V-Day Wishes...



Wishing you all a Happy V-Day.

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Celebrating Love Writing Contest...

This is the time of the year, when love is in the air. Ooops, now I would be under the radar of the various groups who have taken upon themselves the burden of upholding Indian 'tradition' and 'cultural values', for the starting statement of the post or am I safe?

Fine let us get to the main point and like the fringe elements, not waste our time, creating issues out of non-issues. I also feel that participating in this fun-filled event won't even attract an iota of disgrace or generate a feeling of shame, which few young ladies in Mangalore faced. The young ladies suffered the ignominy of being beaten, trashed, and molested by a band of preservers of Indian values, for the crime they committed of visiting a pub.

Since what I am going to tell you involves fiddling with your writing implements, scrambling words, so I guess both you and me are safe.

Post liberalization in 1990's, along with the economic revolution that was witnessed in India, gave birth to class of neo-rich, a clan that traveled to foreign lands with greater frequency for better opportunities in all spheres of life and business assignments. Did this tribe, import the culture of fancy dinners, exchange of greetings cards, offering gifts, etc to mark the romantic moments in one's life? Is V-Day another decadent influence of the West, because our parents and grand parents never celebrated this day? We all know that our parents cared for each other and so did our grand parents, but they didn't earmark a separate day to express their love and caring. Was our society conservative then and now it is more open and broad-minded and hence this transformation. Is it as simple as this or a bucketful of linkages have to be coupled to provide some convincing views?

See, slowly the momentum is gathering. So all you have to do is use your fresh and vibrant words to express your views, of course not just on what I broached about above, but on any topic celebrating love in all its shades. Desicritics is conducting a Valentine's Day Contest - Celebrating Love writing contest. Anyone and everyone can participate in this contest, with a simple condition that all the posts should be about or relate to love in its many forms. More details here.

You don't have to be a Robert Grant or a Heidelberg or a Shakespeare to participate, just spin your thoughts, sew your words deftly and weave your own story or sonnet. Also your write-up can be sentimental or funny, fiction or a true story, a memoir or a photo-essay - the choice is completely yours. For instance, Deepti goes down the memory lane when she was in her early teens to tell the Love Remembered between her grandpa and grandma.

Romance and Love cause all of us to get teary eyed. Some stories have tragic endings and some make us wish that we would also experience the highs of love.

Just scribble, you know why? Because, simple words make the maximum impact.

Hasratien dil me dabane se kya haasil hoga
Apne hoth hila kar to dekho
Khamoshi se kab hoti hai khwahishein poori
Dil ki baat bata kar to dekho
Jo hai dil mei use kar do bayaan
Khud ko ek baar jata kar to dekho




I intentionally didn't do the translation because it kills the flavor and piquancy of the message.

'Yes you can', says RC. 'It's simple. Just pick up your pen and .....'



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That's how 26th January was...

The day was 26th January, a very important day for Indians as this was the day when we were declared a Republic in 1950. For me this day definitely evokes warm memories from my childhood. Those were days, when Republic Day meant going to school early in the morning in the cold winter to participate in the flag hoisting ceremony and making sure to collect chocolates, candies and sweets distributed at the end of the ceremony. Once back home, the Republic Day Parade broadcasted live on the idiot box from Rajpath, Delhi was unquestionably the program to watch. In present times, the day still holds its significance but I am sure the way we look at it has changed a hell lot.

For many it was nothing more than an extended weekend. For few others, it was a welcome break from steering their vehicles in the chaotic traffic. Instead it was a day marked by an air of relaxation, to sit and watch columns of soldiers marching in perfect harmony in different Republic Day events conducted across the nation in various television channels. Add to this, the display of tableaus showcasing the diversity and the varied cultural traditions of the nation.

But for me, this was another day to capture colors in the surroundings. I had been to Lalbagh Gardens, Bangalore early in the morning by 8:00AM to compose some frames from the Republic Day Flower Show organized at the glass house located in the center of the garden.



This flower exhibition dates back to the year 1922, when it was conducted for the first time, and since then this once-in-an-year event has seen a steady increase in entries for participation.



