India wins the WORLD CUP!

The day before the Semi finals match against Pakistan one of my friends called me and asked me if we can go to some restaurant to watch the finals if India go through to the finals and I said sure we can go and was confident of India winning the semi finals match, but after India did win the semi finals my superstitions  took over me. I thought me watching the game in my home was more lucky for India than me going out with my friends and enjoy the atmosphere with a group of people watching the game.

And during the finals I followed the same superstitions that I had followed the in the quarter finals and semi finals match, I used to lie in the couch and would not change the channels during the break and will not move the TV remote from the place I had kept it before.  And when Gambhir and Kohli were steadying things, I was as always in the couch my father was watching the match from the other room and he came to living room to watch it from there and I ordered him to go back and see from the other room as India were doing good 🙂 .  I had other superstitions like hearing the Oueen’s classic “We are the champions” . I heard this song quite a lot of times before the semi finals and final of 2010 IPL and also during the champions league trophy. And it worked this time also.

When M.S.Dhoni hit the winning runs everything was blur to me, I knew he has hit a shot and it was going over the ropes and I started shouting like anything and was crying in joy. It was something very special, winning the T20 world cup was great but this feeling would surpass that very easily. To be honest myself and a lot of people were longing for this day for a very long time. The T20 world cup win gave us hope,  the way this team was playing for the last 2 years in test and limited overs gave us confidence and when they actually won it, that was the ultimate joy. This is the first time I am experiencing these kinds of emotion, I have watched the video of the winning moment a lot of times starting midnight last day and the whole of today. It gave me goose bumps every time and there was a tear in the eye, It kind of made me realize even without knowing it how badly I wanted India to win the world cup.

Thanks to Dhoni, his team mates and everyone involved with the team for giving us one of THE best moments we have gone through our lifes.

On a final note,

The worlds Virat Kohli said after the match about Sachin Tendulkar was very true and it was very special.  Great to see the great man enjoying and realizing his dream.

Cooum and the Kolam

Few weeks back I went to beach station to give my friend a hard disk, I called him before I reached the station and he told me that he was shopping in some other area and he’ll be back in about 5 minutes. I waited for about 40 minutes for him and he still was not there,  I lost my patience and took the next train back home.

When in train he called me and told he was back and I told him I was already in the train. He told me to get down at Chindadripet station and he’ll come there to get the hard disk. I got down at Chindadripet station and was waiting for him to come and took this picture from the station window.
Think this is the Doordarshan tower.

He came in the next train and seeing that I was carrying my camera, he mentioned that Napier bridge was near by and we could take some pictures of that, and we started to walk towards it, with dusk setting in and against the dark Cooum the bridge did look magnificent.

We were walking close towards the bridge and it was getting darker by the minute and then the new lightings that were installed on the bridge were switched on.The lights created a nice reflection of the bridge and the bridge now looked even better than it was before the lights were switched on.

and while walking on the bridge I took this picture of the path we walked from the railway station with a nice reflection of the sky.

Now coming to the second part of the blog and as the title suggests the first part was about the walk along the cooum and the bridge on it, the second part is about Kolam or Rangoli. I do not know the technical difference between them, I just thought having Kolam in the title made a better title as Cooum and Kolam sounded similar 😉 with no offence to both of them 🙂 .

Navarathri ended yesterday and my mother usually keeps Golu and puts some nice rangoli along with it. I took the pictures of them in normal lighting.

This was there for few days and then she did another one.

The fact the she added glitter to them got me thinking on how will it be when I try illuminating only the glitter on them and waited till everyone slept.

I switched all the lights off and took a LED torch which I used to create long exposure photographs and illuminated the glitter part of the rangoli and this is what I ended up with

and this one

When I showed these pictures to my mother she was more proud of her work than mine and it was the vice versa for me :D.

‘NO Ball’ Controversy

From the moment the cricket match number ‘3032‘ between Sri Lanka and India was over, people were only talking about Sehwag being denied a century.

News channels who are already having a feast with Common Wealth Games scam and other problems in India have shifted their focus on the “NO Ball controversy” and not surprisingly all the former cricketers were criticizing the Srilankan team.

