Kabootar ja ja ja

Iconically Plaça Catalunya, Barcelona.

Barça Barça

Ah so all of you’ve gathered from a couple of blog posts that I was indeed in Barcelona last week for a conference. And without dwelling too much on the actual purpose of visit (which went great by the way), I am going to talk about Barcelona. It’s easy to fall in love with the city, its sights, its restaurants, its architecture, its culture and its lifestyle. On the other hand I was forewarned big time by everyone about the theft scenario there. As in that the ratio of pickpocketing stories were abnormally higher than other European cities or at least what was the word on the street. But before I go further, here’s a quick look at the center of Barcelona – Plaça Catalunya.

 

Plaça Catalunya – center of Barcelona. Fountains, pigeons and wide open spaces make it festive and fun. BTW, call me vain but I love this picture. :)

 

Ok.. back to the pick-pocketing warnings. So my friend NN lost all her documents and stuff on the beach there and she wasn’t the only one. A lot of others reported similar things and it all had me pretty spooked. Spooked enough to take a taxi to the hotel first thing and dump all the valuables in the secure room safe. And even after, I hugged my bag for dear life in the metro, on the streets, and glanced suspiciously at everyone to identify the next thief. Constant Vigilance, as Moody (née Harry Potter) would say. And well, it worked. Thankfully I didn’t lose anything. But after my first day there, I realized something. By being extra-vigilant, I was actually losing out on the fun. And the other thing.. no one was going to punch the daylights out of me and make away with my belongings. It would only happen if I turned out to be careless (which on trips I usually am not – a kind of “foreign radar” kicks in and keeps me alert at non-hyper levels). And so after Day 1, I relaxed. I even allowed my bag to slide away to the seat next to me even though my arm was looped around it. And it was far more fun than always waiting for something happen. 

 

Anyhoo, so I got to see a lot of places, a lot of notable architecture by their modernist movement pioneer, Antoni Gaudi, whose masterpieces quite literally encompass a big majority of the Barcelona skyline. And it was all breathtaking. Right from the La Sagrada Familia, more popular as the iconic church of Barcelona to the loopy Parc Guell… a wonderful contribution to a beautiful city. And here’s another postcard from the Parc Guell. You can see the Sagrada Familia and what I call the “lipstick” building as the two tall structures on the landscape.

 

View of the city of Barcelona from Parc Guell.

 

That apart the culture was quite distinctly young and alive. The city seldom slept.. the shops were open all over up to 10pm and the restaurants well past midnight. And in the weekends the cranked it up a notch and went all out for all-nighters too. Specifically I have to mention La Rambla, the pivotal central street of Barcelona and indeed its No 1. sight. A mile-long road all the way from the beach to the city center, the road is filled with such a variety and extreme of things that are hard to imagine as co-existing. From street-side vendors to 5 star fares, from Le Meridien to hostels under 20€ a night, from street hawkers to bird-merchants, from fresh fruit to exotic food, from nudists to transvestites, its all there crammed into one never-sleeping, ever-crowded street. A sight that mere words can’t do any justice to. You’ve got to be there.

More later! Byee!

Experiments with the “analog” SLR

Remember I bought an “analog” SLR? You don’t?? Where’ve you been? Read that post here. So like I mentioned there, I fed a black and white film roll to go all pristine with the shooting. And for the first one, I went through it really quickly and at the same time, experimented a whole whole lot. And so, turns out, out of 36 photos, I got only about 20 not to shake and remotely in focus. Since while shooting, you can’t see any previews, I was still trying to get a hang of the controls and so I figure this percentage while not too great isn’t too bad either. Here are a couple of shots from that bunch. Not bad at all, huh?

The Eiffel Tower. This shot was multiple-exposed 5 times in one click. Pretty neat, huh? 

And then one more -

View across the Seine. Metro 6 is making it’s away across too. 

The above photo however has a white-washed sky (which couldn’t be saved digitally after scanning either). And that proves that the ISO is too high for the light that was available. Nonetheless, considering that this was the first experiment, I am going to consider it a moderate success.

Interesting fact: Did you know that B&W films need special technology to be developed? And that it can’t be done in India? And that it costs maybe 5 times as much to do it wherever it can be? Who knew, huh?

Do you mind taking a picture of me?

