What's worse?

What's worse than taking a 7 am flight to Bombay on Thursday morning?

Taking a 5.20 am flight back to Goa on Friday morning. Groaaannnn.

Jealousy

What happens when you pick up Igloo and pet her?

Jealous Aglee sticks out her tongue at you.

I'm not a cat person..

Yeah right....

Sigh

What I actually want...

What I'll settle for...

Drunk G

I had taken a picture of drunk G in Delhi many months ago.

This week, a TVC featuring a bald guy driving an Indica Vista Drivetech4 was released.

I swear. They look exactly the same.

A perfect end to the week

6 days of hard work, late nights and interrupted sleep followed by a Sunday with a heavy breakfast, a movie, 3 plates of cheese corn nuggets, chicken curry for dinner and the wife for company. A perfect end.

Creative license

Creative output is so subjective.

At a review... 3 people peering at a desktop screen...

Person 1: What do you think?

Person 2: I think it's fine. Looks pretty good actually!

Person 1: (Looking at me). What do you think?

Me: I think it's damn crappy man... GROANNNNN

Goa

Beaches and sunsets are probably the most boring landscapes to shoot. Well atleast if do it often enough. But yet when you see a sunset at a beach, you cant but help pull out your camera.

Taglines

Week 1 - Generated 50 taglines for a client

Week 2 - Shortlisted 16

Week 3 - Presented them to the client

Week 4 (Outcome of the meeting) - Let's not use a tagline anymore.

www.vivekchugh.com

A year and a half ago I decided I'd get a website. I booked domain space. Made a few design attempts myself. Created a logo and shortlisted pictures.

It finally happened today. Version 0.000001 is live.

A big thanks to...(and i really mean this)

Sindhu for developing it and finally getting it online. An absolute doll for getting it done. She wont even let me credit her on my website... Yes, there are such people. Nutty but nice.

Romi for booking domain space and scouting for plugins when I was being a brat by ordering him around.

AK for the profile pic.. he's good by the way. Check out his website. Oh right. He doesn't have one. But when he does, I'll post the link here.

Reva for pushing me when I was too lazy to get off my ass and get this moving.

Need a wide angle

Last week AK came over with his wide angle. I stole it for a while. New found love... I need one.. soon.. A D700 + a 20mm fixed wide angle.

This shot—courtesy AK and his 10 mm.

New found respect

Until most recently I didn't realise the importance of having a significant amount of stash in my bank account. When it was gone I realised how badly I needed it.

I have new found respect for the homeless. They don't even know where their next meal is coming from.

Entertainment

Last year I watched numerous IPL matches from the box. In South Africa where I was freezing my a** off with a large mug of beer in one hand and a blackberry in the other. This year I'll be sitting in front of my mac, logged on to YouTube with a pint of beer in one hand and a bottle opener in the other. Nostalgia beh beh!

Goan eccentricities

2 pm in the afernoon. You walk towards a restaurant for lunch. The door is shut. A hand written signboard is seen on it. "Closed for Lunch"

11 am in another restaurant. Customer to waiter - "Bhai, ek mast wala chai la". Waiter contemplates for 5 mins, gives an apologetic look to the customer and says "Bhai bana na padega".

Beer

If you think you can have another beer, you probably can! My philosophy. I'm five beers down. I think I can have another one. I think I'll go for it!

I just moved to Goa! A shift most people would consider, weird and rash. Why they asked. I said I wanted a change. I wanted to move away from the hustle and bustle. I wanted to live by the beach. I wanted to give my wife a life she always wanted.

I just watched "How to lose a guy in 10 days". I loved it. I miss Reva. Random? Well what do expect from a guy thats 5 beers down?

RIP

Hindustani music doesn't appeal to a large audience. At least not where I come from. I've been raised by a family of businessmen. Naturally I didn't have an inclination towards any form of music. Or any form of art for that matter. 

Let's face it. I didn't understand it. I still don't. But having married Pandit Dinkar Kaikini's grand daughter, I automatically got exposed to music and art a great deal more. I recently heard a video on youtube of Pandit Dinkar singing. You know how sometimes you hear a voice and forget about everything else around you? Your mind blanks out and it seems for that moment you have no worries. You truly start appreciating the beauty of it. You feel a weird connection. And you're at peace. 

Pandit Dinkar Kaikini passed away last week. Even though I hardly knew him, I miss him already. He was a great singer but more importantly a kind man. 

I only pray that Ammama, Rajesh, Aditi, Yogi, Reva and Niyu have the strength to deal with what I'd call the biggest loss for them so far.

