Nuts and bolts of Photography

When you click the right picture, do you feel a sudden stroke of ecstasy? Like something struck you in the head and you just can’t wait till you get back home, download the picture and see it on the big screen of your pc or even the TV? Well, I’ve had my moments of bliss, more often now than earlier.

 I love photography and it is not until recently that I came to realize it. I have the least idea about its technical side and have so far been clicking only on instincts. I did put some effort into reading a document about ‘photography as a science’ and have so far managed to finish only three pages out of fifty eight. (science is just not my cuppa!) J

 

One day, a co-blogger and friend mentioned about four basic principles of photography.

He just gave me four phrases – golden hour, depth of field, soft lighting and high key/low key lighting and left it to me to find out what they meant. So I went to good ol’ wikipedia and found some very simple explanations. It made a lot of sense and I could relate it to my thought process while clicking.

 

I then went back to my collection and checked if some of my earlier photos reflected these concepts. So here for record and my own reference, I am putting down what I read, along with illustrations from some photos I clicked.

 

v Golden Hour – The golden hour is defined as the first and last hour of sunlight during the day when a specific photographic effect is achieved with the quality of the light during these hours. 

 

  

v Key Lighting – Lighting for total illumination of the photo requires 3 points – key lighting, fill lighting and back lighting.

o     In key lighting, low-key lighting is a style where the light is focused on certain parts of the object (which is being photographed) in such a way that it enhances the features that make up the outline of the object and leaves the rest in shadows.

o     Alternatively, high-key lighting is a style that has very little dark areas or shadows.

 

(I do not have photos to illustrate this; will update as and when I click some.)

 

Back lighting – Lighting that is used to illuminate the subject from the back. The camera and the light are facing each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the backlight is very intense

(precisely 16 times more than the key light)

it produces a silhouette 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fill lighting – Lighting that may be used to reduce the contrast of a scene and provide some illumination for the areas of the image that are in shadow.

 

v Soft lighting - Soft light refers to light that tends to “wrap” around objects, casting shadows with soft edges. The softness of the light depends mostly on the following two factors:

o       Distance- The closer the light source, the softer it becomes.

o       Size of light source- The larger the source, the softer it becomes.

 

The softness of a light source can also be determined by the angle between the illuminated object and the ‘length’ of the light source (the longest dimension that is perpendicular to the object being lit). The larger this angle is, the softer the light source.

 

 

 

v Depth of field – This refers to the part of an image that appears sharper than the rest of it showing that the focus of the lens is on that particular portion of the image.  This makes the rest of the image a bit blurred. Mathematically, the depth of field is determined by the distance between and camera and the object, the focal length of the lens and what is called the f-number of the lens. In digital cameras, the dof is determined after the image is made.

 

 

 

 

 

Each of these fundas is a vast field of study in itself and cannot be mastered in a day. But understanding the basics adds so much more to the whole experience of clicking.

 

Thanks a ton to Twisted Dna and Wikipedia.

 

 

Orkut Applications

 

 

This post is more or less a continuation of the previous one, Web 2.0. It is about Orkut- another stunning example of the Web 2.0 revolution.

 

Orkut, as we all know is an online community which stimulates the “social animal” in a person. They define themselves, “orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating.”

 

Orkut strikes the right key with its users. You can find it as a minimized window on any 18-30 year old Indian’s desktop, at least once a day. Why so?

 

Orkut or any Web 2.0 product/company for that matter cannot be successful without constant user need perception, up-gradation and feedback. It is a never ending loop. There are so many portals providing similar services that differentiating becomes inevitable for sustenance.

 

When I first logged on to orkut in 2005, this is what it had –

Ø      friends list and related features

Ø      testimonials

Ø      communities

Ø      photos up to a certain limit

Ø      ‘scrapping’ and messaging

Ø      a simple search facility

 

 

Gradually they added these –

Ø      videos

Ø      photos up to any limit

Ø      optional profile lock to keep away curious strangers

Ø      recent updates from friends feature

Ø      ‘ask friends’ feature for common messages

Ø      blog, picasa incorporation feature

Ø      integration with gmail (where ids from orkut are directly updated to one’s gmail address book

 

 

All these add-ons are certainly a result of the ‘loop’. They found that people needed to share more photos with their loved ones, so increased the photo limit; they understood that integrating the mail ids on orkut with gmail would reduce the effort to check/cross check mail ids each time; they recognized that by showing ones’ profile updates his friends can find out that he has read a new book or got married, found a new job or traveled to new places; they accepted that one needed his own privacy on a wide reaching public utility, one needed to feel free to express himself within his own boundaries!

