Up, close and personal - Animal Photography

There are many who argue that collecting money to allow people to hold/pose with animals in zoos and other establishments is an unethical act. I have a divided opinion on this. Major zoos which advertise such things do collect the money for conservation purposes.

I also feel that allowing such interactions would help people understand the animals further thus increasing their love for them. I have tried using this line with Vidhya whenever there is an opportunity to hold snakes, but she has been relentless in her campaign of not allowing me to pose with snakes.

I am posting below all our "encounters" in different parts of the world. I love animals, i love photographing them. But the best thing is to be close to them and feel their wildness.

The next few photos are from our Singapore trip (which i am yet to write about). The first one is a with a California Seal taken after the "Splash Show" at the Singapore Zoo. For some reason, i was scared and my expression in the photo turned out to be a little silly!

That's me and my mom feeding the lories at the "Lory Loft" at the Jurong Bird Park. This was an excellent enclosure where the birds (hundreds of them) were flying around freely and you could feed them (some liquid). The ones Vidhya was feeding were more interested in her watch rather than the drink. One even landed on my dad's shoulder and he was more than happy to accommodate it.

The next photo is from Dubai. When you go for a Desert Safari which includes dune-bashing, your starting point would be a place where people can watch many "native" animals and interact with them. Unfortunately Vidhya's cousin, who was taking the photographs, took some time to understand the nuancies of a Digital SLR and many photos didn't turn out ok. But, he has improved a lot now and he is as good as any other amateur i know.

Thailand was one of the best vacation spots i have been to. We spent a month there and we had lot of fun. The photos are from a place called "Safari World" which is around an hours drive from Bangkok and a place in Pattaya called "Crocodile Park".

Like the bird in Jurong Bird park, this one too was very interested in the watch Vidhya was wearing.

The one below is called our "Family Snap" by my dad! The Orangutans were extremely friendly, sometime too friendly to feel comfortable.

The biggest tiger i have ever seen, it was trained to let out a huge roar whenever someone sits next to it for a photograph. The bear looks like it is showing the namaste sign, but it is actually holding a banana in its hands.

Vidhya at her bravest! Don't know what came over her, she readily volunteered to go over and take photographs with the elephant. Only the first photograph was part of the "posing plan". The second and the third were not informed to us at all and Vidhya, though appearing to be smiling" was shaking for quite some time after. The elephant, without any warning, lifted her with its trunk and Vidhya had to request the mahout to ask the elephant to put her down.

Saved the best for the last. The photos below seem to unnerve anyone who sees it, even us! Don't know whether , given an option, we would pose once again with a croccodile.

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Bird's-eye View

I have posted the below photo for possible inclusion in the JPG magazine for the theme "Bird's-eye View". In case you haven't heard of this magazine, check it out. JPG magazine is an excellent photo magazine which is made up entirely of contributions by amateur photographers. They also give away pdf versions of all issues of the magazines for free.

The photo was taken from a plane just before landing at Heathrow. Luckily, our plane had to wait in queue before landing hence treating us to beautiful aerial views of London. If you want to see more photos of London, vist the London page for lots of photos from our one week vacation in London.

Fun with sparklers during Diwali

The money i decided to buy crackers with wouldn't get me much more than a few packets of sparklers. Thankfully, it was Vidhya's brother's "thalai-Deepavali" (First Diwali after marriage) and he had purchased umpteen crackers to blast.

But, I had decided to put the sparklers i bought to good use, though i wasted many in the process. We tried many long exposure photographs using the sparklers. The one below was for a duration of 10 seconds, but it took few photos to get the J's orientation right.

Next, the duration was changed to 20 seconds and i tried to write Vidhya's and my name. I just managed it before the sparkler finished, though it was tough getting the H and Y right.

We did try a lot other tricks too, the heart shape being the most common attempt for any long exposure "light" snaps. The next one was done using the "sattai" or the rope which emits a streak of fire when lit at one end.

Diwali was fun. The view from the terrace was awesome. The photo below gives an idea of the number of rockets which can be seen at any instant.

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Rangoli in the Kholu for Navratri

We reached India just in time for Navratri celebrations. My mom, as always, had elaborate plans for the kholu. Navratri was a total relaxation time for me as i had nothing else to do but to eat all the snacks which Vidhya and mom brought back from their trips to the neighbourhood.

My mom had set up a big Kholu occupying our entire living room and she had also done a massive Radha-Krishna rangoli. It was awesome and as i had written before, it deserves a separate post of its own. Below are some of the pictures i had taken of this awesome rangoli. My mom had a picture as a reference for this rangoli. She first drew the outline by chalk and then filled in the gaps with different coloured powders.

There was also a mini-kholu on the side which contained, according to my mom, dolls which couldn't be accomodated in the main kholu. There were reporters from some local daily who had come to take photographs for a competition for the best Kholu. Well, we didn't hear back from them, but i would definitely like to see the better kholus.

She had also prepared decorated plates for display in front of the kholu. These were made with lot of chumkis, grains soaked in coloured water and fevi-kwik!

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The mighty Cauvery

Watching the river Cauvery(or Kaveri, however you want to spell it) puts one in a spell. It, being one of the major rivers of Tamil Nadu, provides water for irrigation for almost the entire area of Tamil Nadu known as the rice-bowl of India.

