Kishor Krishnamoorthi’s WebsiteKishor a.k.a Mjuboy’s Blog

Got home yesterday morning after a much celebrated journey. I spent most of Monday in London, and most of that time was spent at the Natural History Museum where I saw the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 Exhibition. It was spectacular, each image had its own unique story to tell and all of them inspired me to go and take more photos. After that, I saw the Charles Darwin Big Idea exhibition which was also superb. It portrayed Charles Darwin’s life and his ideas in an interesting manner. Each part of the exhibition had the original documents and letters along with some highly detailed sculptures to further enhance the experience. I believe both will be displayed for some more time so if you ever are in London in the next couple of weeks, you should definitely take some time to see both of them.

After the exhibitions, I went for the usual trip to Harrods to take a look at the latest fashions among the rich people. The highlight of the trip this time was that I got to handle some of the best lenses that I’ve ever seen. The gentleman at the camera area was quite happy to show me the Canon 85mm f/1.2L USM, Canon 50mm f/1.2L USM, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS and several more. I would’ve given everything in my bank account for those lenses but unfortunately, my money was not even enough to cover the insurance for them. But they’ve definitely gone up a notch in my wishlist now that I know what they feel like.

And if I had a billion dollars, the lenses would be among the first things I’d get along with the 50 other things on this list.

Its good be back home, although I’m still in the UK timezone having woken up at 2 in the afternoon today. The weather in India is something I really missed, walking around in the breeze with just a t-shirt on seems more of a privilege now.

And my music taste has been undergoing lots of changes lately I’ve been listening to Spring by Vivaldi, Love is Noise by The Verve, Call me Call Me by Yoko Kanno, Hot’n'Cold by Katy Perry and Mr.Rock’n'Roll by Amy MacDonald.

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Even though I suggested in my previous post that I was going insane, I am pleased to inform you that I’ve come back to the world of sanity after a brief tryst with the dark side.

Christmas Dinners have started and like last year, the first Christmas dinner of this year was at the Gliding Club and it was a wonderful dinner indeed. The food was delicious as always, and I was quite stuffed by the end of the lovely three course meal. We did go Gliding all morning and although it was quite cold, the visibility was great and we did some really good flights. It was nice to see all the familiar faces again and as with tradition, we retired to the bar at the end of day and spent a good amount of time talking about things all around the world while we were merrily drunk. We spent the night there and I must say that I had one of the most well rested sleep in a long time. It was a great day out and did a good job to kick me out of the boring routine and show me that there is another exciting world there after all. We came back to campus next day morning, back to the usual life, back to a 2500 word essay due today morning which I successfully finished by midnight.

We’ve got more dinners, parties and socials coming up this week, all of which I’m looking forward to. It should be a good celebration before going back home for winter.

Amazon recently launched their DRM-Free MP3 Downloads for the United Kingdom which I totally approve of. Its a great alternative to iTunes and will also help in the fight against piracy. I was sorely tempted to buy some music just to try it out but financial restraints held me back. I did end up buying an Audio CD which was not available in the Downloads section and it was quite a bargain as well so there was no reason not to get it.

The CD was something I had been wanting to get for a long time now, it was ‘Pride: The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play U2‘ and it came in the mail a couple of days ago. It is a beautiful mix of both of my favourite genres of music, classical and U2. (Yes, U2 is a genre for me!) I’ve been listening to it for most of yesterday and today and I cannot get enough of it.

I’ve also realized that I love getting handwritten letters, it has a certain personal touch and charm to it that technology can never replicate. I received one from my father last week and it felt really good to read that familiar handwriting of his. Another letter was surprisingly from the seller for the CD from Amazon who was kind enough to include a personal message along with the receipt. I’ve made sure that I left a 5/5 seller rating for him.

I got my hands on Lightroom 2.1 last week. It does have some nice features but since I havent done serious editing with it yet, I still need to get used to it. It also seems to run faster but then again, I think thats because I ran CCleaner which is pretty darn amazing software to get rid of all unnecessary things from your PC. It saved me 10Gig I dont know from where, but it did.

This week’s schedule looks a lot more relaxed than the past weeks which is a nice transition before I go home and do absolutely nothing for 3 weeks.

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As I’ve mentioned before, my father always said that confusion is the beginning of clarity, and time and again, his words have been proven right. However, I’m not sure if they apply to a different situation, in this case, a situation of insanity.

Is insanity the beginning of sanity? Or is it just an end in itself? Only time will tell, or atleast I hope it will.

