Pain

An Unfinished Sketch..

After a long time, I picked up my pencils again and started to sketch again. I will post them some time. Today I am posting an unfinished sketch that I have been wanting to finish for a long time but don't think I can capture the beauty...Here is the unfinished sketch. Pardon the poor scanning quality.

P.S.: This is an unfinished sketch of Aishwarya Rai.

Update: On the second thought, I remember why I stopped working on this one. The lips were a bit off-center and I never attempted another one...

Oh No..

"... and Rowling has revealed some characters do not survive."
(BBC News)

Some characters? Not one, but some? The morning of the release I get e-mail from my friend forwarding me to this link. So far I have been abstaining myself going to any link about Harry Potter sent by anyone. I don't want to spoil it. I trusted this friend not to send me any spoilers. So I clicked. I have been abstaining from any news about this book too. I didn't know that "some characters do not survive.". I am scared now. How much darker will it get? Oh God, I can't take the suspense any more now when its just 13 hours away...

A Discontinuous Continuum-2

Today was our submission for the assignment "A discontinuous continuum". I am stillnot sure what it meant, but here are the photos I submitted. The prints were better than my first attempt though the scanning didn't come out that good.

The first snap was of these guys displaying anti-Bush/anti-War slogan very at a traffic signal. I captured them as well as the traffic stopped at the signal. Since I knew it won't make sense individually, I took the liberty of joining them together to make one picture/panoramic view out of them.

Second picture didn't come out as well. It was a red motorcycle parked in a parking lot. Adjacent to it a car was parked. I tried capturing both, trying to make sure that I take the left edge of the first picture (motorcycle) as the right edge of the second picture. I again joined them together to make one picture. I guess, if you look closely you can see the joining line

The third picture was the one I liked the best. They can hold as individual photos as well are part of the panoramic view.

Thats all for today. I am just too tired to write any m0re. So detailed analysis..some other day..

My Question

Facebook has this cool feature called My Question, where you can post a question to be answered by your friends but you have to limit your question by 255 letters. I have a longer question.

I have been wondering that what do you mean when you say you know someone? Does that mean we can identify a person by his/her name? Or is it that we know their habits, hobbies, likes and dislikes, does that what defines a person? Or that we know their personality traits? But then isn't a human being a dynamic entity? We learn, grow and thus change all the time, which means all these likes/dislikes, personality traits, even habits and hobbies changes with time. So how can anyone really know the other person? Do we even know ourselves? ahh..the mysteries of life.

A Discontinuous Continuum

So we got our first Photography assignment "A Discontinuous Continuum". Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? Wait there is more. The description of the assignment reads:

Tuesday, July 17:
CRITIQUE: First Assignment due, "A discontinuous continuum": make three photo coninuums, each comprised of at least two photographs abutted together horizontally or vertically. Begin with a first picture, carefully choosing its composition and framing. The second picture will be an extension from one of the edges of your first picture (so note the edges of the first picture!), accepting whatever happens to fall in the frame. The purpose of this assignment is to begin to understand the relationship between intention and accident, choice and discovery.

Okay, now in English. What Jason (our instructor) explained to us is that when you take a picture you capture a small frame out of the whole view. Okay I need a diagram to explain this. Suppose the gray area in the first diagram below is the whole view that you can see, then when you take a picture you capture only the white area of that whole view and discard the rest. So our assignment is to take pictures right adjacent to that main picture (as shown in second diagram). It can be in any direction but the edges of the picture should be common. I am not sure about the purpose of this exercise yet (though he did explain). But it also does mean that I am wasting a whole lot of rolls trying to figure this out.

I hope it will make sense by next week..

My First Ever Prints

After 5 hours of strip testing (thats what its called!) in that dark and cold dark room (which actually reminds me of Snape's dungeon), I finally got my first set of prints. I still have to work on them as the contrast isn't right so I have to take these prints again (well you learn from your mistakes). But still first prints are first prints so here they are on my blog.

Okay, starting with my first ever roll for which battery of my camera wasn't working, which meant I wasn't sure about the amount of exposure (..technicality, technicality). Nevertheless here is the contact sheet for that roll. I didn't take any prints for this roll yet, I am not sure I will. This was my experimentation with SLR for the first time. As you can notice the exposures changes drastically over the roll, all due to those batteries. I wasn't sure about the exposure in any of them. Oh well, what do you expect for your first roll..

Here comes the second roll. I figured out the batteries and hence the light-meter (which gives the reading for the amount of exposure for your main subject) by now. I was still experimenting with the depth of field in initial few shots (I understand its hard to make out, but thats how you have to do it in an analog camera). the fourth row of this contact sheet has the snaps of that little girl who was playing on the statue. I enlarged few of these. The last two row are snaps from farmer's market which basically was concentrated on this clown who was giving different animal shaped balloons that he was making right there...

