Clicking your DSLR friend !!!

The hardest part for me as a photographer has always been to find a good pic of myself. Everytime I scroll thru pics after returning from trip, they either have beautiful landscapes, cityscapes or portrait of my friends. It is acceptable when you are traveling alone, but hard to absorb if you are accompanied by friends. I very well understand that clicking pic with DSLR is more than just pressing the shutter button, but there is no harm in trying something which makes your DSLR friend feel good, when in return, you are getting high quality, professional retouched portraits, which are most of times enough to get people crazy on social networking. Easier said than done, but worth giving a try, these points might help you in getting the job done and putting a smile on your DSLR friend :

• Snatch the Camera : your DSLR friend might not rely on your abilities as a photographer but you should step forward and snatch the camera every now and then, asking your friend to pose. A pic for a pic is not a bad deal at all.

• No Maneuvering : we all get carried away on getting options to maneuver but we should be very careful while playing with camera. Little tweaking in settings can destroy the complete pic. Unless asked by your DSLR friend or until you are sure about what you are doing, do not change any settings.

• An Opportunity to Learn : learning to shoot with DSLR is not as easy as it might seem, but you do learn as you practice. Be a student and always be ready for any opportunity to learn few tips and tricks about composition, focusing, ISO, shutter and aperture. Ask your DSLR friend to click you as subject, click some pics and discuss with your friend about refinements, you never know that you might develop a new passion soon.

• Click Multiple Shots : always click multiple shots. Even if you know everything is right, there is no harm in clicking couple of more shots. A blink of an eye can spoil a pic and who knows when you will get another chance to visit same place again.

• Preview Pics : previewing pics is almost as necessary as clicking it correctly the very first time. It makes sure that you are clicking at correct settings with perfect composition. If anything goes off, it can be corrected at that very moment instead of spoiling mood later on.

All the best guys and feel free to leave any comments or discuss more about this topic.

traveler blooper

We often make mistakes while traveling. Some of these are inevitable, but most of them are very conventional and can be prevented very easily. As per my traveling experience so far, these are the common bloopers which people generally make during traveling.

Photos  everyone likes to click photos and that is exactly why cameras were invented. We should try to click as many photos as we can to have wonderful memories with us for years to come, but clicking too many shots ends up in wasting lot of your time, unless and until you are traveling specific for photography. Some people are so narcissist that they always come back with too many self shots at exact same place. Apart from wasting lot of your time, you also end up using your camera battery and storage space, which could be better utilized for capturing and enjoying stunning landscapes to follow.

Shopping little bit of shopping is almost necessary before every trip, since each destination has its own topography and one should be well prepared for that. Some people are so shopaholic, that they do not miss even a single opportunity to shop, even during traveling. Shopping while traveling makes sense when you are at one of the paramount shopping streets of the world, like Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, or 5th Avenue in New-York, but just walking by and stopping at any store makes no sense. It kills lot of your time, slows down the tempo, and you might end up missing lot of fun. I had friends who went on shopping at Lincoln Square in Miami, when atmosphere on the street was absolutely electric. This slowed down the whole group and delayed the proceedings, which later on turned out to be an eventful evening.

Eating  whole purpose of traveling is to enjoy beauty, culture, architecture and food, which destination has to offer. Every place you visit has some famous eateries, which is recommended to enjoy local food at its very best. If you are a foodie, then you should definitely try them, but if you are not, don’t waste your time in searching for a good restaurant serving your favorite cuisine. Instead, spend your time in enjoying the beauty, culture and architecture of place and eat at a nearby food joint. Winding up your day with a good meal should be on top of your agenda. We nearly wasted four hours searching for an Indian restaurant in Miami during afternoon, while everyone was having fun at South Beach. The Food we ended up with is still the worst Indian food I ever had in my life.

