Roll Down to the ‘Blues’

I certainly am writing a post after a long long time, so do spare me if you find my language a bit unpolished ;) you know what I mean! Anyways – The main point was that recently, I managed to enter the ‘Mahindra Blues’ festival that was held in Mumbai. & boy it was fab!!. Blues Music has always fascinated me in & out in recent years. The plus point was the photographs that I managed to click while listening to the whimsical music at the fest.

So thought I might dig deep into the form & get some info. On how the ‘Blues’ came to life. Also sharing some of the photographs from the event:

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. - Plato

Blues is a Native American musical and verse form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which we know. In other words, it is a blending of both traditions. Something special and entirely different from either of its parent traditions. In the early nineteen-sixties, the urban bluesmen were "discovered" by young white American and European musicians. Many of these blues-based bands like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, Canned Heat, and Fleetwood Mac, brought the blues to young white audiences, something the black blues artists had been unable to do in America except through the purloined white cross-over covers of black rhythm and blues songs.

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

Since the sixties, rock has undergone several blues revivals. Some rock guitarists, such as Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie Van Halen have used the blues as a foundation for offshoot styles. While the originators like John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins and B.B. King - and their heirs Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and later Eric Clapton and the late Roy Buchanan, among many others, continued to make fantastic music in the blues tradition. The latest generations of blues players like Robert Cray and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others, as well as gracing the blues tradition with their incredible technicality, have drawn a new generation of listeners to the blues.

“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music”

The photographs feature 2 amazing Indian Bands. – Blackstratblues & Soulmate.

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The Way of Light

It may be a little late for this, but it is a process I suppose. I’m still editing pictures from the year 2010 now that I think about it. Just thinking about editing all of the hundreds of thousands of pictures I made from 2011 is intimidating. That is where I am, buried in pixels.

I take a long time to do this. Of course, my favorite part of doing photography is looking at pictures. When it comes to my own work, I tend to be very critical, and this can make the process drawn out even longer. One of my most important goals from this effort is to get a better understanding of how I worked that year, how I’ve grown visually and where I need to improve.

So as I continue this process over 2012 or so, I figured I might share some on the blog:

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

This photo was randomly clicked over an afternoon chat session with my office mates. Sometimes it’s best to capture that moment.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die. - Albert Camus

A photo – featuring my cousin was clicked when he was walking through the sun & shade. Never thought I’ll get a good response for this click. But did :p ..People actually loved this snap.

“There are three forms of visual art: Painting is art to look at, sculpture is art you can walk around, and architecture is art you can walk through” – Mumbai City

Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. The photo clicked walking along the busy street of Mumbai

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.

A magnificent lantern or ‘kandil’ as we call it, lights the way through the sky. Was happy to see 10 of em attached to a kite.

Hope to work hard & click some more ...

Stay Safe. & Happy Clicking.. :)

Any advice or Feedback ? Do share your views with me on the comment box below. Thank You.

How to Use Social Media for Better Customer Acquisition

A user’s clickstream — the trail of clicks she leaves behind while surfing the web — has to end somewhere, so why not on a place where that surfer can become a customer?

That’s the thinking behind web-based customer acquisition. Until fairly recently, that was a relatively straightforward proposition: Just run some banner ads and search ads and then continue the conversation through email.

Social media adds some complexity. Nowadays, a tweet might lead to your Facebook Page or maybe a detour to LinkedIn. A Google search might include a +1 from a friend that will make you reconsider a brand while a Bing search will show what your Facebook friends think of that brand.

Not everyone has successfully navigated this new terrain. As Matt Lawson, VP of Marketing and Alliances for Marin Software admits, “I don’t yet have a handle on it.” With more variables comes more opportunities, though. Proponents say social media provides a powerful new tool to convert surfers into buyers. “Social media allows marketers to two things they couldn’t do before: scale one-to-one conversations and publish their own content without a media partner,” says Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing at Eloqua, a marketing automation firm. “These two behaviors converge in customer acquisition.”

However, Brian Solis, the principal analyst at Altimeter Group, says the modus operandi for most marketers is still twofold:

• Build the size of the community.
• Hope that at some point that translates into customer acquisitions.

olis isn’t alone in making this observation. Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s VP of Global Sales, told attendees at a media event earlier this year that she considered acquiring “Likes” to be the second phase for marketers on Facebook after setting up a brand Page. The third was using Facebook to cultivate your biggest and most-engaged fans.

The latter is the primary method for acquiring customers. In a nutshell, the idea is that if you engage people who are very interested in what you’re selling, they will tell others about it. Eventually, at least some of those people will buy something as well, even if it takes years to convert them. Below are some tips for offering that engagement.

Ask Your Fans What They Want:

It sounds simple enough – Notice the interactions on your posts & identify things fans really want from your social media page.

