Ram Kulkarni
Ram Kulkarni -- Tokyo, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2007 Jeffrey Eric Francis Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/1.4, ISO 800 — map & image datanearby photos
Ram Kulkarni

I was thrilled to get a call yesterday from my best friend, Ramchandra Kulkarni, whom I had not seen in years (perhaps since he was Best Man at my wedding 10 years ago!?). He happened to be in Tokyo for a few days, so I zipped up on a shinkansen (bullet train) to visit with him during a few hours he carved out of his schedule.

Ram and I both entered the University of New Hampshire at the same time, for a Masters in Computer Science. For the duration, we studied along side each-other in Kingsbury Hall, and lived on the same floor of Babcock Hall. Ah, heady days full of good memories.

Fumie and I traveled to India for his wedding in 1997, after which he and his wife, Julia, then moved to Japan to work for Fanuc Robotics, where he quickly rose through the ranks to become one of its top executives. Earlier this year, he moved to Helsinki, now working at the Finnish National Fund for Research and Development (SITRA). The person he currently reports to used to be the Prime Minister of Finland.

Ram and I are the type of friends who can go years without talking, yet immediately fall into the most wonderful, fulfilling discussions when we do meet, because neither time nor distance has any effect on our closeness. I respect him greatly, only regretting that our families don't get to spend time together. I tried to convince him that he and Julia (and Shiv, now two and a half) should move to Kyoto.

I'd brought along my camera, thinking I might try to take some shots along the lines of the impromptu portraits I posted about a few weeks ago, but we got to talking so much that by the time we got around to do it, it was dusk and there was almost no light down in the cavern made by the closely-spaced tall buildings. I didn't have a tripod or much skill, so the results are only so-so photographically, but I'm thrilled with them because Ram is so dear to my heart.

Executive Pose One of the few shots I was able to get without his beaming smile -- Tokyo, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2007 Jeffrey Eric Francis Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/1.4, ISO 800 — map & image datanearby photos
Executive Pose
One of the few shots I was able to get without his beaming smile

I also really like how the deep, rich blue of the overhead sky at dusk is reflected from the background. Our brains automatically compensate for the overly-blue ambient light, such that we don't normally notice it, but a digital camera makes no such compensation unless we tell it through its white-balance setting.

In this case, I ignored the background colors and adjusted the white balance to compensate for the decidedly orange tint lent by the incandescent lights directly above Ram (another compensation that our brains automatically do for us when we're actually there). As such, the true blue of the background actually does show through in the photo, which in this case I find appealing alongside the red plants.

(As an aside, another use of the white-balance setting – one involving judicious amounts of “creative license” – can create colors that were never there in the first place, such as the blue background in this water-glass photo).


All 2 comments so far, oldest first...

What a small world 🙂

I ended up to reading this blog by google search result regarding the Lightroom plugins, and in addition to that found the text and photos interesting. Now it appears that Jeffrey’s bestman works for Sitra in Finland, my home coutry.

Regards,
/KPa

— comment by KPa on December 1st, 2007 at 7:52pm JST (16 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink

I guess he is the same Ram Kulkarni, bro of Krishna & Sonali Kulkarni .. ..who did some schooling in Ahmedabad 🙂

Got stumble upon yr blog & came across this post & was like ..ohh, i know this person ! Great to see him .. And indeed world is too small.

If you happen to talk to him say hi & also say Mona Parikh remember’s him.

Thanks

Netra Parikh
Mumbai / Ahmedabad

— comment by Netra Parikh on April 1st, 2009 at 10:40pm JST (15 years ago) comment permalink
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