Photography and Me

It's been about 2 years since I have taken up Photography as a serious hobby. Unlike most of my hobbies, where after some time I lose interest and move on to something else, Photography has kept me engrossed in it. Maybe it's because there is so much to learn in this field. Every day you come across some new technique or a different perspective of an oft seen subject. The wonders of photography never ceases to amaze. I still remember the first camera I held. It was a Konica. My mother was the one who first instructed me on how to take a photo. It went something like "Look into this hole. You will see 2 square brackets. That should be in the centre of the photo and then click this button". I just loved the noises the camera produced. First the click of the shutter, then the motor whirring to turn the film to the next unexposed frame. As we were kids, me and my brother were not usually allowed to take pictures using this camera. It was a real treat when on a trip my parents would give me the camera and say "Take a picture.". Before I grew up enough to handle this camera, it stopped working. If I remember right, it had some problem with the shutter. Noone at our home cared about Photography enough to go through the pains of getting this repaired.

My second camera came as a gift to me from a family friend. I was asked what I wanted when I passed my 10th with Distinction. I don't know what prompted me, but I told him I wanted a camera. He gifted me with a Fuji compact. Unlike the more expensive Konica, this was almost fully manual. One had to load the film manually( meaning hook the end of the film to the chamber and rotate it till the first frame was loaded. After each shot, the frames had to be moved manually. But still, I didn't mind. The only thing that stopped me from going around and taking pics was the prohibitive cost of developing the film and taking prints. Developing and printing a full roll cost around Rs.300. So this camera came out only on special occassions like School Excursions or camps. Once I had gone on a camp conducted by Rotary Club Alwaye. As usual, I carried my camera along with me and took around 35 pics (1 roll of film). Then it happened that one the way back, my camera fell down and the back flap opened. The film got exposed to sunlight and all the pics were lost. There was nothing I could do. The camera itself didn't suffer any damage. This camera lasted till my engineering days. But as time went by, it was relegated to one corner of the cupboard as Rs.300 for an engineering student was not a small amount.

My third camera, which was my first Digital Camera was also a Fuji. Fuji Finepix a 210 if my memory serves me right. I had written CAT and was in the process of attending the interviews. I had to travel all over India for these interviews and I convinced my dad to buy me a digital camera. Digital Cameras were just coming into the market at that time. It was a 2 Megapixels, 3X Optical zoom camera. This served me well throughout my MBA. Photos that appeared in the IITK MBA placement CD and IITK MBA placement brochure of 2006 were captured using my camera. Till then, photography to me was more of documentation than an art. I'll tell you the difference. Suppose you go to see a waterfall. You and your friends pose in front of the waterfall and get a pic clicked. This proves that you were there at the waterfall. This is a piece of documentation. These are the kind of photos that you usually see in Newspapers. Suppose you take few pics of the same waterfall. Noone is posing in front of the waterfall. You increase the shutter speed of your camera to give a smooth effect to the flowing water. This is photography as an art. I was under the impression that photography as an art is the domain of experienced photographers only. The ones with big cameras, long lenses and an external flash. As I have written before, this was around the time I came across a photoblog maintained by one of my friends. On enquiring with her, I came to know that her camera was just another point and shoot. This brought about a paradigm shift in my view on photography. That was when I decided to try my hand at taking some pics. But I needed a better camera.

My fourth camera, which is my current camera is an Olympus SP 501 UZ. 7.1 Megapixels, 10X Optical zoom. This is the first camera that I have bought using my own hard earned money. Buying this camera was the beginning of my current phase of being a Photography enthusiast. After I bought this camera, I started reading up on photography, starting right from the basics. What is aperture, what is shutter speed, what is depth of field in a picture, so on and so forth. The more I read, the more I saw, the more enthralled I got. I have been working with this camera for the past 2 years. Now I have started getting a feeling that the limiting factor in my pursuit of excellence in the field of photography is my camera. I believe it's time to change this and step into the field where big boys play by buying a DSLR.

One major change that pursuing photography brings in you is that you start to notice the beauty in the smallest of things. Where earlier you never gave a thought to the waterdroplets on your window pane, now you start to think whether it would make a good subject for a Macro Photograph. Where earlier, you didn't even notice when a butterfly fluttered past you, now you observe what species it is and whether it would sit still enough to take a picture. That is the beauty of being a photographer.