Become a Publisher:

Once you’ve determined what your target customers’ interests are, a good strategy is what’s known as “content marketing,” a.k.a. providing objective information. Since a hard sell undermines credibility, marketers are more or less forced to become publishers. Many are aware of this. A recent survey of marketers by Focus, though, found that so-called “content marketing” was the second-strongest performer for them over the past year, second only to email. (Social media was No. 3.)

Another upside of this strategy is that it provides a stream of content for your Facebook and Twitter activities. After all, without frequent, interesting updates, your fans will lose interest.

Provide Resolution:

If you consider a user’s clickstream as a conversation of sorts, then ending things in the middle is unsatisfying for the user and will end in frustration. Solis says the reason for this is the common tendency to end the clickstream at the company website. These days, there’s no reason to do that.

“The idea is that brands can use social media to bring closure,” Solis says. “By studying behavior, questions, answers, conversations, relationships, etc., businesses can learn how to design content, landing pages, and overall experiences to deliver the resolution various consumers seek.”

As an example, Solis cites the use of QR codes. Most companies, he says, will run a QR program that leads to the company’s homepage. A better strategy is to provide “a new landing page that is optimized for expectations.”

Improvise, But Use Common Sense:

As mentioned, Marin’s Lawson admits that customer acquisition via social media isn’t easy. One major issue he has is that, compared to traditional tools like search an ad, banner ads and email, social media is difficult to measure.

Lawson’s not the only one who has that issue. No industry standard figure seems to exist for customer acquisition via social media. That means that you may have a Facebook Page with 10,000 fans that nets only four leads but won’t have any idea whether that’s good or not.

Lacking a well-worn playbook, many go with their gut. Eloqua’s Chernov, for instance, has found that the hard sell is the wrong approach. “Selling on social media is like the old joke about the two bulls on the top of the hill: They can run down and cozy up with one cow, or they can walk down and get to know ‘em all,” he says. “Companies that try the hard sell on social media get ousted from LinkedIn Groups, voted down on Quora and ignored on Twitter and Facebook. The hard-sell runs against the fabric of social media. Marketers are far, far better off trying to help prospects — by talking about what they ‘know’ versus what they ‘sell’ — on social channels.”

Article Courtesy Mashable

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, toos

Take Stunning Abstract Pictures with Movement & Zoom

Camera movements have been used a lot to create an abstraction from a scene. The recipe is very simple: in a long exposure times move the camera while exposing. The result will look similar to the scene but in a more abstract way, in this small article I will discuss how to do it and what kind of results you can expect.

Equipment

Many of these images can be done handheld but it will be a lot easier with a tripod. If you handhold the camera it will be really difficult to get motion in only one direction and the result will probably look messy. If you have a tripod you also need a good head, a head that can allow you to move the camera in only one direction. Three way tripod heads or geared heads are perfect for the task. A ballhead will not be very useful but you can use it to pan horizontally if it has a panning knob as most ballheads have.

On a Sunny day you may also need some ND filters are you will be trying to achieve long exposure times. A ND8 filter is probably enough if you stop down the lens to F16 or F22. Diffraction is not a big problem as nothing in the image will be totally sharp.

A zoom lens is a good idea to create different compositions and to do some zooming!

Exposure Time

This depends a lot on the scene and what you plan to do. Very long exposure times or very short exposure times usually produce an unpleasant result. If you can try to use exposures from 1/30 to 4 seconds. With 1/30 you need a fast wrist!

Movements

The movements you can try depend on your equipment and the scene some basic ideas are:

• Vertical panning (typical for trees)
• Horizontal panning
• Circular panning
• Zooming

Circular movements are nice for fisheye views of a forest with the lens pointed straight up or for the opposite effect with the lens pointed 90 degrees down on a flower field or some scene with a lot of contrast.

Camera movements can be fun to try and can help you create a beautiful scene with bad light or when there are distracting elements in the middle of your composition. It’s a simple way to create abstract representations of what you see and if you process them strongly they can be beautiful prints.

Courtesy: Photography Blogger

Cadbury Oreo Togetherness Movement

Weekend will arrive soon. I miss the last weekend I spent with my family. I had great fun at the Movie and the dinner with my cousins and mom. Suddenly to my realization, we are so busy with our work life that we forget to spend quality time with our loved ones. There was once a time when families loved to be together. Had meals together, played together; but, today in this busy life, we often forget to bond with our children and parents which unfortunately builds up a large communication gap between the families.

My family thoughts took a spark when I observed my friend’s wall on Facebook. He posted an app result which caught my attention. It was “The Togetherness” app from Oreo India page. So, I went further more on my research to find that my favorite cookie Oreo was on Facebook. I instantly liked the page and saw some amazing activities on their wall.