The first signs of insanity that I encountered was talking to myself. I first caught myself talking to myself about a week ago when I was walking back home in the rain at around 2 in the morning after finishing work. Work in this sense is taking photographs at the university nightclub. It felt surprisingly good to talk to someone who knew me best – me! I must admit that I’ve done it a couple of more times but only because it does a good job to sort out things that have been on my mind and nagging me. It definitely is something awkward and not something everyone does but I guess everyone has their own queer side.

Another sign, which would probably come across to the common person as insanity but its something I personally think very highly of – Anti Piracy. After having been hit hard by the credit crunch, I thought I should probably temporarily relax my anti piracy beliefs to download some music since I couldnt afford to buy any. But I just couldnt do it. Not because my internet was slow, not because I couldnt find it, not because piratebay was down, but simply because I could not get myself to click the download button. I just find it morally wrong, not to pay someone for the work they’ve done. Sure, you’re going to say that there are lots of people out there who will pay for it so if one person downloads it, it isnt going to affect them much. But if everyone thinks like that, it obviously will lead to everyone downloading and noone buying. So I decided I’ll buy the music once I get some money and till then, I’ll have the lovely YouTube to aid me in listening to my favourite songs.

And I hope people enjoyed my previous post, my first  work of literature, a poem titled ‘If – 2.0′. It was a result of frustration and annoyance with things around me and the poem, like talking to myself, did a good job of clearing matters from my mind. After seeing the positive feedback I got on Facebook, I may possibly write again sometime soon if I feel like it.

The events which happened at Mumbai have been truly tragic and did unseat me from usual routine. My heart goes out to everyone whose family has been affected by this horrific incident and I sincerely hope that nothing like this ever happens again in a beautiful country like India or any other country for that matter. You can view some photographs which have captured the event in its entirety here.

Life has been going on and on, whether I liked it or not. I’ve been pretty busy over the past week, maybe a bit too busy and need to relax my schedule slightly to accommodate academics. Finance is not the best thing I’d like to write about now, so lets just say that I’m another victim of the Credit Crunch. And thats it for now, might possibly post something more this week about my ‘wonderful’ life.

Currently Listening to – Nee Partha from Hey Ram

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‘The cat is dead’ said Max Woodger as John McCain lost out on the presidency of the United States of America in the 2008 Elections last Tuesday. Barack Obama was successfully elected as the first black president beating McCain by a large margin.

The night after the elections was bonfire night in England, to celebrate the thwarting Guy Fawkes’ plot of blowing up the Parliament in 1605. I went along with a few friends to the Colchester Castle to watch some fireworks. Even though it was supposed to start at 6PM, we waited for about an hour in the cold drizzle before it finally started at 7PM. I have to say it was quite impressive, maybe not worth the wait, but was still quite good. As you can expect, I did take my camera and tripod along and managed to get some pretty nice shots. I’ve posted my personal favourite below. You can see the rest of the photos here.

Being the photographer for the Students Union, I went for about 3 nights last week to take photos. Friday night was really good fun but the others were just alright. After that, I realized that it had been quite a while since I took photos just for myself without the pressure of work so I went for a nice long walk around campus just taking photos of building and places at my own leisure and it felt really good to do that. I’ve posted the photos which I took during the walk on Flickr and you can take a look at them here. The last few photos from the album are the most recent ones.

And on Sunday, we went to the Colchester Zoo which has to be the best zoo I’ve ever visited. Of course, since the other zoo that I remember visiting is Nehru Zoo, one can assume that a zoo doesnt really have to be that impressive to be better than that but trust me, the Colchester Zoo is something to be seen. It is huge and the fact that we spent almost 15minutes taking photos of each animal didnt help. After about 5 hours, we realized that we had only covered about 50% of the Zoo and had to rush through the rest but we still didnt see everything. Another trip to the Zoo is pending and you can see the photos from the trip here. More photos will be uploaded to the set soon.

I’ve been listening to a varied genre of songs recently, a few worth mentioning are ‘Paper Planes by M.I.A‘, ‘Rush Rush by Debbie Harry‘, ‘Everything is borrowed by The Streets‘, ‘Bilqis by Rabbi Shergill‘ and ‘Chariots of Fire by Vangelis‘.

