Let’s talk about the Indian fashion & advertising photographer Tejal Patni. As a master photographer, this artist creates drama, theater and beauty with every click – as clearly showcased with his award-winning Splash calendars that was hailed as among the best in the world.
His pictures are staged worlds full of humor and fancy imagination, stylized, colorful, other worldly, based on comics and science fiction, styled professional, fascinating and young. And they are connected with fashion and marketing, and so this photographer can make a living where other artists stay probable poor since their art is not feeding them.
Tejal Patni is a fortune for our insatiable, image-hungry eyes.
Photography by Tejal Patni
The brands he worked for are Harvey Nichols, Bloomingdale’s, Nike, Smirnoff, Furne One, Splash, Armani, Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Levi’s, Wrangler, Lee, Sprite, Emirates and many more. He also is a prefered photographer of certain Bollywood stars like Katrina Kaif, Bipasha Basu, Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar.
Tejal Patni about himself: “I am Bombay born and graduated from Sir JJ Institute of Applied Arts art school. I started very early in my career as I was blessed to work with key creative people during my art school days. The reason I got noticed was only because (I had very little knowledge of light) I knew how to capture what looked good to my eye, so I started pushing black and white films to the max-3, 200-6,400 ASA and shoot my friends who posed as models under railway station (Mercury) lamps. I experimented a lot with those lamps and became quite an expert at shooting high contrast pics. Maybe that is one reason, my pics still remain dark.
Inspiration – I still borrow a lot from life around me, movies and books. One thing I really enjoy is when Art Directors show me illustrations/sketches of their briefs, as it shows everything in its skeleton form, and it forces you to start from scratch. It helps you do better research and achieve a fresher perspective in the end, unlike layouts presented with photographs. Art Directors, the client and myself have a good idea of what it will end up looking like!
Current goals and position – I am a struggler by all means; which means every year I try and meet my goals or more and then I keep moving on to the next ones. I love to struggle as it keeps me going. I am currently working on a “No Smoking ” project which could translate into a book and an exhibit. I am trying to work on commercials/films and short films too and updating my website, which remains the most important goals of all. I thank my Art Directors and Clients for their patience.”
● Tejal Patni for BLOOMINGDALE’S Advertising
● Dubai Duty Free World Campaign
Print-DDF World Campaign
Photography: Tejal Patni
Set Design: Andrew Rosario
Stylist: Dina Yassin @ Bareface
Hair & Make-up: Toni Malt @ Bareface
Model: Olga @ Bareface
Production: Magnet
Agency: FP7
Location: Dubai, UAE
Tejal Patni is an advertising / fashion / portrait photographer that embodies highly futuristic themes within his work. The Dubai based photographer uses beautiful vibrant color schemes, modern digital sets, where Neo-Tokyo meets outside-lands.
● Tejal Patni for Harvey Nichols Beauty Advertising
● Splash Calendar 2014 (Fourth Limited Edition)
“In Love With Fashion” – Presenting the 4th edition of the Splash Calendar. This year’s concepts celebrates the 2014 trends hitting the runways.
Client: Splash Fashions/Raza Beig CEO
Concept/Photography: Tejal Patni
Wardrobe/Styling: Furne Oné @ Amato
Production Designer: Andrew Del Rosario
Assistant Prop Stylist: Randy Del Rosario
Hair & Make up: Katherina Sherman & Toni Malt
Photography Assistants: Amila Sushanta/Randy Del Rosario/Don Samira
Digital Retouching: 100berlin Creative Retouching
Description: The exclusive and fashion forward Splash Calendar is back again with a bang and this time round, we’re all about being in love! Yes, we’re in love with fashion and everything to do with fashion. We decided to pick a few trends and fabrics that we found ourselves gushing about the entire year and have our calendar themed around them! If you’ve seen our last few calendars you’ll know that this one is definitely going to push boundaries.
● Splash Calendar 2013 (Third Limited Edition)
Concept/Photography: Tejal Patni
Description: It’s the night when wedding bells should have chimed. But an unfortunate turn of events leads to a tragic separation of puppeteer Gautier and his beloved Monique. L’enfer. Hell.
Blatant synonyms for the brutal reality of being torn apart from the one you love the most.
Should you hold on? Or should you let go?
Questions tug tortuously at Monique’s mind while Gautier ponders in the disquieting silence of a dungeon.
This is a tale of two hearts tangled by the delicate strings of an unfinished relationship.
● Splash Calendar 2012 (Second Limited Edition)
Concept/Photography: Tejal Patni
Description: It’s the end of the year. And as we’re all aware, next year is supposedly the end of the world too. Now while everyone has their own theories on how the world will end, talented photographer Tejal Patni turns things around optimistically as he believes every end leads to a new beginning. He takes this concept of new beginnings to conceptualize a calendar for fashion brand Splash. (splashfashions.com) Heavily influenced by B-movie sci-fi clichés, the calendar asks: are we destined to revisit our same life choices, or will we truly create a new beginning?
● Splash Calendar 2011 (First Limited Edition)
Styling: Kirsten Hermans
Hair & Make up: Sofi Longhurst
Digital Retouching: Anil Palyekar
Background Illustrations: Lia Golemba
Agency: Partnership
Concept, Production Design & Photography: Tejal Patni
Description: An impressive photo series by Tejal Patni photographed for fashion brand “Splash”. Middle East high street fashion retailer Splash collaborated with photographer Tejal Patni to create a unique limited edition calendar guaranteed to make a statement and leave a stylish impression.
Using black as the unifying theme across all seasons, Tejal openly used influences from his favourite films and directors. The final result, combines the influences of Tim Burton and Federico Fellini, plus some Broadway shows for set inspiration.
Tejal created 12 different scenes as though each one came from a script of 12 different films. He created a mood board for the entire calendar in terms of where he wanted to head visually and an individual mood board pertaining to “what is it that he wanted to say in each scene”. Tejal wanted the backgrounds to add a semi-realistic, animated and surreal touch to each scene. The process was simple, yet complicated in terms of judging the scale and perspective of each set. All background illustrations were done in different layers to create a level of depth during the shoot wherein all elements were cut to perfection and placed on set in different layers.
Tejal Patni: “I studied film making in London, during my film school days. Students were often taking part in various contests and one of them was to do a music video for a band. Shortly thereafter the Crash Car idea was born – the visual idea was through the video the camera captured the singer singing, but you could not really tell where she was, in the end the camera turns 360 and tracks back to reveal she is in a Crashed Car and you see the rescue team around the car and a few people witnessing the accident. This was purely inspired from the film “Crash”. The scene between Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton is one of my favorite scenes from the film and this film is a work of genius.
This is how things inspire me. The scene I saw from a film or in real life, could be 5-10 years ago; I try and connect the same way with my subject – simple! To make the long story longer, I shot the video and it sucked as I had shot it on video, as a student I could not fund it. The mini DV tape stills sleeps in my locker. I went ahead and recreated a minimal set, got a crashed car in my studio and shot it where the lighting was simple – a lot of back light, to add to the night feel and a few fill lights from the front all shot on 800 asa.”
We are sure that we will hear one day also interesting news about Tejal Patni as a filmmaker, and wish him all the best in his future artistic career!
A D L 
Great Photographer
Awesome