Okay, no more technical gibberish, I promise. Here are the snaps from the second contact sheet that I actually enlarged. First one is from Milk Pail market which is actually a very cool place for vegetable/fruit shopping. they are supposedly European style market. Whatever that means...

Now comes the main attraction. The little kid playing on the statue. This statue is a kid magnet. Honestly. No kid under the age of 6 and above the age of 1 can pass this statue without climbing it. I was there for approximately 30 minutes and approximately 5-6 different kids went up and down the statue in that time (You are right, this is snap of one little girl only..she was actually wearing a red dress which looked amazing in color..but nevertheless). This is not the best print for this shot though. I will come back with better prints...

And finally the clown, giving the balloon animal to a kid who waited (and consequently I waited) for it for 15 minutes...

Okay, better prints are coming soon...till then work with these.

Update: I just noticed something on the last photo. Can you see the face of the little boy behind the little girls hand. Can you see his expression. No? Let me help you (well I am breaking my vow of not processing these photos digitally)..

Okay, now? What do you think? Isn't it priceless?

Photography

So I finally developed my first film. Oh yes, the "Dark room" is reaaaalllly dark. As they say, hath ko hath nahi soojhta (So dark that one hand can't find the other) . But thankfully only one step in the whole processing is required to be done in that dark room: Loading the film. Its not that difficult a task. We practiced it in the classroom. It hardly took me 5 minutes then but today in ABSOLUTE darkness, it took me an hour and half. The rest of the processing just took half an hour. We actually put the roll in a processing tank especially built for film processing and process the film. This developing tank is pretty special as it allows the liquids/chemicals in but no light. At one point, just before fixing the negatives (which by the way is a very crucial step, after this step you can bring the negatives in light) the top pipe of the cylinder dropped (from where the liquid is injected) and I thought all the film inside the developing tank must have been exposed. I continued with the rest of the procedure with my fingers crossed. Those were the longest 30 minutes ever. With all the anxiety, negativity, hope and prayers and cursing myself for being so clumsy, it just took forever to go through those 30 minutes. You can imagine my relief and the big smile when I saw that the negatives actually looked like they were supposed to and not a transparent reel.

The next step was to cut those negatives in order to keep it in the archival sheets. I never knew how difficult it was to cut those negatives. Assuming they are such a thin strip of roll, you would think it would be easy to cut them straight but its not. That slippery surface combined with the knowledge that a slight change can ruin the negative forever, makes it so much difficult to cut those tiny films into a strip of 5 negatives.

I still have to take the prints. Luckily, our professor, Jason Francisco was around when I finished with my film today and he had a look at my negatives. He was very impressed by the results, not the developing procedure but the actual pictures. He said that I should be proud of them. May be he says that to every student in order to encourage them but it certainly did make my day. The two pictures he was referring to were the ones I took on Sunday. On Sunday morning, I had this impulse of going to local farmer's market for taking some snaps despite being sick. As I was parking my bike, there was a little girl playing by the statue while her parents were trying to park the bike too. I asked their permission to take a few shot of hers and they happily agreed. She kept moving all the while so I took about 5-6 shots till I finally got what I wanted. Her face in the front while the statue at the back. But after taking the picture I realized that I should have actually asked her as well before taking her pictures. Well ethically I did the right thing by asking the parents but she isn't a property of her parents and has her own mind about whether she is comfortable with me taking her pictures. I guess that was the reason she kept moving. She wanted to hide behind the statue but I guess the attraction of statue was bigger than her discomfort.

This has been my biggest trouble with photography: Taking pictures of stranger. Whether I should ask their permission first and then shoot or not. At times this might distort the scene/ situation I want to capture. I asked Jason, our professor about this and he said that it depends on what you feel comfortable with. It is good to talk to the subject of your photograph. Usually people are curious about what you are doing and not offended with it. If you think this will distort your situation then talk to them after taking the picture. Don't avoid talking to them. And the best thing he said that you would make people/subject of your photograph comfortable if you are comfortable with what you are doing.

Thats what I was experimenting on Sunday and it was an amazing experience. I talked to strangers, took pictures and felt very comfortable doing it. Being the introvert I am, I never thought I could ever do it. In fact when I was returning from the farmer's market, a lady was behind me. I turned back once and she smiled and said I am following you. She had flowers in her hand so I smiled and said,"And your weapon is flower?". She laughed and we crossed the road together. As I started riding my bike, she said, "Have a nice day". It was really a strange experience for me. Everyone around noticed me taking the pictures and instead of being offended or anything, they felt comfortable talking to me. The weirdest thing that they found about me wasn't that I was taking their pictures but that I was not using a digital camera! The life is so strange..

