India's Honking Problem

Everybody that lives in India knows all about the roads we have here. Even a 10 minute ride out on these roads is equivalent to jumping out of a plane with no back up parachute. It is true that the roads are quite dangerous and very poorly built but from my observance, the primary reason for all the danger is not the build quality but the people themselves!

After having spent 3 years living in Wichita, Kansas, the realization of how dangerously we live in India was like a punch in the face. It's been 9 months I've been back in India and I still cannot cross the road in front of my house by foot. It's just way too scary, way too unpredictable. There is never a break in the traffic, so you've got to force yourself in between the zooming vehicles. I'd rather drive 3 miles and waste fuel, than risk my life getting across 100 ft of pure madness.

I've better adapted myself to the driving conditions but still get jolts of fear when I see someone perform bravely foolish stunts just to overtake a single vehicle. I've also realized most of the traffic jams are also caused by the lack of common sense of motorists, rather than the road builders. Of course the road building jobs are themselves so silly, even a teenager would be capable of building better roads and the rains multiply this problem ten-fold. And then there are the illegally parked vehicles, sentimental religious structures in the middle of the road and all sorts of animals having a picnic.

Even though it is an undeniable fact that the management of traffic and road quality is of the lowest quality, this post really is about the motorists.

I feel quite justified in stating that we have among the worst drivers in the world. I don't know who trains us to be like this but surely something needs to be done. I am guilty of being a part of this system myself but there is little I can do to set it right. And I've noticed that is what everyone else says too - "I know I'm breaking the rules but we are forced to do it since everyone else does it". Who is this everyone and why do they constantly "find themselves" in a situation where they are "forced" to break traffic rules?

I've tried driving without breaking at least the most basic rules and it works! I still get to my destination, thankfully unscathed, and maybe, just maybe, a few minutes late. Seriously it isn't so bad! Sometimes I've waited alone at a red light while the rest of them simply jumped, I've slowed down for pedestrians to cross while the others zoomed even faster just to get past the poor walking people already risking their lives. I feel I'm among the few that use turn lights too!

But I've noticed the use of the turn light just does not work! There have been many situations when there were 4-5 motorbikes on the side I was turning into, and I switch on my indicator to "indicate" that I'm turning. Not one guy notices this! All the motorists promptly speed up trying to overtake me from the wrong side before I make my turn. One time a biker nearly crashed into my car's left side and I was more angry that I stopped and saved him a trip to the hospital instead of just smashing into him and breaking his bones.

So basically, the turn light kind of works the opposite way. Instead of warning people I'm about to turn, it seems to be sending a message that I'm allowing them to over take me from that side. And this is basic driving sense, you don't have to live in another country for years to know how to use a turning indicator!

And then comes another irritating part of the driving experience, the Honking! Oh man.. where do I start? All I can say is, it is a major mess. I simply fail to understand what prompts people to use the horn so excessively. The road is perfectly straight, most - if not all - of the vehicles seem to be moving in the correct direction, and I still hear non-stop honking from at least 4-5 vehicles around me! The reason for the honking is something that only the honker can explain.

I've actually observed (and I'm not exaggerating) people honking almost sub consciously! I remember one instance very well - there was this guy on a bike and was driving straight on a mostly empty road and his finger was on the horn button pressing it in regular pulses - beep-beepbeep-beep.. i seriously felt something was wrong with him. But this kind of behavior is something you can observe in a lot of people. Some sort of psychological disorder in the general mass of motorists? Give them a horn button to press and they'd do it while sleeping.

Also another thing i've noticed is that a surprisingly huge number of people absolutely fail to honk at least once when turning into blind lanes. Now that's another major management disaster of not having organized traffic in the smaller lanes (not unexpected if they can't manage the major roads either!). The introduction of a Stop Sign (and the threat of a ticket for not stopping) might take a few centuries to come by, but in the meantime, the safest way would be to slow down at a blind turn with a short friendly beep on the horn. While these guys overdo it on the big straight roads, they don't do it where it is actually useful!