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‘Rock On’, possibly one of the first Hindi movie that I had hopes for and it did well to live up to the hopes. Ever since I bought the soundtrack a couple of weeks ago, I realized that the movie had potential to be one of the better Bollywood movies made. The songs were excellent and the very fact that I took efforts to buy a Hindi movie audio CD says a lot about it. Great job by Shankar Ehsaan Loy with the music, a good mix of 80’s style rock and harmonious songs. The lyrics (Javed Akhtar) were quite good too, not the usual meaningless stuff but rather words with some significance. It was the music that made me go to the theatre along with a few friends and watch the movie on the first day.

The movie features Farhan Akhtar, the director of the much famed movie ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ in his debut role as an actor along with Arjun Rampal who sports long hair throughout the movie and a couple of Channel V VJs as the main characters. Acting was good, not amazing, but good enough to keep the flow of the movie. The best performance, in my opinion, was by Arjun Rampal who managed to portray both sides of his life beautifully.

The story of the movie was solid and did a wonderful job of intertwining both the old and the new without leaving the viewer confused. It was well laid out and often left us waiting for the next scene eagerly, not nail biting eager, but just enough to keep you comfortable and not bored. It also did a good job at expressing several different types of emotions which made the audience laugh, cry, think and scream with joy, all in less than a span of 3 hours. Each individual band member’s life was looked into equally so as not to concentrate the movie completely on the main characters which dispersed the story over a wide range of topics.

The plot revolves around the band ‘Magik’ which was formed during their college days and seemed to be doing quite well. But incidents happen, and over the course of 10 years, the members lose touch with each other until one meeting by coincidence after which a whole lot of reminicising happens and brings the band back into the limelight. A simple but beautiful story very well executed with humour, emotion and the works.

Cinematography was superb using Hollywood-like camera angles and lighting. One feature which struck me in particular was the fact that all the bokeh in the movie was perfectly circular and the director must have known this because there was lots of it. Everywhere. And I’m not complaining, it only made the movie look better.

The seats were possibly not the best, being 3 rows from the front, but I was just happy watching the movie on the first day and fuelled by almost a litre of Coca Cola, the experience was enjoyable. And the fact that I had gone with 3 girls did much to make it a good movie overall. The other main influence of the movie was that it gave me some hope about Bollywood and that all of the new Hindi movies are not complete bullshit.

The movie had a nice message at the ending to not download the music but rather buy the CD which I thought was nice. Being anti piracy myself, I had already bought the audio CD sometime ago and you should probably do the same.

Definitely watch the movie if you have time and if you dont, make some and go watch the movie. A must for all musicians, upcoming or not, and music lovers in general.

If you have watched the movie, please give your opinion in the comments.

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Yesterday night, I had the opportunity to photograph an Indie band, ‘The Twang’ along with their supporting bands, ‘Jersey Buds’ and ‘The Hours’ for the University Newsletter. The first band playing was ‘Jersey Buds’, who I thought were really good. The next band up was ‘The Hours’ who had varied types of music. The final and most anticipated band, ‘The Twang’, were probably quite, but they weren’t my type of music. Photography, however, was another thing.

The lighting for the first two bands was more or less the same, and played havoc with White Balance. I shoot in RAW so that I would have lots of room for further editing. I was not allowed into the photographer’s pit for the first two bands, since I didnt have a pass. To compensate, I stood right at the front, so that I could have a choice of angles. My viewpoint was limited since I couldnt move about too much and had to stick to one place. When ‘The Twang’ came onto the stage, the lighting was spectacular, and I’d also lost my position in the front. Although I was only one row behind the front, it made a lot of difference. And just when I thought that it would be great if I could get into the photographer’s pit, which was empty, my friend showed up with a Press Pass she’d got for me. I was delighted and had the entire photographer’s pit all to myself. There were endless opportunities there, and I clicked like there was no tomorrow. It was great to be right infront of the band, and away from the crushing crowd. I had to leave after some time and I was happy with the time I’d got in there. I took some pictures of the crowd and as if on cue, I ran out of space on my CF Card. It was the first time I was photographing a concert, putting all my theory I’d learned into practical, and it was a great fun. I cant wait to do this again.

My heart thumping in rhythm with the music, while I clicked photographs and listened to the music, was one helluva experience. While I watched the drummer of ‘Jersey Buds’, it reminded me of my days of drumming in school, and at that moment, I wanted to go and start playing again. The sound was flawless, I cant imagine how many hours they must have spent doing the sound check. And for better sound, I’d noticed that they had microphones on every speaker so that they could monitor sound output and change it during the concert. My ears were still ringing after the concert, but I had an amazing time the ringing in my ears was just a small price to pay for it.

Click here to view the photographs which I took at the event.

