India : Heritage Walk : Ahmedabad Pols (contd.)

Thanks Mike for the comment! Something about Ahmedabad, to answer your question!


Ahmedabad is a city in the western part of India. These pols are the part of the old city in Ahmedabad, its the way people lived in communities in the old town.

Another picture from the pols

Passing Times!

Heritage Walk : Ahmedabad Pols

India : Heritage walk : Ahmedabad Pols

Pols is the plan of old city in Ahmedabad. Some of these pols are virtually small villages with narrow streets, a common square, a feeder for birds.

Each pol has an entrance door with a guard room on the top of the door. Common square has a notice board used for mentioning the events for the week in the pols and a place for people to sit in a group.

People in the pols started putting up a bird feeder to attract birds as there were no trees in these constrained neighbourhood. These feeders are beautiful structures with a storage area for bird food at the bottom where the community collectively stores the food. They also have small openings on the walls for the birds to make a nest.

Again I can't imagine posting just 1 picture!!

Entrance for the pols

Notice board at the Common Square

Bakulbhai : people from Gujarat usually add "bhai" brother and "ben" sister at the end of the names

Small holes in the buildings for birds to make a nest

"Chabutra" - Bird Feeder - in the squares

A Square in one of the pols with architecture from 4 different times.

The locals who gave permission for this trip and a chance for the world to see what an amazing community exists in this little known part of Ahmedabad!

Heritage Walk : Swaminarayan Temple

India : Heritage Walk

Walk started from a Swaminarayan Temple made in 1822, in the old city of Ahmedabad. Now they have about 600 temples around the world.

Sorry for not being able to comment on anyones PAD these days!

Heritage walk : Ahmedabad

Day 4 : India : Heritage walk of Ahmedabad

We took a heritage walk around Ahmedabad, my hometown, founded in 1411. This walk starts from a temple, takes you through old housing system (pols) and ends up at a mosque. I plan to take the blog readers through this amazing walk in the next few days of PAD.

Its a 400+ year old ceiling of a temple carved from Burma wood and decorated using vegetable paints.

India : Ahmedabad

Day 3 : India : The day we fly and fight Kites

This is the day when all the fun is on the terraces. Loud Music, drums, food, drinks and beautiful girls covers the eventful day. We fly kites and try to cut other kites in the air, sometimes just when the kites are going airborne. To do that we use the strings that are literally coated with glass (yes fingers start bleeding by the end of the day). Everytime a person cuts the kite, everyone around him supports him by shouting "Kaipio Che" (we have cut your kite) sometimes with drums and using a microphone to let the other person know who cut his kite.

I will try to get some pictures today, actually showing 2 kites in a fight. I was too busy flying kites myself yesterday to click anything interesting

Last picture are the kites we fly during night. Its usually a big kite and we tie tiny lamps with candles (tukaal) on the strings, sometimes more than 10. We usually fly that in a group and there are few kites flying around it to save the main kite with lamps from others who will try to cut it.

Thanks for everyone who commented!

Terraces with people having fun flying kites

Kites at night with Tukals (tiny lamps) tied to the strings. Kite at the back (left) has 6 lamps and in the front has 4.

Ahmedabad : Uttrayan - Kite Flying Festival

Day 2 : India : Kite Flying Festival

This was the most fun in a day I have ever had clicking pictures. We are having a kite flying festival here in Ahmedabad, India. It is on 14th January and everyone and I mean almost everyone in the city will be flying and fighting kites all day. We bought about 100 kites ourselves for the day, oh yeah! 100 and it will get over before evening!

Everyone thought I was from a newspaper and started posing for the shots hoping to expect in one of the papers next day :)

I just couldn't post 1 picture!

Good Morning!

Good Morning!

India : Day 2 : Time 6:45am, View from my room in India

I know its not really a great picture, but something I use to see every morning I woke up before I moved to US. I decided besides a showcase for experiments with my pictures, trying out different things, PAD is also a great place to post things that matter to me.

To most this is not a view that they would miss, to me it is my home!

Thanks Pidge, Soni and JP for the wishes. I had a nice flight, tiring and long but the end results were going to be so rewarding (seeing my family) that I didn't mind.

