Quesa Lounge is located in the the Sector 50 Market, Noida. It is a fairly new addition to the market and has quickly become a favorite haunt of college-going students and office-goers. You can find Quesa Lounge on Facebook and even on Foursquare.

So far, my favorite drink : the Virgin Mojito!

The Chef at Quesa is an absolute gentleman with a round up of some lovely food. They have quite an extensive menu to choose from.

Do not forget to try out their lip-smacking Chicken Wings! I don’t know what they put in them but they are absolutely delicious and I can’t help re-ordering them whenever I get a chance to drop by.

The Quesa Lounge also has a quirky collection of Hookahs and you can ask the go-to man, Tyagi, to fix you up with a very customized request.

And the following is a panorama of the entire lounge shot during the day.

Move your mouse left to right on the image below to view / scroll the panorama horizontally.

Overall, the Quesa Lounge is a cosy little place to hang out with your friends. Very friendly staff and an excellent Chef – you can also usually find the boys who run the place : Mayank and Adhar. I especially like the food – Noida doesn’t have many good yet reasonably priced places to offer and Quesa fits in perfectly in that empty hole.

I’ve been featured on the Profile column in the September issue of Grazia magazine. Photographs of the article on the pages of the magazine below. The article heading is “The new breed of power networkers” and features two other ladies : Rashmi Vaswani of Rage Chocolatier @rashmivaswani03 on Twitter and Padmini Harchandrani, @paddychop on Twitter.

Many thanks to Mamta Mody for writing a lovely feature – she captured my entire ramble-on-the-phone and boiled it down to it’s essence. And she was very patient with my incessant questions – “What photograph are you going to use? Can I see the article before it’s printed? When’s it getting out?” etc.

Apart from the fact that I’m thrilled about this feature – the awesome folks at Grazia also used a photograph that I shot myself – a self-portrait – so in the credits for the photographers, I’m mentioned too! Thanks to @akanksharedhu for letting me use her mirror for the photograph!

These are photographs from the first wedding I shot on my Nikon D90 – the camera was new and the photographs are now old – from February 2008. Wedding of Akanksha and Aman. Got around to editing the photographs over the weekend. First attempt at a sort-of story-telling style – with diptychs and triptychs.

The mehendi right before the start of all the ceremonies.

The bride dressed-up at the day of the engagement and more details photographs from the mehendi.

A game of cards at the groom’s home – just before all the formalities begin. Relaxing on the rooftop.

Much dancing ensued to welcome the bride and her family – the day and night of the Sangeet at the groom’s place.

the bride with brothers and best friend at the pre-wedding party.

All dressed-up for the engagement ceremony.

The groom waiting patiently for the engagement ceremony to begin.

The bride’s turn to wait patiently while the groom completes the customary “horse-ride” – an Indian wedding isn’t quite complete without a “ghodi”.

Some more dancing right before the engagement ceremony and a huge deal being made out of the horse-ride.

Even on-the-cheek kisses are a little risque at Indian weddings – but just after the engagement, it’s easy to get away with.

The just-engaged couple. I had to be present in the capacity of elder-sister during the actual ring exchange, hence no photographs of the actual engagement in process.

Jewelery being gifted and a lovely smile from the bride-to-be.

The newly-engaged couple.

The “official” photographer had put a small backdrop and light setup in the hall and the couple was whisked inside for some quick portrait shots. I got to shoot some too.

More posing at the behest of the official photographer. The couple is now starting to tire. But just when you think they’re done…

…he picks her up and…

…they exchange some more kisses!

The wedding ceremony, puja and havan – alongwith the seven rounds of the holy-fire – the “saat-pheras”.

Offerings being made to the fire and the ritual of taking the first step together after the seven rounds around the fire are complete.

A wider view of the wedding mandap.

More offerings to the fire, the mantras being recited and smiling bride.

And it’s almost done – some running around to find more offerings for the fire.

Somre more mantras and exchange of sweets.

The bride in a hip mood after being married : throwing the rice up and behind her to signify the “vidaai” or departure and the walkway decorated on her way out.

There are a lot of lovely little things in an Indian wedding – but if I knew the details of all of them, I’d be a wedding pundit, not a wedding photographer! Always a good thing to get details of all ceremonies before actually planning to shoot a wedding. The other wedding I’ve shot was for Bharat and Priyanka if you haven’t seen it already. There’s been a huge improvement in my photography and I’m looking forward to another wedding to cover!

