Fotolog

Dassault Rafale

2012-01-31T10:58:00.000-08:00

This picture was taken at Aero India 2011. One of the most beautiful conventional delta-canard configurations ever produced, and truly lives up to Marcel Dassault's own (wrongly attributed?) quip about the design of airplanes, "If an airplane looks good, it will fly well".

Thank you, Mikhail Simonov

2011-10-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

Mikhail Simonov passed away earlier this year. I'd never have grown up to love aircraft in the same way were it not for this amazing airplane designed by Simonov.

Morning Clearing

2011-10-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

Pensive

2011-10-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

Making A Scene At Work

2011-10-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

Shimmering Landscapes Frozen In Time

2011-10-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

Not Very Far Out

2011-10-15T04:59:00.000-07:00

Epiphanies

2011-10-15T04:58:00.000-07:00

Fishing Boats

2011-10-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

The Velvet Morning

2011-10-15T04:55:00.000-07:00

Sorta like that song by The Verve.

Receding

2011-10-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

Sunrise

2011-10-15T04:53:00.000-07:00

Cylinders Of Water In Formation

2011-10-15T04:51:00.000-07:00

Surf

2011-10-15T04:48:00.000-07:00

Meandering Footsteps

2011-10-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

Landscapes Frozen In Time

2011-10-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hawker

2011-10-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

And here's what a polar map did to this picture. Infinite sandy streets, infinite hawkers, infinite carts.

O Rangka (gka)

2011-10-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

The strangest things get washed up on shore. However, this here is a reasonably environmentally friendly contribution from some pooja that was conducted on the beach.

Bricks

2011-10-09T10:08:00.001-07:00

Reminds me of this really old Linux wallpaper.

Surf

2011-10-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Incipience and Decay

2011-10-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

One more.

Storks (In The Blue Dream)

2011-10-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Clearing: Focus Zoom

2011-10-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

Seeping

2011-10-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

Ficus Religiosa

2011-10-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

The 1960s style effect was thanks to Picknik, Picasa's built in image editor.

Sand Crab

2011-10-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

Burnt Wood

2011-10-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Perigee

2011-03-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

A Moon orbit happens every 27.3 days or a sidereal month, but because its orbit around the Earth has several perturbations, the Moon is at times closer to Earth than at most times during its orbit in a long time. These pictures were taken today (18th March 2011) when the Moon is at a perigee (under the conditions of perturbations in orbit that allow it to be as close as 354,000 km from Earth). More here.

Captured in the Nikon RGB scheme, on a Nikon D40 with a 70-300mm Sigma lens at 300mm.

Nikon RGB scheme, converted to B&W

Crop #1

Crop #2

Kanglish

2011-02-21T06:32:00.000-08:00

That's "Bun, Biscuit and Samosa".

Strings

2011-01-25T10:22:00.000-08:00

My First Electric Guitar

2011-01-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

I play a lot of guitar these days, and this nice little instrument (a Stagg L320 LP copy) is one of two electric guitars I have. Some of my recordings on Soundcloud are on this guitar. Here is my Soundcloud profile.

Flowers in Sepia

2011-01-22T10:53:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [11]

2011-01-22T10:50:00.000-08:00

This is one of those bugs that hovers and moves quite suddenly and unpredictably. (Alright, that wasn't a very good explanation). Anyhoo this picture was taken on manual focus! (*beams*)

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [10]

2011-01-22T10:47:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [9]

2011-01-22T10:46:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [8]

2011-01-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [7]

2011-01-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [6]

2011-01-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [5]

2011-01-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [4]

2011-01-22T10:26:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [3]

2011-01-22T10:24:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [2]

2011-01-22T10:22:00.000-08:00

Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show [plug]

2011-01-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

I visited the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens yesterday, to check out the Republic Day flower show there. It was quite a nice show for the inquisitive ones, although the green house is past its time as an attraction. There were lots of interesting species on display, and this is always a sight to sore eyes used to nothing but crowded city locales, badly spelt placards and traffic.

