Motorcycle diary of Joy Dutta

I do not normally post about other blogs, but I will make an exception for this: http://shaunlunt.typepad.com/shootings/

Flying all alone to Alaska, in a single propeller super cub, with incredible photographs - there is nothing else that can give so much feeling of peace. I am a long distance motorcyclist, and I know how to be jealous of this guy. He is having an experience that is easily the n-th power of what I can get riding a motorcycle in those places. And I have to stick to the land, and only upto what can be remotely called a road.

Way to go Shaun, you are the new God to me.

Yeah, my life somehow found a rhythm after a while. Been distracted by a lot of things, and it took time to organize and let things fall in place. I am back to pursuing my original passions in full steam - riding and photography. Well, I wish I could ride far and do some serious travel photography but I would rather wait till my wife is here. For now I am just making images of people, especially children, the most challenging and rewarding subjects I will ever find. I am also loving the use of Photoshop CS3 on my mac, and a bit of InDesign as well.

Did a shoot yesterday at a beautiful house in Belmont hills. Loved the place.

Another shoot tomorrow at Moss beach, in Half moon bay. Should be a great 80-mile ride.

I finally decided to go with a dedicated domain for my professional photography career. My other site www.joydutta.com will still exist, for this blog and riding related stuff. Bought the domain from nameboy.com, and boy, are they fast ! Within 2 minutes of registration and payment my site went live. I shifted the content from my existing site to the new one in just a minute, thanks to rsync.

I never knew making a publishable book is well within my current resources. I had been planning to get a heavy duty mac desktop primarily for design work. After working on a macbook pro, I know that all I need to master is Adobe Photoshop and InDesign before I can make really professional stuff out of my photos.

I didn’t know about blurb.com and its Booksmart software for mac till Francesco showed me the light. Thanks buddy !

I had to make a practice book, and what is better than making one devoted to the SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) !

A few happy hours of labor, and the result brought me a big grin. A perfect end result in my quest for a photography workflow.

Trying to be a pro photographer eventually needed me to make my own cards. An hour with gimp later I came up with a picture I can never be tired of, plus this picture is featured in my professional site as well. I am feeling quite satisfied about it. Wanted this setup for a long while and it is complete now. I am getting more motivated to go out and shoot so I can keep improving my portfolio.

Long way to go still, though.

I have been using javascript extensively at work for over 2 years, and YUI for the most part of it. Even a few days back I didn’t know about jQuery. I was building my professional photography website and was discussing designs with my good friend and photographer Francesco. When I was done, our sites resembled a lot and Francesco suddenly got the urge to renovate his professional portfolio. He had been using jQuery at work, and in just a day he put up a gallery with top-of-the-line look and feel with soothing effects. I could not believe something existed that was much better than YUI so we compared code fragments. The conciseness and power of jQuery language blew me over, especially the $() selector. I added some cool effects on my site in a very short time and realized I could not do that with such simplicity had I used YUI.

I did not stop at that. I renovated my main website last Sunday, with a few hours of labor, mostly spent in GIMP to make some cool icons to go hand in hand with the magic of jQuery. I am very happy with it now and planning to do more changes to the site soon.

Big thanks to Francesco for opening this wonderful javascript world to me.

As the cliche goes, I am finally going “pro”. Just wanted to see what the professional side of photography has to offer. Waited long enough to gather a few portfolio-grade images and thanks to my recent sessions on portraits and headshots of few models, I am ready by now.

As I find out, it is fierce competition out there. Since money is not my sole focus in this, I am determined to find out what my skills are worth in the market. Business cards are in short order. Several TFCD sessions done so far have been very productive.

I am looking forward to photograph people, especially weddings and children. They are both hard to do well and highly rewarding. Hoping for a productive 2008 in my new adventure.

http://photography.joydutta.com

After a while of photographing friends and family, it was time for some serious glamour shoot. I put up a CL ad last night as a photographer available for TFP/TFCD (Time For Print/CD) sessions. Quite unexpectedly, a model emailed me in the morning and fixed up the shoot at Linda Mar beach in the afternoon. It was a lovely ride down to the beach and with 70F, it was swarming with surfers. Sheila did very well with her little experience. When we got tired of the blues, we visited a nearby park for some greens. Overall, a productive day for me.

My first serious attempt in oil painting on canva-paper turned out a pleasant surprise. What an amazing medium and workability. Love the fact that I can paint right out of the tube and one color can go over another easier than in watercolor. Painting in watercolor, in comparison, seems like a minimalist approach, and quite a lot different than oil, with its own charm. I guess I will keep working on both mediums.

Vipin, my fellow rider from the enfield riding days in India is here at Sunnyvale for this week. What better way to spend a Sunday than a ride, so we took off for a quick afternoon ride to Santa Cruz. In a sweet 40 miles we got some twisty roads (CA-17), a moderately cold mountain pass and finally the ocean. Great chicken shawarma sandwiches at the Falafal restaurant satisfied two big hungry bellies. Back home, we enjoyed photos of our past rides, especially the Kanyakumari trip back in Feb 2003. A Sunday well spent.

Pictures: Vipin @ CA - Dec 07