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Today, as usual, I was hunting around on the internet on ways for improving my photography and came across the whole concept of flash diffusers. I was quite happy with bouncing my flash off the ceiling and walls but I thought that I’d probably take a look anyway. I had already read before that hard light i.e direct light from the flash is quite undesirable unless you want that effect.The all time classic solution to this problem is to diffuse the light. And the rule is that ‘the bigger the light source, the softer the light’ which means that we have to use a large diffuser as the size of the flash head is fixed.

Indoors, this is quite simple, as with a swivel-and-tilt flash, you can easily bounce the flash off the ceiling and walls, and effectively making them the source of light. As they are quite large, the usually give a nice and soft light. Then what’s the problem you may ask, and this was my doubt too. The bounce method may not work when working in places with high ceilings like churches, and outdoors too. And also having some diffused flash directly onto the subject enhances the photograph.

The method by which many photographers continue to swear by is to use a simple bounce card, which is basically a 3×5 index card strapped onto the head of the flash, while having the flash pointing upwards. The card will reflect some amount of light directly onto the subject which supposedly enhances the photograph.

There have been several newer alternatives to the bounce card like the Sto-fen Bounce, Flip-It, the Lightsphere, several products by Lumiquest and so on. You could find about a hundred different types of flash diffusers with a quick Google search but I’ve only listed the well known ones here.

All these various diffusers have the common objective of softening the light from a flash. Personally, I have never used these but after a lot of looking around, I found many posts and discussions relating to the same topic. There were several arguments about the most effective diffuser and many never reached a conclusion. I didn’t know whether I even needed a flash diffused so I thought that I might make myself one just to try it out.

I came across ABetterBounceCard.com which has detailed videos on how to make your own better bounce card, which is an enhanced version of the classic bounce card. The instructions are well described and easy to follow. After watching the video, I decided to get some foam sheet since he recommended using it. He also said that you could use a sheet of photo paper but I, being the perfectionist I am, decided to buy some foam paper.

We went to several stores and spent about 2 – 3 hours before finally coming across a craft store which had the foam sheets. I bought 3, just in case I messed up the first one. It didn’t take long to make the better bounce cards, just simple measuring and cutting. I also made a couple of modifications so that it would fit the flash head better.

However, my first impression of the better bounce card wasn’t too good but maybe I just don’t know how to us it properly. After a few attempts to use it, I realized that it isn’t too useful for me and ditched it. I found that having flash directly onto the subject didnt produce a desirable effect. But I only had the chance to try it out on bags, so I’ll give it a go tomorrow with some portraits and see how it works out.

I had a bonus though, since the foam sheets which I bought were great as backgrounds and I used it for today’s photo of the day. I plan on going and getting some additional colors tomorrow.

And in unrelated news, I have started listening to several songs by ‘The Kinks‘ and a song by Peter Sarstedt called ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ after watching ‘The Darjeeling Limited‘ as they both were featured prominently in the film.

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Alright, I have to admit there’s nothing related to elephants in this post. Getting to the more serious matters at hand, I’ve finished about half of my 3000 word essay today, fuelled by McVities Chocolate Digestives and a nonstop supply of Prabhu Deva songs from YouTube which when combined together, worked better than coffee and Red Bull. I spent almost the whole day writing the essay, and gained a lot of knowledge in the process of finishing the essay. Life has been pretty good overall, other than the fact that my laptop seems to be getting slower day by day and almost starts crying when I run Photoshop.

Click the image for higher resolution and description.

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We had Maths yesterday, I couldn’t finish the paper due to lack of time. I did fine though. We had commerce today, I wrote well and the time was sufficient.

I finished reading ‘Timeline’ by Micheal Crichton. It was a action paced book and unexpected had several twists and turns. The description was very realistic and it felt like I was in the medivial times myself. 8.5/10

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So, there I was sitting in front of my PC listening to my latest musical obsession ‘Colonial Cousins’ when the suddenly, the Blue Screen of Death pops our from nowhere, I just restarted the PC as it instructed me to do and everything was fine after that.

For those of you who dont know what it looks like, I took a pic when the BSOD came and this is what it looked like.
News,

Art from stained teacups

10 things to consider before jumping to Vista

5 years and 10,000 people is what it took to create Vista

10 Best Chinese Inventions

Tower Defence – Flash Game

AMD’s fancy new Quad Core beaten by a Intel Dual Core – Intel rules!

9/11 pictures taken from a plane by a Russian

Coincidences that made Google successful

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