Topping off on yesterday's discussion, I had a GChat talk with our SLR guru, SS. He pointed out to me that it was super irritating to him when someone approached him for taking a picture of them when he was busy setting up his own SLR to take a shot-of-the-year, so to speak. And however occupied he was, he couldn't say 'no' and be done with it. After some thought, I figured it wouldn't hurt anyone to know the etiquette of getting their picture taken by complete strangers. So here are some helpful guidelines - 

1. If someone looks busy and doesn't make eye contact, approach someone else. Simple, right? If they don't make eye contact, they obviously want to be left to do whatever it is that they're doing. So find someone else.

2. Just because someone's dangling an SLR doesn't make them an expert. This is a wayward assumption. But given the fact that all the major brands have slashed down prices, most people are buying the SLRs first and figuring out how to use them much later. However if they do look jobless or aimless, go for it.

3. Never ask someone with a tripod to take your picture. This is ambiguous too. It is assuming that the tripoder is a serious photographer and would much rather wait for his/her "moment" than take a picture of arbitrary you.

4. Approach other tourists with point n shoots. Well, they are your best bets really. And be polite and offer the barter. Their picture for yours.

5. Never make someone take your picture twice. Think about it. Even if they messed up the shot, they did take out the time to aim and shoot a picture of someone they didn't know. Don't extend their courtesy beyond the normalcy and make them take multiple shots, scrutinizing the previous ones right before them and scowling at the bad shots. There are other people out there. Me, for example.. I am already praising their effort even before the preview appears on the screen. And if I hate it, I wait till the first guy is out of earshot and then find someone else to take it. Its only decent.

6. Mean the "do you mind" part. Its like some well-rehearsed dialogue and it must appear in some book for sure. "Do you mind taking a picture of me/us?" is how anyone approaches a stranger. Unfortunately the "do you mind" is purely perfunctory and you are already thrusting the camera into reluctant fingers even before you get the confirmation. Be prepared to hear a "yes" for the mind part and move on spiritedly to someone else who doesn't mind. After all the picture shot by someone who truly doesn't mind has got to be better than the one taken by someone who did for the heck of it.

On that note, here's a one-liner for all the people who did mind taking photos of others and didn't say it - SAY IT! We'd rather not approach grouchy people to take shots of us in our happy times. On the other hand.. it is one picture. And we're not robbing you off anything here. And so if you really can take a shot, consider it your good deed of the day and do it in good humour if it permits you to!

Uh, well.. that's all I could think about right now. Is there anything I left out? Add your two pence...

Traveling solo..

Doing a PhD often entails solo travel, be it for meetings, conferences or workshops. Worse, sometimes you're left to tour exotic locations all by yourself (especially if your husband can't make it with you). Even otherwise, I have come across a lot of people who aren't squeamish about traveling alone. But here's a common issue. When you travel alone, do you end up with more pictures of the place than of you with some of the sights/sounds out there? This question is along the lines of another discussion we had over a year ago on MindBlogging - if you could ever go to movie/restaurant alone.

To answer the question raised above, I am guessing...YES for a vast majority of people. Either that.. or awkwardly positioned self-shot pictures which end up having your face 3D upfront with vestiges of the monument you wanted to capture in the background. Even while traveling in groups, I've noticed that most people are not comfortable requesting a stranger to take a picture of the entire group. And thats often a combination of one of two reasons - they are afraid that they'd mind in that we're disturbing them or that the picture they end up taking is going to be sub-par. However I believe somethings better than nothing and you could always ask someone else to take a shot if you aren't entirely satisfied by it. Or you could travel alone, use a tripod and not be shy to smile wide at a camera positioned 10 feet away with the timer blinking for 10 seconds with the possibility that some jerk is going to run away with your equipment any second. Ok the last bit is a possibility, even if unlikely. 

So what is the solution? I know some people just don't mind not having enough pictures of them in a location and it matters to them only what they absorbed visually and felt while being there. But then again, I don't belong to the "some people" category. I love having my pictures taken in all the new places I visit with whatever needs to be captured in the picture. And so, I approach random touristy-looking strangers and make exchange offers with them. Their picture for mine? A never-fail barter system. Even if only a handful of shots are up to your own quality-control, at least you have them. And even if a bunch of people turn you down, you don't know them and are probably never going to run into them ever again. And for every person that refuses to take your picture (I am yet to find one), there are 10 or more that will. So the bottom line? Don't blame shyness or your own loneliness for the fact that you didn't get enough pictures to a place you visited (unless you really really didn't mind) and instead, get out there, speak the word or play the charades (if you are language-stricken) and get what you want - a picture of you.

PS: When you give a camera to someone to take your picture, please please let it be a point 'n' shoot. If it's a fancy SLR, unless the person you are giving it has had some experience, you have a guaranteed blur!

Ah Paris!

