I remember the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was addicted to MTV and Channel V. After coming back to school and sometimes even early in the morning it was a tradition to switch to these channels to get a taste of the latest Western pop music. After that I went to college and stayed in hostel for 4 years, away from the crowds of a city and away from television sets. I yearned to go home and watch Channel V or MTV. Unfortunately, whenever I would go home during vacations, and put those channels on, I would only see shows like Roadies or some crappy Hindi film music. Staying away from TV, and these music channels playing lesser and lesser English music, put me in a state of limbo. I was stuck with the same songs for all four years of my college years. I would say, till last year, 75% of my music collection comprised of what I had put together way back in 2003/2004. Of late, it has come to my knowledge that MTV and Channel V have completely stopped airing Western music (You may say there is VH1, but whatever!).

What set me rolling were a few trips abroad. I would say, every trip I make abroad opens me up to tons of awesome new music! Trips to US would anyway do so, because radio stations in the US play only the latest and most popular music. Like, my discoveries during the trip to Korea were Canon in D Major (thanks Yunseong for this), and Katie Melua; during my trip to the US in 2008, I was introduced to Katy Perry (thanks the cab drivers of Chicago); during the Smoky Mountains road trip Dave Matthew’s Sing Along was the only thing on my ears (thanks to Ranga and Patrik da); 2009 was introduction to Coldplay (thanks Sudeep; well I had heard Coldplay’s Yellow way back in 2004 but remained stuck at that, did not even know about the existence of Viva La Vida and The Scientist!); 2010 was to perhaps the largest collection of awesome songs, but particularly Beera (thanks Patrik da – you literally planted that song in my head). 

So coming back to the point, what am I currently listening to? My last trip to Chicago was very fruitful in opening up a huge number of awesome songs to me. But I would think it also has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of awesome songs have released this year! I definitely think so! Thanks also to iTunes, I can now tune to hundreds of radio stations from almost all over the world, listen to music from any genre, and even switch channels if I don’t like what they are playing: Mozart to Yanni, Sleeping music to Soundtracks, Pop to Rock, with Jazz, Blues and all that and much more in the middle, or just Top 40 Billboard songs! I am loving it :)

Here are a few songs I am currently listening to, and they are in no particular order (and yes I know, some of them are not latest any more):

Lady Gaga – Bad Romance (this song became the most watched video on Youtube for a while)
Shakira – Waka Waka
K’Naan – Waving Flag
Ke$ha – Tik Tok
Fireflies – Owl City
Jason Derulo – Whattya Want
Train – Hey Soul Sister
Timbaland feat. Katy Perry – If We Ever Meet Again
Raavan OST – Beera
Justin Beiber – Baby (this song’s video is currently the most watched video on Youtube)

This actually sends me back to Q4-2008, when me, Rashmi and Ramya had that wonderful run of watching some excellent movies in Chicago!

And this I recommend to all of you, if you have iTunes and broadband internet, go to the Radios section, and play from one of the hundreds of music channels, especially Absolute Top 40 (1.fm). If you don’t, you could still visit www.1.fm and play one of their tens of music channels!

Enjoy!

Which pic do you prefer: the left one, or the right one?

Have you ever taken a pic of inside a dark room with bright sunlight visible outside a small window? Have you ever taken a pic where there are beautiful clouds in a bright sky and your friend standing under the shade of a canopy? You would often observe that either the sky is blown off (too bright to see any details in the clouds) or the subject is too dark. If you have a DSLR, you would often find yourself asking the question “should I meter the bright sky or should I meter the dark subject in the shade, and still preserve all details”.  Interesting thing here, is that you would be able to see the details in the sky and your subject perfectly fine, but your camera just wont be able to capture them. The problem here, is not with your photography skill, but a limitation in the camera. Let me explain:

The illumination ratio between the darkest spot and brightest spot (containing detail) is called the Dynamic Range of a scene. Typically, DSLR cameras can capture contrast ratios of around 2000:1 or 11 EV (when taken to a base of 2), LCD displays can display upto 9.5 EV. The Human Eye, can perceive well beyond that range. However, there is a catch. The human eye cannot perform both operations (viewing very bright and very dark details) simultaneously, this is done by adjusting the amount of light that enters the eye and it takes a short while to adjust. A camera cannot do this, as you have just one moment to capture, just one frame of details. If you open the shutter for too long, you get too much light (and the bright areas get blown out), if you open it for too short, you get too little light (and the dark areas remain dark).

