Tuesday, January 4, 2011

THE FUTURE TECHNOLOGY!

This is the most hilarious ad I have ever seen. Check this out. The end of the commercial is great.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Photography

All right....here today, I am writing my first blog on photography.

A Camera.

Lot many people think great pictures come from great cameras. They don't; they come from great photographers. Great photographers are great creators next to great musicians. Give a dumb camera to a nice photographer, he will get the picture right. Give a nice camera to a dumb, he will never get a picture at all.

K, what makes a great picture? Or at least a nice picture? I am not going to say here, how to take a great photo and what is needed for doing that! Because, thousand other blogs are doing that, and million other tutorials are available online to explain both technically and logically on handling the camera.

But I can definitely say how to look at a picture and understand it from its properties. A digital photo is saved as jpg (jpg, bmp, tiff are some of the file extensions for pictures. Check out Wikipedia for more on file types) and along with it, the pictures 'EXIF' properties are also saved. Most modern day cameras stores the exif properties when a picture is saved as jpg. There are number of free softwares available online to read the exif properties of an image. If you are using Windows xp and above, this is automatically shown when you are viewing the picture properties. Most online photo storage sites also provide these properties for a photo you are viewing.

Why do we want to look into these properties? Because, these give you technical details of the photograph like exposure, aperture, metering mode etc. And, inspiring from others creations is the best way to learn and master the art of photography. By understanding them, you can understand more dimensions of a picture.

Also, take more time to see a picture. Look how it is composed, what patterns do you see? What is the subject of interest for the photographer? What colors have been captured? What contrasting objects do you see? How much is the lighting? (Each of this items deserve a separate study). A final question...Why did the photographer choose this composition?

Getting answers to these questions at once is not going to help. Do one by one. Learn one and apply the same  when you go out next time for picturing.

Now, click the links below to look at these nice pictures taken with not so great cameras. I purposefully chose some day to day photographs which should be possible by a normal camera and a beginner photographer... As I said, check out the properties of the picture. Hope, this inspires some....

Enjoy your photography


http://www.flickr.com/photos/gandara/181683844/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/serbretel/2312832108/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39443403@N07/3625952552/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianoaurelio/747760916/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianoaurelio/747760942/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marvin-r/4140889748/in/set-72157620560471004/

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Avatar - a reality

Welcome back to my blog.. Thanks for the comments!


Lets talk about a movie - Avatar. Originated from Sanskrit and taken to the world, the word Avatar represents a second form of oneself. The story behind the movie Avatar, represents a lilteral definition of the word. It takes its root from Hindu mythology - where Lord Vishnu takes reincarnation or Avatar of a human form to kill evil on the earth. The movie 'Avatar' is not the first one, though to use Hindu mythological stories. 'The Matrix' takes its root from there too.

OK! What is special about this movie, now? All know it is a big budget James Cameroon movie in 3D with super real graphics and effects. But, that is not the best part. The facts behind the making of this movie is amazing and surprises me.

We were all awed by the computer generated dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park. That was a break through in animation and CG. We got so use to the CG creatures, we dont find it special any more, up until Avatar where we have humanoids in the movie; CG humans! So, what? Generating humans is the least thing James could have worried about. But, giving human expressions to those graphical humans is a challenging one.

Motion capture technology had been in use for quite a long time. Actors wear a weird suite with motion sensors and perform the act. The motion sequences are fed to a computer where the graphical creature followed the motion sequences and represented on the film. Now, for Avatar, James used Performance Capture. He used small cameras in front of the actors and recorded the expressions. In addition to motion, their expression sequences are also fed to a computer. Using special alogorithms, humanoids in Avatar took their shape and looked near real like humans. Actually, one would not even realize the graphics while watching the movie.

That is one part. The other part is how to make this virtual humanoids interact with the environment? James had a solution through Augmented Reality. Avatar is by far the best implementation of this tehnology. Avatar was James idea from the past 10 years. He had to wait this long until 3D and virtual reality industry could evolve.

James would be shooting at a virtual forest environment while the humanoids generated graphically, would be superimposed in the real time over his environment. On top of this, James also added virutality to the environment. He invented a new camera to shoot using Augmented reality. Yes he invented! He invented a new world of virtual reality.

Hats off to James Cameroon.

If you have n't watched the movie, close this computer screen. Head out for the big screen.

Monday, February 1, 2010

iAnything from Apple

This is my first blog ever!

iPad! Why iPad? This question never came, when iPhone was born or when iPod touch was born. For some reasons, iPad does not seem to arrange itself into Apple's list of products. The first thing that comes into my mind is the display. Good for watching movies, playing games, but for reading books (which is what it is targeted for), it may not be a right candidate. It is missing e ink. Again on the browsing, it follows iphone, and has best user experience........but, wait a minute.....there is no flash. Those are the big drawbacks, on something you see. Another big one is about something you cannot see, yes, a camera in the front for chat.

Definitely, iPad would have been a great device with all the three above. I don't understand what Apple had in its mind...

On the other hand, iPad is the coolest and stylish device. Great looks with a nice big silver logo. Put it in a case, you like a professional. It is by far the sexiest device, as a portable computer...no...net book...no..wait, tablet...no no....e book reader....no...super size iPod touch....no.....hmm what should I call it?

Lets wait and see!