Moral Policing

"God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them." Genesis verse 26

"God blessed them. God said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Genesis verse 27

This is how Bible says god made man. At the beginning god didn't put forth much laws of do and don't. Then came the Ten commandments. Ten "Thy Shall nots" which man was supposed to live by. Then once the civilization set in, more laws came. The gray areas were fast being separated into black or white. In the modern society, there is a system of laws in the country which needs to be followed by the citizens. How applicable those laws are and to whom is an entirely different discussion which I do not wish to delve into at this time.

So In India, we have a set of written laws and we have a police department who sees to it that the laws are enforced and any breaking of the laws are appropriately handled. Till then it was alright. In these recent times, there has been a peculiar kind of homo sapiens who deem themselves the protectors of moral laws. They are self appointed and they work on an unwritten code which basically says anything they don't like is immoral. It can be the violence against people celebrating Valentine's Day or the attack against girls in a pub or in the most recent event, slapping an MLA who was taking his oath in Hindi.

These are a set of people who are hell bent on telling us how to live our lives. For them celebrating Valentines Day is westernization. Wearing western clothes is against Indian culture. What Indian Culture are we talking about here? India is the land of Kamasutra and Khajuraho. In the land which taught the world secrets of sex, talking openly about sex is against its culture. While it's ok to depict various sex positions in a temple, an actress wearing a short skirt is against the moral code. Do you see a disconnect here?

From the moral to the regional. The self appointed defender of Marathi Rights Mr.Raj Thackerey and his company of goons who calls themselves the MNS stopped a politician from taking his oath in Hindi in the Maharasthra assembly. Who the politician was and what his background is is not relevant to the discussion here. The constitution clearly states that any politician may take his oath in Hindi, English or the regional language. Last time I checked, Maharashtra was still a part of India and Indian constitution still applies there. Then what law gives these goons the power to stop a constitutional act? The latest news is that 4 MLAs who manhandled the said politician have been suspended for 4 years from the assembly. While I appreciate the quick action taken, the question remains as to how could you let such an incident take place in a meeting of so called "representatives of the public". Whether criminal charges would be filed against them and if any action would be taken on that front remains to be seen.

So look how we have progressed. In the garden of Eden, there was just one rule. Don't eat the forbidden fruit. Now we have laws spanning every human activity. Over that we have people telling us how to live our lives. We have the Moral police, Fashion Police and Censor Police over and above our regular police. If we don't nip this in the bud, it won't be long before we wouldn't have a choice but to live our lives as others dictate it.

Chennai in the rains

When I came to Chennai around three and a half years back, I was not very fond of this place. The weather was too hot to handle, the autodrivers were daylight robbers and the roads were almost always congested. But over the time, I have made peace with most of the irritating aspects of Chennai. I came to understand that life in Chennai makes you appreciate the little things about life outside Chennai that you used to take for granted. Like the weather in Kerala or the disciplined auto drivers in Bangalore.

One thing though that I cannot come to terms with is Chennai during the rains. I am a big admirer of rains. During monsoons when I used to be in Kerala, I would sit in the verandah just watching it rain. The pitter patter of the raindrops was music to my ears and the cold rainy breeze would freshen me up from the inside out. Then I came to Chennai and encountered the Chennai rains. This city has a very low water threshold. All it takes is a brief drizzle and the roadsides are already flooded. If that drizzle turns into a downpour, rest assured that you will have to wade through knee deep water. Knowing the condition of the city's drains, and wading through the knee deep water is a self inflicted torture that you cannot do without.

I have a friend who loves rain but hates walking in the rain. The main reason for that is the feeling of mud beneath her feet in her footwear. I can definitely understand what she feels. For me it is the feeling of the squishy shoes that I hate. In that context, I love my new Merrel shoes. I got this for trekking purposes. It is made up of webbed material. The water drains right out once you are out of the puddle. No more squishy shoes.

Last year, Chennai witnessed one of the heaviest monsoons for quite some time. This was the same time when terrorists hit Mumbai. If man made terror was flooding Mumbai, Natural terror was flooding Chennai. It had been raining for 4 days non stop and I had decided to work from home as you had to either know swimming or own a boat to reach office. And I had neither. On the 5th evening of this non stop downpour, I was watching a movie with my feet propped up on the table when my phone rang. It was the next door neighbour. He asked me where I was. When I told him I was at home itself, he asked me how come I didn't know that water had entered my house. I stood up in shock to see my house flooded with ankle deep water. In the next 15 min, I stowed off my bedding and important documents out of reach of the water and I put my PC's CPU on top of my couch. I packed some essential items and left the flooded house to seek abode at a friend's house.

