{"id":648,"date":"2007-11-30T13:48:49","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T04:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-11-30\/648"},"modified":"2012-12-19T11:21:36","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T02:21:36","slug":"ram-kulkarni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-11-30\/648","title":{"rendered":"Ram Kulkarni"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>60 sec, f\/1.4, ISO 800 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span><\/span>\nRam Kulkarni<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n

I was thrilled to get a call yesterday from my best friend, Ramchandra\nKulkarni, whom I had<\/span> not seen in years (perhaps since he was Best Man at my\nwedding 10 years ago!?). He happened<\/span> to be in Tokyo for a few<\/span> days, so I\nzipped<\/span> up on a shinkansen<\/span> (bullet train) to visit with him during a few<\/span>\nhours he carved out of his schedule.<\/p>\n\n

Ram and I both entered the University of New Hampshire at the same time,\nfor a Masters<\/span> in Computer Science. For the duration<\/span>, we studied along side\neach-other in Kingsbury Hall, and lived on the same floor of Babcock Hall.\nAh, heady days full of good memories.<\/p>\n\n

Fumie and I traveled to India for his wedding in 1997, after which he\nand his wife, Julia, then moved to Japan to work for Fanuc Robotics<\/a>,\nwhere he quickly rose through the ranks to become one of its top\nexecutives. Earlier this year, he moved to Helsinki, now working at the\nFinnish National Fund for Research and Development (SITRA<\/a>). The person<\/span> he\ncurrently reports to used to be the Prime Minister of Finland.<\/p>\n\n

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

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

<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>125 sec, f\/1.4, ISO 800 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span><\/span>\nExecutive Pose<\/span>One of the few shots I was able to get without<\/i> his beaming smile\n<\/div>\n\n

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

In this case, I ignored<\/span> the background colors and adjusted the white\nbalance to compensate for the decidedly orange tint lent by the\nincandescent lights directly above Ram (another compensation that our\nbrains automatically do for us when we're actually there). As such, the\ntrue blue of the background actually does show through in the photo, which\nin this case I find<\/span> appealing alongside the red plants.<\/p>\n\n

(As an aside, another use of the white-balance setting – one\ninvolving judicious amounts of “creative license” – can create\ncolors that were never there in the first place, such as the blue\nbackground in this water-glass photo<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>

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 [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}