Lifeblob's World

Calling all photographers – The lifeblob photo contest for the month of July is now open and the theme is:

Rain Rain Rain – Share your photos of the beautiful and joyous rainy day

I love dancin in rain.. by Sneha Rathod

And this time, we are not giving away one or two prizes but a total of 16 prizes:

• 1 Gold prize winner will receive a cool Rs 1000/- gift voucher to the lifeblob store
• 5 Silze prize winners will receive 10% discount coupons to the lifeblob store
• 10 Bronze prize winners will receive 5% discount coupons to the lifeblob store

So what are you waiting for. Grab your cameras and get going, for the rain does not always come when you want it to. For more details about the contest, visit the photo contest page.

The moment that you have all been waiting for is finally here. The contest for the month of April is now open and the theme for this month is:

Black & White – Recreate the magic in two colors

Graz by Luca Terminator

Anyone who has been into photography for some time will tell you that there is a charm to presenting the photos in monochrome. Simple looking photos can be transformed into masterpieces with the touch of a button and a splash of some extra contrast.

So time to go ahead, unleash your creative juices and present your masterpieces in black and white. For more details about the contest, follow this link.

Bengaluru photographers, time to get your photography gear out. Bengaluru Infinite 2010 is finally here! A day filled with photography in your favourite city capturing the city at its best.

What is it?

Bengaluru Infinite is a photo-marathon that will test your photography skills to the core. Each participant will be given 4 themes on which they will need to take photographs. The themes will cover a wide variety of subjects that are associated with Bengaluru, that define Bengaluru or that showcase the spirit of Bengaluru.

The contest starts at 8AM in the morning and ends at 8PM in the evening during which, the participants will need to shoot photographs that match the themes given to them.

Remember, you only get to submit two photos per theme, so make sure you take plenty of photos for the theme and pick up the best two of the lot.

You can find more details about the contest and the terms and conditions for submission here.

When is it?

The Bengaluru Infinite 2010 will be held on April 25, 2010. Registrations are open now and please call up the following numbers to get yourself registered for the contest.

Asif – 99451 30745 / Sriharsha – 98866 35410 / Peevee – 99455 16333

You can mail at bengaluruinfinite@gmail.com for further details! You can also register at http://bit.ly/bi2010 and one of our volunteers will get in touch with you.

Are there any prizes?

Of course, there are plenty of cool prizes to be won. The details of the prizes will be available shortly at the Bengaluru Infinity 2010 lifeblob page.

What camera should I use?

Photography is more about finding a great moment and capturing it in your camera, rather than a function of the equipment you use. It doesn’t matter what camera you use as long as you are excited to participate and have a knack of identifying a unique moment from the rest.

It goes without saying that you would do better if you had at least a DSLR camera in your hands, but no need to fret if you have a compact camera of a mobile camera since composing a great photo is 90% of the battle won.

We at lifeblob are proud to announce the launch of our first ebook titled “Shoot like a Pro with Compact Camera”. This is based on the tips available in this site and is targeted at a newbie who quickly wants to learn a few tricks, take a few good snaps and get inspired!

There are many bulky books available online and in print on the various subjects in photography. There are also many blogs, like Photography Tips, which will give you tips on how to improve your skills. However, seldom do you find one when you need the most; at the time of clicking! This ebook is a humble effort from our part to solve just that. Just print the ebook in the size of a pocket book and carry it around while shooting.

Shoot Like a Pro with Compact Camera Ebook

Download Here. Its Free!

Feel free to download it, print it, share it with your friends. Your feedback is very important to us. Please share us your thoughts about this ebook.

This is nothing short of a testimony to our growing impact in the field of photography, we have made it to the photography page at Alltop.

Starting today, you will be served with 5 spectacular photos from lifeblob at http://photography.alltop.com/. And if you are one of our users, do keep an eye out since your photo may be the next one to make it to alltop.

And if you are not already sharing your photos using lifeblob, its time you start doing it if you want to see it on Alltop!

We had our second photowalk on the eve of Valentine’s Day in Bangalore. We chose Shivajinagar- Commercial street area for our photowalk with the intent to capture the mood of Bangalore’s shopping scene on the eve of V-day.

