Artist of the Week - Shankar Subramanian

June 28, 2014 Noufel N Honeycomb

Born in Erode in 1969 Shankar Subramanian did his schooling in Kendriya Vidyalaya IISC and Kendriya Vidyalaya Hebbal in Bangalore. He got his Hotel Management Degree from Institute of Hotel Management in 1990.

He was intrigued by the pictures in a brochure of Hasselblad his dad had got and that is when he decided that he will one day take pictures like this. His neighbor Gowri Shankar a retired railway official was a passionate photographer used to take young Shankar to shoot photos out in the wild. These events embarked Shankar to become a photographer.

Initially Shankar was inspired from observing nature and was a vivid bird watcher. However he went on to photograph Portraits and Fashion finding the essence of photography as connecting to people rather than just clicking the photographs.

His first camera was bought by his dad and was a Minolta Film SLR who was always encouraging him to take up photography. His wife got him a Nikon SLR F80 later.

He met Anand Sharan and went on a couple of Wildlife photography trips which made him take up photography seriously. He always took Anand Sharan's views to improve as a photographer.

He is the founder member of the group TGiS (Thank God it's Saturday they gave this name since they got time to photograph only after Friday) which has around 600 members now. The purpose was to provide a supportive and nurturing space for serious hobbyists who have passed out of BSOAP to practice their newly acquired skills. They have conducted 2 exhibitions through this group raising substantial money for NGO's. This group has helped many budding photographers to become professional photographers. For more information on TGiS click here: Saturday morning photo fever

His first group exhibition in 2005 was to raise funds for Rotary Club. He is actively involved in raising funds for NGO's like Rotary and Multiple Sclerosis Society of India (MSSI) spreading awareness. In fact he is the Honorary Secretary at MSSI, Bangalore Chapter (The Society is a member of the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation - MSIF based in London, UK. MSSI works in co-operation with 48 other member countries of MSIF, thereby working in collaborating with similar organization all over the world.)

He is the Founder, Director and Principal Consultant of Ninedots (Ninedots specializes in Innovation consulting and training on creativity and Lateral thinking and Customized program on Leadership development and Behavioral Competencies.) He is a Certified Instructor of de Bono's Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking. His passion for imparting programs on thinking made him to further pursue other tools and he has personally been trained by Tony Buzan on Mind Mapping another awesome tool for thinking and strategy. For more information click here: Ninedots

One of his photograph was sold 5 times in a recent exhibition. Many of his pictures have made it to flickr explore (Flickr receives about 6,000 uploads every minute-- That's about 8.6 million photos a day! From this huge group of images, the Flickr Interesstingness algorithm chooses only 500 images to showcase for each 24-hour period. That's only one image in every 17,000!).He has got more than 2.5 Lakh views on flickr. For Shankars Flickr page click here: Flickr

He also is a Indian Classical dancer and dances in Latin American style too.

He believes in being part of the event of photography, being one with the subject to take photographs. He recalls, when he photographed a camel herder who was smoking, he enjoyed a cup of tea with him conversing and being able to capture the natural element where the person was not alienated by the photographer but accepted him as his own and the picture came alive. He believes in sound technique, patience and perseverance being cornerstones of any photography.