From the archives

This pic is from one of my first forays into digital art. Both the pictures were taken at the Met, and then superimposed. The background picture is the hieroglyphic from the Temple of Dendur (this entire Egyptian temple was transplanted to the US) , and the foot is early Greco-Roman.

Aah, a trip to NY just for the museums is long overdue. I am quite excited about going to the newly reopened MoMA.

Some more Photoshop stuff...

My inspiration was the cover of the Economist's "Intelligent Life".

Dabbling in Photoshop Elements

I love gifting photographs to friends and family, and nowadays, I’ve started dabbling in Photoshop Elements. It’s pretty easy to create fantastic montages, (slightly gimmicky) but cool jigsaw effects and shadow filters. Here’s how I created this particular picture:

• Start with a picture of your choice. Go to Filter > Texture > Texturizer > Load Texture (from file). Once in the folder view, pick Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 3.0\Presets\Textures\Puzzle.psd. Pick Scale and Relief values for your picture. The cool thing is that instant previews are available in the right hand side pane. I picked a scale of 150% and a relief of 6 for this example.
  
  
• Once the jigsaw filter is added, using a magnetic lasso, carve out the pieces you feel are kind of central to the theme of the picture. Once the lasso is complete, cut it and copy it on the same picture. Add some shadow effects; I typically like to “hang” the puzzle pieces and then add a heavy shadow to it.

That’s it! Feel free to add any other cool techniques you know or might come across.

Fanaa

I’m always super-excited about watching even mediocre Hindi movies, so I was really looking forward to watching Fanaa, considering I had good reviews about it. The past few Hindi movies that I’ve seen (Rang De Basanti, Hazaaron Khwaishe Aise, My Brother Nikhil) have left me with nothing with very good impressions about the new directors and the concepts. I am particularly happy with the fact that they no longer consider the average movie-goer to be an immature incapable of understanding complex feelings, plots and grey characters. This movie unfortunately disappoints.

Maybe I have a morbid sense of humor. But this particular episode in the movie is absolutely ridiculous – Rishi Kapoor plunges to his accidental death in the Kashmir valley. The scene cuts to Kajol filling water by the frozen river (why she’s doing that when her house is equipped with the latest gadgets and even a throbbing fireplace is beyond me); where she actually sees Rishi Kapoor’s body flowing underneath the icy river!

Clichés abound…a Delhi travel guide lives in a beautiful apartment complete with a patio and garden furniture. The rain song with Kajol in her drenched chiffon sari. Ee Gads! Poor blind Kajol goes about her merry life with her concept of her “shehazada”. Kiron Kher is intolerable as the overbearing mom. Not one character is fleshed out.

Weekend movies: Kontroll, Melinda and Melinda