Bittersweet. Its that time of the year again, when i say goodbye to some friends. With Mihir leaving in April its finally Brian's turn to finally say goodbye to us.
Two years seem to have flown by, its all bittersweet...

Client feedback is always good

There are sooo many amazing photos from the wedding. You could have a different profile pic each day! Not to take away from how great everyone looked on their own, but your photographer has mad talent. He captured so many precious, fun moments!

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• 2 people like this.
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    Kulsum Merchant Hear that Mehak Sethi? Thank you Lisa! Wait until you see the "videos"!

    Monday at 21:07 ·  · 1
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    Mehak Sethi Yay I'll sleep better tonight

    Monday at 21:09 via Mobile ·  · 1
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    Kulsum Merchant Only after the edits, Mehak. Only after. :P

    Monday at 21:19 ·  · 1

Reflections from a big city

Its good to be in Bombay, i just love to hate this city and hate to love it, strange relationship it is.
Atleast its raining here. 

So where have I been?  My mind’s been away. Summer has that affect on me, my soul tends to hibernate while my mind and body are tortured by the relentless heat.

Every day I look to the skies and pray for rain, pray for the Sun to be a bit more merciful.

Anyways, rains are round the corner and I cant wait for them.

Hitting the road again for 15 days come Tuesday, Bombay, Pune and Hyd….. 

Just back from the mountains

In conversation with an auto rickshaw driver in bombay it struck me that it not this city that changes, but it's the people here that change all the time.... Food for thought maybe ?

So finally bought the 5D MkIII. Pretty excited about it.  Almost done with my Delhi leg of shooting, heading to Bombay tomorrow for 4 days, then back to Delhi on Thursday, off to Doon for a a day's shoot then off to Jaipur for 3 days....

A decent way to end a really long day...

Over the past few days I have much to my own displeasure discovered the joys of instagram, I don't know what to think of it still, too early to judge my own obsession, but it's fun nonetheless.
Anyways I am heading to Doon after a while, on a train, pity I am heading there only for a few hours. Back to delhi on the same train tonight

It's strange to think that I can't call the town I grew up in as home anymore, so much has changed, the streets feel alien. I feel alien in this once quaint town I called home

Home...

I hate goodbyes, just last night we bid farewell to a close friend for the last two years. He is heading back to the states for good.
The times spent watching the commonwealth games, driving drunk around town, cooking especially the nachos night... And lots lots more
Sigh great memories.

Just a sample from yesterday
http://instagr.am/p/JUzT_jqtCt/
Trying to recreate the Holga effect, without shooting on the Holga.

From the retric to the creative...
Used 3 iPhones with instagrams  to replace DSLR's for a day
Great pictures

So we have finally finished shooting the kids, LZ and i are now putting the book together and conducting interviews. I guess at some point will have to shoot the B roll but i guess thats only going to happen in Mid may.
I am off next week for 12 days, covering 3 events in 4 cities. Looking forward to it.

The joys having your personal trainer and physiotherapist- unparalleled !!!!

An evening fighting boredom
http://mehaksethi.com/?page_id=951

FINALLY HE GETS IT AND I BREAK DOWN, TEARS OF JOY

Cmon Sachin you are one run away, please get it!!

22 yards stands between Sachin and History!!

11.....

12 more runs, just 12 more....

Come March and suddenly this colorless pit they call Delhi is transformed. Bright red and orange semal flowers dot the horizon and honestly Delhi looks beautiful.
For two years i have been wanting to go out and shoot those flowers, but i was in US in 2010 and bed ridden in 2011.
However this year i managed to spend an evening, shooting them. I quite liked what i got.
Sharing the same here
http://mehaksethi.com/?page_id=933

Quit smoking v 20.1.2- 8 hours and counting.

Insomnia gets worse, so here i am sitting in my study at 4 am listening to Death cab for the cutie on repeat.

And yet again I cannot sleep , two days of decent sleep and I am back to sleepless nights.

Lying awake for hours can do wonders for one’s thought process, all those thoughts pushed aside and shoved under the carpet jump at you like a rattle snake.

Just the other day at a shoot, I realized that one of the kids we had photographed died of the cold. She was nine months old, poor and her parents were drug addicts. I don’t know what to think, a part of me wants to believe it’s the best that could have happened, a life where poverty is your only hope, is not worth living. But then again a part of me screams out and wants to hold EVERYONE responsible for her death accountable. She was fucking 9 months old, and she had a right to live didn’t she?

We can all live in our wee bubbles and not care a fuck, but for how long?

The other thing that hit me hard was when photographing another slum kid, we asked him whats the one thing he would really want, and in all his innocence, he replied, “ I get only one of cup of tea a day, I would be happiest if I got two!!”

And there I was cribbing about my Earl Grey just that morning, cribbing about how I would rather not drink Darjeeling or English Breakfast but only Earl fucking Grey.

It struck me hard to think that every time I sit on an edit, I drink copious amounts of Earl Grey, and then there was this child so deprived that his parents could’nt buy him two cups of tea a day, two mere cups of tea costing not more than 5 rupees.

Fuck this Shyte !!!!

The post below was penned back in 2006- nothing has changed since


Part VI- 
Sunday Night Torture
My greasy friend Insomnia

With insomnia nothing is real, reality is far away, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy... when you have insomnia you are never really asleep and never really awake… a surreal dance of unwanted existence... you float within a bubble of never ending dejavu…no matter what you do… its never new… its beautiful..
Empty football fields of stark nothingness…reflections from your present demean the presence of your past.
Lost in an oblivion, dark, silent and complete... somewhere you find freedom... yet losing all hope in that freedom wrapped around you…. You become addicted... every night you die and every night you are born again…resurrected…….

