I have often seen people taking point and shoot snaps without much thought into exposure. A little bit of experimenting with exposure, and you can dramatically improve your snaps.

Simply put, exposure is ensuring your photos have the right amount of colour, brightness and contrast. This ensure that the primary subject(s) in your pictures are neither too dark nor too bright. While its very easy to ‘photoshop’ your images to get unrealistic colour, it takes a good camera and a better photographer to capture colours as close to reality as possible.

Conditions like bright direct sunlight, snow, sea water, night photography, sunrise and sunsets etc. provide difficult shooting conditions. Some cameras have settings that let you preselect an environmental condition, others allow you to manually increase or decrease the exposure.

Most automatic cameras have one or more small highlighted blocks (usually a small red rectangle) that comes on screen/ viewfinder when you press the shutter release button. This block is also used to read the image information and make calculations required to ensure correct exposure.Often these also have a half-lock position that is used to lock the exposure information and then compose your focus to do a full click. Some of the expensive cameras also have a dedicated exposure lock button.

The simplest thing one can do is to ensure that this block collects information about the small area that you really want to show lighting and colours correctly for.  Remember, this is not necessarily what you want to focus on!

In the example of the sunset here, the exposure was set to reflect the setting sun – This helped in masking the trees (which were actually visible to the normal eye when the shot was taken). Thus the colours of the sunset and the brightness of the sun itself were captured accurately.

In the example of the sunflower, a flash and exposure compensation setting was used to override the harsh direct sunlight entering the camera. As you can see here, the background is completely white (overexposed) while the colours of the sunflower have been captured accurately.

It is possible to capture almost the entire image in its best form without really compromising on the exposure of the darker and brighter elements. HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) is one such method fast catching up. We shall save that for sometime later.

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Time is 9:46 PM

I am back to my seat and three guys come to announce the best live action award. The category doesn’t sound familiar, but sounds important. Whatever !

The Oscar award for the best live action short film goes to will tell you later.

By the way, did I tell you – Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire are tied at two awards each. Lets see who wins the battle of the Oscars. My heart goes for Slumdog Millionaire but my brain for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I hope my heart wins.

9:52 PM

Hugh Jackman is back and is busy talking of “Change That Has Come”…..He is talking of Mamma Miah and the musical. He is now singing, dancing live “Mariah….” from Mamma Miah…along with guess who – Beyonce Knowles!.

Oh My God!

This is the first time I am seeing him on stage and Hugh Jackman is phenomenal.

A Musical Oscars indeed. All the performers from Mamma Miah look so beautiful including Beyonce Knowles

Time is 9:59 – Time for a break and some grub – Salads, bread crumbs, light mayonnaise and lots of water. Not so spicy, right ? So uncommon for an Indian like me. Isn’t it ?..anyways, time to move on

Five actors including Cuba Gooding Jr. comes onto present the Best Supporting Actor.

The Oscar goes to the Late Heath Ledger for The Dark Night and the family (his mom,  dad and sister) came to receive the Oscars. All three of them spoke and accepts the award. An emotional moment, indeed. May his soul Rest In Peace

Who will win the Best Actor award ? – Mickey Rourke ? Wait for some more time and you will get to know that…

10:13 PM -

The best documentary award goes to James Marsh, Simon Chinn for Men On Wire. The winner shows some magic on stage. Very creative!

10:17 PM

The best Oscar for the small documentary short film goes to Megan Mylan for Smile Pinki – Another Indian film. Wow! This probably is the best year for Indian cinema at the Oscars for a long, long time to come. Hey, this is Icing On Cake!

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It’s back to basics – so it seems. The ” good old days” – days when firms would simply throw money to retain people, Compensation Managers were given marching orders to “do what it takes” to retain talent and in the bargain delivered top dollar increases and fancy variable pays, when counter offers was the need of the hour and kept compensation managers on their toes -

This all seems to be a passe!

With global recession tightening it’s grip around us and with nightmares like the 50B US$ fund run by Bernaud Madoff coming to light, analysts say this is the tip of the iceberg!

