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

Widescreen (16:10) Full Screen (4:3)

1920×1200 1600×1200

1680×1050 1280×960

____________________________________________________________________________

Lloyds Building

Widescreen (16:10) Full Screen (4:3)

1920×1200 1600×1200

1680×1050 1280×960

____________________________________________________________________________

London Eye

Widescreen (16:10) Full Screen (4:3)

1920×1200 1600×1200

1680×1050 1280×960

____________________________________________________________________________

St.Pauls Cathedral

Widescreen (16:10) Full Screen (4:3)

1920×1200 1600×1200

1680×1050 1280×960

____________________________________________________________________________

The Streets of London

Widescreen (16:10) Full Screen (4:3)

1920×1200 1600×1200

1680×1050 1280×960

____________________________________________________________________________

Millennium Bridge

Widescreen (16:10) Full Screen (4:3)

1920×1200 1600×1200

1680×1050 1280×960

____________________________________________________________________________

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

Its been about a week since my exams got over and I’ve made some interesting purchases over the course of these days.

The first and most important one would be the Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon DDR MC Electric 35mm f/2.4 which I’ve nicknamed ‘Jenna’. I managed to win an auction of it on Ebay for just over £60 which I thought, was a decent deal. I havent really had a chance to try the lens out and push it to it limits but from what I’ve seen so far, its had some very impressive results. The first thing I noticed about the lens was that it felt good which is a mark of a good lens. When you hold it on your hands, it just feels right and solid. The piece which I got was in mint condition with one very minor scuff on the side. It focuses very closely, upto a reproduction ratio of 1:2 and can be used to shoot some impressive macro photographs. It resembles the standard focal length of 50mm on a crop-sensor camera and is useful in everyday purposes. I can also remove it from my wishlist now and I’m proud to have achieved another milestone on my wishlist. I will be posting some sample shots taken with it very soon on my Flickr Photostream.

Another gadget that I’ve got my hands on is the Logitech Z-2300. I didnt buy it but one of my good friends bought it and hence, I was able to test it out. They are 2.1 speakers and come with an absolutely massive sub-woofer. The sound quality is excellent, very crisp and makes you feel like you are in the middle of a concert. The sub-woofer is second to none and has a bass powerful enough to rattle the windows. It is also very very loud and can probably over-power some of the popular home audio systems. The sound retains quality at all volume levels which is one of qualities of high-end music systems like Bose, etc and its good to see that quality in consumer level goods, thanks to Logietch’s THX certified sound quality. A highly recommended purchase for any audiophile.

And my final and latest acquisition is a Phottix Wireless remote for my camera. It works excellently and as good as a Canon wired remote. It supports Bulb mode and if you hold down the button on the remote for 3 seconds, you can release it and the camera will still continue to take the photo until you press the button again. This is very useful feature so that you dont have to hold it down to take long exposure photos like Star trails. It also works perfectly with the burst mode and even though I probably wont use it with the burst mode, it nevertheless sounds quite exciting. I hope to make more use of it soon.

The Greatest Show on Earth, the Summer Ball is this Saturday and I’m looking forward to it!

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

After having bought myself a Flickr PRO Account a couple of weeks ago, I decided to upload my 365 Day Project to Flickr so that I can share it with the Flickr community. You can view all the photos in a set here and view a slide-show of the photos here. And you can now keep updated with the photo of the day by subscribing to this exclusive RSS Feed which will notify you when a photo is uploaded onto the set on Flickr.

I came across this highly amusing image of why you shouldnt piss off a engineer, take a look at it yourself here.

Another very witty article I read was about the 8 different types of annoying people you’ll find in Starbucks. I found the list to be quite accurate, read the article here to see if it reminds you of a trip to Starbucks.

People just come up with all sorts of crazy but innovative ideas these days. This list of the most awesome business card designs I have ever seen, reinforces that statement.

Viral marketing is the latest thing for all companies these days, Levis has done quite a good marketing campaign for its jeans with this strange and funny video of guys jumping into jeans.

For all those ardent web designers out there, here is a compilation of useful resources for both experienced and amateur web developers.

If you have vertigo, this photo is probably not for you. Its a photograph of the view from the top of what is currently the world’s tallest structure, the Burj Dubai.

Barack Obama seems to gaining more and more popular support day by day, and his increase in security proves it. Click here to view some amazing photographs of Barack Obama’s Security.

Luigi Colani has designed some of the most extravagant and ridiculous designs which have to be seen to believed. Take a look at them here.

And for the funniest story of the week, officials at Japan’s Narita airport have lost 142gms of cannabis after having placed it in a random passenger’s bag to test their security dogs. As fate may have it, the dogs were not able to sniff out the drugs and the officer has forgotten which bag he put it in.

And thats all for now folks!

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

3 exams finished, only 1 more left and I’ve got a week till that one so I’ve got some freedom till then. My Politics exam went on well but the real kicker is the Statistics exam which was really good considering the fact that I had only one to study for it, the subject that I dislike the most.

I’ve been getting lots of things done over the past week, things that I’d wanted to get done for a long time so it was good to get all of those off my mind.

I was browsing randomly around a couple of days ago when I came across this article which talked about a man who took a Polaroid everyday for 18 years of his life right upto the day he died. After having tackled about three fourths of my 365 Day Project, I know how demanding it can be on some days to get a photo done. And this is only 257 days in for me, he took photos for 6,697 days from 1979 to 1997. It is quite a remarkable feat and I truly respect for having the determination and courage to go through it for 18 years. Thats more than my age. I have been contemplating undertaking a similar project and I’m still continuing to contemplate it, I havent really made up my mind yet. You can read the article here.

I’ve been reading about some photographers lately, the ones who really inspired me were Michael Muller and Platon. Michael Muller shoots celebrities and promo shots for high profile movies, the latest and most famous one being Iron Man. He has a very impressive portfolio and has done portraits of the some of the most famous celebrities out there.

I felt Platon is a bit more ‘legendary’ than Michael Muller since he is the one who photographed the leader of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin himself, for the cover of TIME Magazine in 2007 and also won the World Press Photo in 2008 for Portraits with that photo.

His interview about the photoshoot is very powerful and he talks about his experience, I feel every photographer should listen to this, to know how it feels to photograph one of the most powerful men on earth. You can watch it here. (Click on 2008 Interviews and then click on Putin’s photo) The interview is about 10 minutes long and definitely worth listening to.

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

We had our first exam at University yesterday, Introduction to Economics, which went remarkably well. The exam procedures were more or less the same as school, the only difference being that there were about 400 students in one hall as opposed to about 125 in school. The size didn’t really make much of a difference in the exam but they took a hell a lot of time to collect all the papers at the end. Next exam is next Tuesday, gotta start studying.

I’ve been looking to get a medium format camera recently, because I want to venture out into new forms of photography. After several hours of researching online instead of studying for my exam, I came to the conclusion that for a person who is taking his first step into Medium Format, a folder camera would be ideal since it isn’t very expensive but gives good quality images and is compact when compared to the other alternatives.

I did stumble upon a few Bronicas on Ebay, it was quite tempting to get one, but I had to refrain since they would be an overkill for me and were also slightly expensive. After more hours of hunting, I came across several models of folder cameras such as the Agfa Isolette which seemed to be the most popular and various different versions of the Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta.

Zeiss Ikonta by Ray Pempengco

In order to get a hands-on experience with some of these cameras before buying one, I decided to visit a secondhand camera store in London. So yesterday, right after the exam, I went to London and spent about an hour lost trying to find the store, and I finally managed to find it. I wouldn’t exactly call it a store since they are a mail-order business and don’t have a store front for customers. Its more like a office room filled with all the classic cameras you can dream of. I was initially overwhelmed by the amount of cameras they had in that space and spent a good 10 minutes just looking at the huge collection. The store owners were very friendly and allowed me to handle various cameras. After some drooling and handling of some of the best medium format cameras in the world, I decided that I would get a Zeiss Super Ikonta and if all goes right, I should probably have one with me this time next week. And if anyone is looking to get a classic camera, I suggest you look at their extensive online catalogue, but act quick since they sell like hot cakes.

Here are some links which I found very useful containing more information about the world of Medium Format Cameras -

Introduction to Medium Format Photography - Ken Rockwell

Medium Format Guide - Cameras.co.uk

Choosing a Medium Format Camera - Philip Greenspun, Photo.net

Medium Format on a Budget - Peter Williams

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

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had meetings for the various clubs and societies at University and I was duly elected President of the Gliding Club, President of the Photography Society and Vice President of the Politics Society for the next academic year. I’m quite thrilled by these posts which I have undertaken and I shall do my best to ensure that I help all the societies equally.

I successfully spent the International Shutdown Day without using the computer all the day. I had to take photos of sports for most of the day so it was bit easier to refrain from using the computer since I had something to keep myself occupied with. I did feel the urge to use it in the night after I’d finished all my work but I managed to keep myself under control. And I hadn’t really missed many happenings on the internet as I saw on the next day.

Thanks to a friend, I finally got the chance to play the most coveted game of the year, Grand Theft Auto IV. I played the game on a Xbox 360 but I didn’t really care which I console I played it on as long as I got to play it. My first impressions of the game was the highly improved graphics from the previous games and the physics. Enough cant be said about the new physics engine which is very realistic and gives a whole new feel to the game. We also played the Multiplayer for sometime which was great, we had a bit of a lag but otherwise had a new and exciting experience. I tried to do a mission and I almost completed it when I got killed at the very end. I just cant get used to the dual joystick use in consoles since I prefer PC gaming. Regardless, if you’re going to get only one game this year, make sure it is GTA IV. You can watch a very good 10 minute video review of the game here.

I’ve made some changes to my wishlist, I’ve now amended it to include items that I actually want as opposed to things that would simply be nice to own. Take a look at the updated Wishlist here.

After many months of thinking, I bought myself a Flickr PRO Account yesterday. It offers unlimited upload of photos along with several other incredible features at a very reasonable price of approximately $2 a month. I shall be embedding the Flickr Gallery into the site soon. You can take a look at my Flickr Stream here.

We’ve got exams from next Monday and honestly, I have hardly studied anything. I really hope I get things done soon.

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

I went Gliding yesterday after more than a month. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to glide and had some very enjoyable flights yesterday. The weather has improved which made the whole experience more pleasurable and we had a great day out at the airfield.

GTA IV comes out in less than 2 days. I wasnt really anticipating the release of the game that much since I’m not as interested in games as I was 2 years ago when San Andreas came out. However, I did want to try out the game just once to see how it is and if there is enough improvement as has been publicised. And yesterday, I read IGN’s review of the game and they gave it a perfect score of 10 and called it ‘One of the best games ever’. I also watched the gameplay videos which are totally awesome. And some of my friends over at GTAGaming got invited for all expenses paid trip to New York by Rockstar Games to have a sneak preview of GTA IV, you can read about their exciting experience here. These events have reinstated my interest in the game and I look forward to release. You can see a countdown to the release of the game here.

I got a PC Sync Extension cable for my cameras flash so that I can fire both of my flash simultaneously indoors, I have taken some exciting photos with some new techniques and you can view some of these on my Flickr Stream and my 365 Day Project. I can also use my flash outdoors now, using the cable and I’ve been experimenting to get unique shots which can be seen in the links above.

I had an Economics Test a couple of days which went fairly well. My exams start on May 12th and ending on May 30th. I also got the result of my Politics Essay and I was quite happy with it as was my teacher.

In order to make my domain more ‘UK-friendly’, I have now redirected my previous derelict website and domain name - Cozmonite.com, to this site so that now anyone who visits that domain can click a link to visit this site which is my primary website.

And I have some big plans about the photo gallery which I shall try and implement soon so that it will be easier to view photos here.

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