I have started my Marathi blog. Due to daily use of English language typing in regional language becomes bit difficult. Inorder to get used to my mother tongue and spread it across the globe I have started the blog in Marathi.

Visit : http://17pixels.wordpress.com

After a couple of busy months.. I am back on my blog now. Finally I passed out my Diploma in Cyber Law. Its a new step which I am taking into as a designer which I felt which was very necessary.

I am back from Breakfast with butterflies event which was organised by JungleLore at Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivali. Well it was a very informative and educational event organised by team Junglelore.Overall the 5 hour event was organised in a proper way. I hope next time many nature lovers will join in for this program in Mumbai.

The exhibition entitled ‘Incredible Nature’ is an endeavor to awaken the common Mumbaiite to the beauty of nature. The photographs have been clicked & printed by Arvind & Avanindra.
In the year 1972 Mr. Arvind came across a book – An Eye for a Bird – an autobiography of Eric Hosking, the eminent ornithologist and a photographer who devoted his life for the birds. This book inspired him immensely. During the same year he visited Jahangir Art Gallery and saw Black & white photographs of Mr. Bharadwaj (Guruji), which impressed him to pursue the art of nature photography. Since then he has been keenly interested in photographing the beauty in nature especially birds.
 To have the perfect printing of his pictures he with his son Avanindra started a colour photo-finishing lab  “Skylab Colours”. Now at the age of 70, he has agreed to display his work to the general public.
 The photographs of nature displayed at the exhibition are printed using Hewlett Packard’s (HP) Artist Canvas & Vivera pigment inks, which ensures grand colours & shelf life of about 200 years.
The canvas prints will be of sizes ranging from small to extra large which are ideal for home and office display. Limited edition prints will be available for purchase at discounted rates at the exhibition venue.

Venue: Ravindra Natya Mandir, P.L.Deshpande Maharashtra Kala Academy,  
            Prabhadevi, Mumbai 400 025.

Date & Time:  26th October to 2nd November 2008, 10 am to 8 pm.

Visit www.incrediblenature.in to get a glimpse of nature photographs.

Including me as a wildlife photographer I invite you all for the “Call of the Wild” wildlife photographic exhibition being held at :
Venue : P.L.Deshpande Kala Academy, Ravindra Natya Mandir, Prabhadevi, Mumbai.
Date : 6 to 13 September,2008. Time : 10.00 am to 8.00 pm.
This exhibition is organised by Junglelore. It is a step taken to create awareness and encourage people to participate in efforts towards wildlife conservation.
It is an honour to have Mr. Adik Shirodkar Sr.Advocate Mumbai High court & wildlife photographer, Mr.Vilas Gaokar of Shree Swami Samarth Trading Enterprise Pvt. Ltd, Mr. Rohington Mehta – Technical Editor, Smart Photography, Mr.Suresh Thorat – CCF and Mr.Bibhas Amondkar – Naturalist, trekker and photographer at the inauguration event.

I started my first monsoon trek of year 2008 to Sudhagad which is located approx 10kms from Pali in Maharashtra. Pali is also a famous temple of Lord Ganesh. It comes under the famous Ashtavinayak temples of Maharashtra. This time I was with Junglelore. Before I go ahead let me tell you about Junglelore. It is a group of avid trekkers based in Mumbai. This group has trekked the Sahayadris for more then a decade and they realized the need to protect our man-made monuments. Since the mountains and forts lie in dreadful condition today Junglorelore has taken a step to create awareness among every individual.

