Somewhere under the ‘modern’ city.
When you walk down a deserted alley.
There may be someone behind you.
Lurking. Stalking.

It’s a very ‘funny’ art that adorns downtown Chicago. It’s a great gathering place and it’s fun watching people looking at themselves and others in the ‘bean’ and the backdrop of downtown Chicago’s tall scrapers adds to the atmosphere

Soldier Field is home to NFL’s Chicago Bears.

I have been wanting to get a lens which could get me shots closer (than my 18-200) to these lovely creatures of god namely birds. What has kept me away is the cost of buying a lens. Those who I have spoken to on this topic know how much I talk about this “disability” I have even cribbed about that in this below shown shot on Flickr.

But then they say that never is any lens enough. One of my Flickr friends – Koshy sir – told me that the ideal lens is 100mm more than what you have It’s not the lens but getting closer to the bird that matters more and being there at the right time! This is one such occurence!

I was at my alma mater KREC (or NITK as it is called now) for the annual college fest after a real long time. The college is in Surathkal near Mangalore and situated near the coastline. There is a lighthouse nearby and I had climbed the steps onto the top this time round. While I was capturing the beautiful sea shore from that height, I suddenly noticed a Brahminy Kite flying straight at me!! And beyond being impressed by the majestic beauty of this bird, I had the presence of mind to depress the shutter to get this magnificent sight. Like they say nothing like getting close to the subject!! Truly!

This one is titled “Getting Ready”. This is another one from Vienna. This is a view of the restaurant at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (or the Museum of Art History) at Vienna, Austria as it gets ready for the next set of customers after lunch hour.

I have titled this blog of mine “Photos Happen“. This is as good an example as I need to explain what I mean by it. No, I don’t mean to say that I never ‘plan’ my photographs/photography. In fact quite often I do! I plan meticulous details on what time to go, what kind of equipment to carry (or lug!), what kind of photographs I want to capture etc etc etc. But then if everything were to go by plan, then what would be the fun?! That’s what makes photography an exciting hobby! You can plan all you like. But photos have a way of “happening”. At least to me

We were in Vienna for a week’s short holiday in September 2008. I think on day 2 of this holiday, if I remember right, we decided to go take a look at one of the museum’s of Vienna. There are of course many… in fact Vienna has a “Museum Quartier” dedicated to museums! Just across from the Museum Quartier is the Maria-Theresien-Platz. The platz is of course named after Empress Maria Theresa who lorded over Austria and whose statue now lords over the platz!

On either of the majestic empress lie 2 fantastic museums housed in nearly identical looking (to the casual observer of course!) monumental builds too. One of them is the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or the Museum of Art History for those of us who prefer good old English! Mind you, this is a large, absolutely humongous museum! The collection of art and paintings is phenomenal and takes you many a hour, to just breeze through it. God alone knows how many days one will need to spend to do absolute justice to what these guys have put together! Anyway, lets leave the talk and description of the museum to others who want to talk about it!

What this large collection did do however was ensure that by the time we reached the paintings on the upper level, it was nearly closing time! And as the closing time drew to a close, we literally got pushed out of the chambers. What that also meant was that when I peeped over the balcony of the top floor into the atrium below, I saw the restaurant below being laid out afresh, after having been cleaned, for the next day’s visitors. Now just a few hours earlier, this was exactly the place we had a fabulous lunch and given the number of people milling around, I never gave the place a second look. Not to mention the hurry we were in to get it done with and move on to other portions of the museum!

Then when we were all done and one of the last to leave, it gave me the opportunity to photograph this place with nearly nobody around and the beautiful light and symmetry of this place! Like I say, Photos Happen!

Things I like about this photograph

• The light!
• The symmetry of the table layout which is disturbed by the round table at the top (and that silly little different sized table at the bottom right! )
• The ‘whiteness’ of the tablecloth and the marble (?) flooring offset by the black design on the flooring! Fabulous. Don’t you think?
• The absolute humongous size of this atrium!