RIP

The Cable Guy

Where I work, the IT department is a one man show. What's really great about him is the level of comfort he has with machines. Everyone else's machines. 

I'm there sitting and working on my laptop when suddenly my attention is diverted to my right. I turn back to find the IT guy typing some text on MY laptop. THATS MY LAPTOP. You'd kind of expect him to excuse himself and come up with half a reason for meddling with my laptop right? Anyway this kind of eccentric behavior isn't new to me so I carry on conversing with my colleague.  2 minutes later he disappears with an unsaved document on my desktop. I hit "ALT f4".

Ten minutes of peace. He then reappears with another laptop, pulls out my power cable and connects it to the laptop he just brought. He then places the damn thing on MY TABLE. MY TABLE. Then he disappears again, without a word, into the darkness of his home, the server room. 

Such is life

What do you do when you buy a 30,000 phone? You feel nice for a bit. Then you go ahead and drop it on the concrete. 

Such is life

Having moved from a PC to a Mac about a year ago, I have a tendency to brag a little. I tell people that its far far superior than the PC. In fact I tell people that it's been so great for me that I waste no more time reinstalling software, reinstalling operating systems, partitioning hard drives, losing data, rectifying system crashes, hitting ctrl+alt+delete... blah blah. You get the drift. It's true. I haven't wasted any time doing any of that with my mac in the last one year. 

But today I was humbled when my mac hung for the 20th time. No comments please. 

 

Nikon vs Canon

Right now, we're only talking about SLRs. Not 'point and shoots'. That's another discussion I don't really care for.

Let me start this note with one simple fact. It's not the camera that makes great pictures. It's the photographer. A good photographer can take better pictures with a point and shoot than an idiot with the best SLR money can buy. But if you did want to buy a camera, which one would you finally shell out money for?

I've asked this question to a lot of people myself. Some swear by Nikon. Others use 'Nikon' as a swear word. You fuckin' "Nikon". 

The fact is this. They're both more or less equally good. It's like this. You're not going to create a tantrum at a restaurant if the waiter gives you a Pepsi when you ordered a Coke. It just doesn't matter. But then again a camera is a high involvement purchase. I don't care if you say you're stinking rich but you'd still want to contemplate a little before deciding which side of the fence you want to sit on. Oh and it's a tall fence to climb once you do take a call. 

You see, if it's an SLR and if you don't have money to throw away you would probably just make this decision ONCE. Why? Because once you buy a camera body, you automatically start adding lenses to your kit. So lets assume that after a couple of years, you still love shooting. You've probably added one prime lens for portraiture, one wide angle for landscapes and one tele just because it feels great to hold something that long. And now you suddenly decide you want to switch to a Nikon or the other way around. You're screwed. Why? Simply because when you switch over, you not only have to sell your camera body but you also have to get rid of every Nikkor (Nikon) or Canon lens you bought. Now that brings me to something else that is very interesting. I once heard that you could make Nikkor lenses work on a Canon by adding an adaptor. You'd have to spend close to 400$ on the adapter though. But you just cant make Canon lenses work on a Nikon body.  

Even if the adaptor thingy was possible, I wouldn't use an adaptor to bring in compatibility. Why? I don't really know. It just seems like a compromise. Doesn't it? 

So that still leaves the age old question. Nikon or Canon? I think it really depends on you. I would never touch a Canon for the following reasons:

- I hate getting into "My Canon is bigger than your Canon" debates. 

- I already have a good number of Nikkor lenses which will not work on a Canon. 

- I hate the way they fit in my hand. But your hands are different and a Canon would probably be just as nice. Ergonomically speaking i.e. 

- It takes longer for me to change basic settings on a Canon than a Nikon. What were they thinking?

- I hate having to focus first and then compose. I always compose first and then shoot which is possible on my Nikon. It's a personal thing really. Whatever works for you. I personally find the focus a little dicey on a Canon. It's not as intuitive as my Nikon. And this is Canon's biggest flaw. Let me explain this a little better. On the Canon, you need to focus first, hold down the focus lock key, move your viewfinder to compose your subject within the frame and then finally click. If your subject moves a little when you're doing all of that, your subject will be out of focus. You can use the same method shooting with a Nikon, but with the Nikon there's one more thing you can do. You can set your focus by using one of the many focus points on your viewfinder. Half click to focus and then shoot. If your subject moves when you're doing all of that, half click again and shoot. Simpler? Use both and see.

Warning: Please note that the above is just an opinion. I don't get paid by Nikon for writing any of it. As you already might have guessed, Canon doesn't pay me either.