My love story

Ok..here goes my first blog...I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I m not going to talk about some girl, as u would have expected with such a title.Other than people, We all fall in love with many things in life- cricket, football, tv, internet, computer gaming, travel, movies, SMSing and so on. Somewhere along the run of my life me too fell in love with such a thing....Photography..

I guess i was introduced to it by my cousin, Vishnu Chettan, when he brought his first camera, Kodak KB10, a simple point and shoot type film camera..I must have been some 11, 12 yrs old then. Apparently, he too shares the love for photography. Soon enough, i started bugging my parents to buy one for me too. And after some years of bugging, i got married to my first camera..Kodak KB12, a slightly improved version of my brother's. But soon I realized that being in love with a film camera is like being in love with a millionaires daughter..its an expensive affair..One roll of film with 36 shots will cast about Rs12o and its developing and printing will cost another 250..In effect, i had to spend around Rs370 to take just 36 photos!

Since then camera has been my regular companion on all our family tours. Atfirst i was settled with taking photos of people and places we went. But soon thoughts on wildlife photography, especially bird photography, crept in me. But, with a camera having no zoom at all, it was like planning to buy a Honda Civic with only Rs100 in your pocket! I knew it well; but still was adamant. AHANGARAM...wat else to say! Anyway in each roll of film i brot, i kept aside 3,4 shots for my experiments. Since there was no zoom in the camera, i had to get really close to the birds to get a fairly decent photo. So i spent many hours trying to get as close to them s possible. But they didn't share my noble intentions and flew away at the slightest hint. But after hours of patience testing, i finaly got close to 2 or 3 of them and clicked away. But the results were devastating. The subjects were of the size of a speck in the photos. My relatives laughed their heads off when i pointed out the specks and told them that is supposed to be the bird i was trying to photograph..3, 4 films and a humengous amout of my time got flushed down the drain! And finally i had learned the lesson!

Years passed by and age of the film cameras gave way to digital cameras. Now u didn't have to worry about the number of shots u fire. That means u have enough space for your little experiments. But i never got a chance to lay my hands on a digital until my brother brought one..Sony H9..A semi-professional digital camera with 8.1 megapixels and an astonishing 15x zoom! The only camera that i was familiar with, had just two buttons. One for rewinding the film and the other one for taking the shot. But the new camera in my hand had a great asortment of buttons, spread all over the camera body. After some fruitless hours of pondering and experimenting, I finaly arrived at the doorstep of google! From there i was taken to the world of photography, a fascinating world full of shutter speeds and apertures, exposure, white balance, Macro, ISO and so on..With the newly acquired wisdom, i set out to put them to practice. The outcomes were amazing. I found that, with a camera, a most insignificant water droplet on a leaf can be transformed to a mesmerising picture!

Some months later i was married the second time. This time, to a digital beauty. Canon powershot SX110. Since then it has been my faithful companion on all my trips :)