31-01-2008 - Hello, there!

30-01-2008 - Musical notes

29-01-2008 - Let there be light

28-01-2008 - The dancer in the mirror

I invite suggestions of a good crop. Please use Flickr's notes feature for your suggestions.

27-01-2008 - Snakes and cobwebs

Something of an eyesore in the otherwise spic-and-span Taj Kuteeram near Hesaraghatta (a few kms away from Bengaluru off NH4/Tumkur Rd).

26-01-2008 - A thing of beauty

...is a joy forever.

25-01-2008 - *What* *a* *MESS*!

One fine day, instead of buying a costly cable-management system, I'll try to use whatever little creativity I have and come up with a home-grown system to manage this absolute mess. Tie wires just don't do enough!

24-01-2008 - A month later

...the symbol of the spirit of Christmas still lives on and shines bright!

23-01-2008 - When I'm old and wise

...I hope I can get away with fewer nicks, cuts, scratches and lesser wear-and-tear than my 50-month old cellular phone.

22-01-2008 - Abstract I

21-01-2008 - Topsy turvy

Things always look good this way!

20-01-2008 - When silence meant 'No'

...and wasn't gold either.

19-01-2008 - Life's a circus

It's coming. Flickr has gone out for a stroll, I believe. Let's wait for it to get back, and till then, well, you have the previous 18 to look back on ;).

Alright, we're back to business. Thanks a lot, Flickr (or whoever else deserves it)!



Photography wasn't allowed inside, so there's just this shot from outside, after the show ended.

It was a lousy day today for the most part. Bad traffic, cars we wanted to test drive not actually available in the showrooms this weekend, and all this after having lost 4 hours in the morning to my laziness. The circus was a very very welcome end to the day for both of us.

While watching the show, though, it struck us how we were enjoying the show in a new light. As children, we never thought about the hardships those circus artistes undergo every day. Now, however, we are learned and wise and began to appreciate their performances in a different light. And not only did we just enjoy the show, we also felt some sense of pity for them (and of course, the animals) for the conditions they probably experience.

Anyway - that's some food for thought for everyone of you as well, I guess.

18-01-2008 - Quo vadis, Bengaluru?

I've seen this van/minibus earlier, but I got the opportunity to take this picture today as we were waiting for the lights to go green at the intersection of St. Mark's and Residency roads.

What do I take this to mean? Are shopping malls the new tourist attractions of this city? While we are slowly turning more and more consumerist, have we really descended to the stage where we need buses to go mall-hopping to satisfy our wallet-lightening craze?

A bigger question - and this may probably be looked upon by some as the increasing purchasing power of the middle and lower-middle classes - are shopping malls now more than what they once were? The exclusive "hang-out" places of the well-heeled?

Sometimes it's nice to know nothing about the subject of a photograph. One is free to draw whatever interpretation that catches one's fancy.

17-01-2008 -

I'm feeling sleepy and tired. Can someone please suggest a title for this post, please?

I just dig candle-lit (and equivalent) scenes because of the softness and feel of the light, and the delicate tones and eerie shadows such light creates.

16-01-2008 - Who says software guys burn the midnight oil?

Not even 9 pm, and the office is empty, bar the photographer of course!

PS: The 14-01-2008 post is up now.

15-01-2008 - Dots, lines, shapes and colours

The simple and the complicated, the elegant and the outrageous, all beautiful and captivating. Rangolis outside my parents' home in Hyderabad on the morning of Sankranti.

14-01-2008 - My Daddy's biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig car!

Anyone who's seen Maruti Suzuki's advertisement for the Esteem should recognize the title. Well, the Indigo is (considerably) bigger than the Esteem in terms of space/volume.

The car's not brand new. It's nearly 20 months and 20,000+ kms old, but I've never photographed it before. The Lumix wouldn't go any wider and I couldn't go back any further.

I should have just lied down flat on the ground so that I could have composed the photograph a bit better and avoid clipping the car.

13-01-2008 - A day at the exhibition

The photo isn't up yet. The BSNL DataOne connection at home is *really* flaky and even browsing is proving to be tough. Uploading a photo is like... well, never mind.

I have a lot of text to put up as well in this particular post, which I am going to do when I (if ever as long as I'm here at home in Hyderabad) upload the photo my Flickr photostream.

After a long gap, here's the photograph -



This was a day of missed opportunities. We noticed some pretty queer things while driving down to the exhibition. On one of the flyovers we drove over, we saw two chaps happily flying their kite, having parked their motorbike on the flyover! That would've made for a really intriguing photo of the day, except that we weren't alone in the car and there were other family members as well who we didn't want to inconvenience. Maybe some other time...

Then there was this scene where a traffic policeman stopped a family of four (man, wife, two kids) riding on a motorbike and started taking the rider to task for riding 4-up. The man offered to get off the motorbike and let his wife and kids (very young ones) continue. The traffic cop had no other option but to let them all go. Hilarious!

Finally, of course, the exhibition itself. There were so many more interesting photo possibilities but they would all vanish in a flash - before I could get the little Lumix out of my wife's handbag (I didn't carry it in my pocket for fear of getting pick-pocketed) and start it and point it and shoot. We could also have taken an interesting picture from a really interesting vantage point - at the top of the giant wheel, but we didn't carry the camera along on any of those amusement rides as we were, again, afraid of things flying out of our pockets and such.