I have a total of three plants in three pots – two Curry Leaf plants that die and are reborn almost every month and one Hibiscus Rosa that doesn’t flower anymore even though it’s cousins in the lawns below are throwing up all kinds of reds and whites – there’s three weeds growing in these pots and I’m letting them be to see what comes.

I’m a huge Basil fan and since I’ve been unable to find any basil seeds / cuttings in my local area / markets, I decided to do an experiment – bought a handful of packets of fresh basil leaves at the supermarket and dunked the three best prospective stalks in a glass jar in water and put it next to my glass window. Two rotted and the third sprouted a root and has been potted in soil today. I can see one tiny green leaf trying to poke it’s way out at one of the nodes – but no guarantees yet!

The above image shows the potted Basil stalk – the leaves on it are the ones that came with the stalk. I’ve tried to show the tiny new one sprouting in the photograph below – no marco lens so using the 18-55mm.
The Basil’s been potted in a large white plastic jar that originally contained protein supplements. I still don’t know what to do with the cut-off top – but it sure does look interesting and made some spotlight type of light effects using the on-camera flash.

Experiment till you find what you’re looking for – through the viewfinder.

I shot these photographs at the Pantene Mystery Shampoo event that declared the winner of their 14-day contest. Katrina is one of Pantene’s brand ambassadors and the winner was crowned by her. The last photograph shows the photograph of the winner with Katrina. The event was held at Hotel Taj Lands End, Bandra, Mumbai.

So YAY! The last shot was snapped by Bharat who had accompanied me to the event – and you can see I don’t even know how to stand properly I will be uploading more portraits of the people that I shot at the event later this week or next week after I’ve closed some of the branding projects I’m working on. With more details on who the organizers were and what the whole deal was about – links to videos etc.

Levi’s is launching their new brand of jeans called the Curve ID – the launch date in stores nation-wide is the 2nd of September this year. This event was held at the Taj Mansingh Hotel in New Delhi with a fashion-show choreographed by the very handsome Marc Robinson. The bevy of beauties that represent the Levi’s Curve ID brand are all in the photographs below! [ And please give it some time to load - there are 80 photographs from the event that I just HAD to share! ]

That’s @akanksharedhu’s new Levi’s Curve ID Demi!
The stunningly beautiful table arrangements by art director Shani Himanshu [ the link will take you to his Facebook page ].
That’s me in my new Levi’s Curve ID jeans!	@akanksharedhu with her new pair of Levi’s Curve ID jeans – thanks to Tusharika’s adept measuring and expertise on the Curve ID!
The bar was well-equipped and the service was great at the Taj Mansingh.
	Didn’t get many food pictures because quite frankly, I was too engrossed in the event itself! The people were just fabulous!
Can you tell that I was absolutely mesmerized by the wonderful art direction by Shani Himanshu?! Of course both @akanksharedhu and I were enraptured by his hair as well – didn’t get a picture
That is Shani Himanshu – speaking with @missmalini [ also did not get a picture and this was the best shot I could manage - the light was really low. ]	A sneak peek of John Anderson, President & CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. Shumone Chatterjee, Vice President, Marketing, the Levi’s brand – Asia Pacific.
John Anderson, President & CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. in conversation with a couple of reporters.
Tusharika Rao, Business Head, Levi’s Women & Shumone Chatterjee. John Anderson, President & CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., Mary Alderete, Vice President, Global Women’s Marketing, the Levi’s brand
	The lovely ladies start showing up on the ramp!
An introduction to the international brand ambassadors and the three denim styles : Slight, Demi and Bold. Miss Nine, Lykke Li and Violet.
John Anderson, President & CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., Mary Alderete, Vice President, Global Women’s Marketing, the Levi’s brand
What a bevy of beauties and some really funky and stylish denims on them!
And the Indian Levi’s Curve ID Brand Ambassadors not hitting the ramp starting with Jacqueline Fernandez @Jackie_alien	Chitrangada Singh Ileana D’Cruz @Ileana_Dcruz
And I also spent quite a bit of time trying to capture Jacqueline Fernandez @Jackie_alien’s braid!	I quite loved the hairstyle on Ileana D’Cruz @Ileana_Dcruz
Question and answer time with Shumone!
The Levi’s Curve ID Bold style on Ileana.
Marc Robinson, Ileana D’Cruz and Chitrangada Singh.

