Entries from August 2008 ↓

I had just sold my 17-40 mm lens and was cursing myself for that because a 50 mm prime is quite inadequate for clicking architecture. And there is a great deal of that to be shot in London. After being mopey for a day or two (I don’t know how my wife put up with me) it occurred to me that I could always shoot slices of buildings with my 50 mm, and then stitch them up in Photoshop – just like a panorama. While most results were quite bad (missing slices, great variation in light across different slices and such), this one came out alright. I especially liked the amount of detail that the camera could capture around the clock area.

The picture here was a result of stitching together five, 8-megapixel images. You can click the picture to reveal the complete composition (composite?). I chose to post a “color-negative” version. Let me know if you’d like to see the real thing.

Update: The original non-negative version.

p.s. If the layout looks messed-up, you are probably on IE 6. You deserve a better browser!

Taken at Regent’s Park, London over two years ago. These flowers seemed to flourish (flowerish?) in spite of the heat (which was unusual for English summers).

Having visited the Independence Day Flower Show at Lal Bagh a day in advance, I decided to try some street photography.

Traffic on most roads was light. A lot of autos were decked up with the India tricolor, while a few threw the (unofficial) Karnataka flag into the mix. The shots above were taken while walking on Residency Road.

I will not even try to conceal the fact that the “stylistic treatment” (big word eh!) of this picture has been inspired by Chromasia. As for the title, it’s a straight lift from The Bong Connection’s soundtrack. The first two lines of the song go like this:

O Sujan Majhi Re
Kon Ghate Lagaiba Tomar Naab

I studied Bengali for two years in school, and learned about as much as someone in Kolkata would learn in kindergarten. So my translation should be treated as highly suspect, but it should convey the gist of things:

O Boatman!
Who shall take your boat across (to the other bank of the river) [as suspected, I messed this one up]
To which bank shall you take your boat

Yes, “baul” gets butchered when translated to English. Anyway, given the condition of this boat, I hope that the Majhi has already abandoned it – if nothing else – in the interest of public safety.

Multiple sources of inspiration should make this post a “mash-up” – really the in thing these days.

Same time, place, lens and subjects as these.

Not related to the Disney movie or musical in any way. Spotted at a random building somewhere around Reagent’s Regent’s Park in London.

Either this picture foretells of a the future that awaits us all or it is goading us to go green. Spotted at Kochi in June this year.

I was at a camera shop trying out the Sigma 100-300 lens, when this boy passed me by on an improvised tricycle cart. Unlike the Canon telephotos, the Sigma wasn’t white, but with a lens that big, it doesn’t take too long for someone to know that they are being photographed – even if they are 50 yards away from you. The boy’s face lit up and (who I presume to be) his dad joined in. Our lives crossed for a quarter of a second and we moved on.

Taken at the Lal Bagh Independence Day flower show 3 days ago. I went to the flower show on the 14th this time, and was able to avoid the 15th August crowd. I don’t know if it is the new Government, but for the first time in the last 5 years or so, it actually felt like someone one was spending time, money and effort to improve Lal Bagh. The bougainvillea covered pathway at the Double Road entrance had been paved afresh. The road that leads you to the glasshouse had been rebuilt and the sidewalks on its either side had been broadened. There were a lot of other little touches – a fresh coat of paint here, a few manicured lawns there, that made the place feel “new”.

And still, I seemed to lack that intensity of purpose with which I’ve visited the flower shows at Lal Bagh in past. Perhaps it was the weight of pictures of hundreds of zinnias, bougainvilleas, dahlias, marigolds and numerous other flowers, that I’ve clicked in past and done nothing with, that was bogging me down. Perhaps 5 years is really a long time to be visiting the same flower show with roughly the same flowers in roughly the same arrangements. Perhaps I was upset at not having been able to travel anywhere on a long weekend. Perhaps it was all of these reasons. I better exorcise my ghosts before the next flower show on the 26th of January!

Here’s wishing everyone a happy Independence Day!