Paris is a beautiful city, but also very hectic. I was amazed to see the railway network in Paris. For four days, we didn't have to take anything other than a train. I visited Paris when I had been in Frankfurt for a short term assignment of 3 months.
Personally, it gave me chance to see the places, which I could have seen only in Movie songs in the past. I was absolutely consumed by the Louvre Museum, especially the painting section - I could have spent all four days in the Paintings section itself. Some of the photos that I have clicked in the paintings section are uploaded here.
There are quite a few photographs that I have taken from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Some of those photos of which the angles are little different and appealing are attached here.
The one attached in the right side is the one which is my desktop for the last one year.
This one I think is equally well constructed and I was at the peak of the tower to take this photo. The camera is a very good one - a Sony W30, which belongs to my friend and colleague who made the trip with me. The depth of the photos at full zoom was amazing. I think the Sony W30 has been my best experience with a non-SLR digital camera. However, I do regret not having the CANON EOS 400D, which I bought only two weeks after this trip. The depth of the photos could have been better. However, this Sony W30 had been amazing in that trip.
It has been a trip to savour - the one which I promised to do again with my family. Paris is also the city where I had first seen the Disney Land - However, I went till the gates and backed out saying that I wouldn't want to visit Disney Land without my son (My daughter wasn't born then).
I did visit Disney Land of Los Angeles, last year (2008), with my family and fulfilled one of the promises that I had made during the Paris trip.
Photography:
My interest on photography dates back to 1993. It had everything to do with the way my first ever Photograph shaped up in the Vandalur Zoo near Chennai. We had seen a deer and I happened to be the one with the camera in hand. Everyone shouted "shoot" and I clicked what I saw. It was a fantastic first picture as the deer was moving and I managed to get the deer's picture right in the middle of the frame and with utmost precision. Encouraged by that first picture (which, I didn't realise then, happened by mere luck than skill), I clicked a couple of more important pictures on another day - very important ones for my friends who were supposed to be there in those pictures. The result of those pictures (I had accidentally covered the flash with my hands) left my friends disappointed and exhasperated and myself very focussed on learning where I went wrong. I did handle many point and shoots during the next 10 years - from Minolta to Yaschica. During the period 1993-2002, I found myself in-front of the camera for around a dozen times, as opposed to the dozen hundred times that I was behind the camera, though my engagement and subsequent wedding in 2002 changed a small part of that statistic. I had a very little brush with a SLR camera as one of my room mates had a Nikon FM10, before finally getting a Sony P8 Digital Point and shoot camera in 2003 for myself. I shot some of my best pictures with the Sony P8. I had my eye on the Digital SLR cameras since 2004 and finally got a chance to lay my hands on my first Digital SLR - a Canon E0S400D - in 2007. I added a telephoto zoom lens to the camera by end of 2008 and happily shooting ever. Most of what I shot with my Canon EOS400D is personal and hence we won't be seeing the pictures from the camera, in this blog, anytime soon.
My interest (and perceived skills) in photography gave me two of the unforgettable moments in my life.
1. My cousin was giving her Debut Classical Dance performance and as usual (as the news spread out within the family circles that I was both a willing and able photographer - "willing" was more appropriate than being "able") I was given the photography responsibilities. Enthusiastically, I bought a couple of film rolls and loaded the first one into the camera. My another cousin, who was interested in "my kind" of photography (no idea whatever that means), stuck with me. However I was a little late getting into the theatre and the first song was almost finished when I started shooting. I did manage to get 3 or 4 good snaps of the first song though. During the break, I gave the camera to my wide-eyed cousin and was drinking coffee. As my luck would have it, my cousin clicked the rewind button in the camera and the film went into its shell and the camera was pointing to '0'. I had two choices - either I leave the film roll as it is and it will have only 4 good photos or I re-load the film thereby loosing the first 4 photos. I decided to do the latter as I had missed most of the first song anyway. I reloaded the film and started shooting again happily. I promptly handed over the exposed rolls to my cousin. I almost forgot this little fiasco till the prints of the photos came out. Unbelievably when printed, the first 4 photos looked like trick shots. My cousing was performing one step on the left side of the photo and one another on the right (because of double exposure). Another one had her in a pose in the top half of the photo and another in the bottom half. My cousin was ecstatic (She called me "PC Sriram!!!") with the photos that she repeatedly asked me how did I do it. I wouldn't tell her, would I?
2. One of my friends invited me to take photos in his sister's engagement and I happily obliged. I started loading a film to my point and shoot camera and started shooting as I deemed fit. When I had completed taking one roll, I carefully removed the film roll and handed over to my friend (whose sister's engagement it was). I was busy loading the other fresh film roll in to the camera that I didn't even notice what my friend was doing. After I had loaded the film, I looked at my friend to say "I am ready". But before I could say anything, what I saw in front my eyes left me speechless. My friend who had the film roll with exposed photos, was taking the film roll out in the open sun. I cried "What are you doing?" with disbelief. He replied cooly "I am just looking at the photos that you have taken". Years after, my brother still rolls in laughter when he thinks of the gobsmacked expression I showed after hearing what my friend had to say.
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