Many thank to @udaibir for the invite; to Chitrangada Singh, @ileana_dcruz and @jackie_alien for being super-patient and granting us “pose please” requests; to Tusharika for helping us pick the right jeans; to John Anderson for being so gracious with the “may we take a picture please” and to Levi’s for organizing a wonderfully cute event. Oh and thank to Levi’s once again for pushing the boundaries against waist-size obsession so we don’t have to think about inches anymore – but only styles and shapes!

Camera 360 is a mobile phone application for your Android. I used the Nexus One for this review. First things first : this app has a mind-bending number of options and effects available. 90% of them are available on the free version and the developers are only now creating some additional options for the Pro / paid version. Let me make it clear at the outset – this is the only paid app on my Nexus One. THAT is how good an app this is.

Those are all the screenshots of all the various modes and features available on the Camera 360 app. The phone in the photographs is my Google Nexus One. The feature / shooting options list includes Effects, which has I’m Feeling Lucky that randomizes the effect; Enhance that increases contrast; Black and White; LOMY cyan; LOMO Cinematic; Commercial; LightCyan; Reversal Film; HDR Simulation Light; HDR Simulation Heavy; Night and the Dream effect available only on the Pro version as well as the fantastic Back to 1839 also available on the Pro version.
And that’s just the EFFECT mode. Below you’ll find photographs with the various modes applied to them and some more descriptive information on other modes.
Then there’s a Scenery Mode where your photograph shows up inside another photograph of a dude painting a canvas. The Funny Mode has options for Surrealist Painting; Surrealist Color Painting; Line Sketch; Four-color poster; Fish eye; Vertical left symmetry; Vertical right symmetry; Horizontal left symmetry & Horizontal right symmetry.	If that isn’t enough, there’s also a Tilt-Shift mode! While it obviously doesn’t give an effect like a real tilt-shift lens, if you know what the right situation is to use a tilt-shift lens, you’ll probably be thrilled with this mode. You can fine-tune the amount of blurriness, the transition smoothness, a faster effect or a more time-consuming simulation, etc. Like with any other piece of equipment / filters, one needs to know what to shoot and what subject will get some character enhancement on using a particular shooting mode.
The Shift-Color mode allows you to focus on one particular spot in a scene and convert all other colors to black and white – but keep the color you’re focussed on.
And the last mode is the Normal Mode, where you have options for No Color Filter; Mono; Negative; Solarize; Sepia; Posterize; Whiteboard [ which strengthens saturation ]; Blackboard [ black point addition effect ]; and Aqua.	And if this wasn’t enough, you should also know that in any of these modes in Camera 360, you can adjust the following things in addition to mode-specific adjustments : decide whether you want to see Composition Grids, use a Classic Golden Section or a Modern Central Division; also adjust White Balance; Night shooting mode; Flash mode; exposure times; Auto or Infinite focus and a couple other focusing modes. PHEW!
Scenes with good lighting will give you better results – unless you’re looking for a moody feel.

I can’t possibly go into more details than the above! I can, however tell you how to buy the Pro version because I had a hard time getting it myself. Firstly, buying paid Android apps, if you are in India, is not possible via the Android Market – the pro links just don’t even show up. For this particular app, you will need a PayPal account or a Credit Card. Once you have the free version, and you launch the app, you will see a white screen telling you what’s available on the Pro version and a continue link below that. After clicking on the continue button, the app launches with the camera – now, if you press the back button on your phone, you will be taken to another white screen, which has the payment options etc. I had no idea I had to press the back button. At $3.99, Camera 360 for the Android is totally worth it.

The best sunset I’ve seen in the last six months since I moved to this apartment! The sky never looked this beautiful and I spent about 45 minutes trying to capture it on my Nikon D90 using both the 18-55 and the 55-200 mm lenses. Images with a “panorama” in the top left corner are scrollable versions – move your mouse left and right to view the entire panorama. The lovely lightweight jQuery script was edited and written by John Hobbs @jmhobbs and the script can be found here.

Looking at these photographs now, it’s hard for me to look at them like they’re from a ‘real’ sky! I’ve got a few more spectacular photographs, which I will be uploading – all of them should be uploaded by the end of next week. Hoping for more such sunsets!

