Impelled

Quote: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Photographer: Shripriya Raghunathan

This is the fresh water which drains both into the Atlantic as well as the Pacific ocean. Indeed its the Panama canal, as shot by Shripriya.

A thought provoking quote by Antoine a french pilot and writer. I like his quotes a lot and I am sure you too will like them. So you can expect a few more in the coming weeks.

- Dheepak Ra

Feedback

Quote: Unknown
Photographer: Dheepak Ra

Itsn't it the speaker's fault, if he allows the audience's focus to drift?

This picture was an unintentional, casual shot. But now I wonder

Isnt it my fault that the dog isnt focussing on me?
Isnt it the dog's fault that the picture has focus on the ground instead of the theme?

Well atleast you are focusing on this series and that is what matters ;-)

- Dheepak Ra

Reflections

Quote: Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish Diplomat
Photographer:Arun Bettadapura Ramachandra

Ever heard about spoon feeding? Well here is a perfect example. Not only did Arun contribute the snap, he graciously found a quote, merged it with the quote and gave me the final image in a platter :-)

The photo has been shot at Oystermouth bay, South Wales, sometime last year. Expect more snaps from Arun in the future.

- Dheepak Ra

Meditation

Quote: Diana Robinson
Photographer: Dheepak Ra

A tense cricket match and a pensive captain - Senthil, struck me enough to capture this moment. Its a different issue that I was in the same team which lost it :-(

I didnt have the heart to edit the natural fading blue light which was captured in those evening moments in Chennai.

Meanwhile thanks for the emails regarding the accident. As you saw in the Baejaar, we are fine. Infact we have more writeups this time from Neel Arurkar in his blog: Almost Always the Truth

- Dheepak Ra

Experience

Photographer: Ramya Balaji
Quote: Chinese proverb

Experience is a good teacher. Talking about experience, we met with an accident last weekend - for details click me. Due to which the postings this week might be erratic. Please bear with us.

- Dheepak Ra

Winds of Change

Quote: Stuart Brand
Photographer: Dheepak Ra

Isnt this similar to Eldridge Cleaver's "If you're not part of the solution you must be part of the problem"?

No one is immune to change let alone those in this software field.

I am on-duty tomorrow in an effort to collect some outdoor snaps. So expect my next post only on Monday that too a bit late.

- Dheepak Ra

Honesty

Quote: John Skelton
Photographer: Dheepak Ra

This was shot in Electronic city, Bangalore. Its an abandoned nest with the spooky aura around it due to the naked tree.

This was the first time, i touched up a shot. Just experimenting as to whether it helps in retaining the attention on the theme. Guess I need to revert back to normal, un-edited original snaps.

- Dheepak Ra

Mask

Quote: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photographer: Dheeraj K.C

Just like I promised here is the first of the photographs shot by you folks. This one is from Dheeraj K.C. (dheeraj.kc [at] gmail.com) Its a lovely photograph of pristine snow clad St. Helen. If you notice carefully, the snow capped range is actually a crater which erupted 25 years back.

If only, I could avoid compromising on clarity instead of file size :-(

Thanks Dheeraj for sharing this photograph.

- Dheepak Ra

Perspective

Quote: Rabindranath Tagore
Photographer: Dheepak Ra

Well let me continue from where I left - Rabindranath Tagore's quotes.....

I can write a lengthy discourse here but prefer to leave you, to gaze upon "Half glass of water"

- Dheepak Ra

Part Two

Winston Churchill once remarked that "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts"

Thanks to the internal "Open Door" policy, the faith I had in the company has been vindicated. Most of the issues have been amicably resolved except for a moratorium on shots from my company campus.

So we are expanding to explore Bangalore from now onwards. As my friend once reminded me beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. I hope you will accept the new snaps like the ones of the yore.

My sincere thanks to all of you for having stood with me during the troubled times. Your emails/comments and IM msgs meant a lot to me.

