Times with the Lense!

Adalaj Step Well

Finally! Exams over.
And the good days follow. I wrote the last exam on 30th, next day passed by just in recovering from a bad cold I'd caught during the exams. I was supposed to attend T.I.M.E. class today but as we were late for the same and got ready anyway so I thought it would be a good idea to visit some nearby place. And Adalaj Step Well was first in the row and I had been thinking of visiting the place from quite a time.

We left for Adalaj around 9:30 am. Just three of us, Nitin, Pathak and me. We reached the place soon, though had to walk from the main highway to the site.
Looking it from a distance it doesn't looks like a great place but when you actually descend down the steps, you realize that your first impression wasn't a good indicator of what it would be like inside. As soon as you look across the hallway towards the octagonal storeys held on a similar number of pillars you notice that the place is special and has not yet lost it's charm after 500 years.

There weren't a lot of people there. Just a few visitors and some BArch students (this is just my guess as they roamed around the place making skeches and measuring distances). We spent around two hours there, roaming across all four storeys( or basements if you can call them so, they all are below the ground level). There are actually two well like structres, one octagonal in shape and accessible through steps and the other is smoothly circular and there aren't any steps to reach the water. Water now isn't clean and is home for fishes. The carvings and sculptures are really worth a lot of appreciation. I have a lot more to say but I'd rather let the photographs tell the rest story.

(Click on the photographs to enlarge)
1.The Hallway (Pillars are visible)
2.The four Storeys
3.Marvellous carving and design
4.The circular Well
5.Sculture array
6.Pathak and Nitin at Entrance
7.And finally some archeological information regarding Step Well

GAP!

Hmmm... I haven't added any photographs from long. Not that I haven't been clicking with the camera. It's just that I'm too lazy to bother myself to update blogs with the ongoing activity. My dipawali photographs still need to be taken care of in photoshop and various new ones are also waiting to be processed. So I guess I'll post but any after the end sem exams are over and I'm free. May be I'll head for Shimla in winters, so I do expect to have a lot of good snowladen mountain shots.

The photograph I'd attached along is of a painting. I myself mistook it for a photograph. It appeared at the back page of Reader's digest. Titled "Goldfish", it's really a masterpiece of Oil painting by Devdatta Padekar.(Click to enlarge)

Riya Image Recognition

Just tried this image search software. Though not very perfect it has acceptable accuracy in recognising faces. It did recognize my face (after training with just single photograph) in most of the snaps. Riya is also a nice place to store photos (better than flickr) as it has seperate uploader which is faster and helps in face recognition among your albums.
Riya will soon launch it's image search for internet as well, so it's bound to develop in future.
Nice stuff. Give it a shot.

Ansel Adams -The Ultimate Photographer!

"You don't take a photograph, you make it!" - Ansel Adams.

I would have never realized the true value of Black and White Photography if I hadn't came across the marvellous snaps of California's Yosemite valley by Ansel Adams. This man was one of the greatest US photographers of all time. Most of the photograhs by him are truely awesome and have been classic over years. His works like "Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, 1927", "Rose and Driftwood, 1932", "Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941" and "Aspens, New Mexico, 1958" are pinnacles of all times photography.

Ansel Easton Adams (1902-1984) was not only a genius photographer but was a creative author as well. His books (technical instruction manuals), "The Camera", "The Negative", and "The Print" are still considered classic texts on photography. His other books like "Ansel Adams: The Spirit of Wild Places" and "America's Wilderness" are also very sought after works.

Being conservatinist by heart he joined the Sierra Club (a group dedicated to preserving the natural world's wonders and resources) at an early age of 17 and was associated with it whole of his life. He even served as a Director there.

Some of his best taken shots across US are posted here. The degree of control over a finished black and white photograph is astonishing!
(Click on the photographs to enlarge them)

Jeffrey Pine

Winter Storm

Dogwood

Nevada Falls and Rainbow

Tenaya

Close-up of leaves, Glacier National Park, Montana.

Aspens, New Mexico

Tree and Cliff

Rose and Driftwood

Tree Snow

Elcapitan

Monolith: The Face of Half Dome

Branches in Snow

Church, Taos Pueblo National Historic Landmark, New Mexico.

The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico

Ansel Adams in 1975

Ansel Adams has written, "Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and the wonder surrounding him."
True indeed, photographs convey so much more than words and by intuition connect with the infinite variety of the space around us. And to share this wonder and marvel with others is always the aim of a purposeful photograph.

R-World and FR !

It was a recent visit to both of our favorite hangouts, RWorld and FR. Despite the heavy rains on that day it was still quite enjoyable hangout. FR was celebrating it's completion of 5 years that week, so it was specially decorated for the celebration and a few events were on!

Anniversary no. 5 for FR!

In R-World Bowling alley!

My lucky CCD!!!(I won the ipod nano)

Outside RWorld (Nitin & Shailesh)

3rd Floor FR! (I love standing over here)

That Smooth Zone crap! Though i like this sketch!

Space Sim At RWorld!

Note: Click on the photos to see full size!

Some more Pics!

Here I go again, making full use of my camera!!!!

This one I took from ET. Looks awesome, but I couldn't add to the resolution that newspaper provided!

Right below my Window!!!!

Yeah! This is my Cam!

Zoomed in to the Garden!!!

Guess where this tree is in our Campus!!!!

I've been reading this lately! Don't assume him to be apple's brand ambassador!!!

I know this newspaper SUCKS bigtime, but I've been drilling on it 1 hr daily from a month!!!!!!

Hmmm plz do comment!!!!

And it's pouring and pouring!!!!

Shit! Damn! WTF!
This has been the life from the past few days. I got bruised in my right wrist skidding from the bike. Right leg was also slightly contused. And then passing time turned out to be herculean task. DSA exam was cancelled and that's where it all started screwing. Even typing about "shit happened" is straining my wrist!
Huh! All schedules stand screwed at the moment. And even while I'm sleeping, I'm not being spared. Bad dreams keep screwing me even in those supposedly replenishing hours!

The only respite these days has been the beautiful weather and the rains. So here I go clicking some photographs in the campus.

Warning: Even a slightest attempt to sympathesize would be considered as further mutiliating my patience and hence would be dealt accordingly!

So simply enjoy when it pours!!

Yup! That's the bruised hand!(3 days ago). I still am unable to write my diary!

Just bought Digital camera!

Hey! I was always excited about photography, and wanted to click a lot of photos. My obsession with natural beauty has finally forced me to buy a sony dsc w5(5.1MP).(It was the only Sony model I could afford!).
So here go first of my shots!(Click on Photographs to see real size)