Even though I’ve quite a few recent photos sitting on my hard drive I’ve been unable to choose one from them to post today. Instead, here is something from my archives. I almost trashed this but after some cropping and PP it seems worth posting.

I’m still trying to learn the art of pre-visualizing a shot before I press the shutter. I’ve miles to go before I can do that properly but this photo is one example of using that technique. I’m happy that it turned out exactly as I had wanted it to in the first place.

I’m feeling quite tired so I’ll keep it short. This is another photo from Konigswinter. Some might find the photo dark but I was forced to increase the contrast and decrease some brightness to make the third contrail stand out better.

How does one engage with politics in a fruitful way, beyond the platitudes? Apart from voting for your local representative (which I must confess, somewhat shamefacedly, I haven’t ever done) what can ordinary citizens do to make politics less of a political word?

Our press and leaders wallow in the fact that India is the ‘World’s largest democracy’. The strength of the electorate that votes in election after election is bigger than the populations of most countries. But, voting is also a class thing, where urban middle class angst collides with the moffussil realities of the ‘other’ India that doesn’t make it to the 24/7 T.V screens; the India that doesn’t invade middle class sensibilities with its smells and sounds and the India of paan-chewing messiahs and hooded naxal ‘terrorists’.

A common complaint in middle class drawing rooms across India is that politics today has become such a messy affair. “Everyone is corrupt,” is the lament. True, politics is not the same as it was 20 or even 10 years ago; True, also, that each and every fibre of the political system seems to be dyed in the cesspool of venality; Even more true is the fact that going up against the ‘system’ seems like an impossible task.

The common perception here is that ‘we’ are the victims of a system gone so rotten that it is beyond redemption. But haven’t all of us contributed to it, don’t we all have a hand, and share the responsibility, for the way things are?

Take Jessica Lal. She has become an icon that fuels middle class rage. How dare they shoot a (pretty, young, westernized) woman in a (illegal) bar and manage to get away with it. After all, the killer(s) were nouveau riche spoilt young rich kids from political families. There were many eyewitnesses that evening when Jessica was shot, but when it came to the crunch none of them put their (middle class) money where their mouth was.

Of course, you could always argue that “it’s the system maan.” But the eyewitnesses at the ‘Tamarind Court’ were not people who might be called financially or otherwise insecure. They might have shown more spine, done something to engage with the ‘system’ that all of us love railing against in the air conditioned confines of our Tamarind Courts. When the people of planet page 3 fail, why expect poor Zaheera to defy the system.

The people who held candlelight demonstrations beside India Gate saw a reflection of themselves in the Jessica Lal affair. Yesterday it was Jessica, tomorrow it could be my turn. And yet, when thousands of women are raped across that ‘other’ India every day, the India that doesn’t make it to the T.V. screens, thousands paraded naked on dusty village streets for defying caste conventions, thousands shot dead for sullying family honour, our middle class doesn’t erupt in protest. These women are best relegated out of sight and out of mind.

I didn’t get sufficient time to process another photo from my visit to Konigswinter so here is something from a while back instead. This is the third one in my on and off series on flora in the grip of winter’s sleep and waiting for spring to arrive.

Here is another photo from the same place as yesterday. Cloned out some very distracting shrubs from the bottom. I noticed after coming home that they were present in almost all the photos I shot from this point! For some reason I got a lot of noise in the shadows in this photo even though it was shot at ISO 100. I’ve seen this happen sometimes so am trying to see if there is a pattern to their occurence. Has this happened to any of you? Any obvious reasons I’m missing? Please email me (arthedains at gmail dot com) and let me know.

As I had mentioned yesterday, I got out of Cologne for a brief time yesterday evening to take advantage of the nice clear day. I went to Konigswinter which is a small town along the Rhine, roughly opposite the erstwhile capital of Germany-Bonn. It is something of a resort, lying as it does among the lovely Drachenfels, a mountainous range. My plan was to climb to the top of the tallest hill on the outer edge of the town and take some sunset photos of the breathtaking vista visible from up there. But as it turned out I was completely out of breath by the time I went a quarter of the way up! In my defence, it was a very steep gradient, at times the inclination reached 60 degrees I think! So I decided to put off the climb to the top for another day when I was better prepared and instead chose a vantage point from where the view was not so bad and clicked away. Here is the first one from that shoot. The river is of course the Rhine and the town below is Konigswinter. On the extreme right of the photo you can see a silvery round building. It is the tallest building in the state I live in.

Although I went out of Cologne today to a nearby town on a photographic trip, I couldn’t decide on a photo to post from that trip. So here is something old instead. I hope you can guess why I named the photo thus! I’m quite happy with the way this photo has turned out. Initially, I had thought of posting this in color but the monochrome version which resulted after PP won hands down in the end!

I know this is a bit blurred and unsharp (it was shot handheld in very low light) but I like his natural smile.

This is the other photo I had talked about yesterday. I still cannot decide which one I like the best among the two. They both appeal to me on different levels!