New exhibit unveiled.

Chicago, IL. A new exhibit was unveiled on Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago containing a single photograph by a reclusive French artist who wished to remain unnamed, titled Au large de la fonte. 

Noted Italian art critic Grigio Pellegrino had this to say about it, "... [the photograph] embodies contrapositive destruction, the removal of one object from the universe by another leaving only the shell of existence which reflects the human condition."

The late Henri Cartier-Bresson was unavailable for comment, but the manager of his estate expressed strong feelings of disappointment that the photograph was not in black and white. 

The Indian Association of Orthopedic Surgeons issued a vociferous statement alleging that the photograph belittled the human trauma that ought to dominate any study undertaken, however artsy(sic), of orthopedics. When asked if the leg ought to be included in the photograph, the director instead suggested an inclusion of the surgeon involved in the creation of the cast. 

The exhibit is open from 10:30am-8:00pm Monday through Thursday, 10:30am-5:00pm on Friday and 10:00am-5:00pm on Saturday and Sunday.

In between lenses.

Most people who love photography get stuck behind the lens a little too often for their own liking. It isn't something that is easily admitted, though. 

It's nice to have someone better than yourself at photography come along with you to lovely places. And include you in the frame in a most tasteful fashion when possible.

Taken in MahakooTa and Badami, Bagalkot district, Karnataka.

Photos courtesy Grey skull. And that awesome cam of his.

Wrapping up Mysore.

I've been thinking of unusual, non-linear ways of spinning a tale out of my recent travels, and though the voices in my head have thus far been unable to reach consensus on the matter, they all unanimously decided to get the Mysore trip out of the way.

We were quite lucky while at the palace, managing to catch the only patch of blue sky that July Saturday was willing to favour us with. And after Madras, midday heat at Mysore seemed rather trivial.

So here ya go. A photographic tour of the Mysore palace from the outside. Wish I could've given you a similar tour from the inside.

Mysore has two beautiful traffic circles built in an Indo-Saracenic style to commemorate the rule of two of their recent kings, (Nalvadi) Krishna Raja Wodeyar IV (1902-1940) and Jayachamaraja Wodeyar Bahadur (1940-1950). Managed to get a decent photo of one of them (JC circle) from within our vehicle.
The Mysore palace complex has several wonderfully-preserved temples from the Vijayanagar era when the Wodeyar kingdom was a vassal state of the Tuluva and Saluva emperors.

Shweta Varahaswamy temple, Mysore palace, Mysore. (Photo courtesy Arun Verghese.)

Krishna as kALinga mardhana, south gate, Mysore palace.

JC Circle and the north gate, Mysore palace.

Okay, okay. 'nuff stalling. I give you the Mysore palace, by day.

PS. This is something I noticed only now, going through all the pictures from the trip. You can see something similar ff you zoom in on the north gate image as well: Indian-ized angels! Some part cupid, some part generic angel, only male. I don't think I've seen their like elsewhere. Apsaras adorning brackets or columns in other places like Badami or Belur are very different from whatever these are.

Is this what Indian art free from cumbersome nationalist pride and (hence) overtly influenced by European ideas would look like? Slightly creepy as the man-angels may appear, I like the notion.

Window detail, Jagan Mohana palace, Mysore.

Also see:
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 1
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 2
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 3
And the road becomes my bride.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

A Lil' Bitta H-D-R.

Title stolen from here.

HDR, or High Dynamic Ranging is this lovely photographic technique for capturing both very light and very dark parts in an image. And as much as I like silhouettes, it's nice to get both a pretty looking sky and all the detail in whatever it is that I am trying to photograph.

At first I thought that this needed a more fancy cam than what I had, but apparently you don't. I simply varied the exposure levels and clicked multiple pictures of the same objects, and then combined all of them using a really simple desktop software, Photomatix Pro 3.

And voila!

Inside the South Fort, Badami, Karnataka.

The North Fort, Badami, Karnataka.

One of the rock-cut temples, Badami, Karnataka.

"Durga temple", Aihole, Karnataka.

Kailasanathar temple, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu.

A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 3

This will the third and last segment on birds for some time to come. After this I'll get back to showing off pictures of things that don't fly off or dive under water without a moment's notice, but stay squarely centered in viewfinders.


#12 Spot-billed Duck: Anas poecilorhyncha.
Also known as the Spotbill, it's the one in the centre, behind the twigs. That's the best shot I got of the bird. It's being flanked on both sides by:

#13 Little Cormorant: Phalacrocorax niger.
Cormorants were the most common birds there, I think. It was the same with Ranganthittu 3 months ago. There are three species of cormorants found in large numbers in India, this one being the smallest and darkest.