Hustle no matter how planned the trip is, few people have genetic tendency to hustle at last minute. Last minute hustle always spoils the party, which might adversely affect the mood of trip. To minimize this, I always make a “to do list” of all the imperative requirements for each trip beforehand and check them a day or two before, to make sure that everything is right on track. Worst possible way to start a trip would be to end up in security check at airport without ID proof or driving 100 miles away from home without taking your Driving License. Rather than making efforts to reach on time, we should always aim for reaching before time, to prevent any risks of missing flight or paying extra fines for Car Rental.

Sleeping  trips are supposed to be tiring since we are active for maximum duration in a particular day. We should take enough rest to keep us going for days to follow but there are people who have tendency to sleep a lot more, just because of laziness to come out of their comfort zone. Destinations where key is nightlife (like Las Vegas) or where sunrise is exquisite (like San-Francisco), you should plan your sleep accordingly. Coming back from such places without enjoying for what they are famous for is just like throwing your money in trash.

The Hot and Crazy Scale

About 3 months ago, while going through my account statement online, I suddenly realized that I am paying $7.99 every month for Netflix subscription which I am not using at all. Finally, I decided to make the most of it and promised myself to watch Netflix for at least an hour each day. Going through the contents, I found ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and made up my mind to finish all seasons as quickly as possible. Don’t be shocked, yes it is my first time watching it and I am very much aware of the fact that all the youngsters in India have already watched it about 10 times and some of them even claim that they have been watching it since childhood. Whatever be the case, if you have already watched it, if you are watching it, or if you will watch it in future, you are eventually going to like it. The best part about HIMYM is that each episode ends up with a theory, an advice, which is most of the time worth to apply in your life. After three months and 14 days, I am currently on Season 3 Episode 16 and the best theory which I liked so far is from Season 3 Episode 5 – “The Hot and Crazy Scale” by Barney.

As per Barney, “a person is allowed to be crazy, as long as they are equally hot”. I gave a thought to it and decided to come up with a much simpler explanation. According to me, “a girl is allowed to be crazy, as long as she is equally hot”. There are different ways to understand and remember this theory and I am pretty sure that you will find at least one these useful.

If you are good at visualizing things, then you can think of it in terms of graph as explained by Barney. If X-axis of graph denotes Craziness of girl and Y-axis of graph denotes Hotness of girl, then at each point of time, if you draw perpendicular lines from amount of Craziness on X-axis and amount of Hotness on Y-axis, then those lines should always intersect in area above the diagonal line. As shown in graph below, point of intersection should be above the diagonal line.

If you are not good with graphs but have command on equations, then you can think of it as,

                                                                              H = KC
where,
H = Hotness of girl,
C = Craziness of girl, and
K = Constant which should be greater than 1.

In simple terms, at any point of time, if you divide Hotness by Craziness, result should be grater than 1.

If you have phobia of equations and graphs, but you are good at reading girls, you can think of it like – at any point of time, no matter what happens, Craziness of a girl should not overshadow her Hotness.

All these might seem to be different ways but they convey same thought – magnitude of hotness in girls should always be more that magnitude of craziness. Girls are allowed to be as crazy as then want to be but that should be compensated with increase in hotness. Who wants a damn crazy girl who is not hot at all and who does not wants a damn hot girl who is not crazy at all. Since both these things are almost impossible to exist, “The Hot and Crazy Scale” helps you to make that important decision. Just remember this theory whenever you meet a girl next time, whether it’s a casual meetup or a dinner date, and decide yourself about your future.

choices we make !!!

What we are doing right now, where we are right now, with whom we are right now, all depends upon the choices we made in past. Choices which we make today affects what we will be tomorrow. Although we have choices every day but most of the times we get carried away by situation that we don’t even knew we had one. What we end up doing is making more choices to justify the choice we made yesterday and this cycle goes on and on.

Changing Profile Pic – A New Hobby !!!

