Lunar Eclipse (pics)

June 15th had a total lunar eclipse. Which means that the earth came between the sun and the moon, and overshadowed the moon. What was a full moon, disappeared and then came back to its full shine. This took place in the wee hours of the night, and i would probably have slept through it ( I was to drive back to Delhi the next morning), except that I was unable to sleep. So, got out of bed and went out with the camera to look at the show being put on by the heavens !

Pics are on facebook in the Album 2011 Lunar Eclipse

I am still trying to figure out how to embed the pics from facebook here. Any ideas ? 

The Heat is On

Its HOT.

Let me repeat that.

Its HOT. Really HOT. And its gonna get Hotter!

The screenshot shows the temperature today. The wind blows - hot. Its called लू (loo) in Hindi. It sucks you of energy, makes you want to find shelter out of the sun as soon as you can. The sweat dries off as soon as it forms, hardly giving any respite.

However, I have decided to figure out what can I do about it all. I am planning to start photographing the heat. What I want from you is ... give me your thoughts on what the heat brings to your mind. I will try to find those subjects and take pics and see how it goes.

Lunar Eclipse

Did you know yesterday evening was a lunar eclipse. However, its not a complete eclipse, but a penumbral one, where the softer shadow of earth falls on the moon as the moon is too far away.

A photo shoot

Life changes as you go along. One moment you are the hothead creaming other bikers on the curves, the next moment you are labelled 'too slow' ! Hey ! Amazing how life changes. Gotta take that in your stride or else you start getting all broody about where you messed up , etc. etc. etc. 

Work has been pretty hectic all through last year. Not much time for rides. A 3 day weekend window, i thought screw the work. I am going to relax. So the first call was for a meet for the BNers in Pune to just chit-chat over coffee. 

That was where Nandu chipped in with an invite to take a few pics of 'Rash's Boys' over at lavasa on Sunday morning. Sure , I said, If I can get up :D

The plan was to meet at 8:30am at Chandni Chowk, which we did. Me, Nandu and Chinmay ended up there, and decided to push on before the RSA guys as I knew I was going to be slower than them. So, off we went. 

Took the left turn just after Manas resort. The view was hazy. I thought to myself, how nice it would be if it was clear. Will make for some really nice pics, but the pollution was spoiling it. 

Reached the base of Mutha Ghats and crested it - and presto !  Chinmay was no where in sight, and the air cleared up like magic. The Ghats act like a natural barrier to the pollution from Pune and surrounding areas. The Roads were great, but I went slow :)

Reached Lavasa, or rather stopped at the phatak. Nandu said we were to go back a bit for the photo shoot. So we turned back and met Chinmay. It seems he had stopped at the top of Mutha ghat... while we just swept on by. 

As we were getting in positions and I was taking tips from Nandu, the RSA folks arrived. 

Here's what nandu said to do for pan shots. 

- keep aperture at f16. Uh ! my camera does not allow more than f8. 

- keep shutter at 1/40 . ok. tried with that and f8. got a white screen . damn. a bit of trying on the locals going up and down and 1/100 was what worked out fine for me. 

- keep pics in burst mode. Ok dokey. The first try got me nothing... the bikes were going off the screen ! So, switched to single photo mode. 

and that what I tried all through out. The results as below :

Complete gallery on flickr.

First Rains

Originally uploaded by vibhu

After a few blistering days, it started to rain in Pune. The weather is lovely, but the roads are a nightmare. This shot taken from the office window overlooking baner road.

Sunsets and the BN GQ Run

Yesterday evening, I drove to mumbai to see off the guys from BN for their GQ Run.

The drive on the Mumbai-Pune expressway was great ! I had planned to leave around 5pm, but the petrol bunks near my house were shut down due to it being Maharashtra Day/Labor Day. Finally found one and with a full tank of deisel left pune almost around 6pm.

The expressway is one of the best roads in the country without doubt. What also helps is that it is a toll road with only cars there, so one does not have to worry much about people jumping on it from all directions.

Initially the sun was shining right in the eyes - we were driving west towards the setting sun. However, as sunset neared, the sky turned into glorious hues of red and orange. The result was a very pretty picture (please leave comments on my flickr page if you like it !)



I am not well versed with the mumbai roads, but with help from fellow BN'er Hrishikesh , I was able to find the rendezvous point quite easy.

The GQ Ride



This ride is an attempt by my friends from BN to ride around the Golden Quadrilateral. You can check out more info on the BN GQ blog post.

Ek Cup Chai

Chai, originally uploaded by vibhu.

I got my new camera last weekend, but haven't been able to use it much. Out of the box it comes with a 32MB card - what a joke ! The S5 IS has a 8MP resolution - so each file is almost 2MB in size. 16 pics is all you can take if you use that.

So, the first things done were to buy a 2GB SD card from sandisk, and 4 rechargeable batteries. Another day goes by while the batteries get charged.

No subject for the photographs. Fiddling with the features of the camera, drinking tea - when i think about trying the macro feature on the tea itself. The result is quite pleasing, though a bit grainy.

Nick Brandt's Animal Photography

I came across this fabulous collection of pics from Nick Brandt, a british photographer. The B&W treatment he's given to the pics, make them almost surreal. Check them out ( click the pic above to go to the main website).

Top 10 cameras on Flickr

Everyone knows about flickr right ? One of the most popular online image storage sites. Upload your images and share with your friends kind of thing, which is quite convenient to use. Yeah, even I use it.

Ever wondered the cameras that are the most popular with people ? What are the top 10 cameras being used by the people ? Now you can know ! Check out :

• Top 10 Cameras on Flickr

My camera is ofcourse not on the listing :( . Its actually now out of production after just 3 years or so, so I cannot even link it here !

Another interesting feature on flickr is that you can now geotag your photos ! What does it mean ? Well, basically if you have taken a pic in some location, you can add the info about the place to the pic and it will show up on the map for that location. Very cool to keep track of the pics from a particular place like say Delhi :-)