Right then, the insomnia is back, haven't slept in 3 days. Its 4 30 and i have a shoot in 3 hours, there is no point i even try sleeping now...

So i was chatting with James and Atif this evening, and its clear that i have to head back to Glasgow this year.

Its been 6 years and the Calling is loud and clear.

End of the year, i should be in Glasgow for a week

Right, so another earthquake struck Delhi this afternoon. damn i can't handle them. There i was sitting and eating lunch staring at some tulips in a vase, when all hell broke lose in my head.

Aright folks... after much deliberation, loss of sleep, arguments, et al. The website is up and running. ( a lot of final touches remain) Many thanks to Maria Philipose, Gaurav Swaroop and Richard Devlar.
www.mehaksethi.com

Nothing better than having a client walk out with tears of Joy.. Mission Accomplished !!!

Edit Over.. Finally a shower after 3 long days!!! Bloody brilliant

Also i need to change the way i edit. I just end up smoking way too much and drinking even more coffee.  
The eventual result is i end as a hyper active fuck by the end of every edit

Btw along the way finally bought the beast.

Phew, 7 days -9 shoots, totally knackered. Friday was exceptionally hectic, shot 19 hours non stop, at the end of which my hand felt like a bitch.
Now a week of edits. Atleast 12000 pictures to go through.
Fun times ahead

Finished a very tough edit last evening listening ( more like killing) The suburbs by arcade fire, Its was damn neat. Even shot this morning killing that song.

Now back on the editing table listening to Freshman, brings back a lot of memories

Arghhh... sometimes you just can't get your self to sit and edit, either the coffee is too hot, or the music is not right, your mind looks for excuses, just so you can't complete the task at hand.
Damnit

8 days, 6300 pictures later, i finally have time to breathe and work on my website.
Bloody pain
Also there is an edit from hell awaiting me

 Hello February.
Spending my evening with Pearl Jam and editing the conference i shot on Monday.

Also made a spoof on the same. Worth a laugh

http://vimeo.com/35949982

Life through Frames!!!

Poster for 2012, being used by Lawyers Collective

Rediscovered Judas Priest driving back home this evening. Sometimes a stuck CD can be a blessing in disguise. Freaking Bliss!!!
Guess have had an Od of Sufi music ever since the Metallica concert was cancelled. Time to jump right back into it.

So the film crew is here, and we start shooting at 7 am tomorrow. Its going to be a hectic few days.

I need to get cracking on my website. Like Really!!

13th January 2012- The day Indian Cricket committed Suicide-
RIP

Have made huge strides the past week towards building my studio, finally purchased lights, light boxes, octave boxes, reflectors, back drops et al.
The only thing left is breaking the wall between the study and the living room, hopefully it will be all done by Mid Feb.

Bubble Wrap for the Fragile

Obviously, the homeless are a fragile lot, a fact which the Government of Delhi understands so well that just before the winter freeze set in, the Government decided to distribute bubble wraps instead of blankets to the homeless in Delhi.

Historically bubble wrap has been used to wrap fragile goods amongst other things (now the homeless) but wrapping the poor and homeless in bubble wraps was definitely a stroke of genius.

‘Ingenious ‘I am sure were the words that did the rounds in the Ministry, some one surely was also promoted and was even given a year’s bonus for his/her master class decision. Obviously bubble wrap was a wise economic decision, costing just 25 per sheet, it did save the government a lot of money.

The government justifying its stance claimed that the handing out the blankets was of no use as the poor drug addicts sold the said blankets for money, this coming from a government which very recently informed the Apex Court that “ we have closed down a lot of shelters in Delhi as there aren’t too many takers’?” A government that obviously lives in a wee bubble, wherein not only are there no homeless in Delhi, but also they definitely need no shelter!!

One just has to leave the confines of their comfortable homes and step out to see the plight of the homeless, people living by garbage disposal units burning garbage to keep them warm, inhaling fumes worse than those released from the confines of the Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal.

The homeless, yes! Are a fragile lot but they need shelters and blankets instead of bubble wraps, they need a sensitive government, not one that blatantly rapes its citizens to fill its coffers.

It was in December when we were shooting in Old Delhi, near Jama Masjid that LZ and i spotted this boy with crazy blue eyes on a cycle rickshaw. We both were awestruck by his face and his eyes.  We both wanted to shoot him, but couldn't coz we were in our car and stuck in a jam.
As time passéd that moment was forgotten, till yesterday, we chanced upon the boy again. LZ did shoot him yesterday through the box camera,  but i need to go back there and shoot him.

 A  cold yet lazy Sunday being spent in my study.
Working with LZ on a Canadian documentary on homeless children in Delhi, and its heart wrenching.
The actual shoot is mid jan but we have been spending the past few days meeting NGO's and visiting shelters. Honestly its really really sad to see the plight of the poor and homeless in Delhi.
Came back from my shoot last evening and broke down.

Also manage to shoot the ' Hands that shape the World' Version 2011
A Series of 4 shots.

Star Trails.

Pointing North

So i am finally back, a week in the forests of Naurangiya and decently refreshed i am back to reality.

To be honest its been a good trip. Even though i partially shot star strails i am a wee bit disappointed with the results.
I have no one but me to blame ( lets not discount the dew). Even though i knew dew would be a factor, i did believe i could counter the same. But then again nature is much stronger than a man's will and i was beaten hands down.
The result i could never expose the sensor for more than 24 mins.
And the only time i did (65mins) the dew destroyed the exposure.
Shall post some pictures soon enough