The next day I came back to check out the situation at my house. I was dumbstruck to see that the water in my sitting room was up to my knees and the CPU which I had put on my couch was waterlogged. There was nothing much I could do so I just locked up and left.

It took another 3 days before the situation returned to near normalcy. So now each time it rains more heavily than usual, I start preparing for the worst and keep watching my door sil to see if water has started flowing in.

Tail Piece: A week after this disaster, a team of sales folks from HCL landed in Chennai as part of a training program. One of their requests was that they wanted to go to the beach to see the Sea. I had to bite my tongue real hard to keep myself from replying "The Sea had come to meet you. You are about a week late"

Belief

For those who are not aware, there is an ODI series going on between Australia and India. Yesterday they played the 5th match in a series of 7. Australia went ahead to score 350 runs in the allotted 50 overs. I was with a friend before the Indian chase began and I was going on about how if we got a good start, this total could be chased. His reply to me was " You are talking like a typical Indian Cricket Fan. You should know a lost cause when you see one. We have already lost this match".

I can tell you upfront. I am not a big optimist. But I have written earlier about supporting the underdogs. In this case, India was firmly the underdog. But more than that I believed in one man. I believed in Sachin. He has this habit of seeing victory when others see only defeat. In 1998 during the Coca Cola cup in Sharjah, when India was faced with a target of 285 and needed around 254 to qualify, most of the country would have believed that we wouldn't win the match but atleast we can qualify. But one man believed that the match could be won and his now famous "Desert Storm" knock of 143 almost did the job. Yesterday when everyone else seemed overawed by the size of the target, one man went about doing what he does best....hitting a cricket ball hard.

When Sachin bats like he did yesterday, he makes believers out of us. As a famous banner read "Do all your crimes when Sachin is batting. Coz even the god would be busy watching him". As long as he was at the crease, no target seemed too big and it seemed the first double century in ODIs seemed near. But he fell at 175 needing 19 more to win. The others were good enough only to make 15 out of it. But I can vouch that noone who saw Sachin bat yesterday would have said that we were going to lose the match. The kind of surety in his strokeplay, the sheer domination of the bowling...who the hell said Sachin needs to retire?

Yesterday when Sachin was on the verge of 17000 runs, Sunil Gavaskar made a comment. He said that the crowd is celebrating his 17000 so hard because seeing them makes them feel that each of his runs are theirs. Thats what sets this man apart. You want to end all the communal issues in India in one stroke? Declare cricket as a relegion. Nothing...i repeat Nothing unites India like cricket and nothing personifies cricket better than Sachin.

As the saying goes, "If Cricket is a relegion, then Sachin is God".

Back on Popular demand...

It's been 6 months since I have ventured into this part of the blogosphere. I started a malayalam photoblog in the meantime. If you understand Malayalam or just want to check out how good I am with a camera in my hands, visit www.nimishaardham.blogspot.com. "Nimishaardham" in malayalam means splitsecond.

So I was focusing on this blog and this combined with the fact that I was going through a bit of a writer's block resulted in this blog being dormant.

However, I am now back (don't know how long it's gonna last..but still). This is due to 2 reasons.

Firstly, one of my regular readers asked me yesterday why I don't write anymore. Secondly I got a topic on which to write a post.

So friends, romans and countrymen, I am back. Let's see how long this stint lasts.

The art of writing Assignments - Part 2

MBA course work is all about groups and relative grading...You prosper or perish in groups. This group work opens people to a whole new world of free riding. "Free Riding" being an abstract concept is executed by different people in different ways. Before I get into that, let me tell you what is meant by Free Riding. Free Riders are those people who would tag along for the ride but would hardly move a finger to do anything. But as the group is graded as a whole, they get the same grades.

Now let's see the different approaches to Free Riding.

First there is the "I am not a Free Rider" approach.

These sort of people work very hard to look as if they are working. They will run around...shuffle papers...talk about timelines and appear worried. But they hardly do any work. They are really offended if someone hints about free riding.

Second category is the "I don't give a damn about grades" free rider.

These guys make their intent clear at the beginning of the assignment. Their usual statement goes something like this. "Dude....I don't care about grades.....I am not going to do a single thing on this assignment....if you guys are worried about grades, you go ahead and do the work". Their honesty is hard to deal with. As you are stuck with them in the group, all you can do is do the assignment and watch as they get whatever grades they get for free.

The first category of free riders are very deceptive. To an unattentive eye, it seems as if they are doing the whole assignment by themselves. It has often happened that 4 free riders of the first sort formed a group. Each one was left thinking that others are working hard and finally the assignment never got done. So it is in their advantage to seek out tried and tested Non-Free riders and form a group with them.

