While the climate change talks go on in Copenhagen

cow dung vs bottled water, toilet paper and a plastic bag which says 'more'. Banaras.

Tourist photographers

part of a project on tourist photographers found at various tourist destinations around India. your photographs are sent to you by post without the postage stamp to make sure the postman delivers it to you as he can claim the postage money. with their livelihood under threat from technology, most are looking for other work, while few have shifted to digital cameras and portable printers.

From the grave

some very old advertising stuff. press ads for htcricket.com(Ogilvy, New Delhi). other credits: Hemant Anant Jain. published in Luerzer’s Archive. outdoors for the launch of Satyam cinema(Ogilvy, New Delhi). illustrations: Pavan Buragohain. OBIE finalist. press ads for a golf tournament organized by Hindustan Times(Ogilvy, New Delhi) other credits: Ajay Gahlaut. press ad for Hyundai(Saatchi & Saatchi, New Delhi) other credits: Hemant Anant Jain. outdoor for Sony Xplod car audios(Saatchi & Saatchi, New Delhi) other credits: Hemant Anant Jain

Talk

Best of Show

one of my photographs made it to the Best of Show exhibition of the International Photography Awards in New York. 45 images were selected from the many winners at the competition which included some great photographers.

Rainy day

Gas Giant

managed to shoot Jupiter thanks to some good clear skies in Delhi and Jupiter being at a favourable position in the sky. three of Jupiter’s moons can be seen in the first photo while in the second photo the Great red spot can be seen at bottom left, while the shadow of Io(moon) can be seen centre left. shooting the planets requires really high magnification. the effective focal length of the setup in this case would be around 3000-3500mm achieved with a process which involves projecting the image through the telescope eyepiece directly onto the camera sensor, with the camera lens removed. this is not a single shot but a ‘stack’ of many separate exposures. the process improves the signal to noise ratio by reducing the random digital noise and adding the light signals which can be then improved digitally.
technical stuff: eyepiece projection method with a Celestron 4-inch Maksutov telescope. focal length 1325mm. Eyepiece 15mm. distance of the eyepiece from the camera sensor about 7-8cms. Nikon D90. stacked 20 stills of 1/10sec at 800ISO.

We all shoot silhouettes

Another win

won 1st prize at the International Photography Awards in the Nature(Seasons) category in Non-professional section. you can see the winning entry here.

Nokia Navigator

campaign for Nokia at Wieden+Kennedy, London. shot most of it myself. lots of signages, road signs, and other things in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur and Chennai. 2007. other credits: Hemant Anant Jain, Guy Featherstone. Creative Directors: Ben Walker, Matt Gooden.

The eclipse got eclipsed

had gone to Patna for the longest and the last eclipse of this lifetime visible from India with a scientific team from SPACE. about half a ton of equipment including 14 cameras, 8 laptops, a few telescopes and lenses ranging from 800 to 50mm, etc, was dragged by 7 of us to the roof of the Patna Planetarium from Delhi 5 days before the eclipse. for 5 days and nights continuously, we planned, set up, practiced, improvised, checked, double-checked, triple-checked and hoped for good weather. the task was to get every kind of photographic and spectroscopic data possible. the corona, chromosphere, prominences, the partial phases, Baily's beads, diamond ring, the changes in the sky, the works. we had everything covered. in minute detail. with everything timed to the atomic clock, cameras connected to laptops, automated with software scripts we wrote, polar-aligned motor-driven telescopes, we were greeted with good clear weather everyday till about 2 hours from the beginning of the eclipse. clouds gathered quickly, and it rained heavily just before the totality. we just about managed to cover all the delicate equipment quickly. we had practiced that as well. the clouds cleared up about 10 minutes after totality. extreme disappointment. till the next one next year in Easter Islands.

The Great Indian Sale

To know about the appalling environmental crimes being committed in India, see greatindiansale.blogspot.com. This is my first attempt at animation, shot frame by frame with a DSLR. Other credits: Hemant Anant Jain, Kunal Ahuja, Gagandeep Singh, Naresh Rawat.

Banaras

The ghats of Varanasi. Life, death and everything in between. And after. One of the oldest living cities in the world. A city under threat from ‘development’ and commerce.