THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION
The Photographic Society of St. Stephen’s College, founded in 1949, is one of Delhi’s oldest photographic societies. Led by a group of passionate photographers, our aim has been to encourage the art of photography in the college community. Through diverse events, including photo-talks, photo-walks, and inter and intra-collegiate collaborations and competitions, we hope to broaden the scope of photography. Our alums include prominent photographers like Aditya Arya, Ram Rahman and Sanjeev Saith.

Under the aegis of our fests, such as Frames and Breaking Frames, varied national-level competitions are carried out. The motto of our society, ‘Keeping College in a Frame since 1949’ succinctly captures the role we play in covering programs organized by both academic and cultural societies as well as the St. Stephen’s Center for Advanced Learning (SCAL) and the Center for International Relations here on the college campus. Our team is also involved in the yearly compilation and publication of the official college calendar, which is sold to current students and alums alike.

With an executive council comprising 30 members from various years and courses, we organize ourselves in multiple verticals, such as the event-covering team, the publicity team, the sponsorship team, and the website team, to ensure the smooth functioning of our society. The academic year 2022-23 has been a busy year for us at the society, the details of which will be elucidated further in the paragraphs below.

EVENTS 2022-23
We started the academic session by wrapping up our annual fest, Frames (April 2022), and a three-month-long photo-covering for the St. Stephen’s Young Leaders Neigbourhood-First Fellowship Program (YLNF), offered by SCAL. With the newly formed council, we introduced various photo-related interactive games on our social media platforms, such as ‘Captured It, Caption it’ and ‘Photo-Wordle.’ Our short Instagram guide on photography was well-received by students on the occasion of World Photography Day (August 19). An intra-college treasure hunt competition saw current students sprinting around the campus in an effort to get the prize of free college calendars! We also continued conducting monthly photo competitions under Photo of the Month (POTM). This is an intra-college competition where students are encouraged to submit submissions on themes like Shadow Art, Old Age and Picception. The POTM team then announces the winners of the Judges’ Choice and the People’s Choice monthly.

Our team of photographers was also delighted to collaborate with the Fashion Society of Miranda House, Fashion Crew, to present a street-style fashion photoshoot captured at the picturesque Lodhi Art District in September. With the start of October, the council geared up for the commencement of our mini-fest, Breaking Frames (BF), which is usually conducted in the odd semester. This time, we had Photo-Project (a photo-story competition) and Minimalist Photography as our pre-event online competitions, with cash prizes of over five thousand in store for the winners. Both these national-level collegiate competitions were evaluated by a panel comprising renowned photographers such as Abdul Momin and Hans Kritzler. As a part of BF, a Halloween-themed photo shoot for current students saw good participation. Following this, we successfully organized an offline Onspot Photography competition, a PhotoTalk by eminent photographer Arpit Tyagi, and a lovely PhotoWalk to Yamuna Ghat on October 7th, 8th and 10th. We are also delighted to collaborate with Vastram, the fashion society of SGTB College, for a vintage photoshoot on the college campus.

The beginning of November saw team members engaged in researching and compiling photographs for the Official College Calendar 2023. The theme for the calendar was chosen to be ‘Ad Meliora,’ a Latin word that means ‘toward better things. Our work in the library archives was rewarded when we came upon iconic photographs of college and its events from 1881 onwards, many of which were duly incorporated into the calendar. With sales of 400+ calendars, the Calendar team efficiently worked to collect, parcel and post copies of the calendar to students and alums all over India. Alongside, the arrival of the new batch of first years was marked by organizing a Fresher’s exhibition for them, wherein their submissions were exhibited on the SCR lawns. Our team also engaged with the alums who had visited the college for the alum reunion events in the early weeks of December.

As part of our effort to teach the college community about photography, we conducted two photo classes, both led by current junior members, in September 2022 and January 2023, respectively. Here, the technical working of a DSLR, along with analyzing the works of famous photographers such as Raghunath Rai, was carried out. Moreover, we also carried out a distribution of photobooks authored by well-known photojournalist Gauri Gill.

Amidst all this, there was quite the hustle-bustle in the event-covering team as they were involved in photo-covering for various society and administration-organized events in college. In this academic session, we have covered over 70+ events of the 30+ college societies. Moreover, this semester, we are seeing more first-years participating in event-covering alongside second and third-year mentors. We also covered the various workshops and programs conducted by SCAL. The Founder’s Day event, the celebratory program on 100 years of Allnutt Residences, and the faculty lunches are instances of college activities that were also photographed by our team. The highlight in January was the invitation offered by Dr. Ajay Dua, a retired civil services officer and one of our sponsors to cover the Golfing Tournament 2023 and celebratory dinner organized by The St. Stephen’s Golfing Fraternity on 20th January at the Delhi Golf Club and the Taj Palace.

As we come to the end of January and look forward to February, we are working on releasing our society merch and have various collaborations lined up with The Environmental Society, The Fine Arts Society and The Yearbook Team. March will see the start of our annual fest, Frames 2023, where we host a wide range of competitions and talks to encourage more students to appreciate and learn photography.

Thank you

COUNCIL 2022-23:

President – Cyril Binoy (B.Sc.(Hons) Mathematics III)
Vice President – Joanna Philip (B.A.(Hons) English III)
General Secretary – Joel John (B.Sc.Programme III)
Frames Convenor – Samuel Decastro (B.Sc.Programme III)
Calendar Head – Gregory Joseph (B.Sc.Programme III)
Head of External Affairs – Unnati Singh (B.A.Hons English III)

Treasurer – Jerome Shijo (B.Sc.(Hons) Mathematics II)
Joint Secretary – Nickson Yesudass (B.Sc.Programme II)

Executive Council Members
Carolyn R Antony – (B.Sc.(Hons) Mathematics II)
Debangana Gogoi – (B.Sc.(Hons) Chemistry II)
H M Shrimukh – (B.Sc.(Hons) Mathematics II)
Merin M Thomas – (B.Sc.Programme II)
Riya Gabriel – (B.A.(Hons) History II)
Sujai Kerketta – (B.Sc.Programme II)
Vincent A Jacob – (B.Sc.Programme II)