Twisted Indifference

This was never meant to be a personal blog nor do I write sappy testimonials. My website and my blog mean the world to me. Due to reasons best left alone my hosting account was deleted today. A disaster of mind numbing proportions (to me anyway) was averted due to the presence of mind of a friend to whom I am already indebted to life several times over.

So yes, while this is not a personal blog I would like to take the time to thank Vivek who has not only ensured the uptime of my computers over the past eight years but also ensured that the website and the blog have backups. I could not have asked for a better friend or system administrator.

I realize that the above text reads like a bloody official letter of recognition but I don’t do sappy.

I never had to resubmit assignments at school, the first attempts were always good enough for the teachers. Pointing out the obvious but that was definitely a good thing. I am not putting up the posts that the MySQL backup did not restore. For a simple reason. It is excruciatingly boring. It is only a copy paste job from the text file back up that I have but it’s like setting up and shooting the same bloody photo. What I will be doing is putting up the earlier shots in a different post. More showcase less tutorial-esque. Will start work on it tomorrow.

Random Fact: I hate taking U-Turns while driving since it involves going back down the same road and I try and avoid it as much as I can. Sometimes I tend to leave a carbon footprint that would put a sasquatch to shame.

As made public at yesterday’s blog camp by Tarun, this blog had been down for a while. Sumit had been pestering me for the past couple of months to fix it and I have been slacking. After all, I am only a poor and unpaid “Chief Take-The-Blame Officer”. Yesterday’s events finally prompted Sumit to offer me what I have been asking for as payment. A bottomless mug of beer.

Root Cause Analysis: – The MySQL database was FUBAR.

How the database got corrupted is still a mystery. I had to restore from an old backup which is missing a few posts. Sumit will be posting them again soon.

I was done with the photography workshop by 1400 hrs. A cola and a smoke and then a cab down to Jehangir Art Gallery. The street was already filled up with the artists setting up their exhibits. I met up with fellow bloggers for lunch, including celebrity bloggers like Sakshi and a blogger that churns out ideas by the dozen.

Now down to the photography. The photograph used at the top of this post was clicked with the intention of putting it as the opening photo. When I saw the sculpture of the paint cans hanging on the stand, I knew this was what I would want to open this post with. Confession time, I agree this is a clichéd snap. I believe a lot of people will have attempted a similar snap. With the plethora of photographers around I doubt that it would not have been attempted. Always fun to play with Depth of Field (DOF). Even though the aperture was stopped down till 5.6, which is not really something that would support a clear DOF in say a landscape shot but it was more than adequate here. You can still see the slight gaussian blur after the 5th can.

The correct DOF can make or break a good photograph. I believe that a proper tutorial on DOF would make a great post. That however would have to be kept for later. I have another post to make for the Kala Ghoda Art festival and I still have to feature the remaining vehicles shot at the Auto Expo 2008. I have a feeling that I am going to end up updating everyday this week.

Another couple of snaps that I clicked at the fest.

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The last time I missed the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival due to lack of planning on my part. This time it is not too different. I made sure that I registered myself this time for the photography workshop I wanted to attend. I am however, still wide awake and writing this post regardless of the fact that I have to make my way to Bombay early in the morning. The venue is roughly 4-4 1/2 hours away from here with a change in the mode of transport in between. I should hopefully get a couple of hours of sleep after I am done with this post and the off to catch whatever motorised transport I can find.

The fact that it is freezing out here is not helping. The temperature is threatening to fall lower than 9 degrees as the night progresses.

I tend to add the important stuff last at times. So here’s the deal, I will be there at Kala Ghoda from 0930 hrs to 1300 hrs at least. So here’s lookin’ forward to some brilliant photos. It should be up on the blog soon even though there are a lot of Auto Expo 2008 images that still have to go up.

I am appalled. I wanted to put up a snap of mine for this post, similar to this. I wanted this to be an editorial post. So what is the problem? I am so busy shooting everyone else, I have very few snaps of myself. I could not find a single snap of mine that I liked. I guess I need to rectify that soon.

I will be in Bombay over the weekend. I would have already been in Bombay but with the pre-weekend rush I was unable to get an empty seat on a bus. I will be catching the earliest one out tomorrow. The next installment on the Auto Expo 2008 should go up late evening on Monday. There is a lot more to come. We got Volvo, KTM and Hyundai to name a few. I did not shoot Daimler, nothing new on display but I do have a certain other German TreaT in store. Here’s wishing that I manage to get a decent shot of myself in Bombay. See you Monday!

Glitzy, Glamourous and easy on the environment. That was the Honda booth. Apart from the cars, even Asimo was present to ensure everyone who walked in to the Honda booth did not walk out. I was unable to get a snap as he garnered more attention than the vehicles. The sheer number of people shoving each other to get a glimpse and the fact that I love my camera too much prevented me from getting close enough to shoot. What was worse was that I entered the display around the same time that the booth babes went for a break.

