This Thanksgiving, I finally purchased my own camera! I had been saving up for a few years, and I ended up purchasing a Canon EOS 60d. Since I bought the new camera, I am now starting a Tumblr blog to track my progress in photography with my new camera, starting from the pictures I will take on Thanksgiving onwards. Check it out at http://kamladi.tumblr.com

//WARNING: random multi-paragraph musings approaching…

As my high school years come to a close and I slowly approach college, I’ve recently felt the need to explore alternative ways to organize my life. It started last week, when I began typing up some study guides to help review for finals. I began to wonder- Would I go all digital with my notes in college? Would I become one of those guys who types up notes during lectures, and organizes them for future reference? Honestly- I hope not. While I am amazed by recent advances in note-taking technology, like syncing with Google Docs, wiki pages for sharing notes, etc., I personally feel like I need that pen/pencil to paper action. It helps me connect with what I’m understanding, in a way that using a computer never will. Even if I got some fancy Wacom tablet and digitally scribbled notes into the computer, staring at the computer to study is not something I look forward to.

Additionally, with all the integrals, modeling sketches, formulas, and symbols I use in my Calculus and Physics notes, I’ve started to get annoyed with the lines on notebook paper. Imagine having to enter all of these into a computer! My Calc teacher found a solution- He works out his problems on blank paper. I’m really tempted to try this out. Not only will I no longer be restricted by such thin lines, but the thickness of blank printer paper, for instance, would prevent ink from pens from bleeding through to the next page. How practical is that!

And what would I do with all these class notes once I have finished a course in college? At home, I currently keep a drawer filled with hanging file folders to organize papers for each class. At the end of each year, I hold on to important pages from each class, and store them in plastic containers. Why do I keep such random items like my second AP Calculus AB test? What might be best solution would be to scan in only the most vital notes as PDFs, and drop them away in some folder on my computer or online.

Ah, well. No need to worry about the details of college academia while I’m still trying to study for High School tests. Wait, don’t I have a final exam to review for…..?

A few weeks ago, I finished the completion of my trash/recycling/composting enclosure for Keys School in Palo Alto, CA. It stores bins for each type of waste, and lists the items that can go in each bin on the doors. I am going to place it in the lunch area of the school, so kids can throw away their foods scraps in the composting bin rather than the ordinary trash cans they used to have.

I started construction early in the summer, getting volunteers from Boy Scouts, school, my friends, and just about anybody who stopped by our home while we were working. We basically built a rectangular frame of 2×4′s, and drilled plywood panels on each side. We put wheels on the bottom, and three rounded rectangle shaped holes as openings for people to dispense things in. It was really cool to be able to put my hands to work, designing and building things. To plan out what my project was going to look like, I made a scale model by folding index cards into mini 2×4′s and plywood. After what seemed like a billion revisions of my project proposal, I began cutting, drilling together, sanding. and painting the wood.

Check out my Project Proposal and Final Write Up for more info!

A lot of people have asked me what gear I use for my mini product shot studio. I don’t have any fancy strobes or other gizmos. I took a long time surfing through home depot and other blogs to find some cheap ways to get some good light on my products. Here’s what it basically looks like so far…

Product Shot Studio

As you can see, *very* low budget. My mom gets annoyed by how cluttered it can get. On the left is a car window reflector. It’s perfect for the job: I can bend it and curve it to reflect light exactly where I need to. On the top and right are Home Depot clamp-able work lights. Not the halogen ones— still wondering if I want to deal with the hassle of a typical halogen-yellowish tint to the light. I screwed in 150-watt equivalent fluorescent light bulbs into the work lights. They are perfectly white light, and they are easily movable to get the light in the right spot. Just these two work lights often do not have enough power to sufficiently light up the box, so I usually just throw in some desk lamps from around the house (like the one I’m holding in the picture above).

To make the light really soft, I used cut rectangles of white trash bags. They seem to do a good job, but they cut out a lot of light. More recently, I got some translucent corrugated plastic from an art store, which is doing a much better job. The box itself is a 20″x20″ cardboard box from the local mailroom. I used an X-Acto knife to cut openings on each side so light can go through. And finally, the background. I got long colored poster paper from Office Depot, and I cut them to fit inside the box. The backgrounds are just long enough that I can curve them from the back face of the box to the bottom face, creating a seamless backdrop. Awesome.

For now, this setup really fits my needs, if not my mom’s needs of a neat house (note that this was all set up on her office desk, oops). I’m probably going to keep improving on it, getting stronger lights, maybe some actual light stands rather than a music stand I found lying around. I might even save up for a flash. We’ll see— as I shoot more with it, I’ll eventually figure out what I want to do to improve it. But in the meantime, it does make some pretty beautiful photographs.

~Kedar

I’m trying out this new service called “Flavors.me”, which lets you create a webpage which gathers all your data from different social media websites, like Facebook, Last.Fm, Digg, Delicious, and more, in a very streamlined, aesthetic way. I really want to figure out how they do it, but it’ll take some time. What’s cool is that in the process of building it, I have found myself signing on to new social networking sites, such as SoundCloud, Delicious, and Last.fm. Don’t know what I’ll do with the last one, since I already use Pandora, but Flavors.me doesn’t have support for Pandora yet. We’ll see.

In the meantime, check out my Flavors.me site!

"Pinstripe" © Leela Amladi

Yeah, you read that right. This is the amazing work my sister does when she is “fooling around”. Isn’t it awesome? She basically took different colors of vinyl tape and stretched them across a small canvas. She’s planning on making one or two more to complement it.
~Kedar

Front Cover

Photo Credits

Back Cover

Wait a second… is that my photograph on the front cover of a book? NICE! Yes, I am now officially a published photographer in Meenakshi Mukherjee’s new origami book, Origami Inspirations. Not only are my photos on the front and back cover (the picture on the right on the back cover), but I am listed in at least eight different places throughout the book! I shot about 160 pictures of various origami models for the book, with different backgrounds and angles. I can’t wait to get the book and find out which of my other photographs made it in! I just want to say that it was an amazing experience photographing such awesome origami, and it’s really inspired me in my own origami pursuits.

See Meenakshi Mukherjee’s website for more info.

~Kedar

Hi! This post marks my first entry into my new blog. I spend a lot of time surfing the web and seeing what’s new in the world. So most of my blog posts will be quick notes about what I’ve been looking at: what YouTube videos I’ve seen, what news articles I’ve found interesting, some pictures I’ve taken, and more.

Hope you enjoy it!

~Kedar