitive understanding of what your lenses can do. And that’s part of expressing yourself as well. There are photographers who use wide angle lenses to shoot portraits and that’s a trademark of their work or they shoot animals in studio or on location.
And that becomes a trademark of their images because you look at it, you know, okay, this is one of those guys, you know, if you’ve been watching, viewing a lot of other work because yeah, you have that distortion that wide angles bring to, you know, the lines in an image and all that.
Vineet
Last question I’m going to ask you has been fascinating, completely different topic. How do you, you’ve done a lot of brand work over the years. How do you work out the message from the perspective of, okay, you know, this is the brand message. Now the client himself might not be a creative expert, probably won’t be. They know, look, this is my product. This is the messaging I want to convey to the
Ranjit
Yeah.
Ranjit
Yep.
Vineet
It is up to you to convey it through the visual medium. How do you actually go about thinking through such a project?
Ranjit
There are two aspects to this, especially in India because the photographer unless you’re really up there, high up the value chain, the photographer gets called in pretty late in this whole decision making process. There are a couple of things that come to one is of course ability, second is the equipment that one has and then of course the budgets.
comfort levels of working and so on. So there’s very little that this guy will do this because he has this unique way of seeing and all that. Very few people are called to do that because for most part, a lot of commercial work is very sterile. But when it
When it does work, when people are pushing the boundaries, it’s like, say for instance,
Ranjit
radically different. So what’s the difference? Yeah, for instance, if you’ve got a luxury apartment with massive bay windows, right? You’re going to have a, so if you’re going to either work with that light or you’re going to simulate that on a set, you have to know. So you have to have experienced that, right? And it’s there in your subconscious.
Vineet
Give me an example.
Vineet
Yep.
Ranjit
So when the client says, you know, I want whirling sea face kind of, you know, vibe in this shot. So if you looked at either been there or you studied the study those spaces, yeah, you can replicate that. You can create that environment.
Now, talking about kitchen appliances for instance. Now if you got to give a kitchen an interesting ambience, most artificial lighting in kitchens are very, you know, there’s no spark in it. It’s either it’s an F.
LED lamp overhead lamp with a very flat. There is no punch in it. Punch means you know contrast. There’s no color. It’s bland. Now when does it become very interesting? Either early in the morning that is between I think it’s between 8 to about 9.30-10.
Vineet
Yeah.
Ranjit
There’s this and most kitchens in urban environments, you probably have two medium size windows. Now either you open it, in which case you will have this hard slanting light, very nice beautiful light coming through the window, the beam and say you have a product, you lay it out with you know all the props around and all that. Yeah, you have a magic kitchen out there to photograph your product in, right?
Or it happens towards the afternoon if you’re west facing those windows. You have the similar kind of light I think between 4 to 3, 34 whatever. You have a similar plant. So yeah, so it’s an understanding of the space, the demographics, the social, the demographics of the customer that you’re targeting and the social space, the ambience that he is
the he or the family, the group would stereotypically archetypally occupy.
Vineet
So put the customer in a very familiar space. So he feels that, okay, yeah, this is me. I am being projected here, they’re talking about me.
Ranjit
Absolutely. Yeah. Now the flip side is you can now say you are selling whatever agarbatti or whatever to somebody who say I don’t know how many people would in a very you know the upper end of the income bracket would use agarbattis but just say it’s like aspirational advertising. Okay.
Which is what all the so then you’re creating this big glamour so it is In the image you’re using this really gorgeous woman and everything is cool and you know, it’s all coordinated so this guy is saying like okay, life’s not that great right now, but The message is going to be that the image is going to be accessible to him for him to be able to dream Key, you know
One day, I will also have one.
Vineet
depends on the product I guess like are you showcasing something aspirational or are you showcasing something… yeah you would say this is very relevant to you right now so then you show more realistic scenario or for a fancy car you show something very aspirational like all the Dubai ads
Ranjit
Yeah, yeah. Even you know, all the celebrity endorsements and all that. It’s working on the psyche. There’s no real, there’s no creativity. It’s hardcore psychology that does that work.
Ranjit
where the psychology comes in by lighting, the colors that are in use. They come together, the way the shots are composed. Now you want to make Taru Khan, even though he may not be a very tall man, you can make him look formidable for instance. If you photograph him from a very low…
a perspective that’s lower than his waist. So automatically his height get and you use a shorter optic. And automatically you’re going to find him looking quite ominous in the frame. So these are like I said you study what your lens can do, what perspective can do to the image and which you learn if you’re perceptive practice, learn, internalize it.
And so then when it comes to, yeah, on demand, you have to make an image, it comes out. Most often it comes out. See, some people, I think in my opinion, like in all aspects of life, some people have certain inborn talent. It could be genetics, it could be whatever, the environment in which they grow up.
There are other people who go through the grind and they reach an audience pretty much later in life. So there are some people who have that advantage, but that’s not to say that that’s the…
That’s not a benchmark. To an extent, through application, through discipline, to consistently keep at it. And, you know, even if you’re not maintaining a journal, internally, file it away for reference. The verse comes to us, just hide a folder somewhere where all the stuff that you used to learn, you keep it there.
Ranjit
The world doesn’t have to see it or your clients don’t have to see it. You go back to remind yourself about the lesson you learned from that making that image.
Vineet
So perfect, this has been quite fantastic. I’ve learned a lot. And I think it’s so much to like, I think you should write something on the history of film actually.
Vineet
And we end on that note. We’re going to leave some references in the show notes, both on Spotify and on YouTube. We’ve written some articles on light and color and golden hour. We’ll add those too. So thank you so much Ranjit. This has been fantastic.
Ranjit
Thank you Vinit, thank you for inviting me and I hope whatever I had to say is useful for your audience.
Vineet
it absolutely was for me at least and now looking at the camera thanks everyone for tuning in stay tuned followers on Spotify on YouTube like share subscribe all that stuff it helps us and yeah see you next week bye
