What a blinder !!!

I was on a trip to Tirupati last weekend. For those you arent aware of this place, Tirupati is one of the richest temples in Asia or may be the world itself ( am not sure abt that ) . Sunday morning , there was a huge blanket of fog all over the hill.

One of the domes in the temple is covered with gold... One of the pics here says just that. I was shooting more pics of this dome when a cop stopped me from taking pics. The gold does blind you at times :)

Zip Zap Zoom

Shot this ... at 5 am Chennai - Bangalore Highway..

Action on the tracks...

This is the longest name for any railway station in India..

..And the picture below is the route to Tada.

Please do click on the images for better quality ... and howI wanted my pics to look like :)

Action on the tracks...

W47 outing was towards a waterfall which had no water at all.. and then to Tada which wasnt too exciting. However the highlight was shooting pics of a moving train and capturing pics of objects in motion has started to excite me like crazy.

We shot some pics on the track that was across the AP -TN border.
Something thats also worth mentioning is that you just cant beat the comfort of a Corolla especially when you are in the rear seat and sleeping comfortably. Some of the pics that I shot are here.. Let me know how you like these.

Raining ? So ?

It rarely rains in Chennai ... atleast thats what we all thought. This year, like last year we have seen pretty consistent rains. But no matter what, or how heavy it rains, life just goes on ...

It was the same Sunday morning for me.. time to pick my camera and get some good pics, the same Sunday morning for the jogger.. and the same Sunday morning for the fishermen.

The only difference being, I had a training to attend after the photo shoot, the jogger had to cross a lake on the beach ... and the fishermen had to keep an eye on the fearful dark clouds.

... and am back after a month.

Its been more than a month since I put something in here. I havent even touched my camera for a long time since this happened. However, in recent times I came across Navin, who works in the same company where I work too. His site, though with few pics in it , is really good.

It was hard to believe that his Suzuki and Cagiva pics are actually tiny die cast models and not real ones.

Btw, am looking for a site where you can sell photographs online. If anyone has any clue about it, please let me know.

Perumal's only match (?)

The last couple of weekends have been disappointing. Ram and his group had to cancel a well planned trip into Mudumalai forests. So, I ended up staying at home and watch even more horrific news. Schumi blowing his engine just when we all thought he was going to walk away the championship.

So, the only consolation was watching a cricket match between two major projects here. I did take a few pics here and there, but there is just one worth looking.( atleast I felt that way ). Perumal's team won both matches they played. Talking abt Perumal, he is one lucky guy. Any girl that Perumal looks at, will for sure, start a new relationship with someone else. :))

The bumpy road ahead

The weekend of Week 38.... Kaushik and me decided to explore the Kenneth Anderson RF. We were inspired by various forums that had written about the elephants there. We left on Sat morning and reached there by around noon.
The roads that lead to this place are the worst that exist in this planet. But when we were there, we realised that we needed a place to stay and this place did not seem to have too many options.

Finally, when we saw a board that said Hogenakkal was around 30 kms , we decided to go there instead. Even though it was weekend, Hogenakkal wasnt too crowded. On the way, I managed to see a tree wearing Ceaser's crown. ( or atleast thats how it looked ). Further down at Hogenakkal, I got some good pics of the amazing waterfalls there. Some of them are posted in this page.

The place was nice with some dark blue sky providing some good photo ops. There was another place near the falls which was also good to see.

On our way back to Chennai , we drove down the beautiful Chennai - Blr highway. A beautiful road to drive. My personal best on this road .. 350kms in 3hrs 30 mins.

Weekend getaway

Once I was done shooting my pics at the village, I was driving down to shoot some more pics. Thats where I met this group from my previous project. All of them had one mission - Kingfisher !!!

Btw, the beauty parked by the side belongs to me :)

The Living Dead ! ! !

There is a village off ECR where there doesnt seem to exist even a shadow of life. After the tsunami that happened almost a couple of years back, villagers havent returned back to their houses here. Many seem to have lost their lives here.The entire village itself presents a very scary look. All houses are locked and not a single soul lives in this village.

While some of the houses have been washed away, some have stood still as mute witnessess. I also happened to see a very scary 'staircase to heaven'.
Creepers have crept their way across everything here.. They can be found on abandoned boats, staircases, on top of houses, everywhere.

Current Mood : :(

Sunrise time again

Last Saturday, Pradeep and me went to Ennore hoping to shoot some pics. This pic, ruins in the moonlight was on of the first that we shot there.

After a while, we realised that we were near the broken bridge ( Chennaites wud know ) There was dredging equipment all over the place and was a amazing scene.

This equipment is used daily and ppl work on these huge machines in shifts. This place is right opposite the North Chennai thermal power plant.

The power of imaging ?

My favs from the weekend trip. This was a temple in Ti...( i still..... dont get that name ) This is a 1000 year old temple too.. The first pic was shot with 1/10 secs and the other at 1/15 secs ( ISO 100 ). I knew with the orange sky in the background, it would come out good. The best part was after I was done, someone from the Archelogical Survey of India asked me if I had prior permission to take pics. Luckily, I managed to convince him.