Way back during my school days when someone used to ask – What is your Hobby ?, answer was very much among – listening songs, watching movies, hanging out with friends, playing cricket, web-surfing, reading books, cooking, coin collection, stamp collection; which went very well with definition of Hobby – an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure. With evolution of social networking and instant messaging, people now days spend most of their time in checking status updates which hardly matters in their life, liking pics which are not even worth viewing, commenting on posts just to show that they are active users and messaging friends just to time pass rather than with an intent of getting into a constructive conversation. The more it is helping to stay connected with people who are far away, the more it is catalyzing the process of creating distances with one’s who are around you.

This all has now become a vital part of one’s everyday life cycle. Only after you are done with all this important stuff, your actual leisure time starts. I would say that some are very unlucky to not have their own leisure time since they have lot of friends to take care of and even 24 hours in a day are not enough for them. These people eventually end up in becoming part of their friends leisure time, which will do, since in some way they are contributing significantly to society and to themselves. These people are now so used to these things that they don’t even think out of the box and are very happy and satisfied with what they are doing. Few lucky one’s, which are not that socially active, manage to have their own leisure time. Even they are not able to escape from this dense web of social network and instant messaging and look for some interesting stuff within same web to kill their leisure time. This is where they develop interest in their own Profile Pic (Display Pic) and work constantly to make it better everyday.

On a social network, profile pic is what represents you and in today’s world, it tells everything about you. As per current standard – profile pic should change periodically and it should be completely different that what you have already used. While former rule applies to both boys and girls, latter one is more specific to boys, since it does not matters what profile pic girls upload, on an average 100 plus likes are obvious and girls are used to take these likes as compliment. Girls change profile pic more often than boys and this event happens generally during weekends but it is result of hard work and determination which has been put everyday. General process of changing profile pic can be divided into four steps : Step 1 – to click the pic which may or may not be a selfie, Step 2 – the most difficult part to select one pic from bunch of pics clicked in step 1, Step 3 – to upload the pic and Step 4 – to monitor it for couple of days and change it if response is not as expected. This algorithm might look easy but is much more difficult than Dijkstra’s algorithm that solves the single-source shortest path problem for graph. All these steps take lot of your leisure time and keeps you busy and excited at the same time. Most of the people have accepted this challenge and have started taking it seriously. Taking into account the amount of time one spends in changing profile pic, one can say that it has eventually developed into a Hobby.

Today is Sunday and lot of people have already changed their profile pic. It’s time for you to make a move on and find out what people think about you new profile pic. All the best !!!

why it is hard to get a girl after 26 ?

It is Tuesday evening and I just came back from work. It is awesome weather in Chicago after hell of a winter season. Considering 6pm in evening, I have lot of options to spend my time – could go out and play tennis, burn calories in gym, gather people to play cricket in backyard, watch TV with evening tea and snacks, post process bunch of pending photos or even go to sleep to relax. Eventually, I decided something out of the blue, to write a blog, in an effort to achieve my goal of one blog per month. So here I am, writing on a topic which I already had in my mind from long time but numerous recent instances pushed me hard to go for it.

Why it is hard to get a girl after 26 ? First of all, 26 is not a magical number, nor I came to this conclusion after doing survey of 1000 people. It is just my choice to make myself feel good, since 26 is much close to how old I am right now and in many ways it feels more appropriate than 24 or 25. I want to clear one more thing, this theory is not applicable to Americans. One of the good things about American culture is that you are never too old to find a girl, you can even find your love in hopeless place irrespective of how old you are. Yes, you finally got it, this is all about Indian girls.

