How would you feel if you woke up one day and realised that you had shrunk to about a million times your size? You would try to clamber up your girl’s small toe-nail, only to realise it’s more like trying to scale the Everest, and breakfast would be all about drifting on a cornflake in a milky sea. But before you start thinking of getting back to your world, do take a walk in your backyard, to discover a world you may have never noticed before. Colours and shapes which cannot be seen on any other day, a world where even an irritating mosquito is brimming with vivid colours.
Cletus Rebello, a city-based produc t photog rapher, has organised a macro photography exhibition at Chitrakala Parishath.
With a Nikon D80 and a 100 mm macro lens, he has put together a wonderful collection of frames which bring out the best from the insect world and their interaction with each other and nature.
Marvelous butterflies and caterpillars set against the intricate patterns of leaves and branches, linger on in your mind long after you leave. The compound eyes of the insects are something Cletus has focused on a lot. You have moths, dragonflies, ladybugs, wasps and ants among many sother unidentified insects in various poses in their environment.
Cletus believes that shooting insects is tougher than almost any other subject, be it birds and animals or street photography. Firstly, even with a lot of patience, you have to bear with the incredibly fast and unpredictable movements of the tiny creatures. Once that is sorted out, you have technical issues. One has to use a small aperture to get more detail, which spells trouble in low light conditions.
And when you have a large aperture, chances are you won’t be able to get much into focus.
But Cletus has managed to get through all obstacles to get down to the insect world and capture its intricacies as best he could. A few cropped wings here and there and the catchlights on glossy insects could be avoided though. Shot entirely in Bangalore and Goa, these slices from a mysterious and colourful world delivers what it set out to.