Lots of people had come with friends and families to see this exhibition, a carnival of colors. From whatever I saw there, my rough estimate is that around 200 flowering plants, mostly those that bloom in the winter season were on display.



Through my camera lens, I managed to capture some images, which had little to do with flowers and more to do with colors. It was as if everything were united by a riot of colors. Do you agree with me or you don't?





Apart from this, there were a number of stalls related to gardening in which companies such as Indo-American Hybrid Seeds, Namdhari Seeds, the Department of Horticulture, Coconut Development Board, Coir Development Board, etc exhibited their products and technologies.



Booths selling products from cottage industries also drew handsome crowd. The artisans displayed their rich crafts such as pots, vases, urns, molded images, trinkets, pottery and terracotta items, etc in the typical setting of a rural Indian marketplace





To ensure security when hooligans have turned moralistic leaders, when terrorists are recklessly determined to spew terror, special security arrangements had been put in place. Door frame metal detectors, hand metal detectors and cameras were deployed at several places for efficient tracking purposes.

All in all, it was two hours of time well spent.

Also, the day was noteworthy for another reason. It was the day, when Desicritics, turned three. A journey which started with around 75 bloggers in the desi blogosphere way back in 2006, today has grown into a family of 500, covering everything from nuclear deals to macaca-gate, from Bugti to Boston, from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to Slumdog Millionaire, from the US Economy Fears to the Satyam's Fraud case, from men's rights to reservation rights. RC is proud to be a member of that team, still miles to go.

So here goes the rest from the lot of my today’s clicks to my friends at Desicritics and to all my readers. Hope you liked it too.

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Smell of an Indian Bazaar...

It was long since I had been out to shoot with my shutterbug friends. When I got an invite, if I could join them for a weekend shot at Russel Market, one of the prominent landmarks for the native Bangalorites, I thought why not. The reply was prompt because I have always preferred colder climes and at present winter is in full flourish. Also, wintertime mornings are usually marked with less activity and lots of freshness rules the air.



So all set and done and I reach the market place at 6:30AM. The market place was a melange of action, buying, selling, trading, chaffering, transporting, cleaning and lots more.



Russel Market is one of the oldest markets in Bangalore and it was built in 1927. The freshly painted minaret that stands across the road is a testimony that this place which was once the frequented by the memsahibs driven in their carriages is now replaced by the Marutis, the Fords and the Toyotas.



Even though the city today offers plenty of departmental stores from Sunday-to-Monday to Food World, from Reliance Fresh to Nilgiris, from Spencers to Spar but still there is a sizeable population that visits this bazaar for its weekly stock of fruits and vegetables and other requirements. The building that accommodates close to 100 vegetable shops and mandis today looks a bit jaded.



This place has narrow streets, filled with people unloading mini-trucks ladened with fresh vegetables and fruits. At one corner an old woman is selling a handful of vegetables, while at the other corner there is a middle-aged lady making a garland with different kinds of flowers, sipping hot tea from a glass. Even found a man who was so bitten by Bipasha Basu's 'Beedi Jalai le', that early in the morning he was puffing his jigar maan bari aag in a foolhardy way.



At this early hour of the day, there is action all around as vegetable vendors were busy sorting the vegetables into gunny bags which would be sent to various restaurants and hotels across the city. This place is a trading center for flowers, and florists can be seen exchanging their supply for cash. The topsy-turvyness here is more complex than what one would find in any stock exchange when in action.



As I was walked a little ahead, I saw the central courtyard, where there were neatly arranged rows of meat shops. Strung up were fresh cuts of mutton with hooks. Adjacent to the dark alleys of meat shops, dimly lit with bulbs is the street, which is a must visit place for any sea-food lover.



Variety of fish, prawn, crab, squid, etc of all sizes were available and the best part is it was all fresh stock unlike the refrigerated and preserved ones sold in department stores. This place is a beehive of activity and chances are high that a visitor would soil his/her clothes while purchasing sea-food here.