I cannot even remember the count of how many times I've ended up face to face with another motorist at blind turns, just because he didn't beep. The worst part is, I never fail to beep and the only thing that prevents me from crashing into him is my own low-speed which allows me to stop quickly. The other idiot simply corrects himself without even slowing down and zooms away past me without a second glance! And like I said, this has happened so many times, I just cannot count.

All these are just a few examples of how bad the situation is. There are hundreds more such issues on our roads, each of which cause accidents, sometimes fatal. Each of these occurrences leave me astonished about the mentalities of people around me. I have no problem against anything Indian, in fact, I love everything about it, but there are a few things that are to be realized as faulty. It is a clear example of a flaw being repeated over and over again till it actually becomes acceptable and even believed to be right.

I hope that in the coming few centuries, if the human race can survive long enough, our country can correct a few flaws like these and making living here a better experience. 

Tutorial : Bounce On-Camera Flash of your Point-and-Shoot for Beautiful Indoor Lighting

For the first time on this blog, I am able to post something that might possibly help someone out there.

The Disaster
 What does a combination of people in dull indoors and a basic point-and-shoot camera do? Well, to put it simply, the combination is sort of disastrous. That may depend on whose opinion you take, but most would say that the only way to get photos with a decent exposure would be to fire a flash.

Simple enough, right? Just fire the damn flash and the problem is solved! Not really. Using an on-camera flash can sometimes make pretty people look not-so-pretty especially when their heads are turned sidewards. Harsh light, strong shadows behind the nose, bright spots of light on parts of the face, background mostly still engulfed in darkness, lots of problems!

"I look fat", "My face looks oily", "Why are my eyes red?", "Why's my hair all white?", "My nose looks weird"... and the list goes on. 

Some Expensive Solutions
The most obvious solution would be to use a remotely fired off-camera flash or simply, better indoor lighting. The moment the source of light is off the camera's line of view, things look a lot better. But we can't control  indoor light in most cases and you definitely cannot take the flash off a point-and-shoot.

Indoors would have a ceiling. Sometimes high, sometimes low, but there is a ceiling. Now, having a DSLR with an external flash, one would simply "bounce" the light off a nearby wall or a ceiling by rotating the flash head to the appropriate angle. Once again, this is not possible with a point-and-shoot flash.

My Solution
It is ridiculously simple! Simply hold a mirror in front of your flash at an angle such that the light from the flash reflects up towards the ceiling. As easy as that! The result is a nice, even, soft diffused light coming from above that suddenly makes everything look beautiful!

I did just that, and here's the result.


The result is staggering! The only change was that I introduced a small reflecting surface in front of the flash. The colors are better, the lighting is uniform, there are no harsh shadows and there are no spots of light. The images above are straight out of the camera with no enhancements.

So that's my little trick I could come up with to deal with the problems caused by the pop-up flash on my camera. I am sure there might be better solutions for this problem but then I wrote this post just to put the information out that, "Hey, there are ways to improve the quality of the pictures taken from your boring point-and-shoot camera!" I know a lot of people would benefit from such information, so a big shout-out to the guys who make beautiful tutorials fixing everyday problems with photography!

Problem Scenarios

Mirror Size
The downside of this technique is it would not work in all cases. You'd need a pretty decent sized mirror, maybe 3-4 inches wide and at least 2-3 inches tall, to avoid the flash light to spill around the edges of the mirror. Do not hold the mirror at too shallow an angle or the light would spill over the top leading to strange looking photos. Too tight an angle would cause the flash to hit your own face, blinding you and not lighting the subject at all. Also, there's the problem with the ceiling itself.