 

What do I say? ‘That’s Google’ or ‘That’s the power of Web 2.0′?

 

The recent update from Orkut is called “Orkut applications”. It’s a huge step. Now one can share applications like games, music, videos, slideshows, books, jobs, and what not! You name it and they’ve got it!

Its like integrating all other Web 2.0 portal ideas in one, shelfaris, slide.coms, snapfishes, monsters, cricinfos, bollywood4us, again, you name it!!

Of course, in the process the users gain, but what’s in store for business?  

 

Tim O’Reilly put it aptly,

 

“Web 2.0 is the understanding that the network is the platform and on the network as the platform, the rules for business are different. The cardinal rule is this one – Users add value. Figuring out how to build databases that get better when more people use them is actually the secret source of every Web 2.0 company.”

 

Need I say more?

 

Web 2.0

Recently I got introduced to this term Web 2.0, which was coined in 2004 by O’Reilly as a result of a brainstorming session. Evidently, Web 2.0 is a sequel to Web 1.0, but what is Web 1.0 in the first place?

Web 1.0 is the World Wide Web or Internet we have known in the 90s and early 2000s; the Web that was used to post information in the form of websites which were mostly used by companies, Governments and other special interest groups; hence almost entirely drawing a one-way traffic. Of course, there were e-mails and chat programs, but that is pretty much all that represented a two-way communication.

Over the years, developers and experts have evolved a more interactive version of the Internet; a two-way, rather, an all-way traffic that has increased participation, contribution and extraction by all users alike.

Ohhh yeah, welcome to Web 2.0! The World Wid(er) Web of googles, yahoos, picasas, blogs, wikis and ebays!

According to Tim O’Reilly -
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”

The Web 2.0 buzz which is characterized by many other buzzwords like wikis, blogs, social-networking, open-source, open-content and file-sharing, is supported by a totally new generation of Internet based techniques and languages like Java, AJAX, Flash, etc.

My post is not about digging deep into its technicalities but I would like to focus on the business points of view.

Clearly, the realization that the Internet can be a great instrument to cater to business needs has really been the pushing force for this development. Businesses always need to move with time, technology and people; its a matter of survival. They have gone hand in hand with every revolution- the newspapers, the radio, the television and the mobile technology. Now, the arrival of the 21st has posed great opportunities to explore the latest revolution, the Web.

In the early years after Y2K, businesses realized that they could not only post their company information on the Web, but also use it to seek information from people viewing their sites. This in turn can help them channel the interest from people, to interact and get a lot of first hand information about matters that can be crucial to business decision-making.

Business existence depends entirely on the needs of its market. And if the Web can not just help reach out to its market but even widen it, why not use it to the fullest? The uses of Web 2.0 are wide and the list never seems to end - advertising, networking, partnering, broadcasting, researching and so and on. What more, now, visionaries are creating excellent business models around the Web itself!

Technology developers working for businesses are literally getting into the hearts of the users to attract them to using the Internet. ‘User friendliness’ defines everything they try to do. Other forms of media are being integrated with the Web and now, one can read a newspaper, listen to the radio, watch television or read books online. The result? People are gradually getting hooked onto the Web.

Web 2.0 has very wide implications to many businesses. Take the recruiting industry, for example. It started out with a system where a prospective candidate goes to a company website to get their HR generic id and sends and email with his resume. Then came career links in company sites that accepted form data from the candidate, enabled him to upload his resume and submit the data to the company’s database that could be internally be accessed by its hiring department. Slowly, business models were developed around an external recruiting firm that catered to needs of the companies as well as candidates and created a common platform for them to match their needs. While these are still widely popular, a model based on social/business networking and referrals is being exploited in the form of networking sites like LinkedIn, Ryze, Facebook, Orkut, etc. Newspaper employment ads are being posted on the Internet too and job/recruiting blogs are also featuring Government vacancies online. A whole lot of websites provide both free and paid services for career development resources. Can it get easier than this?

