400th photo here!

January 2007, Edinburgh.

February 2007, Konigswinter.

October 2006, Cologne.

We go celebrity hunting today. This is the great Shubha Mudgal. I think her voice has the power to etch glass. You can read something about her here.

The Dead Heart – Midnight Oil

I’ll go out on a limb and say it; this has to be one of the best greatest hits compilations, ever. There I said it and now you can start throwing whatever it is you throw at people who make one sided statements like that! Wait, there’s more sacrilege coming, apart from this collection I haven’t heard any of their individual albums but I’ll still argue that they are one of the best bands in rock. Do you feel like calling me names like hypocrite and shallow now? I mean shouldn’t a true fan hear each and every one of their songs on every one of their albums and then make such statements? Well, perhaps one day I’ll, but right now I’ll still argue they are great based on this one collection.

Midnight Oil is or rather was an Australian rock band from Sydney who were (and still are) famous for their hard rock sound, strong espousal of left wing causes, incendiary live shows and of course their powerful and hard hitting songs. Led by the charismatic and outspoken Peter Garrett (who actually ran for the Australian Senate on a Nuclear Disarmament Party ticket) the band brought a new sense of left wing activism seldom seen in the mainstream music scene. They were fiercely independent and refused to tone down their commitment to sometimes unpopular causes. Famously, they performed in front of the Exxon headquarters in New York in 1990 in protest of the Exxon Valdez spill carrying a banner that read, “Midnight Oil Makes You Dance, Exxon Oil Makes Us Sick”. They also created a stir with their performance at the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics where they performed wearing shirts that were emblazoned with the word ‘SORRY’, a public apology for the suffering Australian aboriginals went through for more than 200 years under white rule and a direct affront to the Australian PM John Howard sitting in the audience who had refused to apologize to the aboriginals in a gesture of symbolic reconciliation. The band was unfortunately dissolved in 2002 as Garrett left to concentrate on his political career. Apart from Garrett the band consisted of Rob Hirst on drums, Jim Moginie on keyboard/guitar, Martin Rotsey on guitar and a changing line up of bassists.

August 2006, London.

Something from the archives. An impromptu photo session was being orchestrated by the lady near the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. Moving on, today’s photo alongwith yesterday’s was processed using the newly released Adobe Lightroom 1.0. Although it ended up crashing one of my laptops due to insuffcient RAM, on a dual core system it works smoothly. It is not as intuitive as I had hoped but once you figure out some basic stuff it is pretty easy to use. The best part is the interface, so sleek and neat and the light plate feature is icing on the cake! The only thing stopping me is its hefty (for me) price tag. I’m wondering if it is worth buying Lightroom now or whether it makes more sense to wait for Adobe Photoshop CS3 with RAW 4.0 and buy that at a student price. Also, I streamlined my about page to make it easier to read and visually more appealing, or so I hope.

January 2007, Berlin.

February 2007, Cologne.

Cologne’s carnival ended today after five days of high camp and drunken craziness. Coming to the photo, I was torn between posting a color version or this b&w version. As you can see, in the end, I went with the b&w version but if in case you are interested the color version is here.

February 2007, Cologne.

January 2007, Berlin.

To my intense surprise I learnt today that I’m a finalist for the 2007 Photobloggies under various categories as I never do well in popularity contests. This photoblog is a finalist under the categories of ‘Best Southeast Asian Photoblog’, ‘Best Black and White Photography’, ‘Best Abstract Photography’, ‘Best Portrait Photography’ and the biggest surprise of all, ‘Photoblog of the Year’! The judging process is ongoing and the results will be announced in Chicago at the end of April apparently. Looking at the quality of the other photoblogs I seriously doubt if I’ll win anything so it is honor enough that I’m a finalist. Therefore, at this point, I’d like to thank everyone who nominated this photoblog. This wouldn’t have been possible without your support. Thank you very very much. Moving on, do check out the many excellent photoblogs nominated under various categories here.