Here are some of the pictures I took here:

And the venue itself:

The following posts will all be pictures from this flower show. I guess this show marks my return to actively being involved in photography after months.

Hyderabad Brothers Concert

2010-12-26T22:48:00.000-08:00

One of the best concerts of the season that we attended was by the Hyderabad Brothers.

One of my favourite Shankarabharanam based ragas, Begada debuted here during my trip. Having conveniently forgotten how beautiful this sounds, I had a chance to rediscover it. There was a surfiet of Keeravani in the concerts we attended, as in this one. This ragam was perhaps a flavour of the season.

The highlight was undoubtedly the Purvikalyani Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi. For the length of our trip, @diogeneb, @andygana and myself frequently hummed a bunch of ragas - these were our default tunes, if you will. One of them was Kedaram (especially Anandanadanaprakasham rendered in deep bass voice a la M D Ramanathan, which became a gag) and another was Purvikalyani.

This particular performance carried a particularly memorable Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi in Purvikalyani. In the ragamalika improvisations, we saw Bilahari, Saveri, Hamsanandi (in a Purvikalyani RTP at that) and Revati. Not once, but thrice - at three different tempos, as if having Hamsanandi in the Purvikalyani RTP wasn't enough!

Barring a slight interruption in the middle, we loved what we saw of this concert, although we couldn't stay for the rest of the concert after the RTP. A fine finale to our little two-day sojourn into Mylapore during the music season!

Sikkil Gurucharan's Concert

2010-12-26T22:24:00.000-08:00

Sikkil Gurucharan performed with masterly vidwans Umayalpuram K Sivaraman and T K V Ramanujacharyulu. I totally loved this concert, as did @diogeneb, @andygana, a mutual friend, Shridhar and @l__m. There was a memorable Simhendramadhyamam, although in this case, the ragam is called Sumadhyuti since this composition is Muthuswami Deekshithar's Kamakshi Kamakoti Peetha Vasini. There was a superb neraval at "kamalesha sodari kamalaakshi naarayani" which was TKV's first epic exhibition in this concert. TKV's touch is sort of like M S Gopalakrishnan, and for once I didn't mind the role of the violin in the concert, and in fact loved it.

One of the main pieces was a composition in Bilahari. Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi was in Bilahari. Sikkil Gurucharan's singing right through the concert, especially at the lower octaves, was testament to why he's considered a senior artist amongst the youngsters today. The only other performance where we saw this kind of virtuosity amongst the concerts we attended was at the Hyderabad Brothers concert. The legendary UKS thundered his way through a brilliantly composed thaniavardhanam. Watching this legendary mridangam performance alone was worth travelling the whole distance from Bangalore to watch all these concerts.

TKV Ramanujacharyulu was in excellent touch throughout the Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi. I had seen plenty of clips of his on Youtube before but hadn't witnessed him live - and so also with U K Sivaraman.

Since the lot of us witnessed this concert in full (as opposed to the other concerts where we hopped between concerts) I would be hard pressed to rate this better than all of them, but I am inclined to do so. The only concert that came close in terms of quality and compositions and virtuosity was the Hyderabad Brothers concert, which I will cover in another post. I came away on the next day with a 3CD set of a Sikkil Gurucharan concert from 2007. In all, this was a memorable concert.

D B Ashvin's concert

2010-12-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

D B Ashvin's concert was the second one that @diogeneb, @andygana and myself attended during the Margazhi music season. Ashvin is a talented young performer. His accompaniments were Palghat Harinarayanan on the mridangam and R Rahul (sometimes written Raghul, #kogul not intended of course). This concert had some nice moments, such as a main piece in Keeravani.

Ashvin exhibited prodigious histrionics - which often tied into the ebb and flow of the ragam being rendered but which was funny nevertheless:

R Vedavalli's Concert

2010-12-26T21:40:00.000-08:00

R Vedavalli performed at the TTK Hall in Chennai during the Margazhi music season - she has a great voice and had good accompaniments. The most memorable piece of the concert, to me, was a composition in Saveri, "Sri Raja Gopala", with a great neravals. The Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi was in Kalyani.