From my observation I learnt that Oreo India is encouraging Togetherness between the families in India. May it be your relationship with your kids or with your parents; Oreo India is trying their best to erase all the gaps by connecting with your family members. 

I came to know about a feeling which was inside me from ages. The togetherness feeling. Togetherness is the feeling of being close to another person emotionally and physically. It’s an emotion which is as sacred as love for your family.

They have a brilliant app called Togetherness Quotient. A fun and interactive quiz which displays fascinating facts about Indian families. And more we can calculate our own togetherness quotient through their application. It is seriously some valuable piece of information when it comes to youngsters like us who find ways to bond with our families.

But the most proud moment was my “Togetherness Pledge” on the Oreo India page. “I pledge to spend more time with my family & will make all efforts to create warm memorable family moments and give my loved-ones what they deserve” …

This is certainly amazing for me to join such a movement and I personally feel that you guys should too join the togetherness celebration and spread love with your family at – Oreo India page on Facebook. – http://www.facebook.com/OreoIndia

Mobile Phone Photography - Keep Clicking

The rise of mobile phone photography as an art form, rather than just a convenient way to grab casual snapshots, has greatly inspired me.

We have developed a habit of clicking photographs from our cell phone devices and cherish them later. In most cases, our phone has become our primary camera, but despite tech developments that can see high-end options, most of us have 3.2-megapixel or less with limited functionality. But this doesn't mean you can’t take great photos — it just means you have to be smart about getting the right shot.

If you’re interested in taking better photos with your phone, then have a look through the article for some hints, tips, tricks and ideas for shooting success with your camera phone.

Manage Light - Camera phones always fight with the adjustment of lights. Try using manual settings on your camera phone and experiment on shooting with and without flash. Use the natural light available and try to reduce the harsh flash while shooting portraits.

Lessen the Camera Wobble – One of the greatest challenges with mobile phone cameras is the wobble while clicking images. Although this might help creating a special effect for certain pictures but more often it is an annoying result. Try using both your hands while clicking and try to reduce the shake to click stunning pictures...

Try Black & White – In certain circumstances, the image looks more striking when clicked in Black & white. Some angles enhance the objects and the overall effect of the click when turned to black & white. Portraits and close shots are mostly advisable when clicking in monotone.

Experiment on Different Angles – Experiment with your photography by clicking pictures from different angles. Get near to the ground, shoot from above, and keep clicking on different angles.

The best thing about camera phone snapping is that we never run out of film. So keep trying new approaches on your clicks and categorize the best of them. Remember – “The Best Images are born by imaginative experimentation.”

Do tell me your advices in the comments below.

Canon v/s Nikon Cameras - Infographic

Many people are confused over buying their cameras. The first question that pops up in their head – Canon… or Nikon...???  At some point, the world’s leading SLR camera makers, Nikon and Canon, pretty much leveled the playing field with each other - Both producers offer high quality compact digital cameras, professional digital cameras. Both manufacturers are constantly making substantial contributions to technological improvements in photography.

So here’s a quick infographic to help you think better:

Inforgraphic by - Mashable.com

Summer Care - Beat the heat with Fruit Juices

SUMMER is one of the six seasons of the year. Every two months will make a season or Ritu. Summer is in between the 16th May to 15th July. The strength of the body will be lost during this period.

People feel tired and exhausted during the season due to extensive heat rays of the sun, the watery portion (or Kapha) of the body of people, animals, plants, foods and the entire environment will become waterless and the vata will become more in the body and the atmosphere.

The skin will become dry and may precipitate skin diseases as eczema..

What to Drink and Eat: One must drink the juices of grapes, watermelon, banana, jack fruit, lemon and pineapple. This is to say foods and juices of sweet and cold and easily digestible must be consumed. The preparations of sugar, barely/green gram, sharbats, buttermilk with sugar candy are to be used daily to cool the body.

One must take the food of white rice with meat soup of meat of animals reared in cold areas.

Try out juices of grapes, watermelon, banana, jack fruit, lemon and pineapple during summer. Consumption of fruits and juices reduces body heat and benefits in controlling body temperature.

The juices of dry grapes, cucumber, kharjura with Dalchini, Cardamom must be drunk along with pure cold water kept in a pot or a freezer or these must be kept at night in moon light and used along with buffalo's milk. Water with parijatha flowers and usheera can also be used for drinking.

- One must not take foods of pungent, sour, dry and salty foods. Foods of rice with milk, sugar candy, butter milk, lassie are good for good health. Ghee can be used.

- Coffee and tea are not all good as they stimulate the central nervous system. Taking them on empty stomach is harmful as they mix with acid and circulated all over the body producing several sicknesses.

- Alcohol is a hot drink and must not be used during this season, either avoid it or drink it with plenty of water.