Pastafarian

Of all the social networking sites I am member of (and believe me its a lot), I like Facebook the best. It gives a lot of freedom compared to the other sites. But its not as popular as orkut in Indian community, hence I am currently bullying my friends to join the Facebook. I had a very interesting discussion with one such friend about my religious belief I have put on Facebook. Unlike Orkut, you can actually type your belief in Facebook so instead of Agnostic (which I have put on Orkut), I have put Pastafarian. Here are few interesting mails we exchanged about this topic...

Gayathri Chakravarthy (5:47am July 3rd):

Isn't it something to do with a parody religion ! Wow, US did this to you, isn't it !

I too have several questions on the very basis of religion..but am part of no cult yet..not yet ! ;)

Richa (7:52am July 3rd):

Hey I am not a part of a cult...its just a joke. A way of mocking religion. And its not US..I already had doubts before coming here.

I just found Pastafarian funny so added it as my religion instead of saying that I am agnostic which is plain boring...

Gayathri Chakravarthy (8:21am July 3rd):

Wow..this facebook is awesome ! The convenience of a mailbox with the versatility of a forum..opens quite some doors I should say :).. This is technically referred to as Portal building and I have tried it some years ago..but the site designing is sensibly great !

Hmmm, yeah to mention one is agnostic sounds a cliche I suppose and Pastafarian is open mocking as compared to the subtle claims of being agnostic !

Ah, I could go on forever about religion.. ! Have you read Angels & Demons ~ makes worthwhile reading as does Da Vinci Code ! I did know about the numerous ways adopted by the Church to propogate religion but never realized it assumed such hideous propensity.. More prominent examples from our own are the Manusmriti and such like..

Bottomline ~ I believe religion formed the basis of identity among fellowmen, taught discipline to an otherwise Barbaric clan..But, do we still need one as it seems to be dividing rather than Unite ??

Also ~ my question to you ~ Is it religion you doubt or GOD ? Agreeably God is different from what man makes man believe about Him.. what say you ??

Richa (9:03am July 3rd):

Well as far as God is concerned I am agnostic but for religion I am a non-believer.

I don't know whether God exist or not but I know why each and every culture has developed its own concept of God..Its a psychological need. Taking responsibility of all the consequences of your action is really hard, given the uncertainty of those results.You can't think of all the possible outcome of ur action and hence you need someone else to blame or take that responsibility. That someone is God in most cases.

I am a hypocrite when it comes to God. I believe in him when the pressure/stress around me becomes too much for me to bear..I give all the responsibility to him. More like if I am too much worried about something, the only way I can relax is by believing that He exists. But I do so in full knowledge that I am using the concept of God for my advantage...

But I certainly don't believe in Religion..religion is a way by which someone assumes an authority on God and tells other how and where to communicate with God. But as I believe everyone can have his or her concept of God. How can anyone else be an expert about your concept of God and tell you how to communicate with him? It just doesn't make any sense to me, so I despise everyone who tell others how to pray to God or his/her God is better than the other person's God (which honestly I find childish)...

I love Facebook too just the Indian community isn't aware of its existence yet so I don't find many friends here.

Gayathri Chakravarthy (12:11pm July 3rd):

Wooh..multitude of emotions ~ anger, curiosity, acceptance, confession and questioning, I sense it all !

I am agnostic too ! :) Don't think have grown enuf(or ever will) so as to understand Him..in fact at times think we should refrain from discussing Him(or His existence thereof), we are in no qualified to debate him..never..ever !

Ah..spoken like a true science student :o) ! Sorry, couldn't pass up the chance to make this comment ! :p ! See, this is what tears me apart at times..the conflict between the heart and mind.. The teeny weeny bit of intelligence in me asks to follow science which would rationally explain(or attempt to rather) an event but my heart asks I accept the mysteries that surround me unquestioningly and oblige them as miracles.. My family blames me an atheist when I launch an explanation but hope you are able to understand my manner of speech.. I have always felt upset am misunderstood so !

RELIGION ?? I am nothing but skeptic about it with all due respect to the religious fanatics out there.. Religion has not served it's own purpose but also is leading to the downfall of humanity.. What started as a cohesive factor is wreaking havoc all around..and we see the proof in paper every single day. Once again many think am an atheist since I disown my religion - it gives me no pleasure to call myself a Brahmin / Hindu ! :(

Who wrote the holy books / epics and how Holy was he ?? How can I see the world thru anyone else's eyes other than mine ! Agreed you need a code of conduct for a civilized society, coming from where we do - apes ! But who is anyone to dictate my actions ?? I see shades of chauvinism in every one of these doctrines which defeats the very root of their cause - equality. The Manusmriti dictates a shocking code - woman having lost her husband has nothing to look forward to in this world and therefore should even refrain from tasting / touching anything sweet ! How more gross can anything get ??

