Camping

June 20, 2011

Camping is always one of my favorite activity, and everyone in our group is always ready and excited about it. There is so much enthusiasm that we literally have to limit the number of people we can take for camping, still the number goes up every year. The best part is every year we get to meet few new people and make new friends.

This year the number of campers was 16 + kids, and it was much more fun because everyone in group was experienced and brought in new ideas based on their previous experience. As usual when we started planning, it looked like we would surely run short of time and there would be so much to do and eat during the camping and that is what exactly happened. 2 days was not enough, and this being a new campground, it had strict rules about the quiet hours after 10pm which was very disappointing for everyone in the group. Overall we were able to do what we planned for like hiking, cricket (although we missed our bating and Neha got injured too), sand volleyball, cooking dal bati, grill chicken, paneer, mushroom, play games, dance etc etc in these 2 days and had a lot of fun.

Photography Lessons !!

Its been about 3 yrs since am planning to buy SLR camera and every time I think about it, I think about all the hassles that go with SLR camera. One needs to be really into photography to make optimal use of a good machine. With these thoughts I gave up on SLR and bought Sony H50 2 yrs back, which was an excellent camera and I was proud of my decision of not buying a bulky camera and still getting the zoom and quality I was looking for.

But last year I had an issue with my Sony H50 and slowly it started giving problems and finally few months back the lens on the Camera was totally stuck, which could not be repaired. Now I was back with same old question, what should I buy SLR or Point and Shoot Phew ... It took me more than 3 mnths to research and come up with final decision of buying D3100 from Nikon with 18-55m and 55-300mm lens and I think I would still need one more lens in future.

When I started reading about how to take good pictures and use your SLR for best shots, I found there is whole new area to explore, I never thought about so many things before taking a picture, and am not talking about the technical details of the camera, but about our psychology on what to capture . A picture that you take should speak a lot, it should tell you the whole story about the place where it was taken, in fact you can hide or reveal as much as you want on a picture. It requires a totally different set of eyes and thinking to take a good picture, you need to think like a viewer of the picture and understand what he needs to see and what you need to show him. I thought pictures are 2 dimensional but now I know they are 4 dimensional, you can capture, X and Y axis but could also capture the depth and cover Z axis. But above all that the 4th dimension is the time, you should focus the right dimensions at the right time to have a perfect image.

I think learning photography would require a lot of patience and hard work, you might end up spending 15 mins to take a picture that a viewer would view only for 5 secs. So there is no ROI, its only the satisfaction that you would get after taking a good picture, and believe me not everyone would be able to appreciate the efforts involved. Now when I started reading about taking a better picture, I try to see the pictures with those set of details and its really interesting to notice the minute details that most of us always miss.

Fortunately I have 2-3 of my friends who are guru in this skills and are helping me to understand it better. So let me try few shots and I will keep uploading my best pictures online for comments.

Happy Journey Chachu !!

3 weeks back Dinu came to our place, he took a long vacation to stay with us before he goes back to India. Ishaan was very excited about his visit and was eagerly waiting to see him. During his stay Ishaan was happy because he got a person who can spend a lot of time with him, listen to his stories, answer his questions, do whatever he said and was not strict about eating, sleeping and silly things like discipline and manners. He tried and got almost everything that he planned for his Chachu like carnival, chucky cheese, Museum etc and got to play on Chachu's laptop, iPhone for as long as he wished, without worrying about what will daddy say.

When Dinu left for Airport today, Ishaan was all set to go with him to India leaving me and Neha. On our way to airport Ishaan kept asking and confirming if he is going to India or not, whenever I told him "Ishaan Chachu is going to India" his immidiate question was "How abt me ? I want to go with Chachu". We kept explaining him that he needs to stay back with Mumma and Daddy as they love him and can take care of him, but he hardly payed any attention to such logical explanations. He didn't even care about his favorite toys and his best friends which we told him wont be there in India. At last we reached airport and when Dinu got off the car and was taking his luggage, Ishaan asked him "Chachu, go get the tickets for me too"

We were laughing every time he said "I want to go with Chachu to India, he will take care of me" and if we tell him "Chachu is going to India to get married", his answer would be "I want to get married too", he was very serious about what he was saying and it was so innocent. Although we were a bit surprised by his act but were also happy that he developed such a bonding with Dinu that he has no problem going to India with his Chachu leaving his mumma and daddy. Being in US, we are always concerned about the bonding that Ishaan will develop with other family members and relatives. We keep reminding him of all our family members and keep talking about them, showing him pictures, even if he hasn't ever seen them. His memories with Chachu will always remain in several videos and pictures that Dinu took during his stay and in the end Ishaan did promise Dinu that he will come to India for his marriage and will dance with mumma on "Zubbi Zubbi" song. Finally Ishaan gave 3 rounds of hugs and kisses to Dinu before he boarded for the flight and said "Happy Journey Chachu"