Meanwhile I hope none of my previous images is misused ;-)

Osama, if you are planning to pay a visit to my company, please avoid my snaps. Instead use the satellite images. They are both easier to obtain (I did my college project with IRS 1C image) and more accurate (check out US satellite images in google maps)

If you are my company's competitor, feel free to e-mail me. If you renounce using my photos, I can compensate by giving you a 1 hour personally guided tour of the campus ;-)

- Dheepak Ra

You can contribute too

To show my gratitude to all of you, I will be featuring some of your snaps too.

When your eyes rested on your snaps for the first time, didnt it evoke the awe - "Hey, Did I shoot this?" Well we want you to share those snaps for others to feast on it. Let this series be a forum to exhibit your photographic skills.

Expectations from you:

1. You should hold the copyright to the snap. In simple terms, you should have shot it.
2. You are responsible for the content of the shot. Herein you certify that all the required permissions were already obtained. If it was shot in private premises, obtain owners permission. Avoid portraits. If not then you need permission from the person whom you are shooting.
3. You should be willing to release the snap under Creative Commons Attribution License.
4. Some editing here and there is ok. But dont drastically alter it with softwares.
5. Send your photos as attachments (Inline photographs are compressed by Outlook).
6. Due to size limitation in both my company's bulletin board as well as in the image file servers, I will be forced to compress your image to a size of 90k. So expect loss in resolution.

Sorry if that sounded too formal but in short - make sure that nobody has any issues if you share it with others. A simple test - If the photo is acceptable by your mother, then we dont have any issues either ;-)

This series is as much about quotes as it is with photos. So try to pick a theme too before you shoot. It might be a prize winning photo but remember there is an ordinary mortal sitting at the other end, trying to think of a matching quote.

Now that you have read all the way down till here, you can send your photographs to "baejaar[at]gmail.com"

The End

Dear Visitors

Today is one of the saddest days of my life. With heavy heart, I am laying to rest this blog SudaSudaCoffee.

It seems ironic that my last post was on "Death". I had no inkling of the upcoming events. Guess I had a subconcious premonition of the upcoming demise.

I cant elaborate on the reasons for this. But in short, Legal and HR policies within the company, is being violated :-(

From 5th Mar 05 till 12 Apr 05, this site had logged 3013 unique visitors. I started this with no expectation what so ever but it grew leaps and bounds. Thanks a lot to all of you who had visited. Guess this is one of the side effects of a blog becoming too popular with in the company ;-) Its hard to express in words, how much you have meant to me. I have been able to interact (though via emails) with so many of you which wouldnt have been possible, if it werent for this blog.

I havent decided whether to continue this series via email list with non-infy snaps. It depends on how many of you are interested. May be for a quick poll, you can dash an email with subject as "Yes" to baejaar@gmail.com

Most of you have remained anonymous till date, if you would like to stay in touch you can always catch me at baejaar@gmail.com

Regards
Dheepak Ra

Death

Quote: Rabindranath Tagore
Photographer: Dheepak Ra
Venue: In front of my home in Chennai (u can call it as the cricket pitch)

I am falling in love with Rabindranath Tagore's quotes. But I trust you wouldnt mind.

This is another shot from Chennai just after a cricket match. Boy down here, I do miss those cricket matches.

And let me thank you all. The stats for yesterday is yet to sink in - 375 unique visitors in a single day (14 hours to be specific). But more importantly this excludes the innumerable colleagues who access this in the Company's Bulletin Board. Thanks a lot, folks. Hope this momentum is sustained.

- Dheepak Ra

Greed

Quote: Henry Ford
Photographer: Dheepak Ra
Venue: Thankfully not in my company campus

I doubt whether Ford would have imagined the extent to which our society would degenarate.

Usually I post only shots from my workplace but I was forced to make an exception here. No prizes for guessing - this is Chennai only. A single phone call is all that is required for the govt water tankers to be at your door step (free of cost). But when they fill up the Sintex water tank in the road, shouldnt it be available to all? Dont know who had the brainwave to put a lock to it.

Well this wasnt in my colony - shot it somewhere else. Due to which I was forced to face a guy in the neighbourhood with two dogs in his leash. Diplomatically managed to avoid confrontation and had to shoot this discreetly.

