Caught Special - 46

Recently, I participated in the International Photography Award contest conducted in Dubai, second year in a row. It is a very popular and highly competitive contest where several thousands participate from around the world.

The contest had the following four different categories against which one photo each was to be submitted.

             1) Life in Colour

             2) General / Entrant's Choice

             3) Faces (Black and White only)

             4) Night Photography

I had submitted my photo entries for each one of them. Though my pictures did not get shortlisted in the contest further, since I had selected the top-10 picks from my collection for all the four categories, I am glad to share all of those photos here. 

On the right here, I have shown only a collage of all the 40 photos. You need to go to the full view of the posting by clicking the link given below, in order to view all the individual images. In the full view of the posting, I have also given some information about each image that you can read. And you can take a close look at each of the 40 photos by clicking on them for full-size view. 

Note that these images are with decent resolution, and hence they might take a bit more time to load. So please give it some time and then you should be fine.

Caught Special - 27

Where: At home, from the balcony. 

When: 09/Sep/10, Thursday, 05:50 pm.

What: Very dark rain clouds formed an ominous looking roof to this building. See the zoomed-in view too!

How: Nokia X6

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This is a series of Caught Special pictures that I captured at different places.
Click on the picture(s) to see a larger version.
To post your comments about this, click here.

To see all postings in this Caught Special series, click here.

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Caught Special - 13

Here is a Caught Special series of special Sun Pictures (no, I mean... Photographs of the Sun) from my collection for you. 

Each one of them were taken at different places across the globe (yes... really... there's one from KL and one from Japan!). Two or three different cameras were used as you can see in the details. The pictures span a wide period from the year 2005 up to, just 2 weeks ago, this year 2011.  

There are almost 43 pictures in this posting. Some of them look really stunning to me, frankly speaking. I do not know how you feel. Please take a look at these, and post your comments. May be I will post a part-2 series sometime in the future. Click here to see all pictures.

To browse, note that you can also click on one of the pictures and it will launch the Lightbox image-viewer feature that I have enabled. It allows you to quickly see all images in a film-strip fashion, and then, remember, you must press Escape key to come back to this page; if you click the x (close) button of your browser page / tab you will be out of this blog.

Wish you all a very happy, healthy, wealthy, sunny, shiny, prosperous and peaceful new year 2012 and beyond.
 

Nokia X6 Review

The Goods
      + Has a better body shape when compared to the cheaper Nokia XpressMusic 5800.
      + It's sleeker than XM5800.
      + 16 GB of built-in Mass Memory is very handy.
      + Pictures from the 5 Mega Pixel Camera included with
                ~ Dedicated camera key, Carl Zeiss optics, Auto focus, 4x zoom, Dual LED flash, etc. are not bad at all.
      + Built-in A-GPS receiver with the Ovi Maps along with free lifetime Navigation works like a charm.
      + The capacitive touch screen (being Nokia's first with that technology) is quite responsive.
      + Free inventive applications from the Ovi Store like
                ~ Level Touch, Angle Meter, Speedometer, SymaDial, Mobile ESPN, etc. are nice value-adds.
      + Two perfectly positioned stereo speakers on the long side of the phone are effective.
      + It can work with EGPRS, UMTS (3G) and HSDPA (3.5G) network operations.
      + WLAN (Wi-Fi) and Bluetooth connectivity are essential wireless connection choices that are available.
      + With the front-side camera, video calls are possible. [Need 3G Data Plan]
      + The multifunction Rocker switch is a good one too.
      + Ovi Store for free songs download helps music buffs.

Caught Special - 2

Once in a while I get the opportunity to click something special. An attractive frame of scenery, a rare moment of incident or action, an unusual view of a common perspective, a snap of poetic feel and depth, a picture-perfect still, or even an impressive blend of colors with a rustic or a glossy finish.  

This is a series posting such pictures I captured. The pictures are original and without any post-processing.  You can also see my thoughts about the picture and the camera used for snapping. 

