Still-life: Fruits and Vegetables

Did some still-life photography at home recently. Temperature was well above 40 deg C outside and was feeling too lazy to move out of home. Moreover had to finish working with photographs I made during Gaajan/Charak festival; hope to publish them shortly. My attention turned to the vegetables and fruits at home. Their freshness and bright colours bring relief from the blaze of sun outside. The good news is that the atmosphere is now comfortable after heavy rain for two days.

Light coming through the window was used as the main source of illumination along with one or two reflectors to fill-in shadows. The RAW files for these photos were processed with RAW Therapee. It is a nice FOSS tool, based on dcraw, to work with RAW files from digicams. I am a Lightroom 1.1 user and I am happy with this new tool. Obviously Lightroom is more than just a RAW processor, and you can't find those extended features in RAW Therapee. But it does well what it is supposed to do: RAW file processing, and you can also do simple touch-ups on TIFF and JPEG files with it. I shall try to publish a thorough review of the software later.

I built the slide presentation with a new service on the web: Vuvox. I discovered it recently, and it seems gaining popularity among professional photographers. I am yet to explore its different features thoroughly. It supports popular web albums like Flickr and Picasa, and most probably any photo-sharing website that supports RSS feed.

DISCLAIMER: I am not associated in any means with RAW Therapee or Vuvox; just wanted to share about the nice pieces of software I found on the net recently.

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Summer is approaching...

This is the last month of Bengali calendar, Chaitra. We are at the threshold of the summer season. Well the truth is we are already into it. Report shows persistent temperature rise in the country, and as a result we are having short lived winter, prolong and tiring summer and untimely rain and storms. Not long back there used to be occasional thunder storm and cyclone during this time bringing relief from heat and humidity; even I have seen it in my childhood days. We call this climatic phenomenon Kaalboishakhi. But from the past few years it has become a rare event. So now we are enduring a long and sticky summer season.

Like changes in climatic condition there are changes in cultural horizon also. Chaitra is the witness to a month long observation of some rituals, that in many cases spills over to the first month of the new year Baishakh. We call it Gaajan and mostly the people from lower rung of the society are the participants. This is a folk religious celebration where an aboriginal god is the central deity whose priest is also a member of the participating community though now a days the festival has been related to the Hindu god Shiva and a Brahmin is seen to take up the role of the priest. Likewise the festival has lost its splendor and ferocity of celebration in Kolkata and its suburbs. The original spirit can now only be found within some interior pockets of rural Bengal.

Social scientists and cultural historians have shown the celebration to be a fertility ritual for an agricultural community where people pray for good rain and fertility of their land in the wake of a dry summer season. It has been shown to be a celebration of marriage between the Sun God and the Earth. The Hindi speaking people from Bihar also worship the Sun God during Chaitra which they call "Chaiti Chhat". The purpose seems to be the same, that is to pray for fertility and good harvest.

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Flower Market - More photos

Last Saturday I went to flower market again to capture some more colors. The day before at night we had heavy rain here. Naturally the place was filled with mud, small pools of water and rotten flowers scattered here and there. These are the problems of any thriving market place here. So instead I focussed on its beauty, its colorfulness.


I found this vendor in the market showing his beautiful garlands to the buyers.

In the lotus market sticks of lotus bundled together can be found for sale.

Decorative flowers of different colors would be sold to the retailers who will make beautiful flower bouquets to sell them in the local market.

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Jagannath Ghat

Last Saturday I and my friend went to Jagannath ghat to try our luck with street photography. A "Ghat" in general term is a concrete structure built on the bank of a river to facilitate bathing, and as such has a rest room and the stairs that get down to the water. Jagannath ghat is one of the oldest on the bank of the Ganga in Kolkata. The installation has some architectural speciality, unlike others. One can find the porcelain tiles lining the inner walls of the rest room, wrought iron columns and nicely curved ventilators.







Photographers flock the place to shoot at the colorful flower market nearby. The colors are fascinating!! I hope to go there again to capture some more color.

The ghat itself is the place for lots of activities. The daily life passes by with the devotees singing bhajans at their ashrams or local youngsters watching latest Hindi movie in a shady video parlour or people bathing in the river and observing different rituals.

While returning I found this lovely couple playing in the shade of the rest room.

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