It was 8:30AM by now and people returning from the early hours mass at the nearby church were indicative of city life about to get started in a while. I along with my friend, proceeded to a nearby shop, which offers chai 24/7 and while having the chai, a person rushed hurriedly towards me. Seeing, a camera in my hand he told, 'Saab ek photo aap jaldi se lea lo, abhi thodi deear maain guard ke naukri ke liye, ek interview hai' [Can you take a pic immediately because I have an interview for the post of a guard to attend]. I had to politely decline to his request as my camera, doesn't have the instant printing capabilities.

Don't be surprised when I saw, you can click and publish pictures instantly, infact you can do this something similar to the Polaroid cameras of the 70’s. This year PoGo, an Instant Digital Camera unveiled at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, allows one with a push of a button to take pictures, edit those and then print those on full-colour, 2x3-inch prints. Can someone gift me one of those :)

You can see the rest of the pics here.

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New Year Wishes...

We wept, we cried, we lost, we gained, we fell, we stood up, we were bewildered and confused, we tripped the light fantastic toe, we learnt, we un-learnt, we made mistakes, we made strong allegiances and also pointed fingers at our foes, we rebelled, we read, we blogged, we traveled, we consumed, we foundered, we made headway, we dreamt, we innovated, we embarked the ride on global recession's whammy, but as the year comes to an end we got apprehensive about what next.

Arre, whatever be it, just 'Yes We Can' is my slogan, your song, as is Obama's hope, that today ricochets across the Web. Two brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis founders of JibJab, have put a short video which chronicles some of the major tales of this year.



I wish you, your family and friends a very Happy New Year. A beaming smile, a warm embrace and lots of good wishes to you all. You know why? Because you are simply the best in whoever and whatever you are. My simple gift for you with my first attempt on animation juxtaposed on one of the pics taken long back.



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Nothing special...

Is there something special about this pic? Does this qualify for a snapshot or a photograph? You decide and tell me.



I just look it early morning on a foggy day, when I was on vacation. The owner of the car had parked his broken-down car, Ambassador, don't think it is manufactured any more these days.

Few details about this pic.

Time : 7:00 A.M. on a foggy day.
Exposure Time : 1/60 or 0.017 seconds
Aperature : f/5.6
ISO : 320
Metering Mode : Matrix
Exposure : Manual

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Little Fluffy Cotton Candies...

Since we were kids, we always wanted to fly. Fly high above, to see how the earth looks from above and to swim in the clouds. We were taught about different varieties of clouds such as the Cumulus, Stratus, Nimbus and Cirrus. I guess there were lots more but I can re-collect these for now. We used to draw neat diagrams in our Geography workbooks when there were anything related to clouds and I even read the book 'Around the World in 80 Days' always thinking when I will get a chance to fly and go places as Phileas Fogg did.

Hailing from a regular middle class family, I never got an opportunity to fly until I completed my graduation. But still at my early 20's then, for me the clouds meant blotches and patches of cotton puffs floating high up defying the laws of gravity.



The lessons taught in science that clouds are just aggregates of water vapor would sound so fictitious and un-real. It just meant sufficient cotton candies were sprinkled at a higher altitude to gratify all my buddies and school friends when I was a kid.



Ear plugs please. If you have heard of an English electronic music group, The Orb, the above piece is one of their most popular one, composed in 1990. Its again 'Little Fluffy Clouds'.

Later on as time passed, travel became a regular part of my life and I flew miles and miles and saw some of the best panoramas sitting by my flight's window seat. Flying above the Nordic nations during the dying winter season at an early hour when the sun is dressed in its robe of sybaritic lavishness, had offered me some of the best sights of the earth close to the North Pole. Other than that every other city within my country and outside, that I have traveled to offers something special to see when the flight is about to land. For example, when the flight hovered over Paris city before landing at mid-night, the entire city looks like a black bed sheet with small dots of yellow lights. In this ocean of regularity, suddenly you can see a taller and brighter yellow light and my fellow passenger, a native Paris'ian says, 'Hey that's the Eiffel Tower'.

I always opted for a window seat rather than an aisle seat. It's simple the way it works if you wish to get your choicest seat when traveling in economy class. Either stand in the queue first when collecting the boarding pass or have your frequent flying card ready. For me it worked both ways.

