Dear you,
The last of these letters was a goodbye. This one is lighter, a morning of work that made me happy from beginning to end.
Some performances stay with you. Watching the first part of Sapta Sagaradaache Ello, Rukmini Vasanth’s did.
We had crossed paths before, through work. I have shot the posters for all of Hemanth Rao’s films so far, and Sapta Sagaradaache Ello was one of them, though my focus there was Rakshit Shetty, not her. After watching her in it, I wanted something else: to make photographs with her for no reason but the joy of it.
The shoot was built around one word: Flow. The moodboard and the plan all pointed the same way, to stop posing altogether and simply let her move. We set it for early morning, far from the city, at a location I had not been able to forget, and I put together a playlist to hold the mood and keep the flow going.
This flowing, unposed way was new to her. An actor’s days are all marks to hit and poses to hold, and I was asking for the opposite, to let the poses go and simply move to the music and the early light. She took to it completely. She aced it, and how.
She is warm and full of life. There is an honesty and earnestness to her, and a joy that spills onto everyone around her. She is a true collaborator, the kind of person who makes the work feel like no work at all. No wonder she has since gone on to act in some of the biggest films around, and every time I see her up there, it simply makes me happy.
These are from that morning. Shot by Akshay and me, assisted and edited by Prakash Bonal.
Yours truly, Sharath Padaru -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was the playlist for that morning. Press play, and let it flow.