Ceiling Height
 As the ceiling goes higher, the intensity of light goes down. The flash light needs to first reflect off the mirror, losing some energy in the process and then has to travel the distance to the ceiling, get diffused (losing a lot more energy and intensity), and travel all the way back to the subject's height to hit it. That's quite some distance for a weak pop-up flash. So you'd probably need to set the flash power to full if you have such an option on your camera.

Ceiling Color
The color of the ceiling also plays an important part. A white ceiling reflects the most light and also does no color change to the light itself. A red ceiling (just an example) would cause the subject to glow red which in some cases gets interesting too! A black ceiling would most probably not reflect anything at all..

Bounce it off a side wall!
But why bounce it off just the ceiling? Hey, you have walls too! You can angle the mirror to bounce the flash light onto a wall next to the subject and you get some stunning shots of soft lighting from the side. In some cases, the effect looks like the person is standing next to an open window, but you know that's just solid wall! What's more, you can even use a cheap reflector (everyone's gotta get one!) to reflect light back onto the subject in case there is no wall nearby!

Enjoy!
So while the solution is not the best one, it's effectively cheap and works in a lot of scenarios encountered with indoor photography. Hope my little information was useful in understanding the Complexities of Life. Did I say Life? I meant Light. Have fun clicking away with that cheap little point-and-shoot of yours!

The Real-Digital Debate Part 1 : Painting

This is a multi-part post based on my perspective of how digital advancement has changed some analog/traditional things. Here's Part 1 based on what I've noticed how people look at and react to Artwork these days.

Traditional Art
I grew up surrounded by art. I think I made this clear in a lot of posts prior to this. Among the most noticeable things in my house, are my Dad's paintings on the walls. His work is purely traditional - Oil on Canvas, and many many watercolor paintings. My sister too has quite a good eye with art and has made chalk pastels her specialty - another traditional medium. Now coming to me, I would consider myself a traditional artist in graphite drawing. I have some works posted here on my blog and on my deviantArt page. I'm a little new to the art scene as an artist, but definitely not from an observer's point of view.

Right, so I've been hanging around traditional paintings and drawings ever since I was a kid. Obviously I picked up on that, later than sooner, but I did. I must say I absolutely love traditional art. When I look at a drawing or painting on wall (even if not a realistic kind), it gives a sort of rush that I never feel looking at a gallery of photographs. I don't know why this happens, but it happens to me. So personally I put traditional art very high in my list.

Digital Art
Now, coming to the other side of debate. Digital Art. One of the first names that comes to mind when one says digital art is Photoshop. Yes, there are lots of other Digital Art software like, Corel Painter, Adobe Illustrator, etc. each unique in their purpose, but Photoshop really has become a household name unlike the others. "This image has been Photoshopped". How many times have we not heard that term? Photoshop has become an action word - a verb! Well I have been doing stuff on photoshop for quite a few years now, but recently found a whole new side I never knew existed despite being so familiar with the software.

What I'm talking about is that brush tool! No I don't mean the really complicated but beautiful brush sets painstakingly created by artists to make life easy for others, but the simplest round brush! Digital Art with a round brush? Had someone told this to me a couple of years ago, I would've laughed. But now, I own a Wacom tablet and I know what exactly a round brush can do. It can create wonders. I had almost never started any artwork on photoshop with a blank canvas. There was always an image and stuff got overlaid on top. But after acquiring the tablet, photoshop starts with a blank canvas and stuff gets painted on top! How awesome is that! Digital Painting is one of the most amazing things I've been lucky to learn and grasp. A big bow down to the awesomeness of Photoshop - my respect for it grew 10 fold after getting a Wacom. All this and after coming across some unbelievable concept art and beautiful renders purely painted with tablets, I must say I suddenly HAD to put digital painting very high in my list!

The Face-off

Let's breakdown the face-off into 3 parts again based on Effort, Feel and End Result.

