From Feb 4-8, 2015, we conducted a photography exhibition at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, Bangalore. It was an extremely well received collective exhibition of 80+ brilliant photographs by 40+ talented participants who travelled with Darter on photography tours. Here is a quick glimpse of the exhibition highlights.
Photography Exhibition – The Purpose
The exhibition served two important purposes.
- To showcase the amazing work created by photography enthusiasts who have travelled with Darter Photography on our photography tours in the last four years, and to bring out this talent to a wider audience.
- To establish Darter Photography Grant – a unique grant to fund any photography related projects that have a promising outcome but are short on resources to complete the endeavour.
If you couldn’t make it to the exhibition from Feb 4-8, but wished to buy a print, they are still available for purchase. Visit WANDERLUST Photography Exhibition for details.
Before the exhibition – planning and execution
We invited 1000+ photography enthusiasts to submit their images made during Darter’s Photography Tours. In response, we were inundated with beautiful images created from every corner of India and abroad. It was a tough exercise to shortlist a selection to be displayed in the limited space available. In the end, we had more than 80 images, each one of them unique, representing a sense of WANDERLUST – A strong desire to travel and explore the world.
Once we had the images ready, the next task was to work closely with our printers until we ensured that every shade of colours and exposure was presented to perfection in the prints. On the third day of February 2015, the evening before the exhibition, we had those beautiful frames delivered at the venue and we started putting them up on the wall. The excitement in the team wasn’t easy to hide.
Exhibition days – thousands of visitors in five days
We started with a bang at 3pm on Wednesday, February 4, 2015. The exhibition was inaugurated by Sri. IM Vittala Murthy, IAS (Retd). He lit the lamp and briefly addressed a crowd that had already gathered for the first look at the images. We began with an excellent turnout with barely a moment of breather for rest of the day.
On Thursday and Friday (5th and 6th February), people kept coming in continuously, all the while filling in our visitors book with accolades and admiration.
Until now, we were confident of the impeccable quality of the work exhibited, but naturally there were palpitations about how visitors would receive it. A look at the amazing response and comments on the visitors book was enough to boost our confidence. Here is what people said about the exhibition in the first few days.
Extremely interesting and impressive photographs. – Sri. IM Vittala Murthy
Wonderful, mindblowing, tasteful photography. Felt good to watch.
– Arun Kumar M B
Excellent collection. – Dr. Sachin S
Gorgeous photos. Very glad to have visited – Deborah J
The arrivals reached its peak once the weekend began. From Saturday morning till evening, we barely had a minute of free time as people started walking-in in very large numbers. At any point in time all through the two days, we had scores of visitors peering through the images and appreciating them.
We also had several photography-related talks scheduled throughout the weekend, which were all oversubscribed and had standing crowds listening to the speakers.
- On Saturday morning, Pratap J, a master in post-processing and our mentor for post-processing workshops, talked about simple tips & tricks to enhance the images to bring out the final dazzling look to the photographs.
- On Saturday afternoon, our travel photographer Arun Bhat spoke about a unique concept called ‘Conscious Compositions‘. This was not only attended by many photography enthusiasts, but also from veteran photographers from the press.
- On Sunday, Adarsh J Raju spoke about his experiences in travelling to the uncharted locations in Papua New Guinea to see and photograph exotic birds including birds of paradise.
On both these days we had more than a thousand people coming in each day. Once again, the comments in the visitors’ book humbled us with their wholehearted appreciation. The five days of the exhibition was indeed a resounding success.
Next Steps – Darter Photography Grant
Very soon, we will be announcing the details of the Darter Photography Grant. We will be inviting applications from photographers for this grant for executing photography-projects that have a promising outcome. Await this space for more details.
What after the exhibition?
With the grand success of this exhibition, we hope to make WANDERLUST an annual event. In January/February 2016, we intend to come back with another exhibition, which we hope will be an even bigger event. With all this success and accolades comes an expectation that we have to live with, and we hope to do so.
For those who haven’t been able to physically visit the exhibition, worry not! The images are now available online for your viewing pleasure as well as for purchase. When you buy an image to decorate your wall, a share of the sale will go towards Darter Photography Grant.
Thank You!
This exhibition is a result of teamwork. A large number of people were involved in making this happen. We thank Sri.IM Vittala Murthy for being there as an encouragement and inaugurating the exhibition. We thank the contributing photographers for being with us all the time, encouraging us throughout the stages of the exhibition and submitting this extraordinary set of images. We are grateful to all travellers and photography enthusiasts who have travelled with Darter Photography over the past four years, whose creative works, participation and encouragement has made this possible. We thank every visitor for being there and appreciating our work and encouraging us during the exhibition. Several of you not only visited the exhibition, but went home and asked your friends and relatives to come and visit; we can’t be more grateful for this encouragement.
We thank many people involved in the entire process, including Honeycomb for creating beautiful prints, Chitrakala Parishath for the excellent venue facilities, Flower Grafic for the creatives, Building Bridges Communication for media communication, Megha Vision for the media hardware and Terton Photo for at-venue photography and all-round support.