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The Ungulate conference at Munnar went really well. Got to meet some of worlds best wildlife biologists, scientists, photographers, filmmakers etc. Ofcourse, I also planned the trip to go see the Kurinji Flowers which are in bloom and the Nilgiri Thar and to do some ground work on another project. But the weather was not on my side. It was wet wet wet and my new gear got fully drenched in the rain.. including my bag.. the big lens.. everything. To make matters worse, the place was infested with leeches. Till date, leeches got me many times on my foot…

Starting today, I’m off to Munnar to attend the 4th World Congress on Mountain Ungulates. This is the first time I’m attending a wildlife conference in my life and I’m eagerly looking forward to meeting a lot of people and attending lot of the session. I’m going along with Sandesh Kadur to do a small expedition there. Will write about it once I get back. See you next week.

I’m at the GPLv3 Conference at IIMB and it sucks. People missed the whole point of the conference. The conference is about what-to-have and what-not-to-have in the next version of GPL. However, the last 2 days, people have been just asking “How do I run xxx in linux” to “What do you think about M$”. Currently I’m in the DRM panel and someone asks RMS “Why free software” and he is going on and on about how he was in MIT and how he lost freedom.. the usual stuff. Somehow he/she does not get boo’ed while someone got boo’ed coz…

Finally after months of waiting my new gear had arrived. After the Adorama fiasco, the lens went out of stock everywhere. Late July, Gowtham (an online friend whom I’ve had exchanged few mails before regarding photography) shot me a mail saying he was coming down to Bangalore and he could get the lens for me. Exactly on the same day, fresh stock of this lens showed up in B & H. Gowtham ordered it right away and got it delivered to his place without any issues what so ever. Then he flew into India exactly on the day the London…

This is the view from top of Honnamati hill at BR hills. My favorite place on earth. The valley that you see is about 30% of this amazing wilderness paradise called BR hills. This wildlife sanctuary is in a valley which is protected on all the sides by hills, which keeps it relatively less disturbed. I was at the right place at the right time to have captured this ray of light falling on the forest cover through the monsoon clouds. My last two trips have been very fruitful in terms of photography. I’ve managed to upload the first set…

Some updates on my photography front : I got a mail from BBC Wildlife last night. I did not make it to the wildlife photographer of the year award. However, my Vine snake photograph made it to the final stage of the ‘Animal Portraits’ category it seems. I’m just thrilled to even have reached to that point considering they had more than 18,000 entries from 55 countries. About 20 of my photographs have been selected for a exhibition being hosted by WWF. If you are in Delhi, do visit the Indian Habitat Center from 25th to 31st. The exhibition will…

After weighing in all my options for many months, I finally decided on upgrading my lens. I decided to buy an expensive telephoto lens. (One of the top end Nikon lens which costs about $5000) My friend Sanath agreed to carry the lens for me from the US back to Bangalore. He gave me his relative’s address in San Diago where I was suppose to ship the lens. Since I live in India and my Credit card has a $2000 limit, I asked Bharath to buy it for me and I said I’ll wire transfer the money once the delivery…

Jeffrey Friedl has written an excellent overview on the Digital camera white balance. Most of the photographers I know (even professional ones) do not understand what White balance is and they just leave it in auto most of the time, without touching it again in post-processing. I spend few min on each of my photograph to get the right balance and right temperature in post-processing as it makes a BIG difference in how your photograph will look finally.

These lovely lily’s were in bloom in my garden this week. So got out my macro lens and did a small photo shoot of this flower. This photograph is my favorite of the lot. I’ve made a 1400×1050 wallpaper version since I get so many mails for them.