Even his near ones might not recognise him if you say its Yadukrishna R Menon, for he is better known as YKP an acronym for Yadukrishna Photography. Yadu loves to adorn this tag and considers it as a recognition for his talent.
For this final year Master's student of Commerce at the Sacred Heart College,Thevara, photography is not merely a hobby, but it is his passion. If you start talking to Yadu about photography, he will talk to you for hours, non-stop... Such is his love for the art form.
His friends believe that he possesses an inborn talent which may help him to succeed and earn fame in the field.
Every Heartian proudly owns atleast a single picture clicked by their YKP who specialises in portraits.
Yadu believes that through photography he is able to communicate to the world a lot of his thoughts which otherwise he was impossible to express. For him photography is an opportunity to freeze time and he enjoys being the timekeeper for others.
The best reward according to Yadu is the smile that appears on the face of the people when he hands them over their pictures. He admits that he secretly loves it when people irritate him asking for their photos he clicked.
Yadu started recognising his talent when he was in class eight. His father owned an old Yashica film camera. But he had access to it only when his father left for the office. His mother was his initial support. Finally, identifying his son’s craze Yadu’s father got him a Sony digital Camera. It all began from there. He got hold of his first Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera (DSLR) when he was in class twelve. From then Yadu never had to look back.
Yadu gets captivated by the poetry of nature and enthusiastically captures nature’s beauty in his frame. He is passionate about toy photography too. In this area, his favourites are teddy bears, lemon friends and toy cars. He says toy photography is not merely clicking pictures of some random toys using the phone camera but its about giving life to a photograph using suitable compositions in such a way that it speaks to the viewer. From colour, background and a lot more, each and every minute detail is important here he tells.
A photographer according to Yadu should have artistic skills and an ability to picturise all that he or she sees through his or her naked eyes.
While tracing the history of this art, Yadu says that photography has its limitations from the times when nine photographs could be clicked with a film roll, to the days when a roll supported 32.
Impact of digitalisation
With digitalisation the satisfaction levels have also changed. In olden days the artistic value of photography was definitely high but digitalisation has increased its commercial value too.
A real photographer can take a picture that really satisfies him or her only after clicking almost about a thousand pictures. For a real artist, Yadu believes digitalisation has only increased the labour, as now attention needs to given to a lot of aspects and that too in great detail. However, this has also given way to emergence of a new group of photographers who doesn’t respect the artistic elements of this skill and rather prefers to go on clicking. This trend has brought in a situation where photographers are charging unreasonably high prices and real talents don’t get their due respect..
With the coming of mobile cameras, everyone has become a photographer. But Yadu is of the opinion that mobile photography comes with lot of limitations. Though big mobile companies have started providing features to improve and enhance the photographic experience in mobile cameras Yadu considers them as possessing technical disabilities.
Full-fledged photography can never be experienced through mobile phones, he stresses.
Photography is art and commerce to Yadu. He believes that this artform has the greatest potential to give immense returns if promoted efficiently but he admits the fact that extensive commercialisation of photography is degrading its artistic value to some extent.
The success of a photographer these days, says Yadu, is much dependent on social media. May be 30 years after setting up one’s own studio was enough for a person to be recognised as an established photographer. But now things have much changed, and now the main idea is to create maximum reach for your work. This is facilitated through vlogging or platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp etc.
Contests help
Yadu who was the champion of photography competition at the Mahatma Gandhi University Youth festival in 2018 thinks that competitions should be conducted in such a way that aspiring photographers reflect their thought process through a photograph in a short span of time. Only such a person who is able to do this is a real artist, he believes.
Apart from photography, Yadukrishna loves to travel. Another craze of his is automobiles. He conducts constant trips where all his interests meet.
Yadukrishna R Menon greatest strength and pillars of support are his parents. They are the reason that he opens his wings and flies high. His friends too stand with him to see their dear YKP conquer heights.
Versatile artiste
Talking to Yadukrishna’s classmates 'versatile' is the word with which they would like to describe him. His exceptional language is what makes him stands out, they say. He is a talented singer too. He maintains his speciality even in the selection of the songs and comes up with unheard songs. His friends say that his exceptional skills get him a lot of female fan followers.
He creatively promotes his art through social media platforms. His skills ca be viewed in the Facebook page Yadukrishna Photography.
But he knows that cyberspace is not the safe place to exhibit artwork. Issues like plagiarism definitely threatens photographers too, he adds. Some tactful skills like placing the tags at right place can help to avoid such problems. He warns that while sharing women’s photographs one need to be extra careful as they may fall victim to cyberbullies who may misuse these photographs. Avoiding such troubles is the moral responsibility and skill of the camera from Yadukrishna’s point of view.
One of his friends rightly comments, may be Yadu is commercialising his talent as his field of study and the nature of the market demands, but the artistic value in each of his photography is definitely priceless.
