Photography

Last time I went home, I was browsing through a treasure chest of old photo albums. Among them I noticed a few pictures of my dad and his friends when they visited Agra and the Taj Mahal; some 30 years ago. They all looked so special; capturing the excitement of each moment perfectly.

My thoughts went to the thousands of photographs I had taken over the years with my camera. Did those photographs have those qualities? Off course, some of them do, but they are lost within the numerous ordinary ones I had taken. Cameras have come a long way since my dad’s bachelor days, the technology has improved beyond recognition – but have they lost that magic touch? During the age of the film camera; you always thought twice before clicking. You always waited for the right moment, adjusted the frame to the right position, because each click made a dent in your pocket. Digital cameras? Who cares; click, click, click. Maybe one of them will be your perfect shot. You will think, I’ll delete the others later. Usually ‘later’ comes quite late, and invariably your patience runs out while trying to weed out all those unwanted pictures and those real gems get caught in a pile of junk. Years later you will find yourself in the same situation as I am – a few hundred good pictures in a total of ten thousand; faced with that daunting task called as ‘filtering’.

So what do we do? I have a solution. Take prints of your best photos. As soon as you are about to transfer those pics from your camera earmark the best ones and take those prints. It brings back economics into photography. And now you are forced to think twice; just like the good old days. You’ll be left with a few albums of those nice clicks; that you can enjoy over and over again. I know the environmentalist in me is screaming inside; but hey; it is only a few sheets of paper; I’ll make it up some other way. Or you tell me another solution; this is the only one I have

Went for a trip to Nandi Hills early in the morning today. We wanted to see the sunrise there, and we were lucky enough to reach there on time for that. Contrary to my expectations, it was a real nice place indeed. So close to Bangalore, yet so far from the hustle and bustle. Too lazy to write a long blog post, so I leave you with some pics. Didn’t come out as good as I expected, but trust me, it was more beautiful than what the photos could record.

Photo Credits: Espresso and Me!

Microsoft Labs have come up with a new (actually not that new) application called as Photosynth. What it does is quite amazing. You take a series of random photos in a given location and this app tries to create a 3D view stitching all of them together. Kind of like the panorama option in your digital camera, but way cooler. You can just point and click in all directions with a lot of freedom and you don’t have to manually adjust the corners of each pic. It is still in beta but I’m already impressed.

So don’t waste your time, have a look at Photosynth, its loads of fun! And for your viewing pleasure I have created a synth with photos taken during my last visit to Munnar. Just click on the play button on the right top corner to view the awesomeness!

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=640E95F1-F00B-4E7A-A415-DEF35146BA46

The newest kitten-in-the-block. It’s called “Poocha-kutty”, which means kitten in Malayalam. How imaginative, eh? Fun watching this little thing wander around, with no worries, no life-changing decisions to make, hehe. Lucky brat!

A photo I took yesterday, at Kovalam. The effect of the sea looked awesome.

Hmm. If you are atleast minutely interested in photography, you might have heard this question echoing around nowadays. I bought a digital camera recently and was looking around for opinion regarding this issue. I found these really good well researched articles on the debate. Do have a read.

• Film vs. Digital Cameras » kenrockwell.com
• Film versus Digital My Summary » clarkvision.com
• Digital cameras vs. film – Norman Koren » normankoren.com

Ok. So to put my humble opinion into all this, I think the digital camera is best suited for a beginner like me. It gives you the freedom to experiment without drilling holes in your pocket But yeah, for image resolution nothing can beat film. Maybe when I become an expert… well that seems a long time away.. hehe

Update
on December 03, 2005 by Anoop

This discussion has finally led me to do the first big update on the site. The Gallery section is now up and running.