Its Shutterbug day

This blog has been written exclusively for all the budding photographers around.

Gone are the days when you would buy a film role of 36 photos.
With the digital age there is no limit on the number of photos one can take.

Now is this a bad thing? Lets check out.

Today every Tom, Dick and Sally has a digital camera in his hand. Yes ‘his’ applies to all the three. At every function people are more interested in capturing the moment rather than living it.

Here we come across some of our new age irritants.

At a wedding, often times its someone like the bride or grooms brother, who owns a Nikon digi-cam but is too pre-occupied with other things to take pics on his own. He comes and hands over his camera to you and says .. Hey I'm very busy please go ahead and click some snaps.

Dude !!! If I wanted to click snaps I would have brought my own camera.

Mind you they would have already hired a professional photographer for the event and he would be on the job. Just because You don't have the time or patience to click your own snaps, Why me ???

Next time someone does this to you, Here’s what you do. Click away to glory. The floor , peoples feet , the wall, the windows , heads cut-off, Pics taken at 60 degree angles.
Do this once, and there will be one less person who will approach you with this kind of a request in future.

After the the pics are taken. It’s now time to view the results.

Here we come across the next set of irritants.

The first kind send their digital photos, each file minimum 1mb in size attached in an email to your official work mail id. This freakin mail comes before some important work related email and jams up your entire in-box.

Then we have the “Internet literate” folks who know how to use a photo sharing website.

A decade ago in the age of film roles, you were normally subjected to viewing only 36 photos that anyone clicked.
Today with memory sticks costing a dime; the 36 photos have become a minimum of 360 photos.

The flexibility of the digital era is that you can check the results of the pic you captured and delete the ones that don’t stand out. Useful feature eh ?

Well not really. Looks like most folks are not aware that they can do this. So they end up uploading all the 360 pics they clicked.

They send you this link to their album, where the concentration of images is more than that at Google Earth.

Its not uncommon to find 5 pics of the same person all taken within an interval of 10 milliseconds. You click the first picture and it’s the brides brother in the blue shirt, click Next and it’s the brides brother in the blue shirt. This time his face has moved about 0.05 inches to the left. Click next and it’s the brides brother in the blue shirt his face has now moved 0.10 inches to the left. Next click and wow this time it’s the brides bother in the blue shirt his face has moved a full 0.15 inches when compared to the first pic of him.
If its your lucky day then you will also find pics of the wall, doors and windows uploaded.

A note of advice to our friends who upload these gazillion pics. Remember these 360 photos are not images of Eva Longoria Or Kathrina Kaif in skimpy outfits. Rather they are photos of your retired uncle, his 4 married children in their 30’s, the neighbour Mr Rammurthy and his oversized wife, their maid and their pesky 2 kids whose mission for the day seems to be to destroy all the balloons and the other decorations in the hall.

Think people are going to view all these 360 images?. You would be lucky if they glanced through all the thumbnails.

My advice to all. Pick out your best photos and upload not more than 20 - 25 images .
Have another link on the page which says 'More photos…'. People who want to view all the pics will click on this link and do so.

The Holiday

Time for some travel, this time with my wife n the little new addition to the family.

Got some cheap air tickets and found myself staring at the TV screen in the airport-waiting lounge.


Kept wondering what It would be like appearing on TV. Well surely I would not want to appear on the dimwitted regional channel being aired. These days its always some song or dance reality show that is being broadcasted.

Maybe one of the international channels Discovery or Nat Geo might not be a bad idea. Nat Geo.. very cool, but on second thoughts I wouldn’t want to appear on ’20 seconds to disaster’ on Nat Geo.I am here waiting to catch a flight, Hope I don’t turn up on ‘Air Crash Investigations’ either.

Anyways time to board and sooner than expected we are seated in the plane.

Welcome to Air Fisher, I'm your pilot Jack speaking and with me I have our first officer Arkadi Khruschev. (Russian Air crew come cheap by the dozen these days).

