Rough Cut

Last Saturday, I took out my new camera for a work out. I had bought the Canon A550 for quite a bargain, and the reviews on the Net looked good- most of the sites had lots of good things to say. Now, I am an absolute rookie when it came to photography, and I don’t know what ISO and white noise is. Theory is OK, but until you know the effect of these parameters in real life situations, you would never appreciate the difference.

I left my room at 1.30 in the afternoon. The plan was to go to place named Artist colony (maybe because the land was allocated for artists), about 30 min walking distance. I heard that the scenery was good, with lots of trees and a water body. The dry weather, though put paid to my hopes and there was only a puddle at the bottom of a crater. Anyway I wanted to test my camera, and any scene is fair game.

The specs on the camera said 7.1megapixel and 4x optical zoom. It also had quite a few modes and settings which took getting used to in the beginning. For instance, I was poking about in the menu hunting for the zoom function when the zoom was supposed to be activated from a lever. A couple of long range shots went by like that, though I soon figured out things out, and it was smooth sailing after that. The mode I was shooting was initially Auto, and the shots seemed pretty good, to my untrained eye. Then I started getting cocky, going to manual mode and flipping around menu controls like I was a pro. And the results were expected: in bright sunlight those photos looked like they were shot at fading light. Oh well, I will learn.

Next stop was Mango gardens. This is a park whose level is above the road, almost like a part of a hill has been walled off. You won’t see anything from outside, but once you enter the place it seems like you have been transported to a different world. Grass lined pathways, clumps of trees, a pond in the middle with ducks doing their thing- pretty impressive. The maintenance was top notch too, and this is where the municipal corporation deserves the credit. Prefect for a photo shoot.The time of the day was afternoon, and there was an interesting play of light and shadows. The waters in the pool were miraculously still and I grabbed some mirror images before things got too splashy. The zoom feature came in handy here, as I was able to take shots of the ducks from about 10 metres away, without having to squint. My only complain is that it takes quite some time for consecutive shots, which feels icky when you are doing multiple shoots of, say, a child in a swing. The time lag makes you feel cramped. These are some of the photographs of my first session.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bhaskar04

Diwali in Haji Ali

This Diwali was my first outside Surat, and in the run-up I had expected a fair share of fireworks. At Guwahati, during those two days you could not hear yourself think- think of a war zone, or the sound effects of any war scene. The staccato of crakers, the boom of "atom bombs", the flash and clap of "rocket bombs". At Surat, this revelry was upscaled, maybe because the city was full of fat cats who had money to burn. They have to do something with 40,000 crores of diamond export.

So it was a pleasant surprise when the skies over Navi Mumbai twinkled with stars, and you could hear the nasal strains of Himmeshbhai from a respectable distance. The police was talking tough, promising to impose hefty fine and a long stay in the cooler for any poor sod caught with a burning cracker after 10.30 pm.And for once, they actually worked at making good the threat. Most folks didn't want to ruin their holiday mood, and immersed themselves in quieter activities like watching SRK's latest offering, or gorged on sweets, or played cards. And there was peace and quiet all around.

Diwali went a bit curiously for me. We were three old friends sitting around, all new to Bombay. The IIT campus, where I often go to visit my pals ,do a bit of Orkut on the side, and watch movies off the campus LAN was quiet, far too quiet for us.So we three whipped out the Mumbai Navigator, a pretty useful online tool and decided to go to Haji Ali dargah. Don't ask why we chose to go there, it seemed the nearest by train.

Haji Ali's is situated on an island just off the South Bombay coast, reachable by a 600 m long concrete causeway. At low tide, there is practically no need of the causeway, and I imagine that before the structure was built pilgrims would go to the dargah by clambering over the rocks. At high tide, the water level would probably rise by half a meter (this is a very wild guess, so don't sue me if you have information that the rise is actually .43m). The pathway was crowded, as the day being Friday was the Muslim holy day. The causeway was choc a bloc full of people, with vendors shouting out their wares and beggars, most of them maimed chanting like those rowers of old when they were rowing the ship against a strong current.

My first impressions of the place- dismal. The sea was horribly polluted- black waters, floating plastics, rotting leaves and discarded food. The whole area stank horribly, though you tend to get used to it, fast. We looked around the area , climbed out to the rocky shore and went back, barely noticing the stink. Most of the holy places which are situated in india would probably be like this. But then again , I guess a temple without a crowd would be like a body without a soul.