The second category is a necessary evil. They are often tolerated because they are good friends and atleast they were honest (brutally so..) about their free riding.

Although from individual work, the focus shifts to group work, the basic premises of assignment writing does not change. Here also there are Do-Gooders (DG), Do-No-Harmers (DNH) and We Don't Cares(WDC). The second category of Free riders come under the WDC category.

As MBA is a higher degree than B.Tech, the execution of assignments become even more last minute. Night outs become the norm and discussions are often called to start the midnight before the submission day. If it wasn't for the DGs in every group, the assignments would have never been submitted on time. I have had experiences where there were three of us in a group. All three were DNHs and we rarely submitted an assignment on time.

Whether it be B.Tech or MBA, if it is group work, the DGs are the driving force behind the group. They are the ones who crack the whip and sets the ball rolling. DNHs pull their own weight and go along with the flow without hindering it. The WDCs are the ones who act as the deadweight which arrests the group's momentum. If it was not for their contribution (or the lack of it..), assignments would have been submitted days before the deadline. (Oh the sheer horror....I can't even think of it..). Working in groups prepare you for the proffessional world...or so they claim...and it is the healthy mix of DGs, DNHs and WDCs in a class that makes working in groups worth it. You get to make deals, negotiate and sometimes even threaten people...what better to prepare you for the cutthroat corporate world?

The Art of Writing Assignments- Part 1

Assignment- The Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as "a specified task or amount of work assigned or undertaken as if assigned by authority".

In school days, we used to call it homework...take down a few problems dictated by the teacher with a cute "H.W" written on the corner of that page...These were meant to be completed during that day's study time...and it was almost always diligently done so.

Then we grew up..we went to college and we needed a new name for homework, as calling it by its old name made it look childish...thus we entered the era of "Assignments".

Anyone who has an Engineering degree knows how these assignments are tackled during the course of the semester.(Warning: The views below are written solely from the viewpoint of a boy and might not be always applicable to girls).

Before I get into the theory of tackling assignments, let me tell you about the demographics of any Engineering class..

Firstly, there is one category of people whom I'd like to call the Do-Gooders (DG)...these are the students who almost always take up the first two rows of the class (though there are exceptions....I'll come to that later). Their note taking capability is beyond belief....Even the forced jokes that the lecturers make to wake up the rest of the class, might find its way to their notebooks. They often get ridiculed for this fact, but all that is till the exam time draws near...once the exams are at your doorstep, these Do-Gooders obtain the status of the Hollywood superstars....Their notes which were ridiculed before are so much in demand that the photo copies of the photo copies of the notes are being photo copied.....Even during all this demand, these DGs never try to get even for the ridicule....they selflessly offer the notes and never do they utter a word to the tune of "You should have thought this before...."

98% of the Do-Gooders are Girls.

Next category is what I'd like to call Do-No-Harmers (DNH)...these are the people who populate the middle to back rows of the class and they are not as meticulous in taking notes as the DGs. DNHs take notes of the points that they feel are important and can be often found sleeping in classes which bore them to the hilt...When the exam time comes, they are most of the times happy with their own notes and do not bother others.

DNH population is often split 80-20 with 80% being boys...

The last category is called We-don't-cares(WDC). This category is almost always completely made up of boys and these guys rarely populate the class (coz they prefer populating the canteen or the juice shop instead). These are the guys who create the huge demand for the DG's notes.

So now, let's see how the assignment is tackled by various groups..

DGs find it difficult to sleep unless they complete the assignment on the day it has been given. Even if there is a week before the submission date, DGs would like to finish it off as soon as possible.

DNHs find it really difficult even to think about the assignments before the due date. Then on the day before the due date, they borrow a few DG's assignments and engage in honing their CP (copy-paste)skills....The CP technology is perfected by the DNHs to such an extent that no proffessor ever accused a DNH of copying an assignment....the original matter of a DNH's assignment would be spread across maybe half a dozen DG assignments....

WDCs rarely submit an assignment on time....if they do, rest assured that it was written for them by a DG friend....(Some DGs are always in a crusade to convert WDCs to DNHs....I've seen them succeed and I've seen them fail.....Oh the good old times)...

Let's move on....from the individual submissions in Engineering college to the group work in MBA...

The shore of Singing Waves....

