Guess who is on the cover of the latest Outlook magazine!

The answer to the above question is easily guessable since I am making it so obvious. :p Yes, it is ME! Well, not solo, but still. The article was about “Twitter’s real stars” – basically about people who are not real life celebrities but have a huge following/popularity on twitter. It has quotes from a lot of usual suspects 🙂 and then a list of various ID’s that can be followed for various topics. This was the cover story in this edition, so they got their photographers to take images of some of the people to be put up on the cover.

Since my twitter id is @twilightfairy, they wanted me to wear a gown & wings, hold a wand etc and basically portray the id. I wasn’t so sure of the idea and initially I vetoed it completely and told them that I would rather have them take a simple picture because a “fantasy” shoot with such props would need a proper make up artist and stylist etc who would be able to make sure that it all comes together beautifully. Since I would be in front of the camera and not behind it in this case, I would have no idea what’s going on. There was also the problem of props. They were supposed to get the other props but they couldn’t have done so for the gown bit .. it had to be something long and flowy to give that feeling. Eventually with no time left and no options left either, I decided to use the next best option. I washed my hair, conditioned it, disentangled it, combed it, serum-ed it and what not in order to be spread around me, the length not being an issue 😀 The other thing I did was – put on some eye makeup (read blue kohl & black liner) and I was good to go. The photographer Narendra Bisht & I had had a discussion about the shoot and the obvious conclusion was that it should be some time in the evening which gives that “twilight” feel (For the record my id has nothing to do with the vampire series – it is all about that time of day). It had to be a green sort of place with lot of trees and the best location for that was Leisure Valley park in Sec 29, Gurgaon.

off for a shoot. in front of the camera this time. fotu to appear soon in a mag :p
@twilightfairy

So we turned up there. I found a nice “jhurmut” (pic above) at Leisure valley park and we decided “this was it”. There was no wand but Narendra had managed to get the wings from some place in Chandni Chowk after much research. All the ones he initially found had been very tiny in size (meant for school girls). Then he found this shop that had theatre costumes and stuff. Back to action. Wore the wings. Felt a bit silly. Spread the hair around self & then the toughest part – followed the directions of “another” photographer :p. But it was good that he was open minded, had some shots in mind & took some suggestions. I saw the shots in between, saw what worked, what didn’t and tweaked it. During all this while, obviously The Great Indian Tamasha had launched itself in our background with people watching & commenting. It was most disconcerting, but I just shut them out. In some cases when guys would walk by too close staring with their neck twisting at 180 degrees, I had to be brusque with them & asked them to move on with their business. One of them walked into a tree during a similar pursuit and much hilarity ensued. Eventually our audience got bored and left. Plus it was getting dark. During the time I was supposed to hold my phone in my hands and take some shots, I quickly tweeted

Shoot in progress. Some nincompoops watching. Good hair day becoming bad hair day
@twilightfairy

Cutting to the chase, here’s the Outlook Cover and you can read the article here. I have 3 images in the magazine overall (which I’ll probably add later separately after getting them from the photographer). One on the cover, one on the index page (which talks abt the cover story) and one in the cover story. Triple bonanza :D. Here’s an excerpt.

Blogging also helped Priyanka Sachar @twilightfairy increase her tweet-worth. Priyanka passed up eleven-and-a-half years as a computer engineer to become a fine art wedding photographer, and regularly tweets links to her work. She hardly blogs now, having “lost patience with lengthy posts”, and can’t say enough about the mercurial nature of Twitter, though her strike rate of 70-plus tweets on a good day says enough.

Though I have been on the cover of Telegraph India’s “Graphiti” mag also, as part of a wedding photographers cover story with 2 others, this was an entirely different thing altogether. Outlook mag is a bigger deal :).

Next in line – hopefully a cover image shot by me.