In short, Web 2.0 is characterized with vast and wide-reachable audience, unstoppable competition, enormous payback and endless scope for strategizing!
Will this sequel continue? We must wait and see!

References and must reads -

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html

 

Slideroll feature

I recently came across this site, www.slideroll.com and i am probably the last one to do so! Found it extremely interesting. Slideroll helps you create online slideshows. The membership is free and it allows storage of a sufficiently large gallery of pictures. Slideroll enables one to add music to the slides from a given list of tunes from different genres you can choose from. There are also options for text slides, zoom, timing etc.

 

Unfortunately there is no option to add/upload music files from your pc (I didnt find it). Another issue I faced was embedding the slideshow in wordpress. There were many codes for embedding, but noting was working on my wordpress. I spent a lot of time and brain exercise trying to figure out what the code meant. No luck! But I came across an interesting feature to solve all these problems. There is a free slideroll video creator, which you can download to your pc and attach slideshows created on the site and upload music from your pc. The end result is an mpeg file that can be uploaded to youtube and google videos and even to wordpress.

So here goes my first slideshow using slideroll video creator. It is a collage of some photos I clicked during our trips around US. Check out -

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0vc0WMg_kA

 

 

Lights, Camera, Action!

No matter how many movies I watch, after every movie (even the not so good ones), I spend at least a minute wondering how they do it (of course for Titanic, I think I spent a whole month!). This movie making is such a thought provoking affair!

I guess the success lies not only in the freshness of the script but the entire effort that goes into it. It is not just about the story, actors or technical excellence but bringing them all together. I mean, just wait for a movie to end and watch the names appear. . there are so many of them!! Organizing all these folks, in itself is such a herculean task, leave alone getting the best out of them. To add to the complication, we are talking about artists and technicians - professionals in their own fields from whom expertise has to be drawn in such a way that the whole idea doesn’t really change from its original but still gets enough modifications to make it the best.

Imagine people who are successful each time they make a movie like say, Steven Spielberg. I have no clue who does what behind the scenes, but imagine the kind of motivation, leadership and people skills that goes into the whole process!

And how tough can it get when it comes to an animated movie?! The effort is enormous. I saw a video on youtube made by an animation film maker. He has made a 10 minute animated film on how to make animated films. Absolutely simple and crisp but with such good team work from his fellow technicians and artists.

You might be wondering where I am going with this, but the thought I am trying to convey here is that good movies can be such a wonderful source of inspiration for the message they convey not only on screen, but from behind it as well! Give it a thought sometime ..

 

“They take our jobs”

 

That is the mantra here, in the US. We hear a lot about it on TV and come across many articles supporting it. No, I am not talking of it in the present context of the economy going into recession, but this has been the popular opinion for a while.

[Here, ‘they' refers either to the immigrants in the US or aliens to whom US companies outsource local jobs and ‘our' refer to the citizens.]

To think of it, the argument sounds reasonable - globalization has created this situation wherein companies take advantage of low cost labour thereby neglecting the employment and welfare of its own people.
Thousands of Americans have lost their jobs to immigrants and alien companies.
Who is benefiting? Who is to be blamed? Who is losing? The answers seem obvious but they are not.
I just finished reading this book, ‘They take our jobs’ by Aviva Chomsky.
The author has done a very comprehensive research to find out the facts and point out the myths and misconceptions of the reality. Though I’ll be jotting down some of the points here, the book is certainly a ‘must read’.

In the early 20th century, the Government collaborated with businesses to help find ways to reduce cost of production and increase profit margins. When local labour unions grew stronger and workers gained more rights, the businesses started looking at options of bringing in workers from other countries or shifting some work to countries that had cheaper labour costs. Immigrants didn’t fall under a labour union and didn’t have the same rights as citizens. So businesses could successfully reduce cost of production and increase their margins and the final consumer always got the benefit of low prices. Immigrants are also reasonably happy, because whatever they earn in dollars will mean more money(after conversion) to their families back in their countries.