#14 Indian Cormorant: Phalacrocorax fuscicollis
Slightly bigger, a little browner. They swim much lower in the water than ducks, giving them an almost Nessie-like appearance. This particular bird dived under water and did not resurface for at least 20 seconds, and it re-surfaced quite far from the place where it dove in.

(I like my silhouettes. :))

I haven't been able to make up my mind about the bird on the right. The Indian and Great Cormorant species are far too alike, and having enough morphological variation amongst themselves to be easily differentiated.

#15 Oriental Darter: Anhinga melanogaster.
The bird on the right, with the snake-like neck. Wasn't easy to identify, this.
Melanogaster means black-bellied, by the way. Drosophila (the fruit fly) and some species of buttonquail also shares the same name.

#16 Purple Swamphen: Porphyrio porphyrio poliocephalus.
Yes, a swamphen. Who knew such birds existed?

I can't get my head around why birds evolved such fancy colours. It's certainly not as a part of some fiendishly clever camouflage scheme (Purple in a swamp?). Yes, I know, colours and the display of fancy plumages is a big part of bird mating rituals, but surely there must be a more substantial evolutionary reason, like co-occurance with some other vital trait.

#17 Brahminy Kite: Haliastur indus.
The bird on the left. I remember them being very common in Delhi, and I've seen quite a few of them in Bangalore as well. Very distinctive white plumage on the head and neck, chestnut everywhere else. Usually identified with the Garuda of Indian mythology, the eagle vehicle of Vishnu.

#18 Black Kite: Milvus migrans.
At least, I think it's a black kite, cannot be sure. Too many birds which are similar in appearance. Could be a Lesser spotted eagle, a Steppe eagle, or a Common buzzard. The last of them is the most likely alternative. Eagles are bigger and half well-built feet unlike kites and buzzards, but it's difficult to check both size and the nature of the feet from this photograph.

There. 18 birds seen in some three hours. Not bad, eh? There would've easily been double the number of species there, if not more. With this being off-season. One little lake supporting this many birds. Hard to believe.

Pictures 5 and 6 courtesy Arun Verghese.

Also see:
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 1
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 2
And the road becomes my bride.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 2

OK, now for some pictures taken in a more natural setting. Note the simultaneous decrease in image quality. I have a dozen crappy images for every single one I've put up here.


#6 Common Kingfisher: Alcedo atthis.
Not sure which subspecies the bird belongs to. Way too small for real identification.

#7 Grey Heron: Ardea cinerea.
Lovely bird, glided around on top of our boat for quite a while. Note the bent neck, a characteristic while herons and egrets fly. Storks and cranes fly with a stretched neck. Wanted to capture this bird on the ground as well, but alas.

#8 Little Egret: Egretta garzetta.
Closely related to the Grey Heron, but very different in appearance. The black beak and legs distinguish the little egret from other species like Great Egrets and Cattle Egrets, both very common in India and elsewhere. The picture below was not taken at the lake, but at the base of Balamuri falls: there's water splashing everywhere, the quantity of water making up for the lack of height, and there you have this bird, standing silent and still, without a care for the surrounding chaos.

#9 Eurasian Coot: Fulica atra.
Very duck-like, but do not belong to the same family as ducks, geese and swans. The adults are all black, except for a white facial shield that extends to the beak, and a thin red ring around it.

Eurasian Coots and a Little Egret

#10 Spot-billed Pelican: Pelecanus philippensis.
Apparently a very small pelican, it still looked pretty huge when it landed on the water next to our boat. Wish I had captured the landing on camera.

#11 Lesser Whistling Duck: Dendrocygna javanica
These two were going around in circles for at least half an hour. I could see the same pair bobbling up and down there from various parts of the lake. Taken from the observatory tower there.

If you already despair of these, there's a third segment yet to come.

Muhahahaha.

Pictures 5 and 9 courtesy Arun Verghese.

Also see:
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 1
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 3
And the road becomes my bride.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 1

Bird photography is highly frustrating. Success rates are very, very low. And then you have to spend hours and hours trying to figure out what you captured on film.

Karanji Lake, Mysore is a good place for a beginner to do it though. They have an aviary, a butterfly park (open air thing, so you have a good variety of butterflies there only in November), a 30 foot high observatory tower, plenty of nice spots on the lake shore providing a good view of the birds, and the piece de resistance is that you can go boating around much of the lake. No other bird sanctuary gives you so many options. The aviary there is really cool, letting you walk up to within mere feet of exotic birds.

