I spent about 40 minutes sitting at the Railway Reservation Counter yesterday to book a train ticket for me to go to Trivandrum. Although I could’ve done it online, which would’ve been quicker and easier, I decided to do it the old school way just for the thrill of it. What exact thrill I got out it, I dont know, but it felt different there with strangers shifting along the chairs until I got to the counter. After having successfully booked the ticket, I realized that it was raining quite heavily outside. I looked to my left and right, saw the hundreds of people running into the complex to take shelter. Without batting an eyelid, I stepped out into the rain and walked about a mile home. I wont lie and say it was fun, it was an intense experience, of being back home, back in India, an authentic Indian walk, if I may say so.

Although I will be only spending 3 complete days down South, I’ll be spending a couple of more days travelling in the train which I look forward to. Its been ages since I’ve travelled in an Indian train but I can still remember how much I used to love travelling on them. Once I get there, I’ve got several things planned out, the foremost of which, will be to visit my native place, the place where I was born to meet my relatives. Its been roughly 4 years since I’ve gone there and hopefully, will be a nostalgic experience. I’ll also keep an eye out for some photography opportunities and I expect to see plenty. I’ll be gone from the city for just about a week and probably will be back before my absence is felt.

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I had the fortune to get tickets for the evening show of ‘The Dark Knight’ on IMAX yesterday even though it was the day of release here. I went along with 4 other friends, one of whom managed to get the tickets for the rest of us.

All of us were quite excited to watch the highly anticipated movie and I must say that it wasnt a let down.

I’m going to try and make this review as spoiler free as possible so as not to spoil the movie for the ones who havent watched it yet.

The movie was action packed from the very beginning and didnt waste anytime in doing unnecessary introductions. The immediate flurry of activity from the starting of the movie ensured that the audience were hooked on to it and didnt lose interest in the movie. All the action scenes in the movie were very well executed and contained minimal flaw, if any. The scenes involving the Tumbler and the newly introduced ‘Bat-Bike’ were extremely well shot and the use of the futuristic weapons and technology in both the vehicles kept everyone gaping in amazement at them.

The story of the movie started off fairly straightforward but slowly skewed off at a complicated tangent by introducing new elements and people which would’ve confused the average movie goer. It was still understandable but only by paying careful attention to what was going on and even if you missed out on one vital scene, you would be completely lost. I personally felt that the story was alright but my only worry was that they have left the ending in a such a situation that they would have to terribly complicate the plot of next movie to guarantee an acceptable conclusion for the series . Spiderman 3 was ruined in a similar way and I sincerely hope that the director and script-writers have some tricks up their sleeves so that the dont ruin the movie.

Acting performances in the movie were excellent. The late Heath Ledger did an excellent job in portraying the Joker as the psychopathic mad maniac he was and his talent will be sorely missed in the next movie. Christian Bale’s acting was very good as well, switching from the gentle Bruce Wayne to the vicious Batman smoothly. Morgan Freeman is a genius and I dont I really have to sing any more words of praise about his talent, he is a natural actor and can pull off any role with expertise. Credit has also to be given to Aaron Eckhart for his performance as Harvey Dent and Two Face, the latter being slightly scary due to the overdone visual effects.

Cinematography was highly impressive with the chase camera angles for the scenes with the Tumbler and Bat-Bike. The aerial angles were some of the best I’ve seen and I was thoroughly impressed by them. The audio was good, although I felt that the addition of the extra bass to Batman’s voice was a but annoying after sometime. Nevertheless, the extra bass reassured the audience that Batman was ‘the man’ and you would be stupid to mess with him.

Overall, one of better action movies I’ve seen in awhile and I would definitely recommend this to Batman fans. If you are not familiar with the Batman world, you might find the story confusing but it is still worth watching for the great action sequences. 8.5/10.

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For my 18th Birthday, I shall be giving away 6 free photography wallpapers which were taken by me in the wonderful city of London. I hope you like them!

London Underground

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Lloyds Building

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London Eye

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St.Pauls Cathedral

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The Streets of London

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Millennium Bridge

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You can see more of my photography work at my Flickr Photostream.

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Its been just over an hour of being 18 years old, and similar to last year, it doesnt feel much different. However, I do realise that I am legally responsible for my actions now, and I can vote, get a license, sign contracts, drink alcohol, get a proper bank account and lots more things, or atleast I hope so. They disadvantages of being 18 are not too much I suppose, I can be sent to prison and will no longer be able to get away with things as easily since I’m not a ‘kid’ anymore. I’m still one of the youngest people in my friends circle so I can somewhat continue to  have the benefits of being the youngest.

