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Thanks to his image entitled ‘Half-Moon Terminator’ the 14-year-old’s award-winning effort taken from a rooftop in Umm Al Hassam has resulted in him being selected as one of the ‘50 favourite’ Canon photographers from around the world.
His celebrated photograph also won him ‘Young Astronomy Photographer 2010 – highly-commended’ in an international competition run by Royal Observatory, Greenwich and BBC Sky at Night magazine from London.
The picture has been published in this month’s special 50th edition of camera-maker Canon’s magazine PhotoPlus.
Carly Drew, staff writer at PhotoPlus, wrote in an email that although Jathin’s father and ace photographer, Premjith Narayanan’s photographs were also shortlisted, only Jathin’s was selected. She said: “The first of Jathin’s images that we looked at were his Formula One shots, so that was our initial choice, but having had a look at your website, we were presented with so many more options!
“As his moon shot had won an award and there was such a great story behind it, there really was no question that it had to go in.”
The moon was back on his mind too for the recent total lunar eclipse which had photographers across the island grabbing their cameras to capture images. The young photographer who is a Class 10 student at Asian School, Umm Al Hassam, attempted to capture the different facets of the moon during the event. This time he used a professional SLR camera that was mounted on an eight-inch Reflective Telescope manufactured by Celestron with an inbuilt GPS.
Sharing an exclusive photograph he captured during 100-minutes of skyward study, Jathin said: “This photo was taken through the telescope 10 minutes before the end of the eclipse. In this case the shadow was moving from left to right and that is the reason it is more illuminated on the left as it is nearing the border of the dark shadow.”
Guiding him in his work was his father Premjith, general manager of Alstom Middle East. He said: “It was just like the car rallies with combined driving by the driver and the navigator. Jathin in this case was the driver and I was simply giving him information from the laptop.
“So, it wasn’t just photography involved here ... it was a combination of many activities. A lot of knowledge about the eclipse is important. Related books and software are of great help. It helps you make your plans and be prepared confidently.
“In this totality period when the moon is dark, it occults (when one object is hidden by another object that passes between it and the observer) many stars which are located light years away. It’s a challenge to take the occultation photos as you need to give the correct exposures to get both the celestial objects clearly.
“As the telescope is tracking only the moon and not the star and there is relative movement of both the objects and in a short period you have to decide the correct camera exposures and get the right image. Jathin has managed to get some nice shots.”
Premjith is a passionate photographer who takes every opportunity he gets to concentrate on travel photography.
Among his latest achievements is the publication of his image - ‘Pelican in flight’, shot in Kenya, in last month’s edition of PhotoPlus under the category ‘Inspirations’ and entitled ‘Great Canon Photographers in Action’.
He said: “It’s an honour to be put in the same platform as professionals from around the world.”
The snap happy father-son duo is also in the process of launching their own site www.premjithnarayanan.com which will feature more than 3,000 of their photographs.
