Interesting Quote from an unknown author

Squalls, doldrums, heavy seas, gear failures, being tired, being cold are the condition for sailing, part and parcel of the commitment to get from here to there -- not enemies to be eliminated, but companions to be danced with.

Learning Art : Inspiration & realization of taste ?

It had been quite a few months since I had done any photography, and I did lost touch to many things which I consider before going on a photoshoot. Luckily, this shoot turned out to be pretty decent and I got some good shots (atleast I am happy with whatever I got in the end).

I always set a theme in mind before setting out for a photoshoot, for example, if I am going to a beach, I thought, since its a beach, it would be better if I capture the spirit of the sea, and keep human figures small as compared to the sea. Another time, I wanted to shoot only black & white photographs. This time, I did not think of such a thing :( I believe that setting a mindset is very important, because, then its easier to think of subjects in terms of what to shoot, how to shoot, and when to shoot.

I went to Chota Kashmir this time. My first shoot with MWS was also in Chota Kashmir, and the place is ideal for someone looking to burn his fingers with his camera. Well this time, since I had no particular set theme in mind, I was wandering around the place, looking for catchy shots.

The place was the same, the same paddy fields, flowers, butterflies and insects, and this is what I captured. This means that I haven't learned anything if I shot the same stuff, what I had shot an year back when I had just started. Later on, when I was browsing through the pictures I took last time, I noticed a pattern which led me to a very significant realization about my style of learning. This realization pertained to my train of thoughts; they were basically affected by two factors: inspiration & taste.

Inspiration, I believe is a very important component of my style. The photo I had taken above is of a farmer who has to carry a huge bundle of cut paddy plants. In retrospective, when I saw this farmer, I thought, "Ghosh that looks heavy, Poor farmer !", and essentially parallel images of Jews carrying around heavy stones during the Nazi times flashed to my mind. When I came back home, I was trying to crop this photo, when it suddenly dawned on me, that this should be in B&W. This picture, very closely resembles, at least for me, those dark times during the Nazi rule. I, thus want to make a conjecture that probably what your imagination moulds what you shoot (if you want to shoot randomly without any purpose).

Later, when I was shooting with Rohit Bansal, I started clicking butterflies. Well, I think that came around because a day before I was looking at a friend's blog (Ramdas), and he is pretty good at clicking nature. This supports the inspiration conjecture.

The second factor, is taste. Every person has an inclination towards certain styles and a repulsion from the others. I clicked butterflies, that comes from inspiration, and the other part is how I clicked them & when I clicked. The taste component is basically what defines the unique characteristics of two different images of the same subject.

I think, that it would be nice to click something which the eye doesn't see, or try to present the same thing is a different way so to create a "whoa" effect. A more cliché way would have been to just click photograph of some fantastic flower, or some really colourful insect (?or maybe the other way round :P). Well, I wanted to show a cool flower (below) or the tethered texture of this butterfly. Comparing my old photographs of Chota Kashmir with the recent ones, I could really see the development of a taste in my photographs.

I was previously trying to capture photographs in a way I have seen them clicked. Now that I hope I have exhausted that method, I click them in whatever way I feel like. This is definitely progress. However, I am still a long way away from being able to define my taste. Maybe this is what art is !

Facebook, Orkut: Aideu

Today, I am 'deactivating' my web-presence on Facebook, orkut (I was hardly active on it). Some people might consider this killing the whole "social networking" part of one's life as dead, but after analysing the pros and cons I finally decided in favour of getting away. I have tried to compile my thoughts and arrange them in order of priority.

Pros:

1. Keeping in touch with distant friends, looking at old pictures of friends and getting high on nostalgia and remembering the good times.
2. Get to know someone you met recently, a little more deeply, common friends, interests, et cetera
3. Farmville, shared videos and "interesting links". You know that most of people you know are still alive and have not been productive :D

Cons:

1. Empowering real life: Maybe I would miss out on the latest funky pictures of my friends, maybe I would miss the latest burn someone posted on a friend's wall. Eh ! Doesn't matter, atleast I would get to see all this in real life.
2. Time has become a scarce commodity: I have to admit this, I was spending too much time on my e-life.
3. Micro-blogging killing the experience: I was reading a blog I had written about some of my experience in Europe, and as I was reading it, I could remember all those experiences so vividly. Imagine, how a facebook update would have been, "Had great fun in Paris, ... ", how sad ! Maybe, I have been wrong, I should write a blog for stories which I want to recollect, but alas, my laziness ! I would instead write a status message.
4. My dear friends know where to find me. Why do I need facebook then ?

I don't think, that quitting facebook and other social networking sites, I am shutting myself off from the world; I think that it is failing to serve the purpose in my case.

Friends, please add me to your gmail contacts, I may not have your address on my contact list.

Banks: Cash flow catalysts ?

I read somewhere about the birth of the banking industry and here is an account of what I perceived was the message:

"Long before retail banking had started, there was a very rich city person in a kingdom where people exchanged gold for food, and other useful commodities. His name was, lets say, Mr. R. As he was so rich, people use to borrow money from him from time to time after agreeing upon collaterals. Mr. R was very happy with the way things were running, because whenever there was any adverse natural calamity, the poor guys (who lets say depended upon farming for their survival) failed to pay him back the stipulated loan and thus Mr. R would own the promised collateral.