Former India cricketer Bishen Singh Bedi even went on to say that Suraj Randiv (the bowler who bowled the no ball and denied Sehwag a century) should be banned for 5 matches.

Why should the bowler be punished for he has not done anything against the law, yes its against the Sprit of the game, but that does not warrant a punishment.

These type of incidents have been happening for a long time in cricket but nothing was made as big issue as this one has been made.

The media is projecting Indians as saints, we all know what happened in the Sydney test and how BCCI used its power to bail out Harbhajan Singh.

I am not trying to say that whatever Srilankans did was correct but its just part of the game, there is room for these type of incidents because the rule is like that, just because Sehwag did not get his century we cannot fault the rule.

And talking of Spirit of the game, let me remind a incident. I may be wrong in interpreting this as against the sprint of the game. When Anil Kumble got 10 wickets against Pakistan in Delhi, when he had already got 9 wickets and India were sure to win the match, Srinath was bowling at the other end and he made sure that the balls he bowled were unreachable by the batsman and he definitely was not trying to take any wickets that time. Is this not against spirit of the game? as a team player he should be trying to win the match for his country in whatever situation the opposition or his team mates were in. No body raised the questions about spirit of the game being tarnished then?.

Already some news channels are comparing this incident with the infamous ‘Under arm ball incident’. Why are we over reacting to something when it happens to us Indians ?, in this case it is a complete no issue as far as I am concerned.

Chennai Wall’s

தமிழில் வலைபதிவு எழுதநும் என்று ரொம்ப நாளா ஆசை அதை இன்று நிறைவேற்றிகொள்கிறேன்.

எழுத்து பிழை இருந்தால் comments இல் அதை சொல்லவும் திருத்தி கொள்கிறேன் 🙂

சென்னையை அழகாக்கும் முயற்சியில் சென்னை மாநகராட்சி, சென்னையில் உள்ள பிரதான சாலைகளில் உள்ள சுவற்றில் படங்களை வரைய ஆரம்பித்துள்ளது. இதுதான் எங்களுக்கு முன்னாடியே தெரியுமே என்று பல பேர் சொன்னாலும் நான் கடந்த வாரம்தான் இதை கவனித்தேன்.

ஏன் இரண்டு சகர வாகனத்தின் காப்பீட்டின் (Insurance) கடைசி நாள் முடிந்து விட்டதால் இரவு காட்சி படத்திற்கு என் நண்பனுடன் அவன் வண்டியில் சென்றேன். பின் இருகையில் அமைந்திருந்ததால் சாலை இருபுறம் இருக்கும் சுவற்றில் இருந்த படங்களையும், படம் வரைய தயார் செய்து வைத்திருந்த சுவரையும் பார்க்க முடிந்தது.

சென்னை மாநகராட்சியின் இந்த முயற்சி பாராட்டதக்கது. எப்பொழுதும் அரசியல் கட்சி தலைவர்கள் பெயர்களே இருக்கும் இந்த சுவர்களில் இதுபோல் நல்ல படங்களை பார்க்கும்போது மிகவும் சந்தோஷமாக இருந்தது.நான் பார்த்தவரையில் படங்கள் அனைத்தும் மிக அருமையாக இருந்தது. சில இடங்களில் படங்கள் நன்றாக இல்லை என்று பத்திரிகைகளில் படித்ததாக ஞாபகம், ஆனால் நான் பார்த்த வரையில் எல்லா படங்களும் நன்றாகவே இருந்தது.

சென்னை சைதயிலிருந்து தேனாம்பேட்டை செல்லும் வழியில் இருந்த ஒரு படம் இதோ உங்களுக்காக.

இதே போல் எல்லா படங்களும் தத்ரூபமாக இருக்கிறது.அடுத்த முறை சென்னை சாலைகளில் செல்லும்போது இந்த படங்களை கண்டிப்பாக கவனியுங்கள்.

தேர்தல் வரும் சமயங்களில் இதை மறுபடியும் பழையபடி ஆகாமல் இருந்தால் நன்றாக இருக்கும். எனக்கு தெரிந்த வரையில் இந்த படங்களுக்கு எதிராக இருக்க போகிறது வாயிலேயே சுவற்றில் சிகப்பு வண்ணம் பூசும் நகரவாசிகளாகத்தான் இருக்கும், இவர்கள் இந்த படங்களை சேதம் செய்யாமல் இருந்தால் நன்றாக இருக்கும்.