The start : As usual I left my house early morning at 4.45am. After a week’s rest the monsoon had started pouring in Mumbai. Our bus started from Dadar at 6.30am. I was excited since the climate was beautiful which also made me feel energetic. haha!!. We reached Thakurli village which is the base village at 9.45 am after crossing Panvel, Pen and Pali. The Sahayadri range was covered with the velvet green grass. Nature was blooming to its fullest in the monsoon season. Oh! what a scene to capture in my camera it was! After our introduction we started our trek at 10.15 am. From the base I saw the black pregnant monsoon clouds gathering at the top of the mountain.The climate was cool enough to relax me while climbing. When we had reached half way,heavy rains and wind had already pulled everyone of us in it’s arms. Finally after 2 1/2 hrs of trek we reached the top. Heavy rainfall and the waterfalls on the way was a very beautiful scene. We had our lunch in a small old house. Sitting in the old house with heavy rains outside and eating your lunch was all together a different experience.
About Sudhagad Fort : It is one of the ancient forts in Shayadri. It was earlier called as ‘Bhorapgad’. During the empire of Shivaji it was named as Sudhagad. The fort is approx 590 metres in height. It is a huge fort. The level of trek is easy.
Let me take you back to the history of the fort. The ‘Thanale’ excavations in this area are nearly 2200 years old. This shows Sudhagad is an ancient fort. The construction and geographical significance indicate that some great rulers might have constructed the fort. Sudhagad was included in ‘Swarajya’ in 1648.
There is a palace of Pant Sachiv on the fort where 50 people can stay. There is also a temple of Bhorai devi. The surrounding area of the fort is covered with dense forest including medicinal plants and trees. Some other beautiful points to visit are Pachchapur Darwaaja, Takmak Tok & Dindi Darwaaja. Due to heavy rains and fog I was not able to visit all the places. From Takmak tok Dhangad,Korigad Tel-Beila can be seen. Also river ‘Amba’ and the surrounding villages can be seen from Takmak Tok. While climbing the mountain I was able to get a fantastic view of Sarasgad which is at Pali Village.

Overall this trek was a very good kick start for me. Thanks to Junglelore team & Tejas Abhyankar from Junglelore who was with us for guiding and making all other arrangements.

One thing I would like to add in short and sweet is — Love and Respect the nature,wild animals and other creatures and try to preserve and respect our historical monuments.

Wow!! this is a great news which I came across today. Learning photography skills under Vinay sir is always a great experience for a amateur person like me. So I don’t want to miss this monsoon photography opportunity.
Below are the topics which will be covered at the Monsoon Photography in July 2008 at Malshej Ghat in Maharashtra.
Workshop subject :

Monsoon Photography
Landscape Photography
Macro Photography
Waterfalls Photography
Nature Photography
Composition
Individual work evaluation
For more details visit : vineyephotoschool website.

I started my journey from the daily life rich Internet user experience to the jungle experience in Northern India. I reached Ramnagar which is located 18 kms from Jim Corbett Park in the evening from Delhi.
A pluralistic, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic society, India is a home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. My day started at 5.30 am in the morning. The sun was about to rise, spreading it’s beautiful golden rays across the park. I was escorted by the forest guide Shubham who gave me the whole useful information.
Located in the foothills of the Himalayas is the Corbett National Park. It’s home to a variety of flora and fauna, it is famous for its wild population of Tigers, Leopards and Elephants. Corbett national park was established in 1936, as the Hailey National Park. India’s first national park and the first sanctuary to come under Project Tiger.
In the Jim Corbett National Park are found 110 tree species, 50 mammals species, 580 bird species and 25 reptile species.
Jim Corbett remains closed between June 16 to November 14, when the monsoon floods the riverbed and cuts the road links.
One needs to get the permit from the forest department at Ramnagar. The closest of the various gates into the Corbett national park, 1-km from central Ramnagar, is the Bijrani Gate. 11-km away, is the Dhangarhi Gate, and18-kms along the highway north to Ranikhet, provides access to the northwestern portion of the Jim Corbett Park along the Ramnagar River valley, is the Dhikala Gate.
Since you are in the jungle remain quiet, and don’t wear bright colors or strong perfumes.

This park comes under the first Project Tiger plan started by the government of India to save tigers. Shubham my guide informed me the park has around 135 tigers. But still hard to trace a tiger while travelling through the jeep. Even though I am back home the doubt still remains in my mind that does this park really has 135 tigers and if it has why do people are not able to see the tigers while travelling in the park. One can only see the pugmarks of the tiger.

If you are reading my article and have already visited the park do share your experience. Would love to read it. 

From past many days I am trying to learn the Ajax technologies. You may call it the next generation of web i.e the web2.0. While searching on the Adobe site on topics related to Ajax i found this very interesting topic called Flash Ajax video component.
It’s a very small open source Flash component which you can use for video playback within an Ajax Application. The FAVideo component is only 15k and leverages the widely distributed Flash Player which is about 1 megabyte.

This is something exciting which I read about the Adobe Media Player. Adobe has really done a great job by introducing this media player wherein the the designer and developer can really display the content online. As far as a normal user is concerned the player gives a complete flexibility to the user to view what they want. It may be online or offline.
One can easily stream,download,manage and play rich media content by clicking on any FLV file in the Adobe media player. You can even manage and organise videos as your personal collection.