To overcome this, photographers use multiple exposure-bracketed images to create one single image with High Dynamic Range. Are you getting the hang of it now? In principle, take three images - 
Pic 1: A little darker, so that details in the bright areas are maintained (-1 EV). The darker areas in this image would be blank with no details.
Pic 2: A little brighter, so that the details in the dark regions (shadows) are clear (+1 EV). The bright areas in the image would be blown off.
Pic 3: The last pic with an average exposure of the two above  (0 EV). Taking just this pic would not help in situations of extreme contracts, such as bright exteriors and dark interiors.

I took this set of bracketed pics at the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette, Illinois (an affluent village 14 miles north of Downtown Chicago). This was the first of the seven Baha’i Houses of Worship currently surviving. The first pic is –1 EV, the second pic is +1 EV, the third is 0 EV. (Click on them to see large)

Now put the three pics on top of each other in any image editing software and use the bright portions (highlights) from the first pic, dark portions (shadows) from the second pic, and the mid-tones from the third pic! Thats about it!

It sounds straight forward, but to do that, you need a few things:
1. Take exposure bracketed images of exactly the same frame – use a tripod and the AEB feature of your camera. Turn off auto-focus!
2. Use a photo-editing software to put the three HDRs together. I am not sure if you can do it in Photoshop, but there are plugins you can install.

Alright… If you have come this far, it makes some sense to go a bit further…

Perhaps, you did not realise, the method I walked you through to create an HDR, will still not make your images look stunning. Reason: Your LCD monitor can display images only upto a certain contrast ratio. Its dynamic range is lesser than your camera’s standard dynamic range. Now you have an image with dynamic range much greater than that of your LCD monitor and even your camera. So what do you do?

You tone map the image! Basically, you reduce the contrast ratio of the image from something like 16 EV to about 8 EV, or, from 100000:1 to about 255:1. The JPEG images you see usually, are 8 bit images, that contain upto 255 levels of illumination (from darkest to the brightest). So the goal of tone mapping is to reduce the contrast ratio but to preserve the detail. This, can be done using two techniques – Global Tone Mapping, or Local Tone Mapping.

Global Tone Mapping is the most basic operation. It is similar to contrast reduction in Photoshop, or even your LCD monitor! It reduces the contrast in each and every pixel of the image, uniformly according to the most appropriate function for that image. This, does not help us in what we wish to achieve. Really.

Local Tone Mapping reduces the contrast of each pixel based on the contrast and illumination of the surrounding pixels. If you have studied Calculus/Derivatives in school, you could think of it to be something like Global Maxima / Local Maxima. Local Tone Mapping on an image having shadows and highlights would have different impact on the dark areas and the bright areas. In fact, it would bring out more details than you thought were present in the scene! HDR tone mapping using Local Tone Mapping has become extremely popular amongst photo enthusiasts for exactly this reason. These photographs have a distinct look and seem attractive to many! Often one would get comments like “This looks so much like a painting”, or “This is like a computer game scene”. Limited dynamic range is never a problem in paintings, whereas computer game manufacturers use tone mapped HDR graphics to improve the look and feel of the play. While HDR in video games make scenarios look real, HDR and local tone mapping in photography makes real scenes look a bit graphic!

 
HDR created by merging the 3 bracketed images above. Minor tone mapping applied.

Major tone mapping applied to reveal extra details. Looks more graphic than the one above.

Sorry about the long blog post :) I should keep myself in check so that I do not go overboard and do too much of local tone mapping. My name itself says adi… which means, excess!

Recommended softwares:
1. Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom
2. Oloneo Photoengine (the one I used)

becomes…

This does not mean the feet are dirty, this just amplifies the difference in the skin color of different areas of the feet. Look at the details showing up on the pebbles and the floor.

Another example of HDR creation is:

This pic of the dilapidated bungalow was taken somewhere in the Camp area in Pune.

Recently, I purchased a 75mm-300mm telephoto lens for my DSLR. Eager to click, I set out with my kit. I clicked a lot of pics, hundreds of pics on my first two outings with it. I got some good shots. Clicking pics like the ones above, is not called ‘stalking’. I knew about this as I had Googled earlier, but here are the rules if you do not know:
1. If you are in a public place that does not explicitly prohibit photography, you are free to shoot anything and anyone. However, you may not shoot people especially kids if they are engaged in sexual activities.