எந்திரன்

நான் இதை எழுதும் சமயத்தில் எந்திரன் பாடல்கள் வெளியாகி 6 நாட்கள் ஆகிறது, இதில் எனக்கு மிகவும் பிடித்த பாடல் ‘இரும்பிலே ஒரு இருதயம்’ . இந்த பாடல் வரிகள் ஒரு எந்திரன் காதல் செய்வதுபோல் வருகிறது, அனைத்து வரிகளும் மிக அருமை ரஹமான் பாடலை பாடி இருப்பது இன்னும் சிறப்பாக இருக்கிறது.

இந்த பாடல் எனக்கு பிடித்திருக்கிறது என்று சொல்வதைவிட இந்த பாடல்தான் என்னை பிடித்திருக்கிறது என்று சொல்வது சரியாக இருக்கும், 300 முறை இந்த பாடலை கேட்ட பிறகும் இன்னும் அலுத்து போகவில்லை, வேறு பாடல் மாற்றவும் தோணவில்லை 🙂 .

இத்துடன் என்னுடைய முதல் தமிழ் பதிவை முடித்துக்கொள்கிறேன்.

Dhoni’s fuel price rise…

Two days ago (the day before the Bandh for fuel price rise)  my father over heard a conversation between a auto driver and a potential passenger for the auto driver, here’s how it went.

The passenger wanted to go to Adayar from Madipakkam and as usual the auto driver asked for a very high price for the ride and they had a heated conversation and when the passenger asked the driver why its so high the reason the passenger gave was fuel price rise and the passenger shot back that the government has revoked the fuel price rise. Hearing this my father rushed home and told me about this and we both watched the news channel’s for any news of that sort.

We soon realised the passenger was bluffing the auto driver as there were no news of the government revoking the price rise, but there was another interesting news on all news channels M.S.Dhoni was getting married.

It was very interesting to see what all news channels were reporting, unfortunately for them they were not allowed anywhere near the ceremony so they had to content with all the people who were going in and out.

People who were interviewed were florist who brought the flowers for the marriage, they asked him what flowers he has brought,  how many vehicles did he use to bring the flowers (seriously?).

Then came the horse all the camera person and the reporters were so excited seeing the decorated horse and then they interviewed the man who was in charge of the horse.

Then the phoned the most important person in the marriage ceremony as he was very busy to come in person to give the interviews, the priest. he was asked what ceremonies were planned for the marriage (at this point I seriously wished the priest to say that Dhoni is supposed to tie the knot) and there were several others who were interviewed like the shop owner who sold the attires for the bride and groom etc.

All the time watching these news channels covering Dhoni’s marriage I thought, they were doing all this silly stuffs because they could not get access to the actual ceremony and it presented them with a opportunity to claim exclusivity, but if they were allowed to the ceremony I cannot imagine what they would have done to claim the exclusivity.

More the time more the fun… Part II

This is a continuation to the earlier post.

In around November 2009 I tried the following,

I did this with the light from my mobile, I had set the camera on the tripod and moved my mobile to make each           character and then combined all the five characters together. It was not completely dark as you can see the light from the window in the wall and even me :), but It was fun creating each character. It did take a long time to get each character as it looks.

Then on December 30th I did the following for the New Year greetings. I didn’t want to send e-greetings or a simple Happy New Year message with custom image, I thought it would be nice and attractive if I did like the above image and add some colours to it.

This time I made sure that it was completely dark and set the camera again in long exposure mode and drew each letter, drawing each letter perfectly is very hard and time consuming but having said that it is very easy for people who are used to writing alphabets in reverse ;). Here in this message there were lot of alphabets that were repeated so I had to get that alphabet properly only once.

