14th Annual Photography and Filmmaking Fest

“Photography and Filmmaking is the image you create with reality.”

The Digital Excellence Society – Delhi Public School R. K. Puram’s Photography and Filmmaking society – hosted its event DIGEX 2022 from 20th July to 30th July. The annual event was highly anticipated and kicked started the competition season with over 130 schools and 1000 participants from around the world. The event served as a medium of self-expression for enthusiastic  school students and provided them with a platform to showcase their talent in photography, filmmaking, ad-making, photo manipulation and more. The event, hosted in a hybrid format, was one of the first competitions to invite offline participation after the pandemic. The international event, sponsored by Desizn Circle and Avit, was a monumental success and an engaging experience.

All gears functioned smoothly because of the unwavering support from Principal, Ms Padma Srinivasan. She wished the participants the very best of luck and through her address, encouraged passion, creativity and experiential learning.

This year’s event had 9 exciting categories. In a bid to make the event more accessible and keeping in mind the expensive equipment usually required, 2 phone photography categories were added so that there was something for everyone:

Pixelate Senior was the on-the-spot DSLR photography contest for classes XI and XII. The preliminary round was carried out online on 23rd July and the top 5 teams battled it out offline on 30th July. The prelim’s topic was ‘Deception’ and the final’s topic was ‘Product Photography.

Pixelate Junior was an online on-the-spot DSLR photography contest that encouraged the budding photographers of classes IX and X to give their best, be original and learn more about photography. Judged by a Renowned photographer, Mr Virendra Adhikari, this category received large participation and students had to submit their entries on the topic ‘Chaos’.

Phonescape Senior was the on-the-spot phone photography contest for classes XI and XII. The preliminary round was carried out online on 23rd July and the top 5 teams battled it out offline on 30th July. The prelim’s topic was ‘Escapism’ and the topic for the final round was ‘Symmetry’. It was judged by professional photography duo Ms Rachita Chawla and Mr Anand Sharma.

Phonescape Junior was an online on-the-spot phone photography contest that encouraged the budding photographers of classes IX and X to give their best, be original and learn more about photography. Judged by DIGEX Clan’s former President, Mr Keshav Gupta, this category was phenomenally successful. Students had to submit their entries on the topic ‘Imperfection’.

CreADive was the on-the-spot online advertisement-making competition. Students from classes IX-XII participated to create captivating visual sequences of 45-75 seconds. Judged by the Vice President of the DIGEX batch of 2022, Mr Vivaann Pahwa, the participants had to create an advertisement for ‘Paper’.

Camistic was the on-the-spot online ‘story-board’ event. Camistic is a unique amalgamation of storytelling and photography where participants have to click 3-5 photographs in a specific sequence in order to portray a story. This year, the stories were on the topic ‘Broken Loop’ and the judging was done by the Vice President of the DIGEX batch of 2022, Mr Vansh Jain.

Rendered, introduced in the Event Categories last year, was a photo-manipulation category where participants make a creative piece from scratch on a given topic. This year’s topic was ‘Psychedelic’. 

Hi-RES, the online short-film-making category, was the only category of the event that was not held on the spot. It is where teams of 4 students create cinematic masterpieces of 4-6 minutes. The films were judged by the Presidents of the DIGEX batch of 2022, Mr Kushagra Pandey and Ms Siya Chhabra and all entries were made on the topic ‘Breaking the Fourth Wall with Silence’.

The Surprise was one of the most fascinating categories. Participants did not know what their entry will be on until the time for submission begins and the possibilities can range from components of photography to filmmaking, and more! This year, the participants had to submit their entries on ‘Combining Fine Art and Design where 2 photographs were provided to them and the students had to interpret the pictures by clicking their very own photographs. This category was judged by the former president of the Digex Society, Vaidurya Nath.

Preceding the announcement of the results, the Vice Principal – Mr Anil Kathuria – shared encouraging words of wisdom with the audience, some of whom were present offline and some of whom attended the live broadcast. Our sponsor, Desizn Circle, then displayed a short and captivating video for the audience.

The Valedictory had a cultural programme comprising mesmerising performances by both the Western Dance and Music Societies. The teacher-in-charge, Ms Sarika Kaushal, congratulated the participants and expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the participants, judges, sponsors, club members and Presidents Ishita Bhargava and Sana Chawla, Vice President Pratistha Batra, Director Samiya Bhatia, and Core Members Ritvik Kumar and Aditya Banka. This was followed by a beautiful video movie summarizing the highlights of the year.
The winning submissions are available on the Digex Society Website

The results of the event are as follows-