Want to be a part of it? M.I.L.K. ....

Yesterday, while reading on the internet, I read about a contest that would excite many people who often wish to capture the best moments of life and otherwise in their lenses.

The contest titled M.I.L.K.(Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship) is open to any photographer and that’s the best part of it.

To give a small background about this contest, it goes like this. In 1999, British publisher Hodder Headline (now Hachette Livre) held a global photographic competition called M.I.L.K., inspired by the 1950s landmark photographic exhibition, 'The Family of Man'. The main motive behind this event was to offer an open platform for photographers and search for unique and geographically diverse images on the themes of friendship, family and love.

The results were praise worthy as it turned out to be not only one of the richest photographic collections in history, but also one of the most significant, drawing participation from 17,000 professional and amateur photographers in 164 countries. In total over 40,000 images were received by M.I.L.K., including at least four Pulitzer Prize winners. The 300 winning images were chosen by the Chief Judge, Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt, and were the basis for three books entitled Family, Friendship and Love and an international touring exhibition launched at New York's Grand Central Terminal in 2001.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original M.I.L.K. competition, M.I.L.K. Licensing (now a subsidiary of PQ Blackwell), again in association with Elliott Erwitt, is conducting a new competition, this year. It is based on the on the themes of friends, families, lovers and laughter to create a new collection of 150 images from across the world.

The photographers would be judged on the basis of these simple requirements.

• The Images that celebrate friendship, family and love.
• Images that tell stories and convey real emotion.
• Images that evoke a humorous response.
• Technical quality.

The contest is open till the 31st Dec'08. Ah ha that's a long way to go. And with the season of festivities and togetherness just starting, think Dusshera, think Diwali, think Thanksgiving, think Christmas, the canvas is just open to paint each one's own composition on the themes that celebrate friendship, family and love.

The contest offers $125,000 as prize money, with the winner getting $50,000 as cash prize. In the end the top 150 pictures would be included in the coming up publication of 'Fresh M.I.L.K.: Friends, Families, Lovers & Laugher', which is scheduled to be printed in autumn 2009. All featured photographers will retain copyright on their images in exchange for granting M.I.L.K. a non-exclusive license.

For more information, regarding how/where to submit the images online, FAQs and other details check the site here.



Does this pic, celebrate friendship, family and love? You decide. But let me try out some other compositions using my frames for this contest and wish you do too. All the best.

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(This pic was taken when the mother had left the puppies for a while in search of some food and I made sure to click this without disturbing their natural moods.)

Worldwide Photo Walk...

Last Saturday morning, offered a perfect weather for going out and capturing few moments of Bangalore city through the camera clicks. I along with few other shutterbugs made full use of this opportunity as we participated in the Bangalore leg of the Worldwide Photo Walk. The Photo Walk was held to mark the release of 'Lightroom', a photography software programme developed by Adobe. Bangalore was the only city in India where this was talking place, apart from the other 192 cities across the world.

This Bangalore leg of the event was managed by Mahesh Shantaram, an independent documentary photographer and artist based in Bangalore.



There was no planned agenda for the walk and it was quite informal. We all started the event at around 7:30 A.M. from Mayo Hall, one of the prominent landmarks in Bangalore. Then our steps clip-clopped on the Residency Road. On our journey we were free to capture anything and everything in our camera lenses.



I was in a mood to make some bio-scopic compositions, even though I was walking down a road heavily masked with glitz shopping malls. Bangalore's old memories are fading very fast, both in the physical environment and in the social atmosphere. That's a logical outcome of economic growth, so better capture those in pictures before they are reduced to dust.



Just a decade ago, anyone could walk down the narrow alleyways and sip a cup of coffee or tea for one rupee or so. But today rusted locks adorn the entrance doors of these neighborhood tea/coffee houses. The once sleepy get together place has given way to a cosmopolitan shopping juggernaut.



Something definitely is lost, for few it's for the better while for the rest, it's for the worse. The city's populace is no longer nostalgic about the remnants and with an urge to modernize fast, the Government and the builders have gutted the city's very soul.



Bangalore and traffic jams are synonymous. Just that the intensity of the blockage varies with the time period of the day. Even though the day had just started, there were long queues of two-wheelers parked near the road.



Construction sites are a common sight but what really adheres to one's vision is the vibrant life visible on the streets. Like this one, a cobbler mending and polishing shoes, sitting on a tiled pathway by the side of the road, enjoying the cacophony of the traffic in front of him.



Today the city that is bursting at the seams is home to people from so many different strata of life, each seemingly a different world of its own. Some enjoy food in the elegant and refined restaurants that have mushroomed in the cities and some are happy with the food that a make-shift stall owner provides.



Who cares as long as its food?



This way the walk continued and many eyes in the traffic were settled on me and few of my fellow shutterbugs. Since there were few foreigners in our group, the autowallas thought that we were tourists, exploring the city over the weekend and approached us with invites to take us on a paid tour of the city. It was around 11 A.M. that we finally decided to put an end to the walk. All of us gathered in the Mocha restaurant where many had late breakfast amidst passionate discussions about the snaps that each had taken.



All in all a refreshing way to spend four hours of a weekend, walking down the narrow streets and capturing life in pictures. By the way, were these snaps, Ok?

You can check the photos taken by all the participants in the event here.

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Paradox of Life

A jury in Amsterdam has awarded the World Press Photo of the Year' 2006 prize to New York-based photographer Spencer Platt of Getty Images, for his picture from the Israel-Lebanon war last summer.
The picture shows a group of five friends cruising in a red Mini convertible against a background of the wreckage of a collapsed buliding. The building reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs.

"It's a picture you can keep looking at," said World Press Photo jury chair Michele McNally, assistant managing editor for The New York Times, in a statement announcing the prize.

"It has the complexity and contradiction of real life, amidst chaos. This photograph makes you look beyond the obvious." A woman grimaces as she uses her mobile to send an SMS while another, wearing sunglasses covers her nose with a handkerchief.The photo's clutter and complexity set it apart from previous year winners, which tended to show individual, personal moments.

Platt's took this photo on Aug 15th'06, the first day of a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Platt had been up since 6 a.m. wandering the city with his translator,that day. In the late afternoon, as he was preparing to return to his hotel to file his images, he spotted something red and flashy out of the corner of his eye. He spun around and quickly shot five frames of the passing convertible and one of them turned out to be this picture.

For more information about the winners see here for details.

That's why all say, Life is a Paradox.

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