London 2012

Must agree that the London Eye is a brilliant piece of work added into the skyline of London. Nothing like a sunny bright day around it... and just click away! Loved the cloudscapes all around Europe during the summer holidays. Adds so much drama to the pictures!

Then dusk fell ...and as if the sky went up on flames!!

@ Zafran...

Been a long long time since I had posted anything. That too none after I got my new Canon EOS 60D about four months back! An evening out at the new chic Indian restaurant 'Zafran' roused my senses and I got these shots. The food was good but the decor was even the more enticing. The noise handling is remarkably advanced with the Digic IV image processor of the 60D. Haven't yet gathered the courage (and money) to lay my hands on a real fast lens, a.k.a. F/2.8mm but my new replacement Tamron 18-270mm VC PZD is stretched to its limits and put to good use here. And these are shot handlheld!

Shooting the KPC Building

Been a long time since the last post. I was planning to upload these shots that I had taken around the the Head Quarters of the Kuwait Petroleum Coporation (KPC) as a part of a photo workshop last summer. It was pretty hot and balmy that afternoon and moving around the huge complex and shooting was quite demanding physically too! It was a good idea to have carried the polariser filter. Guess it has done a decent job with the sky and the glass.

Looks like lately its a shift to architecture photography as can been seen with most of the stuff I have put up here. Really wished could get some real critique from some real players in the game or some pros. Really don't know if these are good enough.

Photographing Architecture: The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

Photographing architecture is yet another area of specialization in photography. The Museum of Islamic Art at Doha, Qatar does seem to be an interesting piece of Architecture to raise the creative energies in a photographer. It’s interesting how the creative genius of an architect generates and can culminate into yet more expressions in photographs. Tried my hand at this aspect of photography here. Of course, with no formal training whatsoever.

The museum is an interesting piece of architecture designed by the renowned Chinese American architect I.M. Pei, coaxed out of retirement at 91, to work on this project (petrodollars??). The museum houses some of the rarest and precious pieces of Islamic art from across the world, including India.

Wonder what a pro might have to say about these shots!

Guitars!

Guitars have always been a part of my life. The association with the six strings has seen me through the thick and thin of life. No matter however little I may have excelled at performing with it, the guitar has helped me gather friends, sail through the 'ragging' period in college with relative ease, getting invited to parties where lesser mortals like me would have been forgotten about otherwise and of course, the opportunity to play with a band which actually 'got paid' for its performances! Picture above was taken at the store 'Guitar Center' in Las Vegas.

The one below was taken at a rather a unusually decorated Ozzy store 'Kosmic Sound' in Perth.

But the fascination with this instrument for an enthusiast does not remain to playing and listening. The myriad models of the guitar out there in the market is simply mind blowing! As a matter of fact merely learning about and following the numerous styles, makes, 'editions', technologies, etc. of the instrument in itself can be an engrossing past time or hobby. And only a genuine enthusiast and connoisseur can understand the value of a $25,000 Eddie Van Halen Frankenstein replica or a $17,000 Fender Custom Shop Stevie Ray Vaughan Lenny Tribute Stratocaster (one of which I could touch at a Las Vegas 'Guitar Center'!)

There is even a parallel art form of making miniature scale replicas of guitars which are interesting collectors' items for guitarists as well as non-guitarist enthusiasts. The pictures below are of such beautiful and spectacular hand made scale models of various 'famous' models and 'editions' of guitars at one of those colourful 'bazaars' in Fremantle, Perth Australia.

The little girl in the frame will give you an idea of the scale of the miniature replica guitars.

Smart Young City on Gas-Lift – Doha, Qatar

In petroleum engineering parlance gas-lift is a method of lifting oil from wells which do not have enough natural pressure in the oil bearing reservoir to bring it to surface.

Doha, the capital city of Qatar has risen from the Arabian desert sands bolstered by a skyrocketing economy driven by revenues from the huge natural gas reserves. It’s a brand new city with strange and spectacular skyscrapers that are products of the imaginations of the haute architects of the modern world.

And as with the rest of the Arabian countries of the gulf, the traditional ethos yet survive amongst the rising steel and concrete edifices.

The Waqif Souk is an interesting place to spend some of your time in Doha. You can soak in the traditional flavour of an Arabian 'souk' or bazaar, browsing through the little souvenir shops, lazying in one of the cafetarias or have a nice meal in one of the upmarket restaurants. No matter how hip or modern the inside of these places are, the facades are done up in the very traditional aesthetics.

Jal Tarang: Music from Water

That's the Jal Tarang. An ancient Indian concussion instrument comprising of a set of porcelain or bronze bowls (cups) of different sizes filled with water (coloured spectacularly here). The set consists of 15 or 22 bowls (cups), mostly only china bowls as preferred by artistes today. Water is poured into the cups and the pitch is changed by adjusting the volume of water in the cup. The number of cups depends on the melody being played. The bowls mostly are arranged in a half-circle in front of the player who can reach them all easily. The player softly hits the cups with a wooden stick on the border to get the sound.

Must be quite a task to tune this instrument!

This was in a Mumbai mall on Indian Independence Day 2009 and I was perched up in a higher floor to catch that 'top view'.

Las Vegas Surprises

In this age of Information Revolution it’s easy to become a ‘Mr. or Ms. Know-it-all’. You just have to spend some time on the internet and you can almost be there even before you are anywhere near it. Be it Youtube, Wikipedia, Googlemaps, or any such website, they can feed you with almost anything you want to know about a place. These days with the streetview option in googlemaps you can even take a virtual ride along almost any street in the developed world, specially the USA. So, well, almost nothing remains unknown when it comes to travelling to a new destination.
Yet Las Vegas surprises. Inspite of having heard, read, surfed so much about this place, it still held me in awe.