Some of the best things in life can be free. And the city of lights is an everyday example. Some of the best sights it has to offer are absolutely free. Like this one.

 La Tour Eiffel: The single most-visited paid monument in the world.

Ah Paris! How I love this city and how I love showing its jewels off. With the sudden onset of intensive heat, all the monuments are shining in their well-maintained splendour in the bright sunshine. And with my new-found black and white film SLR mania, this is the best place to be to try and capture some surreally brilliant shots while I’m at it. And yes, I am yet to develop the 2 rolls of B&W film that I’ve already exhausted. Needless to say, exceptional results will wind up here. Until then, vivre la Paris!

Firing the canon

So here she is… the newest member of our growing Canon family – a simple film SLR camera. I’ve only just loaded new film into the camera and I got to say I love the “sound” of clicking. There’s nothing digital about it. It’s all mechanical. And it’s finally refreshing to be limited. With the film SLR, thanks to the manual settings, you really got to know what you’re doing. There are no second chances for a single photo. And so this first roll is going to be entirely experimental. If any of the photos do turn out to be masterpieces, you know where you can expect to see them. Until then, just wish me happy clicking.

My new Canon film SLR.

  

PS: This one doesn't have a "on-off" button, just a "lock". Hence the poll.

Postcards from Quiberon…

As promised… courtesy the ‘S’ in our SLR… some pics from our visit to Quiberon, a coastal region in Bretagne, the North-west of France.

And one more…

Enjoy!

Postcards from Prague

So here it is… 4 days , 1330+ pictures later, just 3 photos.. to represent the wholesome spirit of Prague. This first one says it all – a beautiful castle overlooking the entire city, a lovely river that separates the castle and the Old town and the medieval architecture if that wasn’t enough..

And then this one of the twilight. Twilight is brilliant in Prague, making the entire sky a beautiful inky blue. What better to see it against but the gothic church of Old Town? Here, decide for yourself..

And here’s one last picture.. this one for a quirky fact. The longest escalator in all of Europe in the Metro station of Namesti Miru.. At a whopping 88m high and an arduous 2 minutes 30 seconds long and over 400 steps, it’s one hell of a “ride”. What’s worse? The advertisements on the side walls are also posted at an angle. So, if you lean to read them, you may feel a slight spin of vertigo chugging along with you. And the worstest part? The escalators are at least twice as fast as anything normal you’ve gone on before. That means quick step-on and quick step-off. With no elevators in sight on most Metros and the extra'-tall, extra-long ride ahead, it’s an everyday amusement for the “fearless” and intimidating for the rest. Ok ok, I sense it’s enough build-up. Here’s a pic; And what you think is the top, is not. Go figure.

Dobry Den from Prague!!

The digital photo conundrum

Ok, moment of truth. How many of us have thanked technology for coming up with digital photography? Almost all of us I bet. Every household now boasts at least one digital camera. All the uncles and auntys are totally familiar with the USB cable and picture transfer, all the way to the uploading of the images on the internet and web-sharing as well. The good old days of film roll are now obsolete and so are the first digicams that had floppy disk/zip drive memories. Now's the age of miniaturization, what with the advanced memory devices which started out at SD and have gone well and beyond micro-SD to built in large memories too. Everything's as perfect can be.

I have a confession to make. I am not entirely satisfied with this arrangement. Back at home in India, we have a huge cabinet stuffed with picture albums that document the childhood of my brother and me. It has all those trips we made as a family, those birthdays, those family outings, my brother's upanayanam, our Kuwait days, and what not. And sifting through these pictures every vacation is a trip down memory lane for me. And though I can do a similar thing on the laptop, sifting through folder after folder of saved photos, I don't do it. And even if I did the warm glow of memories isn't as strong. I don't know why. There's another problem in this. In the days of the film roll which restricted us to 36 pictures per roll (with a charge for development and approximately Rs 5 per "maxi" print), we were judicious in our usage of the roll. And hence every photo was thought out and worth it. Come the digitial era, of course we are thankful for it eliminates the mental tension of waiting for the photos to develop - Was the film inserted correctly? Will Ihave a blank roll? Were too many pics blurred? No tension at all. Instant previews. A bit blurry? No problem. Take 3-4 pictures extra just to make sure you got everything right. You can always delete the ones you don't want later. But hang on a second... how many of you actually go through all the pictures and delete the ones that don't need to be kept? I do. And it's a tedious process. Add to that "selecting" a maximum of a 100 photos from a folder of well over 500 per trip to share with family and friends. And then "working" on them - brightness, contrast, blah blue... And then adding comments to these pictures (ok that's not mandatory but somehow people got very attached to the comments I give under each picture and so now it's no longer an option)... and uploading everything. It's all a big abuse of digital memory and I am only one of the million doing this. And after this tedious process, I kind of lose the interest to sift through those pictures again for a long time. And that's true of every trip/occassion. And so when you think of wanting to relive some of those memories, more often than not, you end up going to your own Picasa album of the event (it has a more concise set) than to the real folder which has one too many extra pictures.

