Karan Chadda

August 4, 2013

It’s all a blur

One year on from the wonderful 2012 Olympics, London is hosting its anniversary games. In a bid to build a lasting legacy, events are being re-run and, as hoped for by organisers and sponsors, capturing the public’s imagination.

Last year, I posted some snaps of the men’s road race. I was reasonably happy with the outcome but one thought lingered: clear, fully-focused images of cyclists speeding by might capture what happened, but they don’t capture the moment. The camera captures events with a level of detail that people do not. For us, everything whizzes by in a blur.

So this year, I was determined to try and capture the moment and not the facts. I staked out a place on a simple, straight stretch of road conveniently located right by The Angel.

Having found a comfortable spot, I decided the best way to capture the sheer speed of the cyclists was to use blur. The technique is simple in theory and hard in practice. Essentially, all you need to do is move your camera at the same speed as your subject. Obviously, panning a camera lens at the same speed as a cyclist is tricky and you only get one shot.

Fortunately, the amateurs went first – they’re not that fast and there are loads of them so plenty of opportunities to get my eye in before the pros arrived.

This image of a competitor, who’s not going super-fast, was an early attempt to get the effect I was after.

Trying to use the same effect with multiple cyclists was a bit more tricky – they’re travelling at different speeds so only one can really be in focus. Also, the panning appears to warp straight lines a touch (see the road markings).

A while later, having crossed the road (and after a drink or two), the pros came. Preceded by police outriders and heralded by a helicopter, they flew past in the blink of an eye. This is one of the early riders who was ahead of the pack but not leading. It is my most technically accomplished image of the day (make of that what you will).

Then it got a lot more tricky. When the main group hove into view, I’d set myself the task of picking out one rider and getting them in focus. I opted to capture a Team Sky rider. All technique went out of the window. Nothing was straight, everything was blurred, including most of the Team Sky cyclist. This shot has been cropped and had some dust spots cloned out but is otherwise unedited. For me it really does capture the moment, and the amazing speed and the determination of the riders.

This article was also published here on Medium.

August 3, 2013

Values are the only constant in a world of permanent beta

I’ve been reading The End of Competitive Advantage, a provocatively titled book by Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School. It’s ideas should inspire anyone involved in marketing and communications.

The central idea is that companies can no longer depend on finding and locking-in a sustainable position of competitive advantage, so they have to move from opportunity to opportunity, constantly developing, always looking to enter and exit markets.

What on earth has that got to do with marketing and communications? Well, the transience of products and services and the need to shift resources and people around makes a company’s values and brand central to its success.

Well performing companies will be those whose values are strong and embedded within both their culture and practices. Reputation and brand, two sides of the same coin, also become more important. A strong reputation and strong brand are needed to help companies shift into new sectors and move out of declining sectors.

In my view, the killer insight is: if a company’s products and services become transient, then the real constants in its history, and its future, are values, brand and reputation.

If you work in a marcomms discipline, think about that for a moment. What you do is the constant. Your role is to maintain the golden thread that runs through the company. You build brand equity, champion values and protect reputation because those are the assets that will outlast the current product range or even the sector you operate in.

This article was originally published here on Medium.

July 6, 2013

Lions Tour Awards

Every tour should have an awards ceremony to celebrate the highs and lows. These are the awards I would give:

Player of the tour: Leigh Halfpenny
A point kicking machine and safe pair of hands at the back of the field. No player came close to him.

The difference maker: Will Genia
When he played well, Australia played well. When he was quiet, so were his team.

The unstoppable force: George North
A beast of a man who threw himself about, often with his opposite number on his shoulders.

The immovable object: Adam Jones
Locked in the Lions scrum in the third test and still one of the best tight heads in the game.

Best sidestep: James Horwill
Beautifully sidestepped not one judicial panel but two. A memorable feat. Unlikely to be matched any time soon.

Biggest hit: Warren Gatland
Smashed O’Driscoll out of the final test ruthlessly. Vindicated by the result, but the thump still echoes around the rugby world.

June 24, 2013

There is a house in Old Town Prague

I was very fortunate to be in Prague over the weekend and even more fortunate to find myself with some time to myself. It’s a beautiful city and a wonderful place to wander around, to reflect and find little details that make you think.