The 10000 Walla

2010-11-07T23:23:00.000-08:00

There was a time I loved the crackers during Deepavali, and there was a time I didn't care for them so much, and a time I disliked them. The only reason I have for liking them now is the pleasure of doing photography during Deepavali. I took several photographs of this 10,000 walla and contributed a little to pollution in Bangalore, regrettably. But I did get some interesting pictures (if not amazing ones).

Random Light-painting

2010-11-07T23:18:00.000-08:00

Deepavali 2010.

More Pictures From Deepavali 2010

2010-11-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

Deepavali Decorations

2010-11-07T00:43:00.000-07:00

My sister and a friend put together a rather nice flower pattern for this Deepavali.

Wild Horses

2010-07-06T23:13:00.000-07:00

The picture reminds me of that song by The Rolling Stones. This is in downtown Irving, TX.

Evening Run

2010-06-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Common American Goose

2010-06-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

These critters turned up in Texas in Summer - as in New York where I observed them previously at the Montezuma reserve, they had flown south for the winter and have now returned.

Douglas AD-1 Skyraider

2010-06-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

This delightfully well maintained Douglas AD-1 was offering rides at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum (Addison, TX) at the Addison airfield. Lovely machine. This particular example has been modified to seat six. Thunderous engine, that.

MiG-21U Mongol

2010-06-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

A MiG-21U Mongol outfitted in aggressor squadron colours. One of the most formidable fighters of the 1950s Soviet Union, this machine is amongst the most produced fighter aircraft in the post-World-War-2 era.

Airplane Rides at Cavanaugh Flight Museum

2010-06-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

Catch these if you can! I am sure flying each of these classics is a ton of fun!

Local Fowl

2010-06-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

Lazy Photography

2010-06-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

Trying out my new Nikkor 35mm f/1.8.

These Walls

2010-06-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

Sundown

2010-06-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

Sundown in Irving, TX.

F-105 Exhaust Nozzle

2010-06-06T17:29:00.000-07:00

The Republic F-105 Thunderchief was a very important aircraft - and a pretty big and powerful machine. Almost 20 metres long, it was one of the largest single-engined fighter aircraft in existence in the 1950s and 1960s. Here's a close up of the machine's exhaust nozzle - an airbrake has been built into the nozzle's design.

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

2010-06-06T16:47:00.000-07:00

This is a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum. From the design stables of Kelly Johnson, one of the foremost military aircraft designers of the 20th century, this airplane was the stepping stone to the compact single-engined interceptor later embodied in the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the splendid but failed F-20 Tigershark.

Browning Death

2010-06-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

This is the 50 caliber Browning gun on the starboard side of the B-24A. The B-24 usually had twin side gunner positions on the rear, and a single tail gunner. The B-24 in question is at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas, TX.

Tailgunner

2010-06-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of one of the early B-24 Liberators with a manually operated rear-firing 50 caliber Browning. The model in question is a B-24A, which is being maintained at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum. This bird is still flying and they offer rides on the machine - $450 bucks a ride. The machine is splendidly maintained to this day and is nothing short of beautiful.

F-104 Pitot Tube

2010-06-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

A striking shot that I managed to take of the F-104A Starfighter at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas. Impressively sleek machine, as always. Those little wings are a bit scary too!

Attention to Detail

2010-06-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

Nice touch with the guy looking over from the right. Have always loved nose art of all kinds. Especially the plebian variety. This was taken at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas.

Texas, the land of highways

2010-06-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

CAPCOM: I Was There

2010-06-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

At the NASA Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX). The famed CAPCOM seat that saw through so many missions.

The American Falls at Night

2010-05-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

The American Falls are illuminated by lights from across the border every night. Some interesting lighting effects, but it quickly got boring because of the unimaginative use of coloured lights. A laser show would have been much more interesting.

Depth of Field

2010-05-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

Just for effect. These are the tiny flowers that nobody seems to care about, sadly.

Can anyone recognize this species?