[This Blog was in Deep Freeze for quite some time: This trip was undertaken on 25th of Jan. ]

It was a long weekend....the originally planned Wagamon trip didn't seem to materialize...I had to do something to prevent the weekend going to an utter waste. Then out comes Ergo (a newspaper(?) supplied for free at major companies) with a list of little known places for a weekend getaway near Chennai...One of the places which caught my eye was Tranquebar...a Danish outpost in the 1700s....which the article said was on the way to Chidambaram....the only place to stay was the Bungalow on the Beach whose standard room rate was 3500 + 12.5% tax. The cheaper hotel Tamil Nadu was booked fully till Feb 28th. Since I didnt want to wait till then and I couldnt even think of paying almost 4000 bucks (If I had that much to spend, I'd have put in 1500 more and bought the complete calvin and hobbes collection...)for a night's stay...I decided to make it a one day trip. The plan was as follows

Sunday the 25th of January, 2008

0000 hrs: Reach Koyambedu Bus Stand
0005 hrs: Get on a bus to Chidambaram
0600 hrs: Reach Tharangambadi and catch the sunrise on the lovely shore
1000 hrs: Enter the Fort Dansborg museum and roam around
1300 hrs: Get out of the musesum, proceed with photography
1700 hrs: Think about returning and try to get a bus to Chennai
2300 hrs: Reach Chennai...reminisce about what a fantastic trip it was...

Now let's get to what really happened...

I reached Koyambedu Bus Stand on time...I went to the platform reserved for Buses plying to Chidambaram and I find it empty....I enquire about the next bus to Chidambaram to a shopkeeper and he replies that it would be here in 30 min. Although initially miffed, I overcame it...plugged my ears with the ipod headphones and lost myself in the world of Kishore Kumar...30 minutes turned into 90 minutes when finally a bus with the Chidambaram board came (It's not as if I could read it....my understanding Tamil script is like pattern matching....so I should say a bus with a board that looked like it said Chidambaram came). It had hardly stopped and it already had people hanging off the windows and footboards. That finally did it for my patience. Out came my Nokia E71 with Google Maps...I navigated my way to my destination and to my utter horror, I found that it was not anywhere near the way to chidambaram...it was on the way to Karaikal from Chidambaram. After showering some choiciest of abuses on the "informative" Ergo, I got on the next bus to Pondycherry. As my good friend Ashok had done his Engg. from Karaikal, I had a vague idea as to how to get there. I got on the bus and slept off...or tried to sleep with my butt killing me because of the quality of the bus seat.

I reached Pondycherry at around 6.15. The next Karaikal Bus was not much behind. I got on the bus at around 6.30. The bus might have had a problem in the transmission or the bus driver wanted the passengers to reeeally enjoy the journey.....the bus never went above the second gear speed....I was half the through the second intolerable Sathyaraj starrer shown in the bus before I reached Tharangambadi...or Tranquebar...and the time was 10:30....I was running around 4 hours later than planned....

The first recognizable sight that I saw in Tranquebar was the King's Gate. It was built in 1792 and it stands at the beginning of the King's Street which takes you to the beach..

Once you enter through this gate, it's like you have stepped into a time capsule. The churches and buildings on both sides of the road are straight out of sepia tinted photographs. A straight walk on that road would take you to the Tharangambadi beach. On the left side of the beach there is a temple. It's dome was knocked down by the Tsunami that hit the west coast but now the repairs are done and it is a riveting sight. The temple has sea on 2 of its sides.

Another landmark in front of the beach is the Fort Dansborg. It is a Danish Fort and the architecture is very different from the Indian Forts. If you are familiar with Age of Empires 2, you might find this fort similar to the castles of Teutons.

This majestic sight alone was enough to make my trip worth it...I spent quite some time walking around the fort grounds and exploring the museum in the first floor.

I was really tired by then...I had a quick lunch of chocolates and Kurkure sitting in the shade of the temple...and dozed of there itself for sometimes. The sound of the singing waves lulled me to sleep. Once the fierce noon sun had subsided, I took a walk along the beach....This was one of those beaches where someone who collects shells would go crazy....there were new kind of shells at each step....I collected some that caught my fancy...Before thinking about going back, I had to visit the churches in the neighbourhood. There are two...and behind those churches are some graves from the time Danes ruled here.....One of the graves was of a 3 month old baby boy.

After a brief tour of the churches, it was time for me to think about my return journey. From Tharangambadi to Karaikal...karaikal to Pondycherry..Pondy to Chennai....I reached back by around 1:30 at night....I had spent 19 hours travelling to spend about 6 hours in the shore of singing waves....But I know one thing...If I had to go through it all over again, I wouldn't hesitate for a second....