Santanu Chakrabarti

The ABP Group is a media conglomerate that has eleven premier publications, three 24-hour national TV news channels, two leading book publishing businesses as well as mobile and internet properties.  Touching the lives of millions of readers and viewers, daily. The present assignment was for the English daily The Telegraph. The story was about the career scope in the area of renewable energy. As the photographer on assignment I had to communicate with the scientists to arrange for the photo sessions.

The Telegraph tear sheet

The solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 was the longest one of this century and most of it was visible from India. On this occasion Globe and Mail published a story about how eclipses in Indian society traditionally are accompanied by a lot of superstition but science groups are trying to use this occasion to get people to engage with astronomy. In the story renowned eclipse chaser Mr. Debashish Bose was featured as a representative of this new India. As a photographer on assignment my responsibility was to arrange a day-long photo session with Mr. Bose and take photographs to accompany the story. The story was published on 20th July in Globe and Mail.

The Globe and Mail story

Although I am mostly self-taught in photography, I took part in a four months long intensive weekend workshop run by one of the renowned photographers from Kolkata, Mr. Madhu Sarkar, in the year 2005. In the workshop I was taught about theories of composition, artificial lighting techniques, still life shoots, model shoots and wet lab photography processes. Apart from that I keep brushing up concepts in Photography by reading books from The Focal Press, Kodak, The Fountain Press and the like. I also keep myself abreast of current concepts and techniques by reading available online resources like different blogs and ezines.

The Indian Science News Association was founded in 1935 by Professor Meghnad Saha and Acharya P.C. Ray with an objective to disseminate science news and to communicate ideas of Indian scientists and thinkers for public understanding of science and culture together. To meet this goal the Association has been publishing a journal Science and Culture from its inception. In addition it organises seminars, symposia, memorial and endowment lectures etc. Since 1983 ISNA is conducting a course of 10-12 weeks duration on Science Communication and Media Practice for young aspirants who want to be science communicators. The course strives to give the participants exposure to basic journalistic techniques, responsibilities of a science communicator and working principles of audio-visual media.

A technology intensive training that aims at developing a thorough knowledge of Computer Science and Information Networks. It imparts an indepth understanding of how computer technology can be applied to enhance the efficiency of different human efforts. One develops a vivid idea about the methodologies for effective and efficient collection, processing and dissemination of information/content using network technologies. In totality it prepares a participant to take up challenges in this modern digital era.