Effort :
This is a category which is actually confusing to describe. Still, I shall try. Let us assume an example where I would like to paint a realistic portrait in both oil and digital media. Let us also assume that I'm skilled enough to create such a piece of work, which means I have the knowledge of colors, values, etc. So now the only difference is painting on a real canvas and painting on a digital canvas. What takes more effort? In Photoshop, I have a choice of millions of colors with unlimited supply, whereas I have a decent set of oil paints but to create more colors I'll have to start mixing and my color supply is limited. So mixing/creating colors requires some work in oils (or any such painting medium). My digital work has been painted in layers, so now I can individually alter a certain layer's (example background) colors, shapes, etc without affecting the rest of the painting. Obviously, I need to put in a lot of 'effort' to make such a simple change in the oil painting. Even if the digital painting was done on a single layer making major changes to colors, etc would not be as difficult as with oils. Moreover in PS, if I realized one eye turned out bigger than the other, I can quickly select the eye, reduce the size and patch up the area around the eye to blend it back in. If I had to do the same, I'd most probably have to repaint the entire eye with smaller dimensions and patch the area around anyway. So again digital painting has the advantage. Now to add details. PS has enough zoom levels to see each pixel, so we can literally add details the size of pixels. If the image is extremely high res, we can details which may not even be visible to the naked eye. But with traditional painting, I'd be limited by the size of the brush I have and I can't zoom in, so I'd have to be extremely careful while doing this work, in other words, more effort. So clearly, if I am well versed with a digital tablet in my hands, I'd find it far more easier to use and finish than a traditional medium, avoiding all the mess of colors and oils spilling, cleaning palettes, smelling like turpentine, setting up a workspace, lighting, etc. Digital Painting wins this round.

Feel :
If you try to convince a traditional artist to switch over to digital because it's faster, better, more efficient and takes less effort, he'd still be hesitant. Why would that be? It's simple, he wouldn't get the feel of doing the real thing. That's where digital art really loses out. Most tablets do not have a screen on them, so you're practically scratching a blank surface hoping for the right kind of line or shape appear on the screen. The feel of actually drawing that line isn't there. That problem is eliminated with a tablet that has a screen, but still doesn't feel like the real thing. You're trying to draw on a glass surface hoping to create something that looks like an oil painting or a pencil drawing. So to be clear, the feedback isn't completely realistic. A person used to the traditional ways would be reluctant to switch over. Traditional media win this round.

End Result :
A lot of people may not bother to find out how you did it, but what you did. So the end result is pretty important. The advantage of digital art is, you can create a piece that resembles any traditional medium quite accurately. So if you'd print a nicely simulated digital work onto a canvas, most people would be convinced it's an oil painting. What's the fun in that? I don't know. But if you wanted to create a digital painting to look like an oil painting or even a pencil drawing for that matter, you'd be able to do it. The reverse is not possible though.

Conclusion:
So what medium is better? Well, my analysis says digital has quite a few advantages over traditional, but in the end, the opinion is of each individual artist. If you've always liked drawing with real pencils and would like to continue doing that, nothing's more awesome. If you're a beginner and would like to see which medium seems easier to grasp, you can use some of the points above to help you decide. If you've heard a lot about digital art but never understood why it is so popular, especially with concept artists and illustrators, again the above points may help.

As far as my personal opinion goes, I've found switching between digital and traditional now and then actually helps me look at things in a fresh way, so I've shamelessly married myself to both media and wouldn't be ready to let go of either any time soon.

No Place for Humans

It has always been told that everything about this Universe is perfect. A bit too perfect, especially when you consider Earth. I mean, look at how things came together to support life. It's just unbelievable to think of how many factors affect the possibility of life on earth.

