Life through a convex lens

Anyone and everyone that knows me also know that I always and I mean ALWAYS go around with a camera. There have been times when I have forgotten my wallet but I don’t think I have ever forgotten my camera! My first camera was an analog yashica....I call it mine although I cried and forcefully took it from appa when I was 10. He was my first Guru w.r.t photography. I used to stand and stare at him patiently taking pictures, everywhere we went and he would also make us pose and afterwards he would meticulously get them printed, put them in photo albums and label and store the negatives carefully ! There are 3 suitcases full of photo albums in our house today and every time I start looking through them, I need at least a whole day to live through them. Oh..well...I digress....

Coming back to photography, although basic physics and howstuffworks taught me about aperture and objective lens, appa was the one who taught me how to load the film, how to wind it during and after, angles, when to use the flash (those days you had to manually switch on the flash and set it up) and above all, he had an eye for pictures and thankfully, some of it rubbed off on me too (I am not giving myself airs, let's say I am an optimist :D) . Although I still use and love my analog yashica (they do not make such lenses anymore), I am a staunch fan of Canon. I think I have purchased at least 4 of them in the last few years for myself and for family or friends. I now possess a canon SD 870 IS. The main reason in buying it was that it fits in the pocket of my pants and the quality for this level of compactness is really better than most others in the market.

Over the last few years, I have collected gigabytes of photos, some of them good, some interesting and some just for the sake of it. I have had many people appreciate them, so I suddenly had an idea of creating a photo blog (start meesic: papara papara papara payn…..) to display a select few…..and as a thank-you, I named it after my canon.

In general, my photos strictly display the ‘I love people more than places’ argument substantiated by the reasoning that I can always find pictures of India online but I cannot find pictures of my family in India online, can I? well, probably with Google’s total disrespect for privacy that can happen in the near future, but you get my point, don’t you ? But in the blog, I would restrict displaying people pictures in an effort to protect their privacy.

I did consider using Flickr but it is overwhelming to see the great pictures and the even greater talent in there and since I believe I have a long way to go, I decided to start simple with a blog. I know its quite ambitious to maintain 2 blogs with regular posts and so I will smartly not commit to updating both at the same frequency :D

So here is hoping that my readers enjoy my photos and help me get better……if I do end up winning a Pulitzer, I will include each of you in my thank-you speech, deal ;) :D ?!