As your work experience increases, and if you are single, chances to find a girl decreases exponentially. It all starts with College life. In most of the colleges in India, ratio of girls to boys is pretty less. This implies that no matter what happens – all the girls will definitely find someone, even the most confused ones since they have four years to make a decision with lot of options available, and majority of boys will spend college life drinking with friends and playing different games. When boys pass out from college and join corporate world, they again get opportunity to interact with girls. These girls may or may not be from their college, but each one of them now carry lot of filters which plays vital role in deciding future of boys. Each girl has different filters which is constructed over time and is either based on their past relationship(s) which did not went as they planned, or their family culture which is different in every family in India, or their own aspirations which are normally very high or due to concepts of life explained by their best friends, friends which keep on changing year after year. Everytime they see a boy, they apply these filters and come to conclusion within seconds, a decision which is final and will not change in any case. Boys wait for acknowledgement of message which was sent long ago without knowing the fact that receiver at other end is inside these filters and receiver did not received any message till yet. If somehow, boy manages to pass through all these filters or pass through most of them, then only he is considered otherwise he is utilised for other mundane tasks.

To change this scenario, at least someone has to change. Wait a minute, how dare you to think that you can bring change in girls. If ever you attempt to change a girl then you will end up in becoming part of that change and you can count on me for that. So, only scope of change here is with boys, boys who are still in college or who will be going to college in future – while you are in college, it is easy and best time to get a girl. Once you are out of college, it becomes very hard.

Share you thoughts in comments below.

Good Cameras Take Good Photos ! Is it so ?

I started doing photography only after I came to United States in March 2012. My first gadget in United States was an I-pod, which I followed up with Nikon D5100 DSLR Camera. Since childhood I was very fascinated about cameras, so instead of buying point and shoot, I decided to go few steps ahead and bought a DSLR. All through these, almost two years since I got my D5100, my photography has improved quite a lot and few of my friends have even started taking me seriously as a photographer.

With people taking you seriously as a photographer, they develop a default mindset – Since I have Good Camera So I Take Good Photos. Well, I admit that I take good photos or you can say, eventually end up making each photo look good, and it is mainly due to a good camera but there are other factors as well which are vital and play equal part. To be precise, first of all you got to have a good camera which shoots in RAW mode, then there should be proper lighting to expose your shot correctly and once you are done with set up of all the required equipments, you have to compose your shot correctly followed by taking multiple shots at correct moment. After shooting, you have to post process your shot in Photoshop or Light Room to get all the relevant details out of it and once you are done with everything, share your shot with friends. This all might seem easy but it is no less than Rocket Science. I have studied thousands of articles, watched thousands of hours of videos, and spent lot of days to learn photography and I do still have a long way to go. Sometimes you even have to drive miles and miles, skip your lunch, wait for hours, climb up hills, explore forests, just to be in prefect moment to capture that shot.

This has happened lot of times to me – friends invite me to a party and either ask me to bring my own camera or just give any camera to me and expect me to take good photos. I do try my level best to make them happy but in case anything goes wrong, most of them completely fail to understand the challenges present and do not miss an opportunity to criticize.Well according to me, Good Cameras Can be Used To Take Good Photos but one should not think that Good Cameras Take Good Photos.

What do you think ? Let’s discuss in comments.

 

 

traveling in USA

In United States, I have been on a traveling spree since I cleared immigration for the first time in March 2012. As a kid I always wanted to travel and experience something new – new culture, new places, new people, new traditions, new religions and new cuisines, and this is exactly what United States offers to someone like me – A born Traveler. Visiting big cities like New-York, San-Francisco, Los-Angeles, etc and living in Chicago is much more than a dream come true. Few of the most defining moments of this awesome journey have been – driving convertible on Golden Gate bridge in San-Francisco, visit to NASA in Orlando, cruise ride to Statue of Liberty in New-York, drive through Beverly Hills in Los-Angeles, gambling at Casino in Las Vegas, close encounter with Niagara Falls and experiencing surreal Chicago. Best thing about traveling in US is that you never feel far away from you home, from your loved ones. It is hospitality of people which will amaze you the most. US has everything a traveler might think of – dry desert, big lakes, rocky mountains, chromatic oceans, lonely islands, rowdy waterfall, huge skyscrapers, mesmerizing sunsets and a large bunch of crazy peoples. I still have lot of places left in my book to cover. I will keep on sharing my experiences, till then plan a trip to US and experience diversity.