2. You do not violate human rights of anyone by taking their photographs without permission. This really means that you are violating their freedom of privacy, which honestly does not exist anywhere beyond their homes and private indoor spaces.

3. You do not violate their privacy if you click their photos in a public space. There is no right to privacy in a public place, with the exceptions of public toilets. Talk of CCTV cameras in public places!

4. You however need to ensure that you are allowed to take photographs on the land you or your subjects are standing.

5. You do not harass anyone by taking their photographs. However, repeatedly and deliberately chasing a person around clicking photos is considered harassment.

6. You do not need the subjects’ permissions to publish the photographs, unless it is for a commercial purpose.

7. Publishing photographs of people with captions could land you in trouble if you misidentify the subject or if the caption is unduly mocking or in false light.

Read some more rules here: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

This, for the United States, perhaps one of the more liberal countries. For other nations, it is best to look up the rules and social customs. Even in the US, laws differ slightly for each state: for example in Texas, you cannot take a picture if it is for someone’s sexual gratification, like a shot on a nude beach!

In general, it is not illegal to take pictures of people in public settings. If I go to the Mumbai Marathon as a photographer, I cannot possibly ask permission from each and every of the hundreds of runners! It is still the best and the safest to ask people if you can click their picture, in my tiny history, I have got a 100% positive response.

So it all began from Denver on a clear Saturday morning. A malfunctioning phone charging point in the rented car, meant we got a free upgrade to a Volvo S60. Till then, I had only traveled in Volvo buses. But this, was pleasure to the ass!

Colorado is beautiful. The landscape is heavenly, and empty roads add just another level of charm.

This place, was our first stop: Steamboat Springs. It is one of the most famous Ski Towns in the US. At an altitude of 6500 feet, it is a very very pretty little town.

It was getting quite difficult to take pictures with so much sunshine. We literally had to grab any opportunity with clouds covering the sun!

Steamboat Springs is named so because one of the black sulphur springs here sounded like a chugging steamboat to early settlers. Thanks to some landscaping and construction, that sound has almost disappeared.

Even a town with barely 8000 people, had perhaps the best Indian restaurant I have so far been to in the United States. It was also the largest, the spiciest and played the best music inside (AR Rahman!!!!).

This is me and Patrik Da, in perhaps the one standard pose I click of myself wherever I travel! This, is Vail. At 8000 odd feet above sea it is yet another ski resort, highly commercialised, and built in a pretty European style.

When the snow is not enough for skiing, some other activities are biking, or golf…

Anando and Patrik Da, with the bigger da… Einstein Da!

A brilliantly worked out 2 days trip, covering over 500 kms and traveling over highways at an altitude of 11,000 feet, this was a superb trip. I cannot thank Patrik Da enough for this :) Btw, he calls me Anando… ask me why? He also becomes the only other person after Roshnai to understand my camera and take my pictures :)

Patrik Da, I could not capture the hours we spent in the Strawberry Hot Water Springs bathing and jumping around the hot water pools and the cold water river, or the awesome photography sessions we had by the pseudo railway station and in Vail, or those tiny little towns like “Bond” and State Bridge… but I can surely leave this blog to aptly end with this song… (click here)

Seen at the Millennium Park

 
Polish Rally at Grant Park. 1 of every 12 Americans is of Polish descent.

 
The North side of downtown Chicago, from Grant Park

 
Seen at the Millennium Park

Seen at the Millennium Park

 
People try to do different things and come up with some very creative poses that involve themselves and the Bean in the background.

 
But the really amazing ones are the “right-after-marriage” photoshoots at the Bean!

Michigan Avenue, The Magnificent Mile

Finally I got a day of no rain to visit downtown, and I could not resist visiting the Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of John Hancock Tower.

 
This is the view to the South of John Hancock Tower. The Aon Center and Prudential Plaza are prominently visible.

From 1000 ft above ground, this view is to the South-West of John Hancock Tower. The rightmost skyscraper is Willis Tower, a little off the center is Trump Tower (the second tallest building in the world having residences), and to the left is the Aon Center. Chicago is a city of skyscrapers, and some amazing architecture! For more on Chicago’s architecture, click here.

Pretty, aren’t they?