Sleepless in Seattle

Ever since I crossed over the Atlantic and moved to US, my friends back in Europe have always been complaining that I am not pursuing my photographic hobby any further. Well, while in Italy my work routine was pretty different as compared to here and hence I could manage to create time to travel around the continent. While traveling around Europe you often end up taking some great photographs. Thats how I had managed to build a good photo gallery on Flickr. In Seattle, my work does not give me much leeway to exercise my creative cells and my traveling is now reduced to just between home and office.

With a sizeable Indian community in and around Seattle, there are plenty of activities happening on weekends. Cricket is one such activity which is scheduled on my weekends. There are couple of leagues for recreational and professional enthusiasts. So the hiking and climbing I used to do on weekends (in Trento) until last year has now been replaced with cricket. On some occassions I do get a chance to carry my camera around and click some shots of the city. So, all my freundeskreis aus Deutschland und giro di amici dal'Italia, please subscribe to my photo feeds on Flickr.

an Ode to the beauty of Spring

I love the spring season when nature's beauty is spread all across in its vast abundance. The innumerable flowers you see in the fields, gardens, parks etc. remind you how beautiful our world can be. Personally I love this period of the year to take all kinds of beautiful shots of flowers. I shall be uploading them regularly on my Flickr page. Feel free to comment and criticize them.

Bits n Bytes - GeoTagging snaps

Now you could GeoTag your snaps on Flickr or even use some 3rd party tools for doing it and then upload the map onto your Flickr profile. By Geotagging your snaps it gives more semantic sense to the snaps and would also help other viewers to know the place you have taken it.

Here is a quick explanation on how to do it. And this is how my Flickr map looks like

I remember having read (in some research paper talking about semantics in Image retrieval), that the new generation digital cameras would be having a GPS tracker built into them which would automatically tag the snap you have taken with its geographical coordinates. This geographical data would be encoded along with the other EXIF data of the snap. This simple act would be a big blessing for those researchers developing algorithms for implementing semantics in image retrieval engines/tools. By just knowing the location details of a snap one can extract a fair amount of relevant semantic information from the picture/photo.

Bits n Bytes - HDR Photography

Among the recent developments in digital photography, HDR seems to be having a great future. High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography uses an encoding format which permits a large range of pixel values enabling one to capture the full range of original light values of the scene. In practice an image is captured at several time instances and at multiple exposures; then these images are merged and while doing so one can enhance features like the shadows of high exposures etc. This kind of photography is used a lot in the development of games and computer graphics. for learning more about this technology visit

• a pretty decent article on HDR Photography

• a comprehensive FAQ is compiled here
  

• Wikipedia stub on HDR Imaging
  

• Recent advances in HDR Technologies
  

• HDR Collections on Flickr
  

Photo Courtesy gabefarns

Hobbies & Interests : Photography

Photography is a passion in itself. Considered to be one of the most expensive hobbies, it gives the photographer enough tools and space for creativity. With the varous types of cameras invloved, the several types of lenses tailored for a particular need, photographers coming from several backgrounds, each having his/her own taste, etc - photography in itself is a vast field covering several domains from fashion-documentary-fine art-street-nature-vernacular-night-panoramic-photojournalism etc.

for starters this wiki is a good place to have your interface with this vast, interesting and creative field. With the great boom of digital camera technology, cameras and photography in general has expanded its user base by leaps and bounds. To know more about how your digital cameras this is a good link. For the little advanced users and semi-pros, a DSLR camera is the best tool. this would help all you DSLR fans

I guess most of you host your snaps online at places like Flickr, Webshots , Photo.net etc. I found this interesting blog that has a good set of photos uploaded by their users. My favourite ones are this, this and this

Macro photography is a large field in itself. Here is a good starting point to know the intricacies about Macro Lenses. This wiki is also informative.

I upload some of my snaps at these links

Enjoy !

PS: photo Courtesy of Miwaza Jemimah