 Then there are the fallacies that immigrants don’t pay taxes and drain money from the US economy to their own countries in the form of remittances. The author points out that the immigrants who don’t pay taxes are the ones who are mostly hired for informal service jobs, like cleaning, baby sitting etc, for which they are paid less(lesser than the minimum rate prescribed by the law).

The author argues that remittances to other countries is a complex point and needs to be looked at from a global point of view. Spending of foreign remittances can have local and global effects, since, nowadays many products or raw materials used for products and even processes may come from different parts of the world. Remittances may also have a long term effect of more migrations or reliability on immigrants in order to afford the rise in cost of living caused due to remittances.
There are of course, a lot of illegal immigrants but most of these people are engaged in low paying jobs like textile factory workers who have fewer rights in the country and are paid less for their work, in turn reducing the prices of those products. So who’s winning? Who’s not?

Chomsky’s book is very informative, factual and brings out the logic behind many false notions. She has discussed 21 myths in a very constructive manner.

Understanding the complexities of this huge, multicultural American economy is certainly not easy. But this book is a no doubt a good start to understand it the right way.

 

US- IT contract job market situation

As the US goes into recession, H1 IT job market has started looking a bit gloomy for now(like my font). The job sites are still full of requirements, but one would wonder if all of them are real. Looks like there is a lot of effort from the numerous players to try and play it down so they can keep candidates and companies as confident and positive as ever.

I strongly feel that it is high time one thought of sharpening his existing skills and expanding his base. If job requirements reduce while candidates available increase, it will become a tough competition. We have been seeing some companies fishing for multiple skilled candidates, even combinations like Java-VBA-Oracle, so they can get two jobs done for the cost of one. Of course nobody is to be blamed since that is the present situation. Budgets are lower, hence, the pressure to find the best fit is high.

Prospective/existing candidates must look to widen their skill set, constantly update current skills, take brain bench tests/earn certifications, concentrate on their industry domain of interest and importantly, improve communication skills.

 

A good b-school

I was always an ideal inattentive student, distracted by everything other than the teacher(wayyyy) in front of me. It felt like I was scuba diving in a sea of thoughts and this trend unfailingly continued during my b-school days too.

 

 

During those days, one thought that showed up most of the time was about the b-school itself. Everyone around talked about rankings, admissions and b-school popularity. So I thought and thought and thought and came up with this -

 

 

“B-schools teach strategic management, marketing, advertising, leadership, business plans, cost and resource management and statistics; all of them claim to have top notch faculty; then why don’t these guys just use all those books, statistical tools, analyses techniques, diagrams and group dynamics to sit around a table and come up with the best ideas to show up in the top schools list.”

 

Whew! Waaw! Suddenly I felt like this unique, intelligent, street smart girl who needed no more b-school gyan!! Alas, that should have been the last living cell in my brain!

 

But, if you think of it, what really makes a good b-school? Why do the IIMs and ISBs deserve top rankings? It is not the age of the institute, because IIMA is 30 years older than ISB. It is not about the collaboration with international universities, because TAPMI wouldn’t figure in the list then, nor is it the metro location because IRMA’s sprawling campus in Anand is 75kms far from its nearest city, Ahmedabad.

 

 

Let’s see if answering some simple questions will help us.

Q) When does a business or a business school do well?
      a) When its stakeholders are happy

 

Q) Who are a B-school’s stakeholders?
      a) Companies and Applicants 

 

Q) What do companies want from B-schools?
      a) Smart graduates with managerial expertise to fulfill company needs

 

Q) What do applicants look for in a b-school?
      a) Anything that can prepare them for company expectations

 

Q) How does a b-school attract companies?
     a) sell the quality of the other stakeholder, the students
             o How?
                     Select the right candidates
                     Groom them to prepare for the challenges of industry

 

Q) How does a b-school attract applicants?
     a) sell the quality of the other stakeholder, the companies visiting the campus
     b) sell the grooming facilities and techniques being provided to prepare them

 

 Q) How to match the needs of the two stakeholders?
     a) teach management fundas - good faculty
     b) provide sufficient teaching aides - good infrastructure
     c) provide exposure - create base for interaction of stakeholders
     d) create premise - for stakeholders to trust in the school

 

 

With so much competition around, it is never easy for a b-school to shoot up in its ranking; but i believe, the answers to such simple questions that is the idea behind the very existence of a b-school should not be forgotten in the process.