This led me to ponder about the rights of a photographer. Can you shoot anything and everything which is in public? If you can shoot an actor/actress in public and even publish it, cant we shoot guy/lady on the road? No I cant ask permission, then the shot wont be artificial. Would love to hear your views on this.

Guarantee

Dont ask me, whether its Code or Bugs ;-)

Today is Friday. So didnt want to post nething serious. Atleast not when I am doing so from my home town.

P.S: Sorry for the delayed post today. Having got used to company broadband access, I could do nothing with the dialup from my home. Finally gave up and now I am posting this from so called "Broadband" broswing centre.

Roots

Quote: Winston Churchill

Normally I welcome the rains, atleast during the summer to get some respite from this scorching heat. However I had choreographed a picture which involved outdoor shoot. Unfortunately the rains played spoilsport and I was prematurely forced to pack up the shoot. All posts for this week have been from back ups only. Yet to shoot a single good shot this week :-(

Pondering over an alternate theme, I decided on wildlife (or should I say domesticated life) photography. Determined to catch hold of "Rana Longanimity", I went on an expedition. After half an hour, I stumbled upon three frogs. Initially none of them would let me come near them. But after crawling with them (literally on all fours) for 20 mins, they started to ignore me. Nice to see atleast some amphibians who can tolerate me :-) Well to cut it short, having patiently waited for it to come to the right spot (light was a big issue) I shot an entire portfolio for the frog. As usual todays quote matched my worst photo of the day. May be I will upload the rest of the snaps soon to Baejaar blog.

If only I had the guts to come so close to a frog in my school days, I would have been a zoologist like my mother if not like Steve Irwin of Crocodile Hunter fame.

Do you prefer the short authors comment of the yore or ones like this with long boring text? I would love to get some feedbacks on this issue.

Disclaimer: Herein I solemnly declare that no animal was ill treated or tortured for this blog composition.

Faith

Quote: Rabindranath Tagore
Photographer: Yours Truly

Thanks to Shripriya for selecting this wonderful quote by Rabindranath Tagore.

Orithnologist's dream come true. Everyday these flock of birds, chirping in unison, sends us off in the evening. Just remove the headphones and listen to their soothing tones. Look up and reach out to the eternal bliss.

- Dheepak Ra

Abilities

Quote: Rick Hansen
Photographer: Dheepak Ra

Have you ever worked with differently abled kids? If you did, then you can empathize with Rick Hansen.

Its nice to see companies recognizing them. I hope this trend spreads everywhere.

This post is dedicated to all the NGOs particularly Samarthanam and IVA Volunteers.

- Dheepak Ra

Apologies

I hope you werent offended by the April Fool prank. After a string of serious posts, I thought of a light/humorus post to release the stress (It was "ThankGod" Friday remember)

I had failed to put myself in the visitor's shoes until my friend and regular visitor to this blog pointed it out.

I have always wanted this place to be an arena only to smile/ponder/crib (about my poor work). So if I had hurt any one of you, my sincere apologies.

- Dheepak Ra

March Visitor Statistics

With heavy heart, I am reporting that today (Apr 4, 2005) we had the least no of visitors/weekday in a fortnight. Wondering whether its the enthusiasm to work on Monday (too sincere) or is it the monday morning blues which has kept away the visitors. Anyway to cut it short I had just 63 unique visitors today :-( I hope things return to normalcy soon.

Atleast there is some good news. Its one month (05 March 2005) since I started tracking the no of visitors. In one month (12 hours short of), we have entertained 2141 visitors(visits is more accurate) and close to 3000 hits. Thanks to all of you for having visited and/or commented on this site.

- Dheepak Ra

Love

Quote: Mother Teresa
Photographer: Dheepak Ra

It was James Boswell who said "In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground." I guess this is a perfect orchard. Most of my colleague wouldny have noticed this, I hope henceforth they do.

But the quote which I love the most is:
“Avoid fruits and nuts. You are what you eat.” - Jim Davis 'Garfield'

- Dheepak Ra