I live in a metro called Pune in India. Though my home is located right near the center of the city, my house is situated at the border of some hills which is protected under forest law. There is not much construction here and some peacocks, snakes, rabbits can be found. Snakes are abundant here and I have had my encounters with them since my childhood. In the whole animal kingdom, I had been scared only of snakes until I overcame that fear due to my photographic hunger.

A year ago, I was as usual taking out my dogs for a walk. I stepped outside my house and suddenly saw one of my dogs trying to block me from walking to a certain spot.

I immediately understood that something unseen might be there. When my another ...

I would like all to know that this picture on the left is the reason why I named this blog “The face of an Insect”. This is really the first time I could see emotions on the face of this colorful caterpillar. Please note that no artificial coloring has been done this image while post processing. I was following this caterpillar on a coconut for quite a long time. After some 15 minutes, it realized that it was moving on the same surface which was being manipulated by someone behind the lens which made it look at the lens this way. Sounds strange but really it kept staring like this till I took the camera away and left it on a leaf, till then it was running around like a kid on that coconut which was actually at treadmill I made for it. :D

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Seen on this blog are pictures of my relatives which comprise a lot of percentage in my portfolio. Recently I had to disable a picture of a beautiful cousin of mine after a controversy that sparked off wild reactions in India involving usage of pictures for certain applications. In this blog I will explain based on that example, how pictures here which seem normal to us be misused by someone and why model releases are so important in case of minors and adults alike. The picture of my cousin was her getting up from a haystack with a very tiresome expression on her face. The same kind of picture was manipulated and misused in a condom add here which prompted me to remove it immediately as she is my cousin and not a professional model. A model who would deliberately ...

Since I am into the field of music I have had my own personal website along with many others tagged along owned by me. Your special presence on the web, that’s your own domain name on your own rented server (not and AD based) makes a difference everywhere. You get a different status and a very diverse exposure for your work. My first website was like a blog. I am saying like a blog because blog didn’t officially exist then. Everyday I used to post my progress in my love story which never ended happily. It was like a diary so many people were addicted to, and even today beg to me to start it again, but that makes my wife angry and bugged about me making myself and some other woman famous.

Later, when I started ...

I remember my analog slr and shooting with it. The sheer sound of the shutter and the film moving ahead was a very delightful feeling. You felt like you are doing something great. With the digital cameras coming in, we hard hear that mechanical sound, and if we do, it comes through the wave file that’s stored in the camera that creates the effect. No matter how well the wave file is sample, it cannot give that feeling of the shutter of an analog camera mainly because with the sound we could feel the camera roar to the next film by our hands too. There was fun in developing prints, and the precision with which we clicked due to the limitations of the films we carried for shoots.

With the digital world many things ...

Does it sound strange?? I workaholic person wouldn’t agree. I am workaholic like crazy. I like to work n’ work n’ work. This is a usual reason to get my wife upset and violent hehehe. I can’t help it because the professions I am in are so interesting. Music and Photography!!!!!! They have been my hobbies and my passions since long. Both of these require a lot of investment in terms of time and creativity to excel in them. I always strive to be the best in whatever I do but there is something else…. I have never taken formal training for any because dunno why, but since childhood I have had this belief that getting trained surely screws up your style to some extent. Its good to be raw in whatever you do even if it might be considered amateur or ...

In whatever field we enter, in whatever hobby we take, in any part of the world, our life is a competition everywhere. We are trying to prove ourselves better than others in every step in our life. The hunger to win and be successful is the basic instinct of any person with an aim or ambition. Some will loose their hunger and sleep, work day and nights, use and loose people and will sacrifice anything to achieve what they have decided to. And then there are easy ways to prove yourself - Winning contests which allow you to prove your talent more creative and skillful than others. Contests that are carefully designed to fool us by the well established advertising agencies or PR agencies.

Take any contest in this ...

When I first joined Dreamstime I hardly knew anything about the website and overall stock industry. I was just here to make money with my art. One day suddenly I noticed thousands of views for a picture and got baffled. I did not understand what was going on until I opened my portfolio page and saw that there is a section called as “Editors Choice”. My image was considered in that category. Apart from the excitement and the importance from what the section really said I never knew how rare it was to have an image which is considered as editors choice.

After that days passed by…. then months and now after almost a year (2 months short) I got another editors choice image. Wow…. And this time I am more excited about it not because it happened after ...

Wow! Today I am celebrating my 2nd wedding anniversary and can’t believe how I survived those two years… lol. 2 years back when I was getting married I never knew what I was getting into. There were these two weirdos getting married to each other not understanding the outcome of the fusion of two worst explosives. Anyway thankfully, the blast impact remains confined to only both of us but the after effects are seen on our friends and family..hehehe!

Me and my wife both are artists, we both sing but additionally I compose and write songs as well. There is a lot of in house criticism which often ends up in huge tussles over performances. There are concerts to be done together and individually and the fights ...

Hehe funny I know. But I was recently shocked to see my picture in a blog which taught how to put artificial fangs on a normal person and make it look perfect. I was like.. .huh?!?!?! That’s not fair, I am naturally a vampire who likes to prey on beautiful women.

Since my childhood I have hand these canines popping out and everyone advising me to put braces. My parents threatened me a lot of times and I have had beatings over it, but somewhat since childhood I had a belief that these fangs will be useful for me someday…. Ask the ladies !!! Lol! ----> if you ask them make sure you find those marks on their necks to confirm that I was around.

Till now they have been quite an attraction in my photos and people find me real ...

Come September, and India lights up with the pomp of Ganesh festival. The festival called Ganesh Chaturthi in India was started as a public festival by a freedom fighter in the city of Pune. The festival was celebrated as a private festival in every Hindu household before the Indian freedom struggle. The freedom fighter, Lokamanya Tilak, started the festival to get the people united and enjoy their culture. It was a unique move by this freedom fighter, which he achieved with the Ganpati visarjana or immersion procession, wherein the mass output of several Ganesh mandals is taken out on a parade on the final day of the Ganesh festival and taken to be immersed. This process was started in 1893 and is now prevalent virtually all over Maharashtra, with special ...

NOTICE : The fact remains that better the camera, the more approval ratio you have and more sales as well, but I am writing this blog from my experience and analysis.

When I hit the stock concept on google, it wasn’t microstock. It was about RM (Rights Managed) Stock photography. I was a regular visitor to ****** , and used to admire the pictures and the creativity there. Its there I understood that photography whether digital or analog was more about post-processing than clicking the and when they gave me suggestions for photography I wanted to do, they were too skeptical about it. Saying the subjects are not stock oriented, and if they were, it was not the way I should be shooting it. I gave up. I decided, I will shoot my way, my angles, my composition ...

Shooting news based images can be quite challenging, especially if they are sports or religion related events that are having thousands of people attending or participating. How the hell is one gonna get model release for all that. There are sponsor logos, police to take care of the situation by keeping the crowd under control and many more people like vendors making their business selling goodies. Its almost a futile attempt to try shooting such images for stock…… one would think….. but think again!

Some background… lets start from a basic point. A public place and a place that is crowded by regulars and new visitors everyday, how are we supposed to shoot the place without missing out any people. This ...