This is a set of photographs from the special menu created by Kanishk who is preparing to be a Master Chef. Location courtesy : Quesa Lounge, Noida.

Shot on the Nikon D90. Photoshop levels and curves and exposure for post-production of images. We didn’t have a food stylist. There was Lamb guard of honour with whiskey honey glaze served with red wine reduction, Prawns in rum and filo pastry strips, Chicken Breasts with Pepper Vodka and mirin glaze served with balsamic reduction and Cognac & Mocha Cheese Oreo Souffle. The Balasmic Reduction and Red Wine Reduction were to die for. Yummy!

This is a set of photographs of the interior of the living room at a friend’s home. Shot on the Nexus One, using the Android App called Camera 360 using HDR, LOMO cyan and LOMO cinematic filters. I think the light flares are not because of the app but because of the camera lens on the body of the Nexus One. Maybe I smudged it with some oil – there was a lot of cake around ;D

This is a set of photographs of a bathroom and some of the stuff inside a bathroom. It’s been shot on the Nexus One using the Android app called Camera 360 using various shooting modes like LOMO Cyan, LOMO cinematic, HDR, Cyan Film, etc. No editing in Photoshop, the shots are SOOC.

This is a set of photographs of the interior of one of my friend’s home. I’ve used the Retro Camera Android app on my Nexus One for this particular set. While I quite like the way the photographs show up on the phone, while looking at them on the screen, I’m not so happy with the quality. Judge for yourself.

Set of photographs of sunsets shot from my balcony, Noida, India. Photographed using my Nexus One using the Camera 360 Android App. All photographs use either the HIGH HDR filter or the LOW HDR filter built into the Camera 360 app.

Four of my photographs are being used on the Network18 venture website http://www.in.com without my permission. The images are not hosted on the in.com servers, they are being leeched from my hosting servers. Network18 has very blatantly also provided a link back to where they have copied the images from and insouciantly mentioned “Images maybe subject to copyright.” Yes, it is stupid. Now, the CEO Haresh Chawla might not be aware of this – and he might be aware of this – in case of the latter… it’s a ridiculous business strategy. Below are the screenshots in all their glory – for posterity’s sake – and following are direct links till they get taken down : Image 01 | Image 02 | Image 03 | Image 04 – UPDATE : the images have magically disappeared! you can still see them here using Google’s cache Image 01 | Image 02 | Image 03 | Image 04. Thanks to @poeticgooner for the Google Cache hat tip.

They also sent me an email from the in.com website saying ” Thank you for your feedback. Can you please send us the link. Do let is know if the problem persists”.

Read : India’s copyright proposals are un-American (and that’s bad)

This incident was also covered on Chori.in.

Apparently, in.com uses a Bing.com API, which allows them to use keywords and then display search results on their website. While Bing.com and Google.com have my permission to include my images in their search results, in.com does not. Instead of first using and then removing after being caught, in.com should first take permission. in.com is a “content aggregator”, which means everything on that website does not belong to them [ that's my interpretation anyway - please correct me if I'm wrong ].

I’m not sure what Network18′s in.com missed – even though my website / blog clearly states “All rights reserved and copyright studioaside.com – they have gone ahead nonetheless. Shame on you Network18 and whoever made this bad decision for you. I’m sure they steal other content too – the written kind. You got a story, you share it in the comments.

This is a set of photographs of a brunch as a friend’s place. Relaxed. Sheesha. Awesome food from Quesa. Awesome food. Wait. I said that already. Lots of conversation and lots of photographs. Tried out some of the photographs using the Fx Camera android app on my Nexus One.

Set of photographs of my hand when I was doodling on them thinking of a design for one of my latest identity projects. The logo is still under development. Will update this blog post with the finished logo if it ends up using one of the designs from this set! Shot using my Nexus One using the Camera 360 Android App.

The Avantha Masters Golf Tournament marked the re-introduction of the European circuit to the Indian playing field. The tournament was held at the DLF Golf Course, Gurgaon. The winner was Andrew Dodt. Andrew is a professional Australian golfer. This was also the Avantha Masters’ debut tournament.

	There was quite a turnout in terms of the audience crowd – especially with the number of children. The crowd etiquette was quite amazing too.
The runner-up was Richard Finch. You can read the Telegraph UK news story here. This was my first Golf tournament and the winner was especially gracious while posing for photographers.