People talk about water, but that's not even touching the surface. Water has been discovered on so many other planets and asteroids, so why aren't they supporting life? There's more to Earth than just water. The Sun for example is strangely just about the right size (at this moment) and giving off just about the right amount of heat and light for a planet like Earth, placed at just about the right distance to function. But again, that's not it. We have an atmosphere. The Sun despite doing everything right for us has one bad effect - Solar Winds. Winds strong enough to blow away our atmosphere. So after having all the conditions good for life, our atmosphere could've been blown away leading to a lifeless planet that was otherwise perfect. It's mostly thanks to that swirling mass of molten metal buried deep underground that's actually saving us. The Earth's Magnetic Field is present due to this swirling mass of metal and is the reason why our atmosphere doesn't get blown off, and also why most space rocks entering the Earth's atmosphere get burned up before crashing on our heads.

I'm sure there are more "perfections" that have caused Earth to be capable of sustaining life. But of course, this perfection isn't going to last forever. There could be a day when the Earth's Magnetic Field starts fading away and soon our planet is no different from Mars, airless, dry and lifeless. There WILL be a day when the Sun loses its energy and bulges to a size enough to consume the Earth. There could be a day when a blast of cosmic energy from a black hole vaporizes us before we could spell the word 'Death'. And there could be many more of such likely events that will trigger the End of the World.

So to think that the Earth is perfect, I feel is a mistake. The Earth's capability to sustain life is nothing more than a byproduct of the Universe's random and chaotic nature. In my opinion, Life itself is quite random. We may not yet have enough knowledge about how Life was created but I'm hoping we will, because I still find it hard to believe there is a Supernatual being that has created us, who happens to be very similar looking to Humans (according to our own conclusions). I still haven't felt we are that special. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for millions and millions of years and were eventually killed away, we haven't dominated the Earth for even a fraction of that time, why can't we assume that the Supernatural being actually resembled an ancient pre-historic creature and created them to exist for millions of years? To me Nature is not something that can be tamed or controlled. Nature simply evolves into complexity, but when things get too complex, Nature simply hits the Reset button.

Every beautiful thing that happens on Earth is credited to the Gods - Seasons, Monsoon Rains, Solar and Lunar Eclipses, and many many more. Also every bad thing that happens to us is again credited to the Gods. The Gods were angry so they sent down these destructive Tsunamis, Tornadoes, Earthquakes, Meteoroids, etc. But sadly I see everything as a phenomenon caused again by the randomness of the universe itself. Some things are hard to predict because they are caused by Nature itself. It is how I think Nature decides to reset itself. When warm moist air meets cold air, there will be a reaction and if your house happens to be under that reaction, the Gods are angry on you? How does that explain anything?

The biggest mistake we have made is to assume that we are perfect. We've been this arrogant ever since we started recording things we observed. It was universally accepted that the Earth was flat, and that we were in the center of the Universe, and everything else revolved around us. What arrogance! Not only did the Earth turn out to be round, we are no where near the center of the solar system, the only Natural thing that revolves around us is the moon, and the solar system is nowhere near the center of the Milky Way, and the Milky way is not the center of the Universe. So how did we think we were so special? The only brilliant part about this whole thing is, we learned all this ourselves! The farther we could see, the more insignificant we became.

And in all this insignificance a lot of us still believe we are special. We think Earth is special. We were given brains and suddenly Humans became special. But we didn't stop there. Humans with a certain skin color were more special. Humans of a certain gender were more special. Humans that belonged to a certain religion were more special. Humans that belonged to a certain sect within that religion were even more special. Thinking of all this, I actually wish that there really is someone up there who is laughing at the way we treat ourselves and everything/everyone else that are not like us.

We are described as Social Animals. We we are nothing more than Political Animals. "Another person's loss is my gain." Really forward thinking there. If Earth really had a character and a soul, Humans should've rightly been made extinct by now. But maybe the Earth is more patient, or maybe we haven't yet reached the height of our stupidity yet. Oh my, are we going to be worse than this? It really scares me to think that Earth is actually waiting for Humans to reach such a low point that we are going to be the cause for our own destruction. And then, the Earth will breathe again, sweeping away the filth and making way for a better species. So it will be Us who would trigger the End of the World, the Universe can just wait and watch as we all fall apart.