I've spent at least 7-8 hours spread out over the past 3 days rifling through wiki pages trying to identify all the birds we found at Karanji lake on Saturday. It took me insanely long just to identify one ruddy bird, and although I've improved a little since then, this was no mean feat. And even now I have a few birds that I am unable to identify.

#1 The Indian peafowl Pavo cristatus.
Both the albino and the coloured varieties, breathtakingly beautiful. All words are superfluous.

#2 Indian Sarus Crane: Grus antigone antigone.
One HUGE bird. Almost a metre and a half in height, it's the tallest of the cranes. Very distinctive colouring. Kept in one half of the aviary, we weren't allowed to go too close to them.

I wonder why the species name is antigone. In Greek myth she's the daughter of Oedipus, born of the infamous incestuous marriage. Can't see any link there. Antigone also apparently means "unbending" and "in place of a mother" in Greek. The whole baby-dropping thing has to do with storks, not cranes, so that it can't be the latter. Hmm... cranes and storks don't bend their necks while flying, but herons and egrets do. Lemme know if you think of a better reason.
#3 Helmeted Guineafowl: Numida meleagris.
Funny looking things. Had trouble identifying them as these birds are native only to Africa. Apparently they've been domesticated a little over the past century, and introduced extensively in various parts of Europe.
#4 Wild Turkey: Meleagris gallopavo.
I think this is a wild Turkey. The colouring seems a bit unusual. May in fact be a very ugly chicken.

I know, I know, clicking pictures of birds caged in an aviary isn't real bird photography. Wait a while. Next up: A little bit of Ornithology: Part 2.

10.00 am
Addendum

#5 Muscovy Duck: Cairina moschata.
Finally managed to identify this duck. Was rather hard to place as it's a native of the Americas. Scary looking fella, but allowed me to get within 3 feet of him.
Pictures 1,4 and 7 courtesy Arun Verghese.

Also see:
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 2
A Little Bit of Ornithology: Part 3
And the road becomes my bride.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

Pictures of the Month - May

Sunrise over southern Chennai. Taken from on top of the 1974 tower,
the tallest structure on campus.

The 1974 tower silhouetted against the dawn on a different day.

A photographic tour of Lepakshi.

So, yeah. I haven't written anything for ages. I'm more ticked off about it than anyone else possibly can be. My creative juices have all dried up and I am currently wasting away under the oppressive heat of a Madrasi May.

Anyhou, had run home for the weekend and while there, managed to go to this place called Lepakshi near the Andhra border. We visited a 16th century Veerabhadra temple constructed on a low hill by a Vijayanagara chieftain, Virupanna.

Do check out the picasa album.

Lepakshi

PS. Do read the comments accompanying the pictures.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

I am ashamed to admit that having lived in Bangalore for over 14 years, it is only now, when I am living in Madras that I got a chance to go to Mysore and see the Wodeyar palace lit up in all its glory.

I wonder if the Buckingham palace or Versailles can ever match Amba Vilasa in their splendour. Perhaps during the day, but after dark, when lit up? Surely not!

On Sundays people are herded out of the palace grounds before sunset, upon which expectant (read giddy) tourists line up outside the gates, waiting to be let in. With bated breath.

Finally, minutes before the 7 o'clock bell they are let in. And lo! Everything is lit up, the gold of the palace outshining the gold on the horizon. People ooh and people aah and go clickety-click.

Hmm, perhaps there is more to this, many realise, as the lights are dimmed somewhat, in a silent drumroll leading up to something even better.

And then it happens. Incandescent bulbs light up everywhere on palace, blinding in their brightness. The spectacle is so magnificent that people break into spontaneous applause. You grin from ear to ear without even knowing that you do so.

Alas, the day when we went, it started raining minutes after the lamps were turned on. Well, I suppose I should be grateful that it did not start before they were switched on.

People in the UK voted a while back on some "100 things to do before you die". Be you British or Taiwanese, this is one sight you have to see before you die.

PS. If you happened to go to the wiki page on the Mysore palace from the link up there, you might notice that I have put up this pic over there. (Assuming that it hasn't been deleted yet.) One or two others on that page are mine as well!

Pictures of the Month - February

Mimosa pudica
Touch me, touch me not.

Dusk over St. Thomas mount, Chennai.

I didn't have anything better to put up. So sue me. My photography is way more appreciated than my rants anyways.