Under the Labels list on the right hand side, click on 'Caught Special' to see all postings in this series. Click on pictures to see full size view.
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Special thoughts:
We were at Srirangapatna on a company picnic. We came back to Bangalore towards evening, after visiting the spots like Gumbaz etc. in Srirangapatna around lunch time on that day.

Later that evening, there was this news on TV that people in Chennai had witnessed a dark ring around the sun on the sky the same afternoon. It was said to be a 'sun halo'.

Later, at night when I downloaded the photos from my camera I noticed this surprise catch, a lucky snap. At the Gumbaz  in Srirangapatna, I was taking a picture of the one of the minarets there with the sky in the background. The frame I set was not including the sun in it, but had the sun just outside it. But what I saw in the picture when I downloaded it to my computer was that ring around the sun! An accidental, lucky catch!
 
Date: 11/Jul/2010, 1:30 PM ~~ Camera: Nokia X6

 The news text found on The Hindu newspaper's website published these details.

Photo on The Hindu website.

And a YouTube video can be seen here.

Halebid-Belur-Hassan Trip

It was a 1-2 days Belur-Halebid road-trip we planned to make, in our Maruti Swift. For this trip, we had two route options:

Option-1: Bangalore-Nelamangala-Hirisave-Hassan-Belur-Halebid-Hassan-Hirisave-Nelamangala-Bangalore
Option-2: Bangalore-Nelamangala-Tumkur-Tiptur-Arsikere-Banavara-Javagal-Halebid-Belur-Hassan-Nelamangala-Bangalore

Option-1 is what everyone would choose normally. But, it involves going twice on the tough 'Nelamangala-Hassan' segment on the Bangalore-Mangalore highway, i.e. NH-48. The high vehicular traffic including heavy trucks, LPG tankers, other lorries, buses and cars on that single track road makes it a difficult one. Added to that, the 4-lane / road-doubling work that has been going on between Nelamangala and Hirisave for many years have not been completed yet; making the traffic to crossover from one side to the other side at a lot of places - it is risky as well as tiresome.

Due to all that, we formed and chose our own new route, that is option-2. Thanks to the 'Get Directions' feature of Google Maps that allows to specify multiple destination points along a route, we could tweak and analyze both options before we chose one. Option-2 allowed us to explore some new segments, and at the same time avoided the narrow-road heavy-traffic NH-48 at least during the onward direction. The distance is very similar in both routes. Except that the state highway SH-58 segment in option-2 from Banavara to Halebidu via Javagallu was not even looking like a village road! However, there was absolutely no traffic on that segment, so we still were able to comfortably pass through that stretch. In fact we enjoyed a lot of things which I have described later. [Note: If you click on each picture you can view a (slightly) larger version]

CLICK HERE to view the direct Google Maps version of the Route Option-2

Caught Special - 1

Once in a while I get the opportunity to click something special. An attractive frame of scenery, a rare moment of incident or action, an unusual view of a common perspective, a snap of poetic feel and depth, a picture-perfect still, or even an impressive blend of colors with a rustic or a glossy finish.  

This is a series posting such pictures I captured. The pictures are original and without any post-processing.  You can also see my thoughts about the picture and the camera used for snapping. 

Under the Labels list on the right hand side, click on 'Caught Special' to see all postings in this series. Click on pictures to see full size view.
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Special thoughts:
There was this "Shubh Arts Competition - In celebration of Common Wealth Games, New Delhi" at my son's school for which he drew this picture. The topic was 'My Dream Sport'. His submission got selected at the school level and was sent to Delhi.

He wanted a photo of it to use as wallpaper for his computer. I clicked it twice with and without flash. I did not use any zoom.

What a coincidence: The close replica of the two frames made the two photos look like two different drawings, one drawn as a day skiing, and the other, a night skiing! It was not taken using any camera feature like 'Double shot' that can click two automatic pictures using two different 'Scene Modes'. And it was not processed using any Photo tools also. The specialty also comes from the fact that when I clicked the two pictures I had no intention to keep the two frames almost identical, but it just happened.
 
Date: 22/Jul/2010, 11:00 PM ~~ Camera: Nokia X6

You may give a try to 'spot the differences' like we do in those magazines. But you might find none! It's just the difference between - Day and Night!