Sunday, January 10, 2010

3ifactory's first photoride to St.Thomas Mount



First things first… 

What is a Photoride??

You would have obviously heard of photo walks…

A Photo walk is an event in which group of photographers meet at a particular place and take photos while walking around that place… pictures of a particular road, street….goes on like that. A photo-walk can be classified under street photography…

Why Photoride? Why not a Photo walk?
We would surely have photo-walks in the near future… but my opinion is photo-walks are only for cities. You can't have a photo-walk in mountains, hills, beaches etc

We love to travel in our bikes and would love to go on long trips and love photography… combine everything and you get a “PHOTORIDE”!!! :P

Photoride’s exact definition is taking photographs while riding, but we have used the term in a different way defining something different… kindly excuse us….


3ifactory’s first photoride:


         Ever since we started 3ifactory way back in November 2007 we wanted to organize photo-walks, but back then we had just our mobile phones to shoot so we didn’t make them as big events… it would just be the three of us - Vishwaant,Zreej and me.

Date:Jan 10th 2010
Purpose: Our first official photoride
Place: St.Thomas Mount,Chennai
People:
1)   Sreejith
2)   Shiva Vishwanathan
3)   Rajesh
4)   Vishwaant
5)   Hari
6)   Kaushik and
7)   Aako Shiva


I don’t want to give a boring lecture about what we did or what we learnt.
I would just give a overview about what happened in bits and pieces.

How to get there:

From Kathipara bridge take the route which leads to porur… once you cross the bridge there will be a blue colored sign board saying that it’s the way to St.Thomas Mount… Take a left there. There are two options to go to the top:
1)   You can walk through the steps (takes about 15-20 mins)
2)   Ride to the top (little bit lengthy route)

We chose to ride since it’s a photoride :P (mokka) you need to drive through the defense quarters and there will be a play ground and a small blue sign board saying that it’s the way to the Shrine… take a right there and drive for 15 mins and you will be reach the top!!

What we did and what we learnt:

Took some long exposure shots, bokeh shots, light painting shots, candid shots, some portraits and photos of the shrine as such….

Vishwaant who always act as if he is a pro was giving out valuable tips (WTF!!) about photography… :P manasula periya photographer nu nenappu aana oru photo kuda urupadiya edukka theriyathu..Canon 500d vachu epo paarthalum scene poda vendiyathu!!

Sreejith who is a real ace in photography was the one who gave really useful tips and tricks involved with photography… thanks dude… its great to have you around.

Shiva V and Rajesh being newbies were exploring their new cameras by taking different shots and occasionally getting help from others.. thanks a lotguys… for joining the trip. Hope you guys join us for many more such trips.

Kaushik the budding photographer was giving out nice ideas to take photos with different angles with wonderful subjects… and yeah though he had just a sony ericsson... he was putting it to work by taking lots of shots.

Hari the Nari came late…but brought his awesome Nikon D90 and Sreej was busy exploring hari’ cam.

Yours truly was all over st.thomas mount taking photos almost of everything there :D

Overall it was an awesome trip and we had tremendous fun… learning and taking photographs is one thing… but having fun while doing all this is totally different…
did we have fun? Hell Yeah!! lotsa fun!!

Thanks to the amazing group who were always teasing each other (teasing vishwaant and hari in particular) :P helping out each other… totally awesome… totally totally awesome :D


Mokkai:

Any Trip starts with a T and ends with Tea.. We all reached the ground around 7:30 pm, had tea and escaped….

P.S: Will update u babout the next photoride  soon… having few places in my mind… pachamalai, tada, mudhaliyar kuppam and karikaatu kuppam.

Lets see!!

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Travel Bugs!!




 “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

       Last weekend had an interesting discussion with my friends... We were just back from a one day trip to Yelagiri and we were discussing how awesome the trip was and gradually the discussion went on to whether we will be going on such trips, once we get married :P
One wise man (Thats me :D) suggested that we go to all the interesting places before marriage and have the most amazing, fun filled tours along with friends instead of nagging wives (Comedy panna koodathu.. ipave sollitaen) :P

We are all around 24+ now and we might have only around 2 or 3 years before we all get married and after that we will not be having that much time to hang out with friends...

So we all decided that in the next two to three years we must go to all the important places in india...

Ashwin compiled a list too and here is the complete list of the places that we plan to cover... one place in a month... by that calculation we would have covered about 24 - 36 places before we get married... he he :D

Pretty good right?

Before i go on to that list, let me list down the places we have already seen (just for the record :P)

Places Visited already:

1) Mahabalipuram
2) Kovalam (entire ecr comes under this)
4) Bangalore
5) Kerala (Munnar, Allepey, Cochin)
6) Hyderabad
7) Tirupathi (:P)
9) Pondicherry
10) Pulicat Lake


Places to visit in the next two years:

  1. Goa
  2. Vaalpaarai
  3. Ooty
  4. Pulicat Lake
  5. Kaanchipuram
  6. Madurai
  7. Coimbatore
  8. Topslip
  9. Yercaud
  10. Wayanaud
  11. Coorg
  12. Jog Falls
  13. Tada Falls
  14. Rameshwaram
  15. Kanyakumari
  16. Chidambaram -&- Pichavaram lake
  17. Siruvani
  18. Hogenakkal
  19. Kodaikanal
  20. Mudumalai
  21. Lakshwadeep
  22. Mysore
  23. Mumbai
  24. Pune - Lonavla
  25. Ajantha Ellora
  26. Mangalore
  27. Rajasthan
  28. Shimla, Kulu Manali
  29. Darjeeling
  30. Delhi, Agra, Mathura, Vaishnodevi, Haridwar
  31. Leh, Ladakh, Srinagar.
  32. Mt.Everest :P (the ultimate comedy in the list)
  33. Gingee Fort
  34. Andaman & nicobar
  35. Wildlife sanctuaries in india
  36. Vaishno Devi (Jammu)
  37. Kedarnath
  38. Badrinath & Gangotri 
  39. Thiruvannamalai & Parvatha malai

If you know any other interesting place... do let us know it will be really helpful for us...

Cheers!!

 “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

P.S: Edit on 5th Jan, 2009: Adding new places with inputs from my friends Hari, Cowmaa and Reso --> Thanks a lot guys, for suggesting new and exciting places :)

Friday, January 01, 2010

My only Resolution for 2010!

Jan 1rst, 2010. I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be 50 pushups each morning, 50 pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight.
- Taxi Driver