From Mahesh Bhat

We Indians lack role models other than movie stars, cricketers and models. Our children aspire to be part of the fast moving, fast spending society without realising our responsibility towards the society in any manner. But there are a handful of women and men, seemingly ordinary people who have achieved extraordinary things and helped the society around them. These women and men hold the fabric of our society with their vision and action. They have for decades done selfless service and given extra ordinary gifts to the country. They live away from the limelight yet unknowingly their work touches us. “Heroes” is a book about such people. It is a celebration of the life and work of 15 “Heroes” of India.

We have researched and identified these people from across India, from Thrissur to Ladakh and Manipal to Orissa.

Tulasi Munda of Orissa taught herself to read and write and has provided free education to the tribal children for the last 30 years. Vijayanath Shenoy of Manipal had to pawn his wife’s jewellery in his quest to conserve the vanishing architectural heritage of the coastal Karnataka. Chewang Norphel, a 69-year young retired engineer of Leh – Ladakh builds artificial glaciers to solve the water scarcity in the Ladakh region.

The book will consist of evocative B&W photographs by Mahesh Bhat and text by the well-known journalist Anita Pratap. Currently corporations such as Infosys, DSL software have booked and paid for copies in advance and hence support the project. The book is expected to be launched in mid 2006. The physical size will about 9”X9” and will consist of about 108-120 pages. A portion of the profits from the book will be donated to the cause of the Heroes featured in the book.

Please support the project by reserving your copies in advance at a special price of US$19 per book. This includes the cost of delivery. Please make your checks in the name of “Heroes of India Project” and send them to:

Heroes of India Project,
C/o Mahesh Bhat
Arora Business Centre
Dickenson Road
Bangalore-560042
India

For more information or questions and comments, email Mahesh at the following addresses: mahesh[at]maheshbhat[dot]com or heroesofindia[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Back here I extolled the virtues of the RAW format when shooting digital. Ken Rockwell, however, kills that notion outright. He says shooting your images as standard or fine JPG's should suffice for most publications. Any thoughts on this? By the way, Ken also has this post on his site that is a must read for the gearheads among us.

“Shake it, shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture.” – OutKast

Here is to upping the ante on instant gratification. Polaroid as a company may have come and gone [or at least is on its way out like all the other big guns in the industry] but some creative soul has created an online tool called the Polaroid-o-nizer to mimic the look and feel of those instant wonders.

This is what I came up with – a picture I recently shot of my son who just turned 2 … months old!

In a major push to reach couples making their wedding plans for 2005, 2006 and beyond, I have decided to invest heavily in some advertising in Shaadi Style magazine.

If you know of anyone getting married, please refer them to me and direct them to my wedding photojournalism web site at Pipal Productions. I pay $100 for each client/couple that signs on for my services.

Ok, sing along with me now. I am switching to digital. There I said it. A full blow confession in the middle of the night. Listen, it had to happen. I am tired of running to the lab to get images processed, scanned and then reprinted. Pain in the you-know-where. As I have hinted [ok, more than a hint] I am heading into a camera store near NYC to buy a Nikon D70s. There is virtually no difference between this model and its predecessor – the D70, yet I hanker for the newer version. Ok, ok, the LCD display on the back of the newer version is about 25% larger. And size does matter right?

Well, I have been reading about file formats and sizes and the discussions and differences between capturing images in RAW format or compressing them as JPGS. Ideally, one should be using RAW and only RAW. JPGS simply throw away too much information as it brings the file size down to something we can somewhat easily email. This NYTimes article hammered this notion home, though the author seems to have forgotten to mention that there are variations even among RAW producing cameras. And there might just be variations between cameras made by the same manufacturer. Quite the conundrum, eh? Any thoughts on how I should proceed?