Midway through the flight, the plane starts to wobble a bit. The pilot finds the Air speed indicator oscillating more than required. The plane seems to be losing altitude.


Now how important is documentation for any product? . Turns out, in the Aircraft industry - Very Important.


If you have watched Nat Geo’s ‘Air Crash Investigations’, I’m sure you must have come across episodes where pilots scan through pages of the flight manual to troubleshoot unexpected situations in mid flight.

I am still not sure why they rely on the flight manuals when its much easier to do a search and find using a laptop or Comp rather than browsing through a book page by page ?

Anyways since there was no .pdf manual they had to rely on the book.

Jack asks Khruschev to fetch the in-fight reference manuals. Khruschev opens the overhead cabin and finds 3 books.

- Microsoft flight simulator

- Flying for Dummies

- 737 Flight manual

It does not take much time for both to settle for the 737 Flight manual

Soon they spot the situation they are facing, which is covered under Troubleshooting Issue A-493. Flip to the troubleshooting index and both stare in horror.

It so happened that the book that they were carrying was the basic edition. Section A-493 is included only in the Enterprise edition of the manual.

But hang on, no cause for worries. The fine print below says
You can call our 24 x 7 customer care center number. Its a 1800 toll free number (outsourced of course to keep costs low).

Finally they get through and reach the customer care system.
This no different from other systems, the all-familiar message starts off.

You have reached the Boeing customer service department.

Press 1 for English, 2 for French, 3 for Russian, 4 for German ...
for those who have a videophone we also have instructions in sign language to assist the hearing impaired.

Suddenly Jack can no longer follow what’s going on. Our good old friend Khruschev pressed 3, and the instructions are now in Russian.

What the heck !!! backup on the menu and select 1 for English otherwise we are all going down.

A few anxious moments backtracking and back to the English menu. Next sub menu.

Press 1 if your aircraft is a Boeing 737, press 2 if your aircraft is a 747, press 3 if it’s a 767.
If you are not able to identify the model then press 0

The choice is made, 1 it is. A few more anxious moments and the next message streams through.

Please wait as all our executives are attending to other customers, You are the 2nd in queue your call is very dear to us. We thank you for your patience.

Finally a real human voice. Thank you for holding sir, you are speaking to the Boeing 27 x 7 customer support division, how may I help you?


The pilot blabbers out May day May day the engines are failing bla bla bla ..
A long pause at the other end is broken by a, Thank you for your patience, But before we proceed we need to authenticate your aircraft. Please tell me the Aircraft serial number.

Ok Damn it hurry up and tell me where do I find the serial number?
It can be found etched on the left window panel on the cockpit.
Please repeat the 15 digit serial number followed by the month and year of manufacture.

Khruschev rattles off the serial number. The operator goes hmm ok thank you .. hmm ummm.. 4234008.. ok , looks fine. One more pause and ..

Are you sure below the serial number it does not say 'Made in China' anywhere?

No !! For the love of god, there is no ‘Made in China’ written anywhere.

Thank you sir, this confirms that the plane was indeed manufactured by The Everett, Washington factory.

Could you please call the Airhostess? And pass on the headphones to her?

The pilot goes What!! Are you sure this is the right time for this? We don’t have time to play games.

Yes I know what I am doing. You have to trust me.
The Airhostess is summoned and she listens to the instructions from Customer Support, she goes .. umm hmm, aha .. Oh .. ok

She then disappears.

The headphones are handed back to the pilot. Things should return to normal in a short while, meanwhile may I place you on hold, as I have two other airplanes in queue.

Then the pilot is put on to the all-familiar elevator music.

A few minutes trickle by and suddenly everything on the plane is back to normal.

Darn !! what was the problem that the Air Hostess could solve ?
Turned out that someone left the lavatory door unlocked and the whiff from the lavatory was knocking the pilot’s out of their senses.

With the door shut tight everything returned to normal.

So we didn’t make it to Nat Geo Air crash investigation after all. Back at our destination and off to continue another normal day.