Renaissance

There is a new camera at home

Karthi — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:17:49 +0000

There is a new camera at home. Here is a visual documentation of the camera.

Last week, I brought my very first photography book “The Photo Book” and I wonder why it took so much time to buy one. This book is not about techniques, tips and tricks but a collection of stunning, beautiful photographs. I brought this one to appreciate photography. Incidentally on the same I brought this toy camera (comes with Jeeraga Mitai ) to my little son. With book and little camera and nothing much to do, I indulged in pop art and results are displayed below.

The only thing hate about photography books is that they are obscenely costly and I had to shell out a pricey sum for this book.

Keep walking

Karthi — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:42:55 +0000

Keep walking, originally uploaded by Thru Lens.

Keep walking, no matter what.

Coffee machines & Error messages

Karthi — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:56:27 +0000

There is a new coffee machine in the office and it looks like a space age gadget. With the new coffee machine in place the trusted old coffee machine was abondend/retired for a short duration. The old coffee machine made a great come back by engineers popular demand. ( Is there a managements truth here? )

There is a reson why the old coffee machine was so popular among the engineers. It had pretty simple interface and most of all the error messages were clear. So everybody knew what to do when things go bad. For example when the container gets filled with the grounded beans, the old machine says

Empty the drawer

For the same condition the new coffee machine says

Ground beans full

The message “Empty the drawer” is simple and to the point. You have to empty the drawer to get the fresh cup of coffee again but the message “Ground beans full” is not direct and message is not clear and ambiguous. It is not asking the user to empty the drawer. I first thought that the grounded beans are full and I am going to get fresh cup of coffee now, only to wait for eternity.

We humans are designed to understand simple and directed message, I hope programmers/designers understand this and write/design more simple and direct error messages in future.

Dasavatharam

Karthi — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:08:14 +0000

As they say a bad critique should make an artist skip only his breakfast. There are quite few bad critique on the movie Dasavatharam which may make Kamal to loose his lunch and dinner. Dasavatharam was an entertaining movie in parts and the bad makeup spoils the rest.

Cinema is a visual medium and the visuals are the ones that’s going to stick in viewers mind, not the hours spent to get the makeup done and logistics behind it. Most of the makeup seemed imperfect and comes up as an eyesore. This spoils the fun.

I wonder why Himesh scored the music, is it to get all Indian appeal or for the Avatar Singh? I badly miss Illayaraja here. Devi sri prasad’s background score is rash and doesn’t lead you into the movie. Screenplay of movie was good and dialogues were good too.

Finally, Kamal would have made a big difference if the heroine’s character had been etched more intellectual. I hate to see women being dumb. Finally less said about the scientific facts used in the movie, the better it is….

Flowers

Karthi — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:35:18 +0000

Flowers, originally uploaded by Thru Lens.

Break

Karthi — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:04:13 +0000

Break from the busy schedule….

You can any thing with a smile…

Difficult is worth doing…

Plan

Karthi — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:48:57 +0000

I wish this was one was fake…

Life insurace ad

Karthi — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:32:50 +0000

I wonder why New York Life insurance diverged from original ads which was feel good to latest one which brings shock.

Does this mean that life insurance ads need to be really scary for the idea to stick?

Rue Saint Gilles

Karthi — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:41:41 +0000

There is something magical about the Rue Saint Gilles in Pondicherry. This place gets featured in so many ads. The beautiful yellow walls, brown windows, old lamp posts, calm beach and every thing adds a bit of magic to the place.

Currently aired ads shot in Rue Saint Gilles are:

Sony Cybershot
Ramaraj Veshti

I have trouble recollecting others.

More photos from Rue Saint Gilles…

N a m e b o a r d , originally uploaded by Thru Lens.

Window: Cropped

Karthi — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:49:15 +0000

Another aesthetic window, shot at the street of Saint Le Giles in Pondicherry.

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth.
-Harold Evans

The question of whether to compose or crop keeps lingering in my mind and now I have come to a conclusion that it really doesn’t matter. What matters is how one gets that great photograph but to some purist composition is all that matters and cropping is a sin.

Photography is all about seeing and to me it doesn’t stop once you release the shutter button. It continuous even after in your favorite image editor. The above photograph was not conceived as it is shown, I cropped and rotated the original to get the final product and to me it looks beautiful and I hope others too will feel the beauty in it. The original photograph had a little clutter to it, after reducing it to simpler form, it became even more beautiful. Crop and Rotate added a new dimension to otherwise dull photograph.

SEE your old photographs with a new eye and you may see the unseen.

Window, originally uploaded by Thru Lens.