Adventures in b&w

A few days ago I was taking a stroll on the corniche, camera in hand, and saw the Burj Qatar balancing this ramrod-thin light saber on its head! I got back to the car to get the tripod and got a clean shot after a few tries. The one building I absolutely hate on the Doha skyline is the Doha Bank Headquarters. It is a decent-looking building but the lighting is way over the top and overshadows everything else. When you want to get a good shot of the corniche, the Doha Bank always turns out with blown highlights.

It is also generally a bad idea to design your headquarters in the shape of your logo. You can’t change your logo even if you want to! If some hacker group takes your online banking site to the cleaners and you get involved in an unwanted scandal you may want to reinvent yourself with a complete coat of rebranding. No. Your past would never leave you and haunt you in the form of your headquarters!!

The solitary gull, Qatar 2012

The weather has been quite chilly and windy here in Doha for the past few weeks, a welcome break from the anxiety surrounding what appeared to be an ultra-short winter. It now looks like the winter is cold all around the world. Anything but the start of the next summer! A few weeks ago it was foggy as well and this gull was chasing another solitary sailor on a Dhow in the Persian Gulf.

Up Close, Qatar 2012.

I have been using the old theme for the past year and its use has been a mixed bag. The theme looked very good but the images showed up pretty hazy initially. Later when I analyzed the problem, I realized that the theme was resizing my images and that was the root cause of the problem. I then started resizing the images manually and the images looked sharp. Only that the width was just 490px. I didn’t worry too much initially but some of the images, particularly the landscape-oriented ones, were too small to reveal details. I was postponing the transition for the fear of resizing all old images. Today I decided to upgrade the theme, without worrying too much about the older posts. One of these days I will update the blog with larger images.

The above image was shot at the Doha Trade Fair, held in the first week of January. It is an annual  shopping festival where traders, predominantly from the MENA region, showcase their wares. This year saw a great influx of Chinese shops selling cheap wares at a handsome margin. The outside of the fair saw as much action as the inside, where local buyers were haggling on the price with Chinese vendors, a losing battle that doesn’t even start. I am yet to see anyone outsmart the Chinese, post-WWII, ever since Mao set up shop. The circus clowns were entertaining everyone throwing flames and walking on stilettos taller than ones found in any runway. I thought the guy was just about to fall. He was merely entertaining the official cameraman.

The King of Rishikesh, India 2009.

Rishikesh is a small town in the banks of the river Ganges. It is here that the Ganges hits the plains and tames down a little bit, if you could call it a tame river. The town is flocked by tourists who seek adventure as well as spiritual enlightenment. Adventure sports lovers enjoy white water rafting on the Ganges while those seeking inner peace flock to the Kailas Ashram, a center of Yoga. The Beatles put the town on the rock map.

The river is spanned by two suspension bridges, named Ram Jhula and Lakshman Jhula. Crossing the bridge is a daily task for the few thousand inhabitants of the city, but for some tourists with young kids, it is an adventure sport in itself. The bridge sways mildly from side to side to the rhythm of the motor bikes that crisscross. The monkeys tolling on the bridge perform numerous acrobatics around the steel ropes, all ending in the snatching of your favorite snack from your hand. The tourists shriek in terror and gingerly cross the bridge, all the time planning their return trip across the bridge.

A few years ago on a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I found these two people relaxing. I viewed some of my old snaps and was wondering who they were? Are they a couple or just two weary visitors? What happened to them?

That’s my son hard at work trying to forge a sword from a sheet of paper! I think Panasonic made a grave mistake not improving the LC1 to a 10 megapixel shooter. Though I do not use it much, every time I shoot something, I am amazed at the quality. It never fails to bring a smile while looking at the snaps.

The shutter of the LC1 is extraordinarily silent, making the GH1 sound like a gunshot. The JPEGs out of the camera have a crisp look. I guess the lens is a true Leica. I own the Leica 25mm F/1.4 for the GH1 that is made in Japan, and it doesn’t come anywhere close to this one. Maybe the difference is that the tripods I use for the GH1 are not up to speed, or maybe my handholding technique is faulty. Overall, the LC1 is so perfectly done, that Panasonic & Leica only have to up the sensor to 10 Megapixels. Just throw in a new sensor and update the circuitry. I guess the processors have more than quadrupled in speed to make this a trivial.

The snap has a grainy look because I pushed the ISO to 400 by underexposing by two stops at ISO 100. Not really necessary, but I was just lazy to wade into the menu to change the ISO.

As I was writing this post, I felt compelled to shoot another snap. I shot this requesting my son to stand next to the window. This has now become my standard technique. Ask someone to stand facing the light from a window, ensuring that the sun is not directly outside  Then, shoot!!

Conversion to B&W is using Lightroom.