Finally after a delay of almost a year, I have managed to edit and upload the video that documents Team BCMTouring conquering the Gata Loops.

This particular video was shot during BCMTouring’s Ladakh 2007 expedition, which comprised of 11 riders and a pillion from across India, all riding together to the highest roads in the world. The video was shot by me by mounting my digital camera on a tripod, which was securely held on the side of my bag, while I was riding my motorcycle (no pillion).

Compression employed by Youtube has almost killed the quality of the video, so if you have the bandwidth and the patience, please download the original video, which is 57.82mb in size.

You will need windows media player to play this video, click here to download this video

This Saturday, we will be holding the first ever Photography Contest Meet in Delhi. Where budding photographers will get a chance to test and prove their metal against their counterparts.

The photography meet would be held at Lodhi Garden, which not only provides a scenic environment for photographers with its rich Flora and Fauna, it is also home to quite a few historical monuments from the Mughal era. With diverse and umpteen photography opportunities, it should keep any photographer busy for hours.

We will be meeting up at the Lodhi Garden parking at 2:30pm on Saturday, after which the contest would start and every photographer would have four hours to come up with photographs which they feel are worthy of winning the competition. Once the contest is over, photographers will have 24hours to process and upload three of their best images to a special gallery which will be created in the BCMTouring Photo Gallery and would then be judged by a panel of photographers, who will pick the winning photograph.

The meet is open to every one, though to participate in the contest, you will need to register for a free account on BCMTouring, which will allow you the rights to upload those photographs.

In case of any questions or queries, please feel free to call/sms me at 9891211270.

Hi everyone, I have decided to migrate my RSS feeds from Feedburner to Google, while those who are currently subscribed to the RSS and email updates earlier, will continue to recieve updates, they might be a little slow compared to the new feed. So I request you to resubscribe to the new RSS feed to ensure that you recieve the RSS updates ASAP.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending illustrated talk on photography and Kashmir by Matt Brandon and David duChemin at the India Habitat Center. While I attended Friday’s lecture on Tibet and China, alone, this time I had Varun for company.

The session began with Matt walking us through the treks he had done in Kashmir while running a Trek and Tour company there, and his experience of living in Kashmir for over a decade.

After Matt’s wonderful presentation, it was David’s turn and he was going to talk about photography. This was the main reason I had gone there in the first place and I wasn’t at all disappointed and I have to say, I couldn’t agree more with David’s statement, “it isn’t the quantity of light that matters, it is the quality.”

During the presentation, David not only gave a few invaluable tips on photography, we also got a treat by seeing some of his brilliant work and hearing the story behind them.

Once the session got over, it was time for Q&A round and which was really the icing on the cake and something I enjoyed more than the actual session!

While the questions ranged from how to approach people (in particular women) for their photographs to tips on landscape and portrait photography etc. it was when couple of “purist” asked the eternal question “is post processing ethical?” that the session really turned interesting.

Matt’s response to this question was “I am not doing anything that I did not do while shooting films and slides, even at that time we used to tweak color and clean the blemishes etc. while processing them in the dark room and this is what we are currently doing through tools like Photoshop. Even the famous photograph of the Afghan Girl on the cover of National Geographic Magazine was enhanced by removing blemishes on the face of the girl, and this was over 20 years ago!”

When another “purist” accused them of bending reality and not showing things exactly the way they were, David gave a short and firm reply, “We are artists and not photojournalists or documentarians, we do not show what was there, we show things the way we saw them. If you wish to see what is actually there, then you should go there personally.”

I have to say, I completely agree with David’s statement. After all, photography is not supposed to be a scanning technique; designed and built to produce duplicate copies of a given scene or object.

Photography is art, and a photograph is the artistic representation of the artist’s perspective and it should be left to the artist’s discretion, how much post processing he/she wants to do.
Overall it was a fantastic session that I thoroughly enjoyed and I am hoping that I’ll be able to attend more such sessions in future.

Today I attended Mike Fowler’s lecture on his mountaineering expeditions to China and Tibet.

The event was organized by the Himalayan Club and was held in the Gulmohar Hall at India Habitat Center in New Delhi.

While initially I didn’t know what to expect and was not sure if I should attend the lecture, I finally decided to bite the bullet and went there in the evening. And I wasn’t disappointed, when Mike started talking about his adventures and started sharing photographs of Siguniang and Grosvenor mountains in Sichuan Province and Kajaqiao and Manamcho peaks in Tibet.

I completely taken aback by the photographs I saw, which were backed up by Mike’s impressive narration. The views captured in those photographs were something that I haven’t personally seen till now and are something which is reserved for the trekkers and mountaineers.

The photographs have reignited my desire to start trekking and I hope this time I’ll be able to fulfill that wish not be once again lured by the motorcycle touring bug and once again pickup my motorcycle for the next adventure.

Tomorrow I’ll be going back to the India Habitat Center, where Matt Brandon and David duChemin (noted photographers) will be speaking on treks and travel in Kashmir and will also be sharing photography tips.

If you are in Delhi and are interested in photography or seeing some marvelous photographs, then do turn up at the Gulmohar Hall at India Habitat Center at 7pm, entry is free for all and there is no registration.