I also had a mp3 player which was having a small light source, I used it to create the pentagrams and springs, then of course I joined all the alphabets to form the message I wanted to convey and added some colours just to make it bit more lively. I was very happy with the end product (the image above) I sent it all my friends and they were also impressed. The next morning one of my friends called me and said it was very good and he also wanted to send the same message to his friends. I was puzzled as why is he calling me to get my permission to send the message to his friends, he could have sent it by himself without asking me. But then when he told me that he wanted his name instead of mine :P. I understood why he called me :), I told him I’ll change the name and mail him.

I did not realise it was day and it was not dark to get the alphabets of his name, his name was Vijay so all I had to do was to make the character ‘J’. I opened the image in windows paint application and blackened a part of the ‘U’ alphabet to make it look like ‘J’ and completed his name sent him the mail :D.

I did all this drawing alphabets with light before I came to know of the type of Photography called ‘Light Painting‘. All the pictures that I saw with this technique were visually spectacular.I wanted to try some pictures in this type of photography.

I was in a shop recently where I bought a Flashlight (as north Americans would call it) which is known as Torch in the rest of the world. It had three bright white LED lamps. I bought it because, it would be would be way better than my mobile light when I try Light Painting.  Here are the following pictures that I tried with the new torch.

Note – No photo editing software’s were used in the following images 🙂

In this picture I tried to create a man with a flower in his hand. It was very difficult to make it look as it looks now, I was having a difficult time in doing the head part then the hands and the legs, everytime I tried they were all out of place so I placed some markers in the wall as reference points for the head, hands and the legs. Since I was holding the torch on the opposite side of the markers those markers were not visible but it was visible for me and it helped me to draw the man.

Here I tried creating a orb as demonstrated in this link, but mine was very bad :(. For those who are lazy enough to click the link, I tied the torch to a string and rotated the string and expected to make a sphere out of it.

I had lots of fun making this one and it also took a lot of time, it would have been even better if I had not moved my hands. I made this by illuminating the parts of me that I wanted to be in the picture, I placed my hands at different positions and illuminated then with the torch with the other hand.

This was fairly simple compared to the previous picture, no big effort for this but it looks cool :).

Light painting is so addictive when you try it, the results always amaze you and it will always have a surprise element as you are not sure how the picture is going to look when you finished composing the picture.

I’ll finish this post with a warning that if you plan to do some Light painting photography make sure its dark and no one else is around else people might mistake it to some kind of evil ritual that comes in Dan Brown books 😛 .

More the time more the fun… Part I

Long exposure photography (here after referred as LEP) is my most favourite part of photography, the results that each picture ends up is unknown until composition of the picture is complete but what ever the result may be it will be a surprise and will leave you wanting for more. I have clicked a lot of long exposure photographs and was amazed the results each one produced.

The following image is one of my first attempts on LEP,this is a picture I took on a park when a car was being drove past, since it was exposed for a long time the light from the lamp post is very bright and I said the picture was taken when a car drove past but you actually cannot see any car in the picture, that is because when a picture is exposed for a long time it only captures the most brightest part of the scene, in this picture other than the lamp the car’s head lights are the brightest and so all you see is the light from the car and since it was in a movement you can see the car’s light for the distance it moved. After this attempt at LEP I did not experiment much with long exposures, and then came the New Year. As I was in London during the start of this year I decided to go to the fireworks display at the London Eye.

I was very excited to be going to the fireworks display because I knew when fireworks were captured with long exposures it would be spectacular as I have seen many pictures of fireworks online. As new year’s eve was nearing I was getting more excited and more nervous as I did not want to screw up the one time opportunity, So I went through lot of tips given in online for capturing fireworks.

Then came December 31’st 2009, I slept well the previous night as I knew it would be a very long night next day and I was all prepared for the night, I even decided on the place where I will take the pictures from. There is a bridge called “Hungerford”.