Shot on a wood table mostly. With light coming in from a window on the right, the laptop on the back and a couple of paper / book reflectors. Mostly shot on long exposure. Of course wouldn’t be possible without a tripod. I’ve shot the Nexus One with the Case Mate cover, the Divoom speakers and a couple of print books that I’m giving to a client – after I shot their event.

One of the things to be careful about when shooting shiny / plain surface products is that they tend to catch a lot of dust & lint – the maximum time spent in the above photographs was cleaning them up in Photoshop because even after using CyberClean, there were lots of linty things on the black surface of the speaker, the soft blue part of the Case-Mate cover and the screen of the phone as well.

The Samsung Bloggers’ Meet was held at the Hard Rock Cafe, Saket, New Delhi. The event was managed by @mediaredefined , Digitas and Communique and the agenda was to introduce two Samsung phones to the audience : the Samsung Galaxy S and the Samsung Wave.

This is before the start of the event – the venue was made available by Hard Rock Cafe, just 15 minutes before the event was supposed to begin. The ‘standees’ were being made ready and the projector was being setup. The entire projector setup seemed quite hi-tech especially because the phone screens were constantly being plugged into video / screen on projector mode.
I might have gotten a little carried away with the standees – they were made well – because they photographed real well. Some of the early arrivals. People connecting to the internet once the wi-fi details were passed on.	The demo phones in the hands of @praval from @mediaredefined The demo phones being fired up for the start of the event. @realin @pacificleo and @vivekk poring over the demo instruments. Sarfaraz from Samsung, starting with an introduction to bada – the mobile phone OS that Samsung has created.
The two Samsung techies who came down from Bangalore to answer more detailed questions regarding the OS and the platforms in question. from the adjacent table of bloggers.	Two flyers for the Samsung Galaxy S and Samsung Wave phones. @gautamghosh doing a thorough check of the Samsung Wave mobile phone.
Sarfaraz from Samsung demonstrating how one of the contact apps works on the Galaxy S.
The question and answer session was melded within the presentation – which is probably a good thing. Technical questions being answered by the Samsung team. Food, water, brochures, standees and bloggers.	The snacks were good – I tried only the non-veg ones. Sarfaraz from Samsung demonstrating a feature where you can sync up details from three social networking platforms : Facebook, MySpace and Twitter : for any of your contacts and see those details without having to separately log into your own Facebook / MySpace / Twitter accounts.
Excitement levels were high for the Nascar game that was played amongst three contestants. Ankur, from Samsung is at extreme right.
The winners getting hold of their Samsung Wave and Samsung Galaxy S phones from Samsung’s Ankur. @praval is in the background.
The Samsung Galaxy S : the more expensive of the two phones. Very light weight.
The Samsung Wave.
Sarfaraz giving the lowdown about swype, a new way of inputing text into your phone – this was something I was hearing of for the first time. The Samsung Galaxy S. The bag with contents that each blogger received : at right and below.

This Samsung Bloggers’ Meet was my first corporate-sponsored bloggers’ meet and frankly, I wasn’t expecting anything as good as this even was. The Samsung people were friendly, fielded all questions with honest answers and there was a lot of banter. Of course, everyone aspires for a more attentive audience and that isn’t always what you get. The Hard Rock Cafe people were polite and courteous and the @mediaredefined people did a good job handling the event – including managing once of the contests despite there being no phone network inside the premises and despite all the suggestions being thrown their way.

I for one, did not realize how four hours flew past – apart from the fact that I was busy with the camera, I did learn a thing or two about the mobile phone market and what companies like Samsung are planning. My only comparison point – as far as personal experience with mobile phones goes – is the Nexus One. And I’m still not sure how the two Samsung phones measure up. In any case, the Android platform is poised to take over the world – quite literally and I’m glad there are more platforms like Samsung’s bada that will keep Google on it’s toes.

Industrial photo shoot from half a decade ago. Shot on my Fuji SLR, 35mm film. A visit to the Mundra Special Economic Zone to cover all aspects of the Zone – from railways, to the Adani Jetty, the ports, the hypermarkets, an annual conference, etc.

This shoot was one heck of an experience – mainly because it was my first time on a port in the midst of all those huge cranes and containers. Photography is prohibited on ports and even though we had the requisite permissions, there were times we got chased down to show the physical proof in the from of the signed papers we were carrying.