Summer growth

The street was lined with these trees, and they all seemed to show fresh leaves at the end of every branch. A really nice sight.

A night with the Workshop

“In case any of the songs, jokes, or other repartee offends you, then that’s really not our problem. If you can’t take some jokes, then you really shouldn’t be here.” Following a warning that sounds something like that, the Workshop gets to work.


A little back-story first. I happened to read photocritic’s post on concert photography, and after seeing the photos on his website, I was itching to give it a shot.

When my brother told me that his friend’s band had recently got an album out and that they were performing in various places around the city, I decided to get out the camera and give it a whirl. After all, what better opportunity than this?

I’m not much of a rock buff, or even music buff for that matter, but what I heard on the album which bro purchased had a good ring to it. What particularly caught my eye was the use of our regular Indian dialogues and other fare as names for songs. So off it was concert.

The first thing that hits you when the workshop come on stage is that fact that they are dressed like they are at a workshop. Complete with overalls (please correct me if I got this term wrong) and bright yellow protective helmets. A few test shots at the venue to check for lighting (that was me testing btw, not the band, they did some sound checks).

If they sing a particular genre of rock, I wouldn’t really know, but if I had to give it a name, I’d call it humour rock. And attending the performance bought me back to my school days, with all the double entendre. They’ve got one album out, and all songs are right out of that one. A thing I liked was that they don’t do covers, only their stuff. Thumbs up there. The humour is not just in the songs, its on stage as well. In fact, you will be forgiven if you walked into a performance between songs and thought you walked into a stand-up comedy routine. Another thumbs up. They even had this part where each of them ’show-off’ their ‘instrumental’ skills with short solo performances. I liked that part too.

Now for the songs. Since their album has something for everyone, quite literally (there’s a song in the most popular Indian language, as well as the not so popular Indian language, aka english). Personal favourites include ‘Phude Sarka’ (inspired by the famous marathi dialogue, oft heard in buses as well as trains) and ‘She folked up my jazz’ (warning, singing this song near your current girlfriend could be hazardous to your health).

Other warnings: Do not attend their concert with your kids. Sure the ‘explicit content’ might be bad for your kids if you were a parent, but it would be even worse if your kids caught the ‘meanings’ before you did.

Verdict: Well, I’m not really qualified to talk about music, but I enjoyed the performance. Stay away if you are an uptight music person, or worse, an uptight rock person. As for me… \m/

Links to the band: Myspace, Facebook.

The three guitarists

Beating down the drums

Old skool guitaring

Into the song

Check out the rest of the set here.

Looking around Kanheri – Descent into greenery

Looking around Kanheri – Flame of the Forest

We visited Kanheri on an overcast day. The clouds loomed around, threatening to rain. In July or August, it would have meant that I was walking around with an umbrella in the hand, the camera carefully wrapped to avoid the stray rain drops or the sudden downpour.

One of the challenges of a bright, yet overcast sky is that any photo you take looks gloomy with a white sky, and no polariser can help you add some blue to the dull sky. You could use a graduated Neutral Density (ND) filter, but you need straight horizons for that, and I don’t have one to begin with. So instead, I opted to try High Dynamic Range (HDR) instead.

The Buddha at Kanheri Caves

Stepping out side the stupa of yesterday, is the Buddha of today. This statue towers over the entrance, and while there are other, more intricate sculptures around the place, this one takes the cake because of his sheer size.

The stupa at Kanheri Caves

I am a regular at the Stuck in Customs website, and one of his recent posts caught my eye. And so at the visit to Kanheri caves at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, I And that was the inspiration behind this attempt. There was hardly any light coming in, which became a bit of a challenge with me not carrying my tripod.

Just after cursing myself a couple of times, I thought that maybe its time to try out the bagpod. So I swung off the backpack, squished the top so that it got a depression, and then balanced the camera on it. The 2-second timer helped. That kept the camera steady enough for this picture. If I had carried the tripod, I think I would have ended up with a higher point-of-view, but I like this PoV’s effect.

Sunset in a bamboo grove

The Mumbai Port Trust garden, right opposite the Colaba bus depot is a nice place to visit. Sunday evenings means the place will usually have a lot of families there but not so many that you feel you are in a fish market. If you stay off the main garden area which has all the kids running loose, you can get some pretty interesting photos.

As I was loitering around, putting the 100mm to use, I saw the sun setting. So while everyone was making their way to the sea side seating area to catch the last rays, I noticed the rays on the bamboo. I did manage to get some curious and bemused looks from the people there because there was no apparent subject that I seemed to be pointing my camera towards.

A boat passing in the night

Back in the H2 days, I took a boat ride from the Gateway of India, Mumbai. As the lights of Mumbai shrank and grew dimmer in the distance, there were other boats which were well lit that we passed by on the way out, including the Indian Empress. While trying to take shots of it, every trick in the book could not get sort out the shaky, blurry photos. I ended up so annoyed with the camera (yes yes, blame the tools) that I increased the shutterspeed to the highest value (30 secs), pointed it in the direction of an incoming boat and fired. And the picture above is the result.