Twisted Indifference

I only planned to ride till Masinagudi. For the past five years I have been driving a car. I got back on the bike less than a month ago. The 35 odd kilometres to Masinagudi from Ooty seemed like a good warm up before I began riding long distances. Even though it meant passing through Kalhatty Ghat with its infamous 36 hair raising hairpin bends. Masinagudi is another one road town. Under the impression that Mudumalai was closed to random visitors I went down the road to Singara.

I held no assumptions of capturing any wildlife since the max zoom I can achieve is 200mm. While I had hoped to capture some decent landscape shots my primary motivation for being there was the ride. A few days before, I made the mistake of going to Dolphin’s Nose, a viewpoint 12-14 kms from Coonoor. I expected the destination to be a waste of time since it’s a tourist trap but I was told by colleagues who had been there that the ride is totally worth it. Man were they ever wrong. Neither is the road worth the ride nor is the view worth the abuse you take riding till Dolphin’s Nose. Given that the person who informed me belongs to the ‘All Noise No Performance’ Royal Enfield Bullet Club I should have known better than to listen to him. What I think of those junk metal piles of shit would fill another blog post.

I can digress spectacularly. The gray langur above was the only wild animal that I managed to capture. The photo is slightly blurred which may not be all that noticeable in the low res image put up here. Of course a good telephoto lens isn’t the only thing I lack, the patience needed for wildlife photography also seems to be absent in me.

So the ride to Masinagudi and Singara Power House done I figured I’d head back. Around 5 kms out of Masinagudi I had stopped to take some shots of the road and I see bunch of my batchmates heading towards me. They planned to head through Mudumalai and this was the time I was informed that there’s a bloody national highway that passes through it. Duh! Too kicked at riding through roads which put all roads in Maharashtra (expressway and part of golden quadrilateral excluded) to shame I did not stop to take any photographs.

The motorcade now included a Mercedes ML 270, a Maruti Zen and me on my Pulsar 200 DTS-i. We crossed Mudumalai and came to the border checkpost that led into Karnataka. It was interesting to note that the Tamil Nadu – Karnataka border lay less than 80 kms from Ooty. While it is essentially the same reserve, being in Karnataka it is called Bandipur. The roads got even better. I had to take the shot. Click on it to view a larger image.

The highway through Mudumalai was peppered with speed bumps. Bandipur was not. Prudence might have called for a leisurely cruise through the forests but as I mentioned earlier I don’t buy into the all noise no performance propaganda. I was also finally getting the opportunity to unleash the full capabilities of my bike. My bike is no Hayabusa but we scorched the roads of Bandipur nonetheless.

I forgot the name of the village from where you take the road leading to Gopalswamy Betta but I’m pretty sure it was the first village we entered after Bandipur. It just couldn’t get any better. It was like a karmic reward for something good that I must have done somewhere. Or I was being handed this for enduring the miserable ride to Dolphin’s Nose. Regardless I was happy to collect. Not just on the view and the road but also the fact that I managed to capture half the sistine chapel.

It’s a little difficult to say how far I rode to get there since during the whole ride there was a lot of oscillations between two destinations. My total riding that day was 192.8 kms but riding straight to Gopalswamy Betta and back to Ooty without my diversions would be a lot less. Being there was totally worth it.

Sprawling green forests and a view way better than I captured since I was also hindered by a tooth ache that was triggered by the cold winds. On a side note the root canal procedure is finished and the cold wind can do me no harm. Well it does have me down with fever but that was my fault. Riding into the wind is one thing. Taunting it by forgetting to wear a jacket on a recent trip to Pykara was essentially stupid.

From graffiti to flames to the downright eye-poppers; the artists had managed to create them all. Having spent a considerable amount of time as a photographer for an automotive magazine in India, an intense love affair with cars tricked out in custom paint jobs is inevitable. Of course covering an every inch of an Ambassador in white fur might be overkill. Even the interiors weren’t spared.

The graffiti art was on a Maruti Suzuki Swift. This car without the custom paint job can makes me want to get in behind the wheel and floor the throttle. Especially the diesel version. The throttle response is brilliant. But then this blog is about photography not cars.

The Royal Enfield, a motorcycle owned by those who dare to be different (and also love pushing the bike to the nearest garage at frequent intervals.) This bike has an undying affinity towards proving Murphy right. Given the new technological breakthroughs that the company has now adopted I guess things should be different.

Flames were largely popular with the Yamaha RX series in its heyday. So putting solid colours on a bike that is coveted for its acres of chrome is I guess keeping with what the bike stands for. Being different.

I just might be prejudiced in my opinion of the art work on the Swift. Apart from the fact that he used a car I really like, the canvas (body) is my favourite colour. Black. Narcisstic, the way the artist’s name is emblazoned on the car panels but it is acceptable. I am the last one who should point out to people marking their territory as far as their creations are concerned. I cannot really use protection of my intellectual property as an excuse.

Now we come to the reason why I spent almost an entire day working on this post. I was saving the best for the last. I do not claim to be any kind of expert with Photoshop. Whatever I do know about it is through watching a colleague of mine. He is a graphic designer and we worked together briefly. That and a little credit to online tutorials. I, however, do know what different techniques were applied when shooting on film. The one emulated here in photoshop is called cross processing. In photoshop, cross processing is done using the Curves function. Stick to non-destructive editing and use a Curves layer. Makes life much simpler. Adobe has certainly made mine easier by adding the Cross Processing action as a Preset.

All I had to do after selecting it from a drop down menu was to apply a little fine tuning. In this photo and in the photo that is used as the opening image in this post, the Dodge and Burn tool have been my best friends. I wish I could have taken a better angle for the car, I would love to do something similar maybe with a wide angle, taking in the rear three quarters of the car with the Gothic Revival Buildings in the background and then apply a similar effect. I think I will take someone along with me who has a thorough knowledge of the buildings and the architectural style.

This should do it for Art in the Financial Capital. Bid adieu to the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, let’s hope I can spend more time there the next time. The next few posts will be about the photos from the Auto Expo 2008 again. I am going to try and put up as much of it as I can by the week-end since I would like to start with something new next week.

This post will be a photo feature of the Tata Nano. As I had mentioned earlier. It failed to impress me. POV of a photographer of course. Economic aspects, I leave it to the experts.

Being at the launch of the Tata Nano was a brilliant feeling though. The split second after Mr. Ratan Tata said “…..because a promise is, a Promise” I knew the crowd was going to go wild and that he had just delivered the next day’s headlines for all the newspapers.

Regardless of what I might think about the car, the pure charisma and stage presence that Mr. Ratan Tata exuded was worth the jostling crowds and hordes of other photographers scrambling for a steady space to shoot from.

Sarcasm, wit and a much deserved reason to cock a snook at all his detractors. This of course following in the wake of the Tata Indica reaching sales of over a million cars.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.

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!