So, that's what you're left with at the end of the day - an uninteresting shot that does justice neither to the riot of colour and culture that was on display or to the sounds and the energy permeating the air that evening.

12-01-2008 - Old window

Window/grill design from 30 years back. Wooden frames. Windows that open inwards. Elaborate grills.

As we speak (or as I type, rather :)) I don't have access to the set of photo-editing tools that I normally use, so I've uploaded the picture as-shot on my Dad's JVC Everio camcorder (which is capable of taking still photographs as well). I haven't corrected the picture for field curvature/distortion caused by the wide angle, or performed any of the other usual post-processing (cropping, noise reduction, sharpening etc. etc.). I'll probably do it later.

Going home for Sankranti

I'll be in Hyderabad with my folks for 4 days on the occasion of Sankranti. There is sporadic internet connectivity at best from home (ah, the joys of BSNL DSL!), but I'm taking a camera along with me.

Even if I'm not posting an image here every day, you can rest assured that I'm in fact taking pictures and will upload them the instant I get/see the opportunity to.

Wish you all a very happy Sankranti!

11-01-2008 - The world's first RFID-ready car?

This is, of course, going to be clear only to those who are somewhat in touch with the Indian automobile market. The SX4 is Maruti Suzuki's new kid on the (upper C-segment) block. And here's a photograph of a Toshiba SX4 RFID-ready printer that's been with us at work for a number of months if not years.

I can add another coincidence to this, which is the newly announced Tata Nano. One of our products, called OATedge, was initially supposed to be called OATnano. The name was subsequently dropped (I believe it had something to do with a certain computer company using the same name for a certain device they manufacture and market :)).

PS: The photograph appears to be best viewed on Flickr itself. The HTML code in the blog entry compresses it height-wise and makes it look strange. Just click on the photograph above and you'll be taken to its Flickr page.

PPS: Fixed PS. The issue was blogger trying to re-scale pictures linked off Flickr. Trade-off? Smaller-sized pictures on the blog. No problem. You can see the photos in any size (ok - a range of sizes) with just a couple of clicks. Come on now, you aren't *that* lazy, are you? :)

PPPS: Fixed the small pictures problem (stage PPS) by switching to the Minima Stretch template. I'm yet to fully leverage the features offered by blogspot, as you can make out.

10-01-2008 - Save water

Let's conserve as much of it as we can.

09-01-2008 - Bug's eye view of our living room

Any bug you like, as long as it's not a cockroach.

08-01-2008 - Good night, world

Nothing too great today. I was just trying some post-processing stuff out with DxO Optics Pro.

07-01-2008 - Addictions

They come in many flavours!

06-01-2008 - White House Productions presents...

"What do I shoot today?"

Direction and cinematography (sic) by yours truly.

Screenplay and performance by my better half.

360 days - only - more to go in this calendar year. Groovy!

05-01-2008 - Waah, Appu babu....!

Nayi ghadi, naya batuwa, naya LowePro... badhiyaan hai!

The 4th LowePro in the family now is a Ridge 10 to house the wife's ultra-compact Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX10. It partners the already existing NatureTrekker AW II, CompuTrekker AW and Aspen AP 208.

We bought the bag earlier today, while the watch and wallet are souvenirs from our honeymoon to Switzerland (December 2007).

Of course, I'd really to love to post a picture of my hypothetical nayi dream-gaadi and naya dream-ghar, finances permitting, but that's not going to happen any time soon :).

04-01-2008 - Ow! Ow! Ow!

Alright - no more kitchen pictures for the next few weeks. I promise! It's just that I got home pretty late today and it was dark - and uninteresting - outside. Besides, the good thing is that my wife is beginning to show a lot of interest in my photo-a-day initiative and she wanted me to upload this image to the blog today. So, here it is - some kneaded wheat with its @$$ on fire!

03-01-2008 - Kitchen triptych

This is the first time (ever) I've tried out a triptych.

To continue with the food theme from yesterday's photograph, here's some vegetable stew in the making. Some fusili pasta was eventually added to the mix, but you can't see that here.

02-01-2008 - Ah! The joys of...

...not making any resolutions! They manifested themselves today in the form of a late evening snack :).

01-01-2008 - Ring in the new

I wish I hadn't thrown out the old blade. That happened two days back. If only I had the idea of this photograph in mind then...

Ah well, in the spirit of the New Year, let's ring in the new!

First post - Introduction

This is me.

This will be my photo-a-day blog. I wanted to keep this separate from my main blog. I created this blog in late 2006 with hopes of starting posting from the 1st of January, 2007. Unfortunately, I'm a year late, as it turns out :). I really hope to post one *new* photograph every day.

As of now, I have no fixed theme in mind. I will just capture whatever catches my fancy on a given day. It's going to be tough at least on weekdays because I usually don't carry a camera with me to work and so photo opportunities are limited to early morning and late evening. I should change that. My wife's recently got a pocketable point-and-shoot digital camera and that should do just fine for my commute.

Eventually, I hope (as I said - I am not planning on it right now) that this photo-a-day initiative develops into something meaningful. It could happen that I begin to photograph more and more those things or ideas that I care deeply about, and so I might have a collection of images that probably document the developments of those ideas or transitions in those things with time. That would be interesting and worth putting up for the world to see.