And what about prints? Are you one of those very few who take select prints of your trip just for the keeps? Or is it the one odd blow-up or the personalized calendar? If you are like most people it's the latter. Thanks to all of this... when my laptop crashed and lost a good deal of pictures from recent trips, I experienced no tremendous grief. I still had the Picasa albums... and so what if they weren't the real high quality? I wasn't doing anything with them anyways. Sad but true. I'd love to hear what the rest of the world thinks on this whole conundrum. So if you have something to say, say it!!

Softbox

Due to popular demand (well one comment and a couple of GTalk messages) I've decided to share the Softbox secrets, in my possession thanks to S and the internet of course. So, what's a Softbox? It's a simple contraption that basically helps soften the harsh naked light from a bulb. And so what that does is to cast a soft, even glow over the subject and when you play around with it, you can get many interesting configurations of shadows and light (look at some of my thumbnails below if you need examples). It's sort of like a lampshade, just much thinner to allow almost all of the light pass through, except softened.

So, what you need is probably just a bunch of things lying around. Let's make a list anyways (I like to list things... even if there are just 2 things on it... In this case however, it may as well be justified).

Stuff -
1. Cardboard boxes (shoe cartons, courier boxes, anything that is neither too big nor too small)
2. White trace paper
3. Halogen bulbs (say, 500W for the max impact; if you can't find one, go with whatever you get)
4. Extras - tape, lampstands (from table lamps or the likes), scissors and pen-knife.

How -
Fairly simple and self-explanatory!
1. Cut a hole on the back of the box to allow the insertion of your bulb through it. If you are using a 500W bulb, be careful about burning youself unknowingly.
2. Cut away the side/front flaps of the opening of the box so that you can cleanly tape the trace paper over the opening.

That's it! You're pretty much done. That's only the first step though. Positioning the light and then playing with the ISO, WB and other settings of your camera as you light different portions of the subject are the next steps. And it helps if you have atleast two softboxes for even lighting, if you desire. Look at the post below for our setup.

Model in me

Anyone who knows me knows that this post can't do with me modeling anything. But surprise surprise.. it is! Ever since S got very involved with the whole lighting nuances in photography and created everything from a lightbox to a softbox, he's played photographer and obviously, I get to be the model. Here's our current softbox setup (all of this is made from shoeboxes and the likes... the overall investment is under 10€ - have any questions, drop me a line).

And here's a bunch of the results - some are truly scary I accept.. but that's what you get when you attempt ghost lighting amongst other things. Lol. So that was our weekend. Go on, try your own softbox. Enjoy.

The lightbox

This is a remarkable post for many reasons, 1 -It's the 400th for MindBlogging (yippeee) and 2- it fulfills a project that S and I embarked upon ages ago after seeing Pattu's this post. Fascinated by the concept and seduced by his results, we set out to build our own little/mid-sized lightbox. We followed pretty much the same procedure. But for the unfamiliar here's a gist .

What you need -

How to go about it -

1. Cut out a rectangle from the top and the 2 sides of the box with the knife so as to be able to tape the trace paper over the holes and allow light into it for a reflection-less even light.

2. Paste the trace paper directly over the holes to cover them up. Tip: Tape from the inside of the box for better results.

3. Paste the chart over the inner back wall and the bottom of the box. The end result should look somewhat like this -

4. Position the lamps with the fluorescent bulbs (we found only a maximum of 40W) directly in front of the box on either side of the opening. We realized that this configuration was best for the low power afforded by our lamps.

Shoot away!

Here are some results -

We could've gotten better results with a more powerful lamp and that'll be part of our Lightbox Ver 2.0. As of now, here's wishing you all a fabulous New Year ahead!

Oh look it's fall..

It happens every year. One day there is the chill that goes with an ending summer and another day, you look out and the trees are all changing colour rapidly. It's Fall and it's here. And it's the most beautiful time of the year. the weather's great and the outside is gorgeous. I took these shots from just outside my office. If I don't feel like working, nature's to blame. Take a look...

Pretty, isn't it?