Santosh

  • Capturing Memories and Growing with ‘Photography’

    I bought my first ‘DSLR’ (a Nikon D3200) in 2012 and the trigger was a trip to Germany. Before that I had a point and shoot Sony CyberShot that I had bought in 2005, that too was to capture pictures on internship trip to West Africa. These were simple decisions to buy a camera that I can afford – no considerations of their capabilities or technical specifications. Both these cameras were used occasionally to capture memories- and my then ignorant self had a very narrow definition of memories. The camera got to be packed and used mostly when I was traveling and memories were mostly travel memories.

    Exploring Bharatpur National Park
    Exploring 
    A walk in Aravali
    A walk in Aravali

    But it all changed in 2015. The definition of memories changed and my purpose for taking photos changed. We became parents. And, every gaze, stare, smile, movement, gestures.. everything was worth capturing. Every moment became a memory to preserve. A camera became a constant companion. But I also got hooked to not only capturing these memories but learning how I can capture them better. I wanted to do justice to the divine innocence engendering happiness in thousands different ways; I wanted my photography skills to be able to capture them in better way.

    Aurovanam, Puducherry
    Curiosity, Aurovanam
    Friends
    Friends

    This made me go into a rabbit hole, consuming many tutorials on photography, getting in photography gears and photography as an art form. But I have no regrets. It introduced me to Susan Sontag, John Berger, Ansel Adams, Roland Barthes, Henri Cartier Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Steve McCurry, Annie Leibovitz Stephan Shore.. the list is endless. The journey that started with an ambition to getting off the ‘auto mode’ and mastering the manual mode unintentionally meandered into understanding why we take pictures and what makes it an art form. There are many theories and approaches and deviations from these theories that have resulted in mesmerising pictures. Be it Stephan Shore’s approach of taking pictures as we see things naturally or the decisive moment of Bresson – the masters of photographies went deep to put soul into a mundane act of pressing the shutter button. Knowing their work and looking at their pictures was a reward in itself! 

    My photography journey started with clicking pictures of our daughter and it is growing with her. But more than the pictures and getting better at photography it gave me something immensely valuable that goes beyond the photography or photographs. Out of my crazy schedules and numerous distractions, it makes me shut down all distractions and focus, literally and figuratively, on what matters- people who I love and care about. 

    (For those, who are keen to explore photography as an art, here are some YouTube links that are good starting points to know more about photography. You can also just search for the master photographers’ name in YouTube and will get enough videos to get better understanding of their work and learn from their work.)

     

  • The State of the Carbon Dioxide Removal – Nowhere close to what is needed.

    Photo by Lou00efc Manegarium on Pexels.com

    The first edition of the state of the Carbon Dioxide Removal report is out. And, it confirms what many of us have been reiterating for a long time.
    1. The current status of Carbon Dioxide Removal is just a fraction of what is needed to achieve our goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees.
    2. The total CDR is approximately 2 GtCO2 per year compared to 12-16 GtCO2 per year required for meeting Paris Agreement.
    3. We have put an unsubstantiated hope in ‘Novel’ technologies that would bail us out by removing carbon from the air. Unfortunately, so far these ‘novel’ technologies have remained nascent or emerging and almost all the CDR has been through conventional methods. Out of 2GtCO2 CDR achieved, the novel technologies (BECCS: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, Biochar, and others) have contributed only 0.002 GtCO2.
    These findings underline the urgency that countries need to have more aggressive targets for reducing carbon emissions and the traditional CDR (Land Use Change and Forestry – includes agroforestry, improved forest management, wetland restoration, afforestation etc) as we keep our focus on finding and developing novel technologies for CDR. This is necessary as in all the scenarios we have, we do not have any options to achieve Net Zero/Decarbonization without CDR.

  • Openai ChatGPT3 and the Robot Curve

    With public availability of ChatGPT3 people got suddenly exposed to Artificial Intelligence and what it can do. Some are being alarmed about what all careers will be lost and some are enthusiastic about what all possibilities we will unlock. For those who are scared about their careers and job losses, this is not something that is happening for the first time. Marty Neumeier’s Robot Curve explains this quite succinctly.

    The Robot Curve depicts how creative and thinking processes get routinised and automated overtime. Creative work when it becomes well understood it becomes skilled work and then rote work and then goes all the way to be come robotic work. It keeps on repeating. The only thing that we can do is to reinvent and transform ourselves to move up on this curve by preparing ourselves to do more creative and original work. Continuous learning and up-skilling oneself to do more original and creative work is the only way to remain relevant.

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  • Reading Theme for this year: Nature and Religion

    I just ordered the first lot of books this year on my kindle. Most of these books are on Nature, Sustainability and Religion. This is in sync with what I have decided to be the key theme for reading this year. I want to read and explore the relationship between Nature and Religion.

    There is no denying that our lifestyle and choices that we make are one of the most critical factors in the way we engage with ‘Nature’. Greed and a lack of compassion are the main reasons behind all the devastation and imbalance we have caused in our ecosystem. Religions and spiritual movements have expounded a lot on the topics of ‘greed’, ‘compassion; and ‘lifestyle’. I am hope to connect the dots and get more insight on how we can be more compassionate and mindful in our lifestyle choices when it comes to dealing with nature.

  • What I read in 2022

    I already wrote about what happened with my reading routine and habit this year. But still managed to read some books. Here are the books that I finished this year. There are at least 3-4 books that I am done halfway and will include them in the next years list.

    The first two in the list are recommended to anyone who is interested in reading books that fundamentally change your perspectives about many things. The first one changes the way you look at success, time, and life and the second one changes the way you look at money.

    Previous Years

    2021 2020 2019 2018(2) 2018(1) 2017(2) 2017(1) 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2008  2007  2006