Last year when i had been to India in the summer months, the river was dry and just 2 days before i travelled to Trichy, the gates at the Mettur dam had been opened. It would have been a wonderful sight watching the first waves of the water enter Trichy. I was in trichy early this month and Kaveri was at her best with lots of water with a good flow. Below are some of the photos of this grand river of Tamil Nadu taken last year.

I took the photo of Malai-Kottai from the main bridge over the Kaveri (Chennai route) very early in the morning.

We also visited Mukkombu which is a main tourist attraction near Trichy. Mukkombu is actually a place where a dam has been constructed on the Kaveri. This dam is actually split into many sections because of the presence of an island in the middle of the river.

There were many people fishing from the dam using nets. There were hundreds of small fishes just next to the dam eagerly jumping to be caught!

Kaveri starts from Talakaveri in Kartanaka and finally flows into the Bay of Bengal at Poompuhar or Kaveripattinam or Kaveripoopattinam. This place was originally called Kaveri-pugum-pattinam i.e. the place where Kaveri enters. This town is also my native place and every time i go for a vacation, we try to make a trip to our "Kula Deivam" temple in this town.

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Back from vacation

Back in Cyprus after a month long vacation. In fact, the time in India during the vacation was more hectic than the regular working time in Cyprus! But, the vacation was great. I travelled a lot, visited beautiful villages in Tamil Nadu, went on a low cost airline, went to Singapore for a vacation within a vacation, attended my brother-in-law's wedding and much much more. So, there are lot of posts and photos in the pipeline...

Diwali rockets have sky-rocketed

This is my first Diwali in India in six years and i was quite surprised by the relative lack of excitement visible on the streets considering that Diwali was just around the corner. Where are the crackers? Where is the noise?

Back then, when we were in school, my brother and i used to be allocated a budget to buy crackers. We would then do lot of complicated mathematics with the price list to arrive at an optimum combination of "hardcore" bombs and soft ones like the traditional flowerpot, pencils etc. It was important that we start bursting crackers before the "rest of the gang" and we had crackers left to burst after the rest had burned out theirs.

This year, i didn't have much of a company and i too wasn't very keen on bursting a lot of crackers. So, the purchase was put off until yesterday evening. Yesterday, i got the details on the good places to buy crackers and visited those shops. The first one i visited "theoretically" started around half a km before the actual shop, as the queue extended until there. I was in no mood to start an hour to purchase a few crackers. A similar story unfolded in all the other branded shops i visited. So, i went back to the "local" shops though i was told that the crackers might be a bit expensive there.

I had budgeted approximately 500 Rupees for the purchase, as i just wanted to have a feel of the crackers. I wanted to buy the entire course of crackers starting with the sparklers and ending with the rockets. I first asked for a pack of sparklers. Out of curiosity, i asked the shopkeeper for the price. He said "125 Rupees, sir". 125 rupees for a pack of sparklers! My purchase had almost finished as soon as it began! I was very careful in the further purchases enquiring about the price of each item before purchasing it. Good that i had forgotten the big shopping bag which i had intended to bring. Otherwise, it would have been an embarrassment if i had given the bag to the shopkeeper for the very few items that the 500 rupees would have got me. In fact, the number of items i got for the amount fit into a small plastic cover which usually fits two aavin 500ml milk packets!

Anyway Happy Diwali to one and all, while i go out for 5 minutes to burst the crackers i have bought...

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It is cold in Chennai - El Nino?

Chennaiites are not used to the weather being cold. Even when it is a pleasant 20-something (deg C), you can swarms of chennaiites out for their morning walk wearing their monkey caps or their shawls. You can even see people sitting around a fire to keep themselves warm from the cold 20 deg outside!

But, this time, it is really cold in chennai, really cold. Why else would a sane chennaite like me get up in the middle of the night and switch off the fan? Agreed that the electricity board does that often, but no one would do that in the bedroom. It is an open invitation for all the chennai-born mosquitoes to come and have you for dinner! But, i was forced to do so. I was never prepared for this and hence i don't have a quilt or something similar. So, i had to switch off the fan and put up a brave face against the mosquitoes.

As a result of this exceeding cold climate, the sale of monkey caps sky-rocketed and monkey caps manufactured by world renowned brands like rheebok, odidos and nikey started making an appearance on the streets of T.Nagar. Tamil Nadu police had even relaxed the rule in the mornings for two-wheeler drivers (which forced them to wear helmets), as they anyway wore 2 layers of monkey-caps which was equally thick.

While the scientists and other equally bright scholars at IIT Madras were blaming El-Nino for this phenomenon, Jayalalitha made a statement on Jaya TV:

"My dear brothers and sisters of Chennai, don't believe the statements made by the scientists. They are in connivance with the minority DMK government. It is not "E" "l" (pronounced eee-yell) Nino which is responsible for your suffering, but EEE-Yell-ThamizhThanniMagan (Cousin of ThamizhKudiMagan) who is responsible. EEE-Yell-ThamizhThanniMagan is the minister of state for caps and his son has recently started a factory manufacturing monkey-caps. To increase sales, their TV channel started showing lower temperatures in their weather forecasts thus leading people to believe that it is actually cold. It is not! Throw away your monkey caps. Even I have removed my shawl to prove that it is not cold (there was a highly greyed image of Jayalalitha shown without her shawl)"

Whether it is El-Nino or EEE-Yell-ThamizhThanniMagan who is responsible, I don't care! But, it is cold in Chennai!

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