Monday evening, has been one hell of a evening. Wonder why people ever get married at all. To be happy ? to keep their parents happy ? Man, I know it sucks but what the hell ... I met someone after a really long time who has been cribbing abt marriage from the word go. And it has been barely a 6 month old marriage. How deep in shit can someone ever be in ? HUH !!!!

Anyways, this pic.. with Avinash , me and Kaushik. We were there below for 3 hrs and were really exhausted when we took this pic. Avinash with his Minolta /Kaushik with his 350D and me with a Digital Rebel XT.

C(r)ave for it...

2 weeks of planning, 1 week of Kaushik doing nothing at office other than researching :) , 8 hrs of discussion on how to take pics , 4 hrs of reminding Kaushik for the tripod .... and then the day arrives when we board the train in Chennai to Belum caves. Located around 300+ kms from Chennai, we land at a place called Ti....( damn, this name never gets into my head ). On reaching there, we took a bus from the place where we stayed to Belum caves. Can you believe that there is a reservation for MPs and MLAs in this bus ? A very colorful bus indeed. Btw, the cave is a one hour rickety ride from the town Ti..( I still cant get that name !!! )Once we were there, its clicking time. First of all about the caves.. chk this pic..

Life behind bars

I was out to the zoo sometime back. These pics had remained in my camera and I almost forgot to upload it here until Mike reminded me last week.

I was looking at India's national bird, ironically caged and satisfying its thirst during the peak Chennai summer. Also feasting on the food meant for the peacocks was this visitor. This guy was on his way out of the cage and posed for me.

Lazy mood, Lazy drive

Its been a long time since I got to post something here. Its been a long time since I touched my camera too. So, we ( Mike, lover boy Venkat and me ) drove down the AP highway for a couple of hundred kms.
I was enjoying my lazy drive ( never did more than 70 -80 ) and forgot totally that I had my camera along. However, when we saw a bridge with the railway track below, we got off and decided to take a quick nap! Its probably fun to lie on the track when you know there is a train coming in the next few minutes. I was scared to hell and was asking Venkat to take this pic quickly. If I had seen a train coming, I would have fainted for sure :) Infact, in less than 5 mins after shooting this pic, a train passed through.
The AP highway is one amazing road. Clean stretches with so many bridges and so less traffic. This road connects Chennai with Calcutta ( 1600 + kms ) .Varsha came up with a brilliant plan that we should drive around from Chennai to Calcutta some time. Yeah, may be we should try that sometime.

We should have stayed around for a longer time as we had nothing to do back home but Mr.Romeo promised to take Juliet out for a movie and was keen on getting back. Man, its fun to see people cajoling on the phone.( Roaming charges dont apply ???) :))

Does the train hit you ?

Took me a while to realise that I had taken a good pic. The effect can be felt when you have it as your wallpaper and watch it. Suddenly you feel that the train is moving and about to hit you.

Doesnt happen to you ? You have absolutely no feel of photography !!! hahaha

Its been a while since I have been on a photography club visit .Thats the reason for no new pics. Hopefully I shud get some new ones.. cos 'she' is coming tomorrow and 'She' is coming in a few days. Keep guessing !!!

What happens when you are doing nothing Monday morning ? You take pics of your Thinkpad !!!

When we finally reached this place, with almost no pics on the way, we thought we might as well have some good breakfast. There was this road side shop selling tea. Since this was still early morning, i came across a interesting setup. There was steam all over and just one long spoon with a couple of water droplets on it.
With ISO at 100, Aperture set at 6.3, and a exposure time of 1/ 20 secs, i was able to darken the background and focus more on the drops. Let me know how you like this.

We went to one of Chennai's suburbs last week with the hope of getting more pics on the train. Sadly the train was too crowded and we were not able to get any pics. The pic of the left was something I tried after reading a book somewhere on how to capture motion esp.. on the train and I think it came out well.. The other pic has comrades in action while on the journey :)

And.. for some of you.. this is how trains look here in India :)

None of these images are of original quality. All of them have been resized to fit better.

This is one of the unforgettable pics that I shot. I shot this pic with no idea how it would come. I was messing up with the settings, didnt know what speed / iso / nothing. Just kept clicking and this is what I got.. Somehow , this was one of the reasons why I started getting more and more intersted in photography. Its always a new day and every pic is a new pic. .... ithoda.. I just quoted something :)) thathuvam # 87986


n e r d y n o t e s

The tree was shot by Pradeep who works with me. Both of us were experimenting with the Canon. This was during the 2005 cylcone that hit chennai.

The Silhoutte was at Royapuram, Chennai. Thanks a ton to Lakshmanan Sir for teaching me the trick of shooting this.

Thats my car..

This tree was shot by me during the first CPC meet. We went to Guindy park but not able to get any good ones. This tree caught my imagination and I shot this just when everyone of us were packing up. Didnt expect this to come out well.