So let me end with a quote from my friend - Well am agnostic but for religion I am a non-believer :)))

There was an article about facebook in the paper today ! :o) Looks like it's attracting people by the droves..was pleased to read the article and think I knew about facebook already ! ;)

The discussion isn't over yet, just discontinued at the moment due to multitude of reason. Some day we will pick it up again. Meanwhile, if anyone else wants to put their two cents in, you are welcome to do so.

Timing

How does these viruses know the worst timing possible to attack you? I am supposed to develop and print my first film roll ever and here I am sick, sitting in my bed, doing nothing. I want to get my Purple belt before I leave for India in August, which means I can't afford to miss classes, but again here I am sick, sitting in my bed, doing nothing. I need to get data from this company, get my tickets booked and so many numerous task but no here I am sick, sitting in my bed, doing nothing. Its so frustrating but I can't even scream as I have throat infection! What DID I do to deserve this?

Monterey Bay Aquarium

So here are the photos from our Sunday trip to Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Outer Bay: The stunning one-million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit is home to the largest community of open-ocean animals to be found in any aquarium. It homes ray, giant tuna, sharks, sea turtles. The outer bay also features a huge collection of jellyfish species. The outer bay section however starts with the An Chovis.

AnChovies: The anchovies are a family (Engraulidae) of small but common schooling saltwater plankton-feeding fish. They are found in scattered areas throughout the world's oceans, but are concentrated in temperate waters, and are rare or absent in very cold or very warm seas. This snap (below) shows the school of AnChovies swimming.

This snap is showing the feeding of AnChovies.

Jelly fishes: There are a lot of different types of Jelly Fishes in the Monterey Bay AquariumI love the color contrast in these snaps and the swirly motion hey move in.

The next attraction here were sharks and other predators. It was pretty dark there and they were moving very fast thus making it very hard to take their picture. They also had sea turtles in the same tank. Here are few shots.
Ray: The first one is a shot of Ray with different image processing. Rays, also known as Batoidea, are most closely related to sharks and young batoids look very much like young sharks. Most species live on the sea floor, in a variety of geographical regions - many in coastal waters, few live in deep waters, most batoids have a somewhat cosmopolitan distribution, in tropical and subtropical marine environments, temperate or cold-water species.

Sunfish: It is the largest animal on display with 880 pound. The ocean sunfish (Mola mola) or is the heaviest bony fish in the world, with an average weight of 1000 kilograms. The species is native to tropical and temperate waters around the globe. It resembles a fish head without a tail, and its main body is flattened laterally. Sunfish can be as tall as they are long, when their dorsal and anal fins are extended.

Sea Turtle: Sea turtles can live upto 189 years, making them the longest living animal on Earth. They were the slowest moving animal in this tank but still light was low to get a good snap.

Shark: I am not sure whether its a shark or tuna. Any ideas?

Shark Tank: Shark tank shot from back. You can imagine the scale of the display from this.

Sea Otters: They are very fun loving creature. It was so much fun watching them play in the water. Here are few fun pictures. In the last one, its hard to see the otter (its at the the top left corner) but I love the lights.

Kelp Forest: This was my favorite section. I can spend eternity there. Some info about Kelp forests first.

Kelp forests occur in cold, nutrient-rich water and are among the most beautiful and biologically productive habitats in the marine environment. They are found throughout the world in shallow open coastal waters, and the larger forests are restricted to temperatures less than 20ºC, extending to both the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. A dependence upon light for photosynthesis restricts them to clear shallow water and they are rarely much deeper than 15-40m. The kelps have in common a capacity for some of the most remarkable growth rates in the plant kingdom.

The yellow plants in all these photos are Kelp.

You can actually see the cucumber fish on the rock in this one.

This one just shows the height of the exhibit

The whitish fishes in the back are the An Chovis. They actually swim in a group called school. They learn to swim with each other.

Okay, this is the shot of this scuba driver(I am not sure if you can call them that, but whatever) feeding the fish. You can actual see a fish biting his hand to get the food.

Coral Reef /Shaley Reefs: Some pictures from the different reefs now.

First one is coral reef . We visited this section last so we were really tired and hungry so not many photos from here.

This is from Shaley Reef. You can see prawns as well as Anemones. They look loike flower but are actually animals (Pink colored in this case).

Shaley reef again. Can you see the small fish lurking behind the rock?

Sandy Seafloor: The fishes here are fascinating. They metamorph in their environment so nicely that its simply amazing.

Can you spot the white fish on the sand in this one?

These are sand dollars. They are actually marine animals.

Penguins: These are black-footed Penguins. They were really beautiful. And these are actual pictures and not a poster.

Now few fun pictures from aquarium. There was this telescope placed at one portion in an area where whales visit. We couldn't see any whales but here are few experimental photos from telescope. There was this rock where few otters and ducks were resting.

Thats it for today..