Masoom: my cat

I've adopted a kitten 2 months back and it has been one of the best decisions. Actually she was left by a young girl in the nearby forest and my maid Mamoni brought her home. She is such a friendly cat and the moment I held her I knew she's going to stay! She loves people, because from day one she didn't fear us humans and let us hold her. Whenever she got any chance she sat on our lap and she still does it (she sleeps on my bed). 

Coco my Lhasa Apso; my another photography model, also took a great liking to her. She stays home mostly with Coco. My other dogs- Rika, Bhola and Joju who stays outside in the kennel are yet to like her because they have developed pack mentality and try to attack her whenever they see her. Anyways her addition to the family has been such a nice thing!  She is such a sweet friend and a great companion! She is skinny and won't put on weight no matter how much food she eats! Guess it is just a growing phase... I hope she grows up to round and stocky cat!

My older sister named her Massum/ Masoom, meaning "cute/ innocent" in Hindi language. I call her "Mew-mew" because she mews all the time for food!

 

Exif data:

Camera: Canon 40 D

Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.8

ISO: 1250

Shutter Speed: 1/60

Aperture stop: f/1.8 

Focal length - 50mm

 

Camera : Olympus EPL2
Lens: MC CIMKO MT Series 28mm f/2.8 Lens
ISO- 200
Shutter speed- 1/125
Aperture: ? Don't remember...maybe f/5.3

Camera : Canon 40D
Lens: SOLIGOR AUTO-ZOOM 1:4.5 F=75mm-260mm lens
ISO- 1250
Shutter speed- 1/13
Aperture: ? f/5.3 maybe

Santa!

There is this wonderful Photography blog called 
http://constellationcafe.wordpress.com/ by Akshay Bhoan. 
It is a great blog to check film roll reviews and reviews on Photography Books, Photographers, camera, lens etc... Also I love the healthy discussions and inspiring articles. 

Today I got a parcel consisting of 4 film rolls; Lomography Slide/ X-Pro 200, Fujifilm REALA 100, ORWO B&W, Kodak 200 from Akshay Bhoan!!! Cool! 

Since 2004 I am actively into Photography but became more serious with my first DSLR- Canon 40D in 2007. I grew up with film photography but we never had the professional or even remotely good camera in our home. We had those plastic- automatic- commercially mass produced Konica/ Kodak film cameras which my mother used to buy year after year since it never lasted longer... She herself likes to take pictures but she clicks without knowing any technical basics; in automatic mode. 
I liked Photography since childhood but I never got the result like the ones I saw on magazines so I took it for granted until later I realized that it takes a good camera to get good result; best a manual camera and whole lot of technical know-hows...

Since I come from a remote place, exposure to Photography and information was limited...

2000- A new world of World Wide Web opened up to me... much later it became my Photography teacher. I am a self taught but at times I feel that I should have joined a Photography class to makes things easier and quicker. 

I got into film photography very late- 2010-2011. I read up a lot from the net... 

Hopefully one day I'll get to have my own darkroom and stocks of film rolls...

Till then I thank Akshay Bhoan for encouraging a newbie like me by his thoughtful gesture. Thank you.

Ziro Festival of Music (September 2012)

Ziro Valley is known for it's scenic beauty and a well known place of Arunachal Pradesh. A music festival and a joint Art and culture festival was organized by few people I knew. My friend Dinu and I planned on going for the 3 days days music fest (14-15-16 Sep'12) to Ziro. 

I carried my Olympus E-PL2 with Cimko MT 28mm f/2.8 lens and Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens. Both the lens doesn't give me infinity focus and it was a very bad idea to carry them for traveling to a place which is known for lots of beautiful sceneries. Cimko MT is also particularly not a very nice lens. The one I have is on MD mount. I realized my folly much latter when I struggled for infinity focus. I tried my best with the lenses and tried "focus free" technique most of the times.

M43 Olympus gives 2X crop so Cimko MT 28mm f/2.8 lens becomes 56mm focal lens (kindly correct me if I am wrong). I post processed some of the photos in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and tried retaining the details of the sceneries and also by sharpening the photos.

We stayed in Dinu's uncle Mr. Tilling Dole's lodge. It was a pleasant co-incidence because Mr. Dole was also a Govt. commissioned photographer but now turned organic farmer and Entrepreneur.

A friend of ours had set up tea stall. We helped her run the stall and meanwhile I also did Tarrot reading for fun. The music was great. We had our own North-East celebrated artists (barefoot rock singer-Lou Majaw) and other performing. There were bands from Delhi and other part of India such as Manwhopause, etc. My favourite was the punk-rock girlband- Vinyl Records where 4 of the members are my juniors from Arunachal Pradesh. It is my bad that I don't have their photos or much of the concert photos since I was helping in the store and had limitations with my lenses...  

We also went sight-seeing to a local Hindu (Shiv-ling) temple.

I had lots of fun but I do regret not taking much photos or doing much. 

On