From the street dwellers to Mega malls; the Shivajinagar-Commercial street area gave us an opportunity to capture the rich diaspora of shopping experience. From cheap china electronics to Kashmiri carpets, the Shivajinagar area has a lot of street vendors selling all kinds of stuff. I was accompanied by Sidhartha, Zeeshan, Prashanth, Rakshith, Vishwas, and Pranav.

Here are some photos from the walk.

Rakshith Prasad	Vishwas Narendra	Broken - Zeeshan
Mosque - Vishwas	Antique Clocks - Pranav	Abandoned - Sidhartha

Follow us @lifeblob for updates on future photowalks.  Not from Bangalore and want to start photowalking at your city. Do let us know!

Last saturday, the 6th of Feb, 2010 we had our first “official” photowalk, though we started photowalking some time back.

Siddharth, Suman, Rakesh, Prashanth, Vikas, Vishwas, Pranav and yours truly met up near Vidhana Soudha (which is a seat of state legislature and one of the most prominent monuments in Bangalore)  and walked towards Cubban Park, taking photos of the High Court, Central Library along the way. It was great fun meeting the the photography enthusiasts in Bangalore and we learnt a trick or two from them.

Here are some of the snaps clicked by the fellow photowalkers. For more photos go here

Siddhartha Reddy	The Photowalkers - Pranav Bhasin
Dragonfly - Pranav	Statue - Pranav Bhasin

We are organizing another photowalk on Saturday, the 13th of Feb 2010 near Shivajinagar-Commercial street area. For more details and RSVP go here. See you there!

We have had several breathtaking entries to the “Celebrations” contest. Thanks to everyone who posted photos and voted on them. Due to popular demand, we have decided to let the celebrations linger on for just a little bit longer.

The deadline for submission of entries and voting has been extended to Jan 24th, 2010. If you haven’t posted your entry yet, now is a great time to do so. It also gives you plenty of time to popularize your content and gather more votes.

Today, we witness one of the biggest celestial events of the millennium – an annular solar eclipse that will be the longest until December 23, 3043. The eclipse will last 11 mins 7.7 seconds maximum and I’m sure there are several photography enthusiasts who would like to capture it in their frames.

However, taking photos of a solar eclipse could be very harmful to your eyes and also the equipment you use. Here are a set of instructions that you should strictly follow to safely take photos of a solar eclipse:

1) Setup your equipment early. If you have a tripod, this is the time to bring it out as it will save you from looking directly into the sun and also let you take long exposure shots.

2) Get a good solar filter that can be attached in front of your lens. Do not shoot without a filter as it can seriously damage your eyes or the camera sensor.

3) If you have a DSLR or a camera with interchangeable lenses, put on the lens with the longest focal length. A focal length of 200mm to 5oomm should give you a really good picture that captures the intricate details of the sun. If you are using a compact camera, set it to the maximum optical zoom level that is available.

4) Use an ISO value of 50 or 100, aperture size of 8-16 and focus on infinity. Take a series of photos at every shutter speed ranging from 1/1000 sec to 1 sec.

5) If your camera supports bracketing, turn it on. This will tell the camera to automatically take the same shot at 3-5 different exposure levels and you can choose the best of the lot offline. If you don’t have bracketing, manually change the exposure level for your shots so that you don’t miss out on the magic. The low exposure shots will give you the details, the high exposure shots will give you better outer coronal features and you can also combine them later to create an HDR image.

6) Take a few long exposure shots to further capture the coronal features better.

7) To take group photos during the eclipse, project the image of the eclipse on a wall or in water using a reflector and shoot against the backdrop.

The National Center for Biological Sciences, Bangalore is doing a study of the behaviour of birds and animals before, during and after the solar eclipse. If you would like to support their research, please submit your observations to Eclipse Watch and post any photos of the eclipse, pets, animals, birds etc during the eclipse at the Eclipse Watch Lifeblob.

“Photowalking is the act of walking with a camera for the main purpose of taking pictures of things that the photographer may find interesting” as per wikipedia.

Traditionally, photowalking has been used as a method to practice and improve one’s own photography skills. Walking is also a good exercise and during a photowalk, you could roam around a neighbourhood for several miles without realizing how much you walked.

Last week, we started photowalking and are amazed at how much we learnt about our neighbourhood . More importantly, we shot very interesting people and objects, the kind that you would normally squander and opportunity to shoot. We simply love it and are going to do it on a regular basis now – if you would like to join in, you are most welcome to.

Here are some snaps from our last two photowalks: