Ten Cricket : another advertisement channel !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ten Cricket is insult to cricket fans. In past couple of months I've watched more advertisements than cricket.

Ten Cricket's clever (yes!!!) and irritating ploy to show advertisement on screen during each ball and at times full screen add during an over is just too irritating. And your are not even allowed to watch the entire over at times. Say a over with a no or wide ball; commercial is on from 5'th ball itself. I'm not ready to pay just to watch advertisements.

Is there any way to take this channel to court for this ????

Best of Me : 2010

2010 is quite an eventful year for me in terms of photography. Few long drives, few far places, 2 exhibitions. It was over all an interesting journey this year so far. Here is a list of best of my frames [as per me] and a little “behind the frame” of these pics.


I took this shot during my last visit at Kolkata. It was around 6 pm; dusk was setting in. I sat near a Ghat and took this shot hand-held. I like this frame because of its color and lovely mellow mood.





2010 Sindur Khala at Baghbazar Puja. I was here for 7 hours to photograph this very event. With 35^ centigrade temperature, humidity above 80% and scorching sun; it was definitely not a pleasant outing. I was sweating like it was raining and my dressed soaked with sweat literally showed that. Despite all these I was a satisfied photographer at the end of the day … as the candid portraits I captured that day were beautiful and reflection of Bengali joy at its best. Here are few of my favorites.











I took this shot during my last visit at Kolkata. Just before the beginning of Durga Puja I visited the famous Kumartuli. In short Kumartuli is “Land of Color”.








This shot was taken at a place named Narayanpura, somewhat 60 km from Bangalore. Settlements of potters; which still do all the clay work in traditional way.





I had this idea of doing macro in black and white. I dedicated one day for this during independence day Lalbagh Flower show. Many of my friends did not like this idea because; as per them this diminishes the main beauty of flower; its color.








I took this shot at my current office on Women’s Day. Till date this image is the “most interesting” and “most viewed” image in my Flickr Photostream as per flickr terminologies. This image was also selected for an exhibition pEtE maatu





These pictures were taken at Kolkata. I had gone to Kolkata to attend famous Kolkata Book Fair… and ended up with these shots.








Puri sea beach: I took this shot during my visit to Puri earlier this year. I woke up early to spend some time with the fishermen who come back early morning from sea. This is one frame from that day.





Visit my Flickr Photostream for more.

Narayanpura : GOD in making … everyday

I badly wanted to do some pottery place shoot as Ganesh puja was nearby. The obvious choice was the age old pottery town [ which is now close to my home too ]. But eventually Narayanpura surfaced and we all agreed for it instantaneously. I had the picture of a shady old village when I first heard about this place. But this place does not resemble to any village at all. Rather it has become a small town with nice houses and clean road. The life is not as struggling as I thought it would be.

It is not as commercialized as it is in Bangalore Pottery Town. We still found some hand driven clay pot makers being used here.

I certainly fulfilled my wish of capturing artists making clay idols here. The process is quite long. They make the idols and dry them; and after that they paint those. Sadly I did not see anyone painting clay idols though …..

P.S. : All work used in this blog are my original work. For more do visit my photo stream @Flickr

Welcome back

I’ve decided to start blogging again ( yes !!!!!!!). Spend a chunk of the afternoon today to give my blog a facelift. And here is the final result …

As the saying goes I’m not a good finisher. In past 1 year ( the time when I did not blog even a single post ) I started three articles and two poems ………. And still they are in “starting” stage. So what happened to those ? Still saved as draft; and I’m not sure if I’m ever gonna finish those. But enough being said about the past; I’m planning to be more regular on blogger now onwards.

Had to change the name and caption of this blog as I felt like the earlier name [$ukanto’s Blog] and caption [ Me, Myself and the world around me ] was too selfish. Would certainly love to hear your opinion about the new caption and the new name of this blog.

This will be my platform for sharing my photographic ideas and experiences besides the general articles on events and incidents around me. That’s why the caption : “Reflections of my mind and my lenses”

photo shoot

Now I’m a proud owner of Canon 450D; a mid level DSLR. Finally I managed to buy my own. With this I’m able to kick-start ( rather resume ) my interest in photography and more scope to write here too. I’m introducing a new tag “photo shoot” here on and I’ll be using this tag in posts containing pictures taken by me.

About my gear; currently I’m using 18-55 mm IS kit lens with my Canon 450D body and will certainly go for bigger and better lens later.

Sedlec Ossuary : The Church of Bones

THE Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: kostnice Sedlec) is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints (Czech: Hřbitovní kostel Všech Svatých) in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. about 70 kilometers east the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague, lies this small town called Sedlec. It might have been an ordinary enough town, if not for its extraordinary church. The inside of this church is decorated with artworks made of real human bones. The ossuary contains approximately 40,000-70,000 human skeletons which have been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

A cistercian monastery was founded near Sedlec in the year 1142. One of the principal tasks of the monks was the cultivation of the grounds and lands around the monastery. In 1278 King Otakar II of Bohemia sent Henry, the abbot of Sedlec, on a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land. When leaving Jerusalem Henry took with him a handful of earth from Golgotha which he sprinkled over the cemetery of Sedlec monastery, consequently the cemetery became famous, not only in Bohemia but also throughout Central Europe and many wealthy people desired to be buried here. The burial ground was enlarged during the epidemics of plague in the 14 th century (e.g.in 1318 about 30 000 people were buried here) and also during the Hussite wars in first quarter of the 15 th. century.

AFTER 1400 one of the abbots had a church of All -Saints erected in Gothic style in the middle of the cemetery and under it a chapel destined for the deposition of bones from abolished graves, a task which was begun by a half blind Cistercian monk after the year 1511. The charnel-house was re-modeled in Czech Baroque style between 1703 - I710 by the famous Czech architect, of the Italian origin ,Jan Blažej SANTIM-Aichl. The present arrangement of the bones dates from 1870 and is the work of a Czech wood-carver, František RINT (you can see his name, put together from bones, on the right-hand wall over the last bench).

THE most interesting creations by Master Rint are the chandelier in the centre of the nave, containing all the bones of the human body, two monstrances beside the main altar and the coat-of arms of the Schwarzenberg noble family on the left-hand side of the chapel.

[Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary

http://www.kostnice.cz/

]

Movie review : Transformer The Revenge of The Fallen

THE much talked about sequel of the Transformer created quite hype in its early days of release. But the movie was kinda mixed bag in its overall presentation.

SHIA LaBeouf and Megan Fox ‘s charm has always been a positive point for the Transformer series. Superb special effects, sound and video editing adds more to this movie. But I guess Michael Bay went a bit too far by trying to show a bit of everything in it. Girl robot following Sam ( Shia LaBeouf ) in the college and trying to kill him in bed will certainly remind you of Terminator and Species series and this looked way out o sync. Towards the end the strange ( rather foolish ) sequence of Sam dying and then again coming back to life after taking order from seniors robots in somewhere in heaven ( or should I say heave-tronics??? ) mixed with some very old styled emotions made the movie dull towards the end.

DESPITE all these cons this movie is still good to watch “once” in some good theatre for it’s amazing action sequence and sound effects.

My Rating : Average