But have you ever thought of taking pics when you are traveling miles above the earth's surface. Try it and it's really a different experience altogether.





Some neat tips on how to make your compositions and how to take pics from your plane's window is in a blog here.

Now my mind still keeps racing to my school days when we used to make simple experiments for creating clouds. All one needs are a clear plastic jar, a small metal tray full of ice cubes, and some hot water. Fill the plastic jar till its half full with hot water. On the top lid of the jar, place the metal tray full of ice cubes. After a while one can see the cloud-like formation. What happens is really simple, the air and water vapor inside the jar near to the base of the tray are cooled and temperature falls to a level such that, the air and water vapor condense into water droplets. In a very similar format the clouds are formed in the atmosphere, air rises, cools, and water vapor present in the air condenses into clouds.

Was it too much of gyan? Ah ha, just can't imagine losing interest in the clouds. Even these days, have climbed hills and went out of treks in the early mornings before the city life sets in just to catch the clouds in my lenses. Some days it's luck and some days it's plain disappointment. Whatever be the case, old habits don't die fast and easy. Isn't it.

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Just like that...

There was nothing special about this composition. Just in the wild bush something had grown and this was during a trip to a hill resort. Somehow it caught my senses and even though I had gone few yards ahead, took a few steps back and clicked it.



I don't know if it came out the perfect way. But something came at the end and that's what you see above.

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Learnt this and still more to learn...

Let's go back a bit to the +2 days when solving problems in physics was something that was really interesting and challenging at the same time. Cracking problems from books in Physics by Halliday-Resnick-Walker and Sears-Zemansky was absorbing and engrossing. For instance, solving problems on topics such as velocity, acceleration, momentum was fascinating but when it came to relative velocity, I have seen many students get a bit jittery. Reason for this is that both my subject and object of reference are in motion. Even initially, I used to have problems, but once I grasped the concepts well, I realized that its nothing difficult but an extension of the solving problems related to velocity.

But why am I talking about relative velocity out of the blues?

Though the link is not that straight forward, I scribbled the above part to draw an analogy.

Think when was the last time, you took an awesome picture using a camera. I can smell something here. When the composition was still, you managed to capture the frame, pretty decently to your personal satisfaction. Now when you tried to photograph any moving subject, you were disappointed with your results. Either the picture was blurred or something was faulty that you didn't like.

Can motion pictures be clicked with ease? I feel, yes.

All one needs to do is to understand the shutter speed and aperture adjustment in the camera. I know of a simple technique called panning, which I learnt recently and with this, you can accurately get the output as the one you would have conceived in your mind.

Without getting into too much of technicals, I would say that the aperture adjustment would control the amount of light entering the camera and the shutter speed would control the duration of time the light is exposed. For panning, I would need a slow speed, may be 1/15 second or slower. To take pics of moving subjects, you may opt for a fast shutter speed to freeze the subject. If the selected shutter speed happens to be faster than the subject speed, the final output that you would get would be static and the pictorial element of motion would be missing.

A recommended technique is to select a slower speed and follow the subject along as you take the photograph. This is essentially what panning is all about. There is no rocket science in this and all it needs is a bit of creativity and imagination and then your pictures are just perfect.



In panning outputs, the main subject is sharp against a blurred background. The idea is very simple, just follow the subject when it passes in front of you and keep continuing doing that as you press the click button on your camera and then even after the shot is taken. It's like the inertia.



How do I do it? Just keep your feet firm and still, and then rotate the top half of your body as you chase your subject. Before doing that, you should have pre-focused your camera, with all the necessary settings at a reference point where your subject will pass through. A darker background is always preferred and adds to the output. Like the relative velocity analogy, in this case, once you are comfortable with the shutter speed and apertures in the camera settings, and add to it a pinch of one's imagination, panning becomes an easy nut to crack.



In all the three pics that you see above, the shutter speed was set at about 1/15 seconds.

More on panning here. Try this and it's really addictive, don't you feel so? Hey, and don't forget to share your pictures, so that even I can learn more.

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