View Larger Map

I was sure that the view from the bridge would be perfect as I will have a good view of both London Eye and the Big Ben where the clock will move to 12 and of course I can get a nice panorama of the scene. I decided that I will start around 9.30 in the evening as I will reach London Eye by 10.30 pm and there would be enough time for me the settle in a good place with a good view of London Eye and Big Ben, by 6.30 pm it was midnight in India so I called my friends and wished them a good new year. After all the calls I was even more excited and was beginning to be restless and I was in no mood eat and ate only 2 bread slices and took 2 cans of coke and kept it in my bag, then made sure I took the tripod and the camera and finally I set off at 8.15pm. I took a train and reached Waterloo station which is near London eye by 9.30pm and there were huge number of people in the station. I started to proceed towards London Eye but the usual routes were all blocked and had to take another route, as I was nearing London Eye I realised that I did the right thing by starting early because there were people everywhere in the road, people had come with their family as early as 5.30 in the evening (I came to know this the next day after seeing it in the news). I started to proceed towards Hungerford’s bridge and unusually all the walkways leading to it were closed so I enquired a police officer on how to reach the bridge. I was very disappointed by the reply he gave, he told the bridge was closed, now I had to look for a new place with a good view of London Eye as going to get Big Ben was nearly impossible. I walked past the crowded streets for some 30 minutes and then decided on a place, it was not the best but was decent enough and only less number of people was there. I set the tripod and took this picture.

It was around 10.30pm so I had 2 hours till the fireworks started and I started to fell hungry so took out the coke can and gulped it and suddenly the London Eye was been rotated I thought it would look good if I captured the movement of London Eye and took the following photos.

Then after 2 long hours it was 2010, the fire works started and I started to take lot of pictures I was so excited that I did not even check the pictures while taking them if they are turning out be good. After 10 minutes of continuous fireworks it was all over and I got a chance to look at the pictures, here are some of them.

For the whole set go this link. Then people started to dance and all the people were going to the same station and it took me a very long time to get into the station and I had missed the last train to my home from that station so I had to go to another station and got a train and reached home 4.30 in the morning and for all those people who are worried that I didn’t eat anything I got a burger from McDonalds’ (yes it was open at that time).

Here is the link for the video of the fireworks  obviously I did not take it ;).

I want to write more on LEP (I know this post has very little of LEP) so I have split this post, I don’t know if it will stop with the second part :).

When I took a picture of the moon

Few days ago when chatting with a friend I gave him a link to Singapore mappilai’s blog and told him that I also have an idea of doing some blogs on the pictures I take, but after giving a serious thought about blogging that night I realised am too lazy for blogging and thought I will stop with reading blogs.Another day I was chatting with another friend A Flinstones character (no pun intended, a very nice guy actually) to whom I had told that I had got a new lens for my cam (Self promotion 1) and he gave me a link on tips to capture the moon and asked me to try it out, but it was all cloudy for some days and obviously I could not see the moon so was waiting for a nice clear day er.. night sky.

Yesteday night I was watching this movie The Negotiator which was a very good engaging movie on my ipod (Self promotion 2) , the movie got over around 11.30 and as I usually will close the curtains in my room due to a street lamp just out of my room, so I could not see the clear sky but but don’t lose heart I got up to get some water and pulled the curtains and saw no clouds and I ran a quick scan to find the moon and bingo I found it :). I was excited and rushed to take out the tripod and placed it in a position that I thought would be best to capture the moon, then I took out the camera and mounted the new 70-300mm lens I was promoting earlier and set at its maximum zoom capability and placed on top of the tripod and saw the moon through the lens, WOW it was a beautiful sight and was even more excited and clicked the first picture not realising in what mode the camera was in and it resulted in the following picture.

The camera was set in auto mode and hence this bright light like thing with no details. Then changed the mode so that I can get some details on the moon and set up the camera settings that I thought would be perfect to get the details and I clicked and the result was the one below

It was all blurred as the camera had shaked when I pressed the shutter release button, I had enough and wanted to get a decent picture of the moon and took out the remote for the camera which will make sure there are no shakes and tried different settings and got some interesting results and in between updated the status in twitter,buzz and facebook that i am taking some pictures of the moon :). The best out of the lot is the one below

and cropped the image to this and uploaded them into facebook,orkut and buzz faithfully.

Will do another blog on the technical stuff and the settings that I tried out.

Update 1

Had a go at the moon another time

this time since the moon looks bigger it looks even more spectacular.

The full moon appeared yesterday and this is how it looked, I could not get any details on it as there were no shadows to create them 😦 .

Hello world!

Hello All,

This is my first blog and will be writing abt my experiences, photograpy and many more things, so watch out this space