Friday free!!

The week from Monday morning till now has been a tight knot of frustration, firefighting and firing people. Thankfully there seems to be a glimmer of hope that the weekend will be comparatively peaceful. At times I really do wonder if it is good to be sooooo passionate about your work but I cannot treat it as just another job.

The community has changed hands. There seems that things could change there BUT since last two challenges my gripe was also the quality of photos which have scored high. So if the photo appreciation of voters does not improve there isn’t much hope either way. This week the topic at is “humor” and at https://dpchallenge.com is “In the Garden” both the topics are not really inspiring me for any kind of action – guess I will take a week off.

Men In Black

Click for larger version I have submitted this picture to https://dpchallenge.com for the theme “Trends” the title is “Men In Black : The Next Generation” a bit different interpretation of the challenge but I was tickled by the idea. Actually I wanted to do “Men In Black : Attack of the clones” with Aasim sitting between two parallel mirrors OR “Honey I Shrunk Morpheus” Aasim in Aviator Rayban goggles but they didn’t work out.

I also did 6 pictures on the Circle theme. There are a couple of more that I want to try out. Yesterday evening when we went to Swati’s parents, her father took out and gave me 2 polarising filters which exactly fit my camera!! Now i can eliminate all reflections from shiny surfaces. He also has a ring flash and a three head flash but the problem is my poor camera does not have an external flash connector.

Saturday Night Quiz!

Yesterday night at dinner time I don’t know how but conversation veered towards which cartoon character has dog named … here is what Aasim could remember
Dennis the menace – Ruff
Obelix – Dogmatix
Tintin – Snowy
Phantom – It’s a wolf, Devil
Jughead – Hot Dog (In 1960’s he was owned by Archie)
Flintstones – Dino (yeah he is a dog)
Jetsons – Astro?
We added
Dagwood/Blondie – Daisy
Jiggs, Bringing up father – Fifi
Garfield – Odie (I know but the cat owns him 😉
Charlie Brown – Snoopy

You know of any more?

The day promises to be filled with moments of good photography, I want to take some pictures for the https://dpchallenge.com theme “Trends” my earlier entry seems to be doing better than my expectations – I had rated it a 4/10, it is averaging 4.9630 after 162 votes. Will write a detailed critique on the entry after the results.

Better to be a fool among equals than equal among fools

A cause to dye for….

My one and only dear son Aasim wants me to dye my hair as according to him I now have too much grey…

I am not really in favour BUT I keep wondering…

Look mama no hands!!

Day before yesterday Aasim got the trainer wheels on his bicycle removed. Basically he figured out that as long as they are there he will not truly bi-cycle 🙂

Now he is cycling without any help and can also make his tiny bicycle go round in very tight circles. Wanted to photograph but after the first couple of shots deemed it too dangerous for Aasim as he wants to look at the camera rather than concentrate on cycling

Ego!

Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.

They are the true egoist!

Blues :)

Blue is such a beautiful color wonder why it is associated with melancholy. Our obsession with photography continues. This picture was taken by Swati for theme Blue, however we have concluded that we will no longer post on , instead try to take at least 5 technically presentable pictures of each theme.

I don’t want to comment about BUT this has to be documented that our decision has nothing to do with our personal scores(pun intended), we just don’t want to be part of an autocracy…

Swati’s father had come for dinner on Saturday and looking at our enthusiasm has promised to dig out and give us a free run of his old photographic and studio equipment, he was a professional Industrial and Medical research photographer all his life and is now retired…

Hopefully this will also rekindle his basic interest in photography and he will have some thing to do with all of us involved. He has largely been an introvert all his life and consequently, after retirement, lonely…

Oh! yes I have dared and entered a picture to https://dpchallenge.com – more on that later.

[update]
A friend pointed out that owner is trying to change – well good for her… I still don’t like the arbitrary way she deletes posts with comments made by community members.
[/update]

Anatomy of a perfect day!

Yesterday… no not the song!!

6:45am woke up! Feeling waaaay better after ages there was no body ache, fever, itchy throat… Booted the network, every machine came up flawlessly, got in the first batch of mail, no nasty surprises – the mold was set. By 9:00 Swati had dropped Aasim to school and was back. Waking up early gave us exactly 1 hour alone before the daily hell broke loose… Everyone arrived on their respective 10:00 sharp, no major fires to be tackled. By the time I delegated dousing of the minor ones and prevented a show stopper bug it was 12:30 time to get Aasim back, had been a while since I have been to his school so I decided to tag along with Swati. Was pleased to learn that the only problem with the boy is his lack of distinction between “sh” and “ch” – who gives a damn to such chit these days!!

On way back, on impulse, Swati stopped at Vivek’s studio. Vivek is Swati’s childhood friend, was her neighbor and now a professional photographer. In short a perfect person to pester for our blossoming hobby. He very kindly and readily agreed that we come back in an hour. So at 2:00 we were all back in his studio… … boy oh boy each of the three main lights he has is more costly than the camera I wanted!!! Apart from tips on where to get back drop material and props etc, Swati had smilingly bargained for a shoot of our family. He took color pics, he took black and white pics and then almost as if to prove a point took my puny little camera and shot the picture you see here!! “Yes Sir!! point proved and well taken.” He has also agreed to get colored non reflective back drop plastic sheets which are available in Mumbai when he goes there month end. Aasim astounded us by taking this picture, guess world does look very different from three feet high and a 5 year olds perspective.

Back to office/home by 3:15 and finding everything still peaceful we headed to “Barista” for a cup of coffee… … This time Aasim opted to stay back in the office. Now… Barista in Nagpur is adjacent to the Westside store… … Reaching there Swati informed that there was a 50% sale on!!! Since I did want Swati to have a new pair of jeans I was gullible enough. So while Swati got her first low waist flares.. I picked a shirt for myself. After which we had a leisurely cup and headed back home. Everything was indeed as expected. No calls, No mails. A quick check out of CVS showed what everyone had achieved during the day. Since there wasn’t much I shooed everyone home relatively early.

The dinner threatened to be a dull affair but thanks to fabulous fish fry and fish curry sent over by my khala, it also fell in line with the rest of the day. Aasim slept of watching “Asterix and the Big Fight”, It was well past midnight that we realized that we were still at our respective computers doing nothing in particular… Last I remember the clock showed 1:15am

Thoughts

Fun is more fun when the people with whom you are having fun know what the fun is all about!

You never know how tall you stand unless you stand up for yourself!

These two gems were thrown casually at me by my wife this morning over a very trivial matter – been thinking about it since then….

Ah! she is so devious – BUT – then loving wouldn’t be so much fun if we completely understood each other in everything 😉

I have a thousand wishes, each one of them to die for…

Take a look at this and then the original here and you will understand why I want higher mega pixels on my camera.

My heart is currently set on Nikon Coolpix 5700, it is available here for INR 49500 which currently is way beyond my reach.

Well… someday… sooner or later…

All three of us are suffering from sore throat, runny nose and the works. Everyone is keeping out of everyone’s way 😉