Photography

Flickr has published two amazing high-def photos of earth from one of NASA’s earth observing satellite - Suomi NPP. The photos are created by joining several high def photos and joining them together, as explained here. Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth - Blue Marble 2012 Eastern Hemisphere - Blue Marble 2012 The original photo on the left of the western hemisphere is available on Flickr with a resolution of 8000x8000 or 64 megapixels!

On April 8, 2008, Powerhouse Museum based out of Sydney, Australia, released their publicly-held historical photographs for access on Flickr, becoming the first museum in the world to do so. Earlier on Jan 16, 2008, the Library of Congress had released over 3000 photos on Flickr. What is common between these two contributions was that the rare photographs were in the public domain - they had no known copyright and are therefore free to reuse by anybody in the world.

The incompetency of our police and government in handling our security is often sought to be hidden by fear mongering. Knee jerk reactions like banning liquids in airlines, utterly stupid checks while entering malls, and the topic of this post, actively discouraging photography at all public places. Citizens and private organizations, getting these clues from our public administrators, in turn have made life hell for amateur photography enthusiasts worldwide. Some years back, I was almost handed over to the police by some folks in our neighborhood for “suspiciously” taking photographs in streets in the night.

Flickr’s camera stats is an enormously humbling resource for me. It would be the most powerful message for newbie photography enthusiasts - creativity rules technology any day, so stop thinking too much about your camera. The kind of amazing photos taken using basic point-and-shoot cameras by talented photographers from around the world, keeps me firmly rooted to the ground while I lug my bulky Rebel Xti wherever I go.

The Canon A95 Canon India is selling Powershot A95 at an MRP of Rs. 25,995/-. Amazon’s listing of A95 mentions a list price of $349.95 (or Rs. 15,121 at today’s exchange rates). Amazon actually sells it for $269.94 (or Rs. 11,664 today). The question is why does Canon India sell its regular products at a 70% higher price in India? How much duty do these products attract anyway?

Yes, it is over an year old now. I never posted them publicly because, frankly, I felt others had better cameras and better photos from the event. But rather than having them languish in some forgotten corner of my computer, I am uploading them to my Flickr account. So here is: Linux Asia 2004 - a photoset on Flickr