IN LOVE WITH PORTRAITURE

Aniruddha Das is a Kolkata based photographer. He underwent a basic plus advanced training course conducted by ‘The Frame’, under the able guidance of renowned Kolkata based photographer Arghya Chatterjee from 2000-2003.

- Rohinton Mehta

He also studied fashion photography with his mentor Arghya Chatterjee. Aniruddha has participated in various national and international photo contests and has received more than 500 awards.

In 2019, Aniruddha achieved the distinction of AFIP from The Federation of Indian Photography, followed by EFIP in 2020 and AFIAP in the year 2021. This continued and he was awarded the distinction of EFIAP and later, EFIAP/B from France in 2022. Aniruddha is a Sony A7 IV user.

You have mastery over portraiture. What points do you keep in mind before starting on a project? 

To answer this question in detail would be very lengthy, so here’s my answer in short. Portrait photography is about capturing the essence, personality, identity and attitude of a person. To do that I ensure that my lighting and subject pose are ideal and that the background is not disturbing – a distracting background competes with the subject. I also try to see that my models are relaxed and as comfortable as possible, because any model that is uncomfortable will not provide the best poses.

Lighting is one of the most crucial elements of portrait photography as different lighting setups can create completely different feelings, mood, and emotions. Outdoors, slightly overcast days provide beautiful, naturally soft, flattering light. Direct sunlight is not usually desirable because it creates strong, hard shadows on the subject’s face and oftentimes, require some sort of ‘fill-in’ light to reduce the shadows cast by the hard sunlight.