Meetup (Workshop) at The Frank Anthony Public School

This was my third school visit after St. Pauls’ Mission School and Pratt Memorial School. People who know me, knows I have many young friends and how they light my life. I enjoy being with them.

It was the fourth “Meetup” I conducted. I shall write about this in my blog. This episode of my life is special. I was invited to conduct a workshop in The Frank Anthony Public School in the capacity of a“Photographer – blogger”. Earlier I spoke to young people as either a photographer or as a blogger.

The photography club of the school which is yet not established, the workshop was its first event and was attended by 73 people from class 5 to class 11. Now that I know how classes 9 to 12 behave, I was worried how to present myself in front of extreme young people. But trust me, 8-9 students of class 5 – 8 were so good and responded/interacted so well.

For the first time, I made a power point presentation to explain the points. I kept a separate module for social media behaviour. I stressed on few points of community learning, sharing whatever little we learn. I asked them to connect to photographers from Kolkata or people whom they can approach to take help from.

Special thanks to Arghya. He is a class 9 student of Calcutta Boys’ School. Of the “approachable” people I mentioned in the presentation, I mentioned Soumya Shankar Ghoshal, Subinoy Das and Lopamudra Talukdar. I thank them for allowing me to use 2 photographs from their collection. I am not sharing the presentation here as I believe the time is not ripe for this. May be sometime later.
I feel blessed. Looking forward to more school visits, (if they invite me.).

Sharing Arghya Roy’s experience.

I have attended many workshops. But never became a kind of a mentor of a workshop. I didn’t even know what it was to be a mentor. When I went to Frank Anthony Public School today in the morning, I still thought myself to be a student who was attending a workshop. To be honest, I was a bit shy at first, but I started to open up as soon as Anirban da introduced me to the students. This was actually the first time that I was interacting with so many people and it felt good. I mean it felt REALLY good. It made me feel happy when I helped them with their problems. And something that I honestly learned was that, I should start making better ppt’s, and the more I help someone the more knowledge I’ll gain.
I will obviously try to stay connected with them and help them whenever in the future with whatever little knowledge I have in photography…. I also got some good response about my helping styles….and I am really happy about it…
I thank Anirban Da for making me comfortable in interacting with people, making me and my work a bit famous and again for the experience.

Tejas Chandak (Class 10) was one of the first to update his status. Sharing it with you:

Attended my first MEETUP/Workshop with Anirban Da.
A great guy, down to earth, brings the element of fun in learning and above all a very approachable person. Helped me learn a lot about the science behind the lens. Skills were developed. New concepts were built. All in all, an enlightening experience!
Looking forward to more of these learning sessions. But after my ICSE examinations.
Indeed, the motto of this workshop is very apt.
Enjoyed. Learnt. Shot.

Siddhartha Ghosh (the president of the newly formed club) writes for this blog,

70 odd students, despite all barriers, which includes the junior sports and the tension of the upcoming examinations made it to the school for the first photography workshop to have ever been held in school. Nothing stopped these enthusiastic students. And this enthusiasm was there till the very end of this MEETUP.
The difference between a teacher and a scholar is that a teacher is approachable, which is apparently the virtue people look for. Interacting with the audience the very moment he got onto to the stage, Anirban Saha had cleared the air the very first time someone called him “sir”. He said “Please don’t call me sir. Call me Dada / Bhaiya / Da (elder brother)”.
With him he had Arghya Roy, a student of Calcutta Boy’s School.
He started off with the very basic question “Why do you click photos?”. The unique thing about this workshop was that the students who turned up for it were from the classes’ five to ten. I personally cannot imagine taking up photography at the age of 10 (class five) and there in front of me were kids who not only turned up for it, but were actively interacting with Dada.
The workshop was probably the best thing we (the founders of the club) could have possibly organised for the club. The feedback was humongous.
A number of students contacted me on Facebook and whatsapp asking about future workshops and telling me how they had enjoyed themselves. A number of new people wanted to join. That is the charisma Anirban Saha has. As the president of this club I look forward to many such workshops with Dada. We are also looking forward to a photo walk somewhere in the month April. This club looks forward to a lot of interaction with him and the kind of person that he is, we know he will always make time for such future endeavours.