I wish it isn’t because what we have been through over the last few months has been more than what we can take. Unfortunately, my wish isnt going to come trough and this will last a few more months – the damage, unraveling like a ravaging hurricane, the magnitude of which will be know only when the storm passes!

While we duck for cover and realize that umbrellas are not enough to weather this storm, compensation managers are going through a pretty different and unique year end / compensation planning process. Quite a few firms that I know, both big and small have said they don’t plan to do merit raises this year – some of the other players are even taking a call on doing away with variable pay plans, not to mention the scary issue of headcount reduction.

So what does the employee feel?

Well – at least some of my experiences tell me that the real world is living in an ivory tower. I’ve had a few folks walk by to me and say, “Can you tell me how much increase I am going to get ? “, “I want to know the “exact” percentage of my bonus!” and I am stumped for words!!!!

It’s sad that a majority of the work force thinks that this is a passing cloud. I can’t blame their ignorance because they probably don’t understand the magnitude of what we are contending with today. But as someone who reasonably understands the situation, I can tell you one thing – the good old days are gone forever and will never ever return.

Hold on! I’m not a pessimist. I am an eternal optimist!!! I’m not predicting doomsday for a second. The point that I am trying to make is that corporates are learning lessons and learning them hard and fast – mistakes teach us a lot and this one is no different.

This too shall pass say some – Yes!.. This too will, because we can’t expect to see things never improve. They will and they better.. Just that the new world order has arrived and when things get back to normal – it’s back to the days of our parents, days when value propositions will be driven by learning and growth opportunities, loyalty to firms having some value and of course, compensation being at the bottom of the stack..

Good bye good old days, welcome to the new world order!!! – if your firms want to survive!

Image Credit: Luismi1985

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First of all, India Special wishes its family of readers, writers and everyone alike a very Happy and Prosperous Diwali. We thank you very much for the patronage shown to us over the last four months of our existence.

As someone said

The sun does not shine there, nor do the moon and the stars, nor do lightning shine. All the lights of the world cannot be compared even to a ray of the inner light of the Self. Merge yourself in this light of lights and enjoy the supreme Deepavali.

May this year bring to you astounding success and may every step that you take bring laurels to you and your family.

A little history ….

Image Credit-Dhondu Saxena

They say Deepavali, or Diwali, is a significant festival in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism- celebrated as the “Festival of Lights.”

To us, it is a festival full of light, opportunity and hope. The lights or lamps signify victory of good over the evil.

Diwali is celebrated on the first day of the lunar Kartika month, which falls in the month of October or November.

It is a symbol of year long optimism on the darkest night of the year where everyone puts their heart and soul to bring joy to life, forgetting the year that was gone by in the hope for a brighter and bigger future.

Diwali unites people irrespective of their caste, creed, sex or relgion.

A Ray of Hope is all we need…

Incidentally the month of October 2008 has been marked as a “Red Month” due to market crashes all over the world, financial calamities, systemic breakdowns etc. There are fears that this is the beginning of a long recession. There is gloom and darkness everywhere.

In this hour of crisis, we should not lose hope. We should continue to bring rays of hope in ourselves and all those whom we adore and love.

The economic turmoil will surely claim a few victims. There is no denying the fact it will be a painful turbulence. Yet, we have to remain hopeful about the future and leave no stones unturned to design our destiny and to shape the lives of our generations to come

On the eve of this Diwali, let us pray together that we have the unity, conscience and wisdom to see us through this crisis – not as Indians, Chinese or Americans, not as Hindus, Muslims or Christians but as sensible and thoughtful human beings who have the respect for the neighbour, empathy for the suffered and a hope for a bigger, brighter tomorrow.

May this Diwali bring you SHUBH LABH (prosperity and wealth), good health and happiness for you, your family and the world.

With that said, we want to leave this thought with you…

May there be a ray of hope….

Video Credit: Fratelanutela, You Tube

Let this diwali burn all your bad times and enter you in good times.

Happy Diwali, once again !!!

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