dslr

Dubai Traffic

Submitted by Vishal on Fri, 2010/02/26 - 9:58pm

Dubai Traffic as seen from Sana fashions signal, with the Dubai Metro, Etisalat building, Trade center, Emirates Towers and Burj Khalifa in the background.

Possibly the most common sight in Dubai -- the tail lights of several cars in front of you, that is. :)

Post-processed in the GIMP, using some of the GEGL Black & White Conversion Method I've outlined here, while keeping th original colour layer, adding in some more on top and generally freewheeling it until it looked right.

V

Cheap Robots & the Men Who Buy Them

Submitted by Vishal on Sat, 2010/01/30 - 11:50pm

Macro shot of a cheap transforming robot toy's head

I'm very much an 80s kid. I grew up with Transformers and G.I. Joe, not Rugrats and Ed, Edd n Eddy. Though I did spend a good chunk of my childhood in the 90s, growing up in Muscat, away from the twin cultural juggernauts of India and the US, meant that some things arrived later, and stayed around more. And 80s cartoons, and a love of the toys that came with the subculture, is one of those things.

How to Make Stylish Black & White Digital Photos with the GIMP

Submitted by Vishal on Mon, 2009/12/21 - 3:18am

Road Picture - beforeRoad Picture - after
How exactly do you turn the dull, boring image on the left into the one on the right? Easy, read on for the tutorial!

Head in the Black & White Clouds

Submitted by Vishal on Wed, 2009/12/16 - 11:56am

The top of a cloud in black & white

I mentioned in a previous Black & White photo post that while I love the aesthetic I'd never done much of it, i.e. I'd never bothered to process my (colour) digital pictures into adequate black & white photos. But now that I've hit upon a method whose results I like, expect a lot more black & white posts on this blog!

Today I'm presenting 5 shots taken mostly during my last India trip (except the first, which was taken in Khor Fakkan). I hope you like 'em, and if you'd like to find out how I did them, do check back here in a few days when I'll put up a tutorial on how to convert images to B&W using the GIMP. (You can follow the site's RSS feed, and me on twitter).

The Burj Dubai, Day & Night

Submitted by Vishal on Sat, 2009/11/28 - 12:07am

Photo of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, in the afternoon with a Dubai metro station and footbridge in the foreground

Oddly enough, despite the Dubai Mall being open for over a year now, I have never taken my Pentax SLR out in it to snap a few shots.

But today when my friend Amit was in town (we were meeting after 15 years despite living the the same city for much of that time -- and that's a whole 'nother story), he asked me to bring along the 'fancy camera' to take some touristy shots. Since I rarely take touristy shots, I was looking forward to the challenge! :)

And wouldn't you know it, the batteries were flat and I didn't have time to recharge them. Lucky for me the Pentax K200D uses four ordinary AA batteries, so I was able to get up and running after a quick stop at a gas station convenience store for some alkalines.

Literally the first shot I took, seconds after popping the batteries in was the one above. It's not a great shot, but you do get to see a Dubai metro station in the foreground, and once again the speed of an SLR -- nearly as good as instant response of the film cameras I cut my teeth on -- amazed me.

Later in the evening we found ourselves in the Dubai Mall, outdoors near the fountain. I got one half-decent shot of the fountain, below, which I can't decide is bad because of the column obscuring it, or likable precisely because of that rogue column in the way. Such is the way with photographs, sometimes.

Picture of the Dubai fountain, near the Burj Dubai and Dubai Mall, in the Old Town development and Business Bay

Needless to say, I need to go back with a tripod someday (of course, first I need to find a tripod that can steadily hold my beast of a camera).

Then followed several unsuccessful attempts at taking shots of the nearly-finished Burj Dubai, all of which were blurry (including one with a borrowed tripod). Finally I managed to get a good, properly composed shot by employing a trick I learnt from the esteemed Samir Bharadwaj -- I leaned against one of the same offending columns that had earlier come between me and the fountain.

All was forgiven between me and that piece of decorative architecture, because it helped me get this shot below:

Photo of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, at night with most of the lights on

And that, along with an excellent evening of good food and laughter with friends of old (and some new ones too), made the evening quite worth it.

V

Playing Around With The Pentax K200D

Submitted by Vishal on Sat, 2009/04/18 - 2:28pm

Macro shot of the Pentax K200D dslr camera taken with a Kodak C875 compact
A couple of weeks ago did my bit to help ease the credit crunch by put a good deal of cash into retail spending. I bought myself a Pentax K200D digital SLR camera. It's the first professional camera I've ever owned, and while everybody and their mother told me to get a frakking Canon or Nikon, this one -- quirks, warts and all -- is the one I wanted (also there was a rumour going around that the model was discontinued, and indeed it took me a week to track it down in a store).

I've spent the past couple of weeks testing it out. With no real SLR experience behind me I haven't half a clue as to what I'm doing. The days have also been brown and grey, which doesn't fill me with enthusiasm to take pictures. Here's a bunch of decent ones I've taken so far (out of hundreds of lousy ones, heh).

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