I’ve got about 3 texts, 2 calls, 3 online and 3 real life wishes for my birthday so far, my thanks to all of them for remembering my birthday and dutifully wishing me on time.

The last week has been good fun, I’ve been showing Hyderabad around to one of my good friends from England which has also given me the opportunity to see various places in the city which I otherwise would not have seen. The city has certainly changed for the better over the course of the year but not too drastically, which is good since I like it the way it is. Some places that I quite enjoyed going include the Chowmahalla Palace and Ramoji FIlm City. I also met up with the Photography Club a couple of times and got some pretty good shots, all of which I have/shall be uploading on Flickr. The more eventful of the meetings being the time when we went to the newly opened Panjagutta flyover the night before it was inaugrated to get some shots of the flyover which we probably wont be ever able to get again since it’ll never be completely empty ever again.

My sincere apologies for not having posted on the site for over a week and in order to compensate for this absence, I have a surprise in store for everyone tomorrow so make sure you visit the site sometime late on the 15th of July!

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After having settled in the hot and humid weather of Hyderabad, I met up with some old friends from the Hyderabad Photography Club and we decided to go to Charminar for some street photography. We walked around the streets, as one does for street photography, after which we proceeded to have some classic Irani Chai and Osmania Biscuit at a local cafe. The Irani tasted better than ever and it also came in cups which looked like they hadnt been washed since the time of Nizams. Its small things like that which make Hyderabad the place it is. We also went up to the top level of Charminar which provided some great views of the surrounding areas. The one that intrigued me was the lack of fences around the level which is a serious safety threat and if anyone trips, it is highly possible that they’ll down a good 75ft before they hit the ground. Regardless of the safety issue, it feels nice to be up there at that height and admire the view.

Today, we went to the Villart Photography Expo at People’s Plaza in Necklace road. It was an okay show with about 4 stalls being really good out of about 25. It was definitely worth going, not only for those 4 good stalls but also to get a general feel of what is going on in the Indian photography market. One of the 4 stalls which I liked was the Canon stall, simply because I got to handle a Canon 5D w/ 70-200 f/2.8 L IS USM with a 580EX II. It was very heavy initially but the lens was quite awesome and I toyed around with it for a while before having to hand it back to the people there. There was also a stall which had some movie cranes for demo and one my friends got to play around with the cranes for sometime. They seemed pretty cool and innovative. The Elinchrom stand was amazing too, the man was kind enough to give us a demo of the remote system of their line of Studio flashes and also allow us to have a go at it. The whole expo was a pretty good experience and we finished it off with a casual talk with some more friends at a coffee shop.

I have been uploading all my new photographs solely on Flickr and you can see the latest photos at my photostream here.

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I got back to good ol’ Hyderabad early Sunday morning and had Biryani for the lunch on the same day without wasting any time. It feels good to be back home where I belong with the various elements that make Hyderabad what it is.

I had an interesting experience near Heathrow airport where I was spending a night before catching my early plane on Saturday morning. I was happily taking photographs with my Carl Zeiss 135mm f/3.5 when I was approached politely by a police office who wished to know whether I had permission to take photographs there. As expected, I replied ‘no’ and then he requested to see the photographs that I’d taken which I promptly did. He asked for some to be deleted which I also promptly did and once that was done, he talked to me about how taking photographs near the airport is illegal without permission and that I shouldnt have done so. I plead ignorance since I knew of no such law and there were no boards pointing that out. He was kind enough to let me go off with a “friendly warning” to quote him, and said he would have to arrest me if I continued to take photographs. Following this, I thanked him and left back to my hotel counting my blessings for having gotten off, thanks to the friendly cop.

And in other photography related news, I have fallen in love with both my Carl Zeiss lenses which are just insanely sharp beyond belief. The 135mm is sharper than the 35mm and these have become my favourite lenses now. The 35mm is my walkaround lens now, replacing the 18-250mm which I use solely for wide-angle and sports now. My 50mm had the misfortune of being dropped once and now has problems in manual focus but auto focus seems to function perfectly well.

I met with some friends today and a couple of days ago and have been catching up on things that I missed over the past 6 months. It felt nice to meet them after a somewhat long time and socialise once again like the good ol’ days.

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