Some time later, it so happened that there was favourable climate and all the borrowers paid back their loans and Mr. R didn't get any cheap collaterals. He was frustrated because he was not gaining anything out of his efforts in lending the money. He said, "Let me charge them an additional amount for using my money !". This was the birth of interest rates.

One can very easily imagine, Mr. R demanding more interest from a person who has a weak collateral and lesser from the other."

I guess the above story forms an important link in the thread which I am about to propose. However, before delving into this further, I want to make the following disclaimer: The following discussion is primarily for academic/discussion purpose and has no relevance anyhow to my professional output.

To start off, imagine a hypothetical world, where everyone is completely truthful, trustworthy(I hope truthfulness and trustworthiness are equivalent but am not completely sure), and rational.

If this was the case, my claim is that we can do away completely with all the banks and have just one central bank.

The intuition behind this is the following: Lets say there were only 2 people in the whole world, namely Mr. A (car manufacturer) and Mr. B (wants to buy a car). Now, B earns money, saves it till he has the amount to buy the car. A takes the car money from B, and manufactures the car for him and delivers the car to him after some days.

We all know the reality: B earns money, saves it or invests it (earns interest on it). A takes a loan from a bank, constructs the infrastructure required for car manufacture and keeps paying interest to the bank. Finally, on the day, when B has the required funds, A gets the money, pays back the loan and B gets the car. If A would have trusted B, to give him the amount on the stipulated date of car delivery, then A would probably not have to borrow money from the bank and would directly take it from B, as and when he has the money. Since, there are so many A's and so many B's in this world, hence, in some sense banks are behaving as the brokers - finding the right mapping of A to B's. Thus even if people trust each other, we need a central bank for smooth cash flow between people who need it to people who have it.

How it all started ...

This year I did something I had never done before: I started pursuing my hobby seriously, and what a great start it was ! I was lucky that I stumbled across this group called the "Mumbai Weekend Shooters", commonly referred by the acronym MWS. What are the chances that you start pursuing your hobby and you meet a set of people who are so into it, that you can talk about it on an entire Sunday !

My first shoot was on 4th January, when the MWS group assembled at Chota Kashmir to shoot. Well, this was the first shoot of the year and thus there was a huge turnout for it ! In those days, I had a Sony DSC-H50, which was the coolest camera I had seen until I had seen the gear which people in MWS had ! My knowledge of photography, ranging from basic shooting settings like exposure, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, et cetera to the aesthetic sense in pictures, well it was non-existent then !

While I was sitting in the autorickshaw on my way to Goregaon, I was thinking of what to expect. I said, "Hmm ... MWS is a group of hobbyist photographers, they must be a bunch of college students who are into art and all. I am going to be probably going to the only engineer there". I googled Chota Kashmir and browsed through some of the pictures that appeared. "Chota Kashmir is such a boring place ... no great landscapes, nothing ! What are these guys gonna shoot over there !!" Well, what really happened is still to come.

I picked up my camera, switched to "A" (auto) mode and started clicking some pictures while sitting in the rickshaw.

When I reached, there were 3-4 guys standing near a lake. There was only one person with a Point and Shoot out of those 4 people.

"Oohh ! I am not the only one with a point-n-shoot here".

I met them, shook hands and was standing quietly in one corner. In about 10 minutes or so, there was a huge congregation of people, people with cars, people with terrific gears, disconnected people shooting macros, people with point-n-shoots :P and in the middle were people of which it was explicit that they were loud and seemed outrightly fun !

MWS has a tradition that all new members of the group have to bring chocolates for others.

Last night, when I went shopping for chocolates, I was in a dilemma, which ones should I buy: Five-stars or Mars or Lindt. I thought, "Hmm .. am a student, Lindt is super expensive, so it is definitely out of picture, Five star seems too cheap, its my first day, I should have a good impression, lets buy Mars".

Back to narration, so I thought that it would be best if I introduce myself to this loud set of people, maybe they would introduce me to the rest. I introduced myself to this girl in black:

"Hello, I am a new member, my name is Ashutosh"

"Hellllooooo Ashutosh !!!" and then in a really loud voice, "Arrey chocolates kahan hain ?"

"They are in my bag"

"Arrey toh bag mein kyun hain .... nikaalo bhi !!!!!!!!"

As it turned out this girl was Riddhi Rathi. I made it a point: Riddhi is very loud and can embarrass someone :P

I started introducing myself to the other members. As it turned out, everything which I had expected was not happening. People didn't care that someone brought Mars or Eclairs ! They just love it when a new member comes and they get something to eat early morning !!

For the next 2 hours: Click ! Click ! Click !

When I saw that most people in the group were serious photographers I made it a point to try and see what they see and learn from it. At the end of the shoot, I was really happy. I had never taken so many good pictures on the same day !

Today as I write this blog, I have had around 7 shoots with MWS. It been a great day every day !