Only a few minutes from the high-end stores on Pařížská Street, down a little side road you’d only walk down if you were visiting someone who lived there, was a house that really did make me think.

: The house in Old Town Prague

I only noticed it out of the corner of my eye, but its elaborate and decaying front door grabbed my attention. I had to take a closer look.

: The door up close

The door, flaking, warped and studded with iron is beautiful. Although run down, it’s still imposing. It feels strong. How old could it be?

: The plaque

Slightly to the right of the door, sitting worn away in the crumbling façade is an iron plaque. I don’t know what the words say, but the number 1890 is clear. Could this building with its beautiful door have lived through world wars, Communism and revolutions? What must it have witnessed?

: Crumbling plaster and roughly cut stone

The crumbling plaster on the exterior of the building has exposed the brickwork underneath. The bricks appear to be roughly cut stone. They’re uneven, crumbling. There’s a warmth to their colour. Like many of the buildings in Prague, the plaster is made to look like stone. So an old house, built of cheaper stone, plastered to look like fine stone and with a grand front door. What is it like on the inside?

Well, this is where it gets really interesting. Walking down the side of the house, past more crumbling plaster, I looked through a window with rusting iron bars and smashed-through glass and a decaying frame. What did I see? I saw a room with a lovely, arching ceiling and I saw another window directly opposite. An open window, that appears to have glass in it. And through that window, a luscious, green courtyard of some sort. Is this a building decaying only on the outside? Is it the garden of a neighbouring property? How did this fine building come to be in this state?

: Through the window

This house inspires so many stories in my head. It really makes me think. I know nothing more about this building, but I do know this: there is a house in Old Town Prague, it has many stories to tell and I wish I knew them.

This post was also published here on Medium.

June 11, 2013

Great expectations

There has been no shortage of landmark moments recently at Apple. In the past couple of years they have lost their talismanic leader, launched the (very poor at the time) Apple Maps, become the most valuable company in the world and have subsequently lost a third of that value. One thing they haven’t done though, is change the world.

We’ve all become used to a new iPhone being launched once or twice a year. We’ve been conditioned to expect a rolling six-month cycle of product upgrades, new features and, occasionally, a whole new, category-defining product.

However, after three years without launching a new product (iPad mini doesn’t count), people have become impatient. Apple watchers trawl through patent applications trying to guess what the engineers at Cupertino will come up with next. Others simply declare that Apple is no longer innovative.

Tim Cook needs a game changer

The oft-rumoured Apple TV set is still nowhere in sight. Talk of an iWatch seems to be the driven by little more than fanboy and fangirl dreams of what Apple could do to improve the Pebble. Meanwhile Google has stolen a march with Glass. It is becoming tech media consensus that Google is now the most innovative company around, some even say Google has the best designers.

All this puts into context the importance of yesterday’s Apple developer conference. Tim Cook needs a game changer, he needs an iPod, iPhone or iPad equivalent. And he needs it yesterday.

So what did we get? We got a very thorough, thoughtful redesign of an operating system. From colour palette to logic, iOS7 at first glance seems a very well designed upgrade. Crucially, it signals a new design direction.

Under the guidance of design-lead Jony Ive, Apple’s software design is becoming as simple as its hardware. We also saw the launch of a completely redesigned Mac Pro, out with the old clunky box and in with a new, much leaner cylinder.

Simplicity is the new watchword. And everyone knows that creating things that are simple to understand and simple to use takes time.

Expectations had clearly become so great that Apple could no longer deliver; no company could. When this happens, brands tend to falter, some brands fail entirely and collapse. Despite the conjecture about their ability to innovate, one thing Apple clearly has not lost is its confidence.

Tim Cook and Jony Ive have seemingly set out a new strategy. Apple is backing away from the tech trend of having products in perpetual beta that are continually updated. The pace of product launches will slow but development will not. Each new product is likely to see a thorough reworking, not just a better camera or faster chip. Yesterday Apple took the first step in resetting our expectations.

This article originally appeared here on the Huffington Post.