In this episode, Rajeev sits down with Vasuchandran, known online as "Snap Thrash." He brings one of the most eclectic backgrounds to the show, bridging the gap between Indian classical music, global heavy metal tours, independent forex trading, and a deeply-rooted passion for film photography. From his childhood roots in Kerala to capturing street frames in Japan and Austria, Vasuchandran shares his artistic philosophy on why the slow, deliberate process of analog film brings him a unique sense of value that digital simply cannot replicate.
Musical Heritage and Other Influences
Trained for over a decade as an Indian classical vocalist in Kerala, Vasuchandran details his unexpected, slow-burning transition into rock and heavy metal during his college years, ultimately leading to the creation of his thrash metal band, Amorphia.
From international classic rock and German metal bands like the Scorpions and Pantera (specifically guitarist Dimebag Darrell) to local Kerala legends Motherjane, he shares what drives his musical style.
Influenced early on by his father, a college principal who experimented with film cameras, Vasuchandran learned photography not from a rigid technical or compositional standpoint, but as an intuitive exploration of light, viewfinders, and angles.
Embracing the "Slow Process":
Unlike the instant gratification of digital cameras, Vasuchandran loves the delayed rewards of film. He explains how manual gear, calculating lighting via the Sunny 16 Rule, and waiting weeks for lab results forces him to truly understand the symbiotic relationship between lenses and light.
For me. I still remember like the back in the days that the cameras had no LCD screen like that. We we, we don’t know what we are going to get after shooting it because we can see a lot of dials here, like a aperture value, shutter speed. We don’t know what we are doing it back in the day, but back in the day we had the automatic aperture priority, shutter priority cameras and stuff that we shoot. We get the result only after maybe a couple of weeks that we see, oh, this photo looks really nice. So for me, it’s kind of a process.
Vasu’s Gear & Analog Toolkit
Yashica Electro 35 (1960s): An aperture-priority vintage camera he relies on strictly for intuitive street photography.
Canon AE-1 (1980s): His go-to manual setup for landscapes and object photography.
Favorite Film Stocks: Kodak Gold (200 ISO), Kodak Ultra Max (400 ISO), Kodak Ektachrome (Positive/Slide film), and Harman Red (Redscale film).
Light Metering: Uses a combination of the physical camera, the Light Meter mobile app, and the Sunny 16 Rule.
"You're one of the most unusual, different guests that I've had so far... a very unusual background and it's super interesting to see someone like you really flourish." — Rajeev