2010-05-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

Update: I was told this is a red winged black bird, or an Agelaius phoeniceus

In a Bubbly Stream

2010-05-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

Down from the perch

2010-05-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

Looking down from the perch, down at the foot of the American Falls.

The American Falls

2010-05-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

Another picture of the American Falls from the Cave of the Winds tour.

The Cave of the Winds

2010-05-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

Not one of my better pictures, but a nice place.

A Successful Trial

2010-05-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

A picture I intended only as a trial, but which I ended up liking.

Roadside Flowers

2010-05-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

Undersaturated, underexposed. For effect.

Black Widow Band

2010-05-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

Black Widow are a local band that seem to be doing a ton of tours. Their covers of classic rock acts such as AC/DC, Guns and Roses, Led Zeppelin and others are good, border on innovative. They added a ton of atmosphere to Niagara Falls on 22nd May.

Mist and Rainbows

2010-05-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

Rainbows are a common feature on a sunny day. This picture was taken from the "Hurricane Alley" (or so I think) portion of the Cave of the Winds tour.

That's Water Down Below...

2010-05-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

...with rocky outgrowth in the foreground. Taken from the observation deck after the Cave of the Winds tour at Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls Redux

2010-05-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

I've made a few visits to the Niagara Falls, but my recent one was the most comprehensive. After the Cave of the Winds tour, I took a few pictures from the lookout point on Goat Island. Here's one of them, it is one of the sundry gulls there, with the Skylon tower in the background.

A common raven?

2010-04-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

I take this for a common raven, but if anyone knows the species, please comment.

Beaver amongst the pigeons

2010-04-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

One of the funniest pictures I have taken in recent memory.

An Essential Feature of Spring

2010-04-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

A Dabbler in Flight

2010-04-04T20:55:00.000-07:00

Despite its name, the dabbling duck's actually quite an elegant flier.

Late Evening Skim

2010-04-04T20:53:00.000-07:00

This is a dabbling duck captured skimming over the water. They're pretty facile with their flying - generally graceful because of the long necks and a beak which acts as a stabilizer in flight.

Spring in Dallas - 1

2010-04-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

A picture from my album for spring in Dallas. I spotted this critter on the tree near my apartment complex. This was shot on the 70-300mm.

Test post for Intense debate

2009-12-29T05:22:00.001-08:00

Lone Marauder

2009-05-02T02:18:00.000-07:00

A lone eagle scouts the skies above Bangalore in the early hours of the morning.

Great Balls of Fire

2009-05-02T02:17:00.001-07:00

Explosive Splendour

2009-05-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

Sparks Fly

2009-05-02T02:16:00.000-07:00

The 4th of July celebrations at Owasco lake in 2008.

Hear Ye!

2009-05-02T02:15:00.000-07:00

A Lone Goose

2009-05-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

A lone goose at the Montezuma Reserve in Upstate New York.

Old Fall Colours

2009-02-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

The colours I will have to wait for more than a year to see, perhaps.

Decadence

2008-11-23T05:14:00.000-08:00

The original intention of this picture was to convey decandence (right to left), but I now see it as the formation of an idea with the embellishment of detail on a concept (left to right).

Cayuga County Court House

2008-11-23T04:55:00.000-08:00

One of the buildings in downtown Auburn, NY on a quintessential Fall day.

The Evening's Denouement

2008-11-23T04:50:00.000-08:00

A winter evening unfolds. The mellow evening sunlight trickles through the trees, and as parts of the sky turn to purple in anticipation of the sun moving along to the next great sunset on earth, some portions fo the sky remain brightly lit. Taken entirely on my Sigma 70-300 DG Macro lens.

Poised to Strike

2008-11-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

Herons are cunning hunters. They wait for their prey and are perfectly still, toting their thin, surgically sharp bills. They strike only when absolutely sure. The picture series shows a Heron at Montezuma reserve - I captured this too from my moving car and had no chance of spending enough time at the spot to record the Heron's hunting techniques. But I did capture three frames showing the Heron stalking its prey.