Shooting cars was easier than trucks. At least as far as the Auto Expo was concerned. Honda made it even easier. The cars were on display on turntables. It makes my job a little easier. I can shoot all angles without having to move. Just make sure you avoid motion blur. The speed of the turntable might be real slow but the low light conditions don’t exactly allow for a high shutter speed either. Unless of course you already own a lens that allows an aperture value of 2.8 across the entire zoom range. I was carrying a 50mm prime that opens up all the way to 1.4 but expecting a fixed spot at all locations would be nothing short of expecting miracles.

One thing you need to consider in these cases is the colour of the vehicle. Ok, so no one would consider using the photos shot here on a poster or an advertising billboard but paying attention to colour is still important. Why? Exposure. As I had mentioned in the earlier post, the light setup was more to attract than to photograph. Now red is a colour you need to be careful about. If you ever look at the histogram displays on your camera, you will know what I am talking about. I was still on Matrix metering mode but I made sure I shot to the right. I usually do that with darker colours in conditions where the light is not under my control.

Now this was time to switch over to RAW instead of shooting JPEGs but the sheer volume of the snaps and the editing that would be required made me think twice about it. Given the photo’s end usage I guess sticking with JPEGs was fine. I might have chosen other options altogether if I had been hired by the car manufacturers themselves for the shoot. End usage is something you need to consider even before you begin the shoot. Needless to say, your equipment has to match what you are planning on shooting. I would have loved to have a Nikkor 70mm-200mm f/2.8 VR but since I cannot afford to buy at this point, I chose to improvise. The VR in my 18mm-200mm VR comes in very handy. I have always been very steady with the camera. There have been exceptions but then that was not the case here. Combined that with the VR capabilities and I can shoot at ISO equiv. 100 even in such low light conditions. Sharp images even at 1/20 shutter speeds.

This concludes the Honda segment of the Auto Expo 2008. I did not shoot all the Honda cars but I will put up the links as soon as I find someone who shot them. I missed the following exhibits, BMW, Volkswagen and Skoda. I would like to invite those who have visited those displays to do a guest post on this blog. Please let me know what cars or bikes you have shot and if it would be possible for you write a little something about your photography. I can be contacted at sumit@twistedindifference.com.

In this post we will be looking at the commercial vehicle segment. It will be from the photography angle not from the angle of a automotive journalist. I look at the colours and the angles of the vehicles. I look for aerodynamics but only because streamlining is an aspect any photographer would admire. You wouldn’t want to shoot a woman with all the curves in the wrong places now would you?

Tata and Ashok Leyland have dominated Indian highways for a long time now. The market has however been flooded with a multitude of Commercial Vehicle manufacturers for the past few years. Volvo came in with their Behemoth; trucks in the 400 – 500 horsepower range. They towered over the trucks on the highway then, looking down with disdain. Times have changed.

I have been an avid truck lover for a long time now. My love story started with the Mack trucks. Passion and online research led me to Volvo. That was a long time ago and I never would have imagined being able to shoot these monsters so soon. I got the opportunity a little less than a year ago. The Volvo plant in Bangalore. I’ll get to that soon.

I had no complaints with what was displayed at the expo but I had plenty about the way they were displayed. What you will notice in most of the photos is either the lack of proper lighting or irregular lighting. I can understand every manufacturer would like to have the sexiest looking booth but please realize the photographs are what will remind people what the display was like.

More than the lights, my major headache was the lack of space. It is a given that at an event of this magnitude hordes of people will be inevitable but when you have to take each and every shot at 18mm it starts getting on your nerves. I mean wide angles are fun but when used judiciously not when used as the only option. You still have a job to do and you do your best to get a good shot but yes the ‘I could have done better’ thought lingers in your mind on the way out.

Regardless, you cannot be in love with automobiles and not have fun at the Expo. The truck displays alone were enough to put me at risk of getting a whiplash. So yes, Ashok Leyland has done good work, I loved their designs and the fact that they did not forget one important point, the fairing along the sides. Not everyone here remembers that. AMW was the first amongst the Indian manufacturers.

The next post will be on the Honda cars. Their hybrid models and what they may or may not decide to bring into India. I am sure you would like to see something about the Tata Nano too, but it failed to impress me. I will of course be still putting it up soon. Make sure you check back!

I got off my lazy ass and finally did something about the fact that I had misplaced my data cable while in Delhi for the Auto Expo and I did not have a card reader. I went out and bought one. It is a temporary one, I wanted a SanDisk Card Reader but I could find anyone in Pune who stocks them. My Bombay trip is still a few days away and I could not wait that long to put up the shots for the auto expo. I am sure everyone of you out there is waiting for a glimpse of the photos that all the auto magazines will be carrying in their February issue. This is not an attempt to out-scoop them, this is just my take on the Auto Expo 2008.

That said, given the number of snaps that I took, I obviously am not going to upload each and every one of them, nor is it something I can do in one day. So you guys need to check back, for over the next week I will be giving a lot of shots and in some cases detailed articles about the cars, the bikes and the trucks. So swing by often, or make it easy and subscribe to the feed; for the photos you see here were exclusively shot for Twisted Indifference Studios. The teaser above might just push you to do that!