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f3.5/f4.6
Shutter Speed : 1
Aperture : F3.5

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Across the Seven Seas

Across the Seven Seas

Not really a great picture or anything, but I am leaving in about 1 hour, so I decided to make that as my theme for PAD entry. I edited the picture in PS to make it a little more not so boring :)

I don't know if I will be able to continue entering the pictures for the next month, but I will try.

As for the last entry question, it was the weight of my check-in bag. I am allowed to carry 2 bags of 50lbs each, hence the title.

See you all from the other side of the world!

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Tamron 75-300mm f3.5/5.6
Shutter Speed : 1/3
Aperture : F4.5

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Useful proof!

Useful Proof!

Following Ben's style of PAD here, a question for commentors :

So what is it that I am trying to weigh here? Hint : Its not my weight

Answer to the question will be hopefully in my tomorrows PAD entry. I am not sure if I will have enough time to do the shot but I will try. Oh! That's another hint.

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Tamron 75-300mm f3.5/5.6
Shutter Speed : 1
Aperture : F4.2

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The last drop

The last drop!

I was trying to shoot something for the backlight challenge, but nothing really excited me enough to enter. This was one of the outtakes.

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f3.5/f4.6
Shutter Speed : 1/160
Aperture : F6.3

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Cupid in love!

Cupid in love!

About 60 years back this statue appeared behind our office at the edge of the pond. No one knows where it came from. Its just been standing there ever since.

After 10 days we had some sun and finally I felt like clicking something outside. I wanted to experiment with the correct exposure of white. This shot was at +1 EV to get the proper exposure.

Well, I just made up the story to make it sound more interesting ;)

Thanks everyone for all the comments !!

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f3.5/f4.6
Shutter Speed : 1/160
Aperture : F6.3

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Starry Claus

Starry Claus

Starry calls himself my father. He came, dressed up before Cristmas to give his gift, a lottery ticket for everyone at work.

We share the same birthday and its because of him I have had some celebrations on my birthday from the last 3 years. He is full of stories and loves to talk. Stories from the grave yard he worked at, the war, time he worked as a quality assurance guy, as a technician, as a cook and so on. He makes the best pasta salad!

A friend I will always remember!

Edit to add : I was too lazy (or rather it was an eventful day) to click a picture today, so one of the older pictures.

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f3.5/f4.6
Shutter Speed : 1/60
Aperture : F4.2

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Tuned In

Tuned In

As Pidge mentioned about the DOF seeing my previous PAD entry, I decided to try that for tonight.

So I picked up my most popular prop and placed in facing the blinds to get a nice background. Lately this is the only thing I am using my guitar for, have to start doing things besides photography for a change, but there are so many things I would like to do but so little time!

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f3.5/f4.6
Shutter Speed : 1/10
Aperture : F5.6

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An Apple a day!

An Apple a day!

Inspired by the thread (mentorship) started by graphicfunk, I did some experimenting with multiple exposure.

Setup included an apple on black background and a table lamp. To get all the three positions in focus, I played around with manual focus before executing the shot.

In the shutter priority mode of camera I kept the shutter speed at 30sec. I kept the camera at manual focus and adjusted according to the first shot. After clicking, I waited for 2 sec before turning off the light, moving the apple in complete darkness, rotating the focus ring (based on number of attempts before), turning on the light for another 2 sec and repeating the same thing for 3rd position. After number of tries this came out to be decent, I did some photoshop, levels, curves, USM and resize to post it here.

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f3.5/f4.6
Shutter Speed : 30
Aperture : F14

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Red works!

It seems red background always looks great, just an experiment with red and background lighting.

Third day into PAD and I am looking around my room to shoot things !

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Nikon 18-55mm f3.5/f4.6
Shutter Speed : 1/8
Aperture : F5.6

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Challenge Entry - Shapes

Photo of the day is going to be the challenge entry at dpchallenge.com for the challenge "Shapes". I will edit this post once the challenge results are out.

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Goodbye 2005!!

Goodbye 2005!!

Walking through the Pheasant farms in Ithaca, NY. These pigeons were overlooking the pheasants sitting on the fences. At a distance someone fired a shot and they all started flying in circles, giving me enough time to get this beautiful shot. My very first day I was out shooting in 2006.

Camera : Nikon D50
Lens : Tamron 75-300mm - f4.0/f5.6
Shutter Speed : 1/320
Aperture : F6

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