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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

School is just getting sadder and sadder day by day. Of course, the extracurricular activities are keeping us pretty busy, but life in class is dead. All the track events got postponed today because of the cricket matches. The music room was buzzing with activity with the competitions drawing closer. Fatik and me climbed the school compound wall and took pictures of the school building, we then continued and took pictures of the Primary Kids who mobbed us asking us to take their pictures and we had to literally run away from them and a few of them chased us till the music room! Hehe. Hope school improves in the future.

News,

Vista to release on Nov. 30

Porky Pig says ‘Son of a Bitch’ - YouTube - Hilarious Video!!

100 Million Websites - And I have 4!

Linux F*** Count - Amusing

11 ways to sleep better

Yahoo Wii page

Best Halo costume ever!

5 Books every geek should read

11 Reasons why you shouldnt forward me that email

Study holds promise for AIDS

Lost moon landing tapes discovered

10 tips for Google Image Search

Paintball - Flash Game

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Linger by The Cranberries is my latest addiction. Its the only song I’ve listened since yesterday. I must have played atleast a 100 times. Its a great song, my addiction started after listening to it in ‘Click’.

Since, Id is tomorrow, our school has decided to give us a holiday tomorrow also so thats another day of fun.

I played Half life 2 Lost Coast today and its just amazing. The graphics are completly life-like and the HDR effects are spectacular. Its a short level though..finished it quickly…wish it was longer…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!