 

Crash, boom, bang!

It has been a while since I posted. Just like our stock market, I crashed! The reason being the market itself. I spent few days finding out the possible reasons and how worse it could get and guess what, I am still as optimistic as ever.

 

The sensex is down more than 5000 points compared to the highest level it attained towards the end of 2007. Evidently it is a big blow to the traders, investors, funds, IPO’s and most of all to the tempo in the country. The Finance Minister has been trying hard to keep the optimism levels from going down far too much by assuring that our growth rate for the coming FY08-09 is posed at a very promising rate of 8.75% (There has been many statements with a different rate each time, but this one seems to be the final projection).

Now, what really happened?
Recession in the US which is caused by words declared as used the most number of times last year - “subprime crisis”, lies at the root of the problems. In simple terms, ‘subprime’ means loan given to a person who is not eligible for it, because of his low creditworthiness, income or any other unhealthy financial situation. Ironically these loans are given to the same person at a rate higher than the market(reasoning- risk involved). Since US real estate valuations were blown out of proportion and were simply not affordable by subprimes, there developed a crisis. This in turn created lot of pressure in the banking industry that indulged in a lot of subprime borrowing and did not have enough funds to lend to businesses and other consumers who needed them for growth. So slowly the economy began to dip and then crashed. Businesses didnt do well and large number of employees were laid off. Incomes and consumer demand fell and since many countries in the world depend a lot upon the US, exports being the main share of their GDP, those economies also crashed. India was among the least affected as our exports to the US are comparatively less.

 

There is a reason why our stock market took some time to take the hit. Towards the end of 07, there was a lot of optimism in the our market due to large purchases by institutional buyers, foreign investors, excellent performances by some large cap and mid cap companies, promises and prospects reflected by the Government and a lot of hype. This lead to an illogical overvaluation of stock prices; illogical because they were high  not as a result of the company doing well but as a result of speculation. It was like a bubble that had to burst at some point in time. After the Subprime, lot of American investors started pulling away their investments from other countries. This, in hand with the rising oil prices and blow to the software industry, in terms of declining projects, employee lay off and rupee value appreciation paved way to a much needed correction.

This is more or less like a world correction and a lot of people including me are still optimistic because our nation has all eyes focussed on development and stability. This is an opportunity to buy shares of promising companies.
Corrections like these are just nature’s way of telling us not to get carried away but to focus and do things the right way!

(to read more about subprime crisis check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_Crisis )

 

PC, our phenomenal FM

I am so glad my friend Suchitra and I have these discussions outside work; discussions about work itself, friends, fun, nations-economies-investments-shares(in our own sweet way), cricket, movies, family and recipes. We agree, disagree, exchange online articles and videos and at the end of the day, its interesting because our chat history turns out to be truly historical !!

Today’s chat history was a milestone because we had this heated discussion about India and America, our economies, politics, culture and almost every other broad aspect we could think of(rather, using every keyword we have come across in our textbooks(i of course used google too)).  It got really interesting because we were mostly disagreeing with each other and in the meantime many points came up. And while exchanging all the heat, cold and warmth Suchitra sent me this youtube link - an hour long interview of our Finance Minister, Mr. P Chidambaram by an American interviewer, Charlie Rose interview taken circa 2005.

Its been 6 hours since we ended our discussion and I have already watched this interview thrice, and i wholeheartedly feel it is a must watch for everyone. One hour of time spent on this interview is totally worth it, and i have two points to justify this. But first, watch the interview -  

You would probably have guessed by now

point 1 - PC’s communication skills, articulation, confidence, eloquence and clarity

point 2 - the magnitude of content, simplification of economics, relativity of issues, representation of facts and reality

I found it phenomenal! Didnt you?