Things I wish I could change about this photograph

• The fact that the bottom portion of the table arrangement got cropped off. This unfortunately I could not help! The place was so huge that from eye level, I could not even cover the whole area and I was holding the camera way up in the air above my head and trying to shoot by ‘judgement’!! And this is at 18mm – the widest I could go on the Nikon 18-200mm lens I was using! I tried a few shots till we were bullied out This is the one that came the closest to ‘ideal’

A bane faced by many a photographer is “stealth” of photographs. Pratap (@pixelshooter) has posted a pretty detailed take on this earlier which I read today. At around the same time, I noticed the comment shown below on the above photograph of mine. This got me thinking and led to this posting.

However, before we get into the dilemna I am facing, some basic definitions and understanding.

Copyright

Firstly what is a copyright? I find this article to be a good explanation of what a copyright is. After you read that, you might want to read a little more about copyright myths by the same author.

Photographs taken by an amateur photographer like me as a part of his/her hobby are buy default the copyright of the photographer.

License

A license refers to the act of authorizing use (under applicable intelectual property laws) by the licensor to the licensee sparing the licensee from a claim of infringement brought by the licensor. A more detailed explanation is on the wiki.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation devoted towards expanding the range of “creative” works available for others to build upon legally and share further. In many ways, Creative Commons is to creative work, what “open source” is to software. Creative Commons defines many licenses under which one can license one’s work. Depending upon the license you choose, the restrictions that apply on the licensee when he/she/they use your work changes. The advantage obviously is that while you keep the copyright, you also allow others to copy and distribute your work provide they give you credit under the conditions you specify.

What license to choose?

That of course brings me to the topic of what license to choose. If you are feeling a little lost with all the jargon – I know I was – there is a simple way of deciding using this page on the Creative Commons website. Personally, I have used the following 2 licenses

1. Attribution-Share Alike
2. Attribution-Non commercial-No Derivative Works

Dilemna

As you can see from the 2 links above, the first is far more “relaxed” as compared to the second. After I came across Creative Commons, around 2 years ago, all my photographs where shared under Attribution-Share Alike. Some time in the past I got into this thinking that I while I want my work to be available to others to copy and distribute, I don’t want them to use the same commercially or derive other things from my work. Hence the move to Attribution-Non commercial-No Derivative Works. I am however wondering on the “No Derivative” clause currently. I need to figure out if there is a license from CC which allows me to share my work, enforce a “non-commercial” clause but still allow for derivatives which are further shared alike by the licensee. That would achieve my want to contribute and get the community to grow. I am sure those of you who swear by Open Source, get where I am going with this and what is driving this thinking!

Let me know what you think

This one’s called “Let There Be Music”. I guess it’s not difficult to guess why!

I have been playing with idea of starting a blog for the photos I click and then I finally gave in to the temptation. The question remains as to how long am I going to sustain this though. The previous 2 attempts at blogging have been… er… just that, attempts! So here goes another attempt!

As a first post, I was wondering what to start of with. Then I thought why not merge 2 passions of mine. Photography and Music.

This one is from the archives. Circa 2008. And this is how this “photo happened”.

I was representing my company at Sibos 2008. Sibos in 2008 happened to be in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria! We were staying walking distance from the venue. On the first day, after the conference, we wanted to catch some dinner and a few of us went around looking for a place to grab some decent food. We found this off-beat looking Italian place a block or two away. It was drizzling outside and there was no hope in hell of seeing anything around. But I was carrying my camera… you know, just in case. Good thing I did I got this stunning trumpet hanging on the equally lovely old wall in the restaurant!

And now for you photographers out there who will not be happy to just stop at this and want the gory details on what went into this snap… sorry, it was an absolute no-brains-used, simple point and shoot affair! But no not on a point and shoot. It was on my trusty old Nikon D70S, with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR mounted on it!