National Geographic features my photos in their magazine

To all those who do not know…National Geographic Traveller magazine launched its first edition in India this month and it is called ‘National Geographic Traveller India’. And they were kind enough to feature two of my photos in it, pay me a decent sum and send me a nice hard copy for my collection.



The first and the larger photograph is on page 168 that talks about Tranquebar: Place of the Singing Waves. I took this photo of Fort Dansborg on a dark afternoon from the Tranquebar beach.


The second and the smaller one is on page 64, which talks about ‘Island clean up’ in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. I was surprised that someone was interested in this photograph. Guess it is a lesson to all us photographers to store all our photographs, irrespective of how insignificant it might be. I took this photo while entering the Viper Island, which is known for its gory gallows from the Kaala Paani days.

The magazine is not available online and hence I scanned some of these pages in my home scanner. I guess the quality can be much better. If you wish to see it in shining print, pick up the hard copy from your city’s magazine stands. And I am sure you will treasure reading the launch edition of this magazine as the photographs (apart from mine ) and the articles are simply astounding. It makes for a fabulous read and totally worth the 120 INR bucks that you spend on it.

Thank you National Geographic and Ack Media (Ack Media or Amar Chitra Katha Media, a part of India Business House was responsible for launching National Geographic Traveller magazine in India) for the feature. You have certainly made me real happy!!

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Blog and Photography Portfolio…Now on Mobile!

The mobile is becoming the new web!! And most of us travellers are smartphone users. So why am I missing on catching the ‘mobile’ bus was the question that was plaguing my mind for a long while. Both my travel blog and photography portfolio could be seen on the mobile, but it was the web version that was rendering on the mobile. This web version on the mobile brought with it a unique set of problems. My travel blog used to take a lot of time to load on the mobile and the widgets on the site would add to the misery. And my photography portfolio, where the slideshow runs on Flash failed to render properly on the mobile and again was very slow.



To overcome these problems, I put my limited technical knowledge and ‘Googling’ to full use and tried various 3rd party tools, mobile templates and native mobile apps. But, none of them solved my purpose as they were either too slow or directed my online properties through their site or ended up showing unwanted Ads.



After a lot of online research and permutations and combinations, I finally ended up using the default mobile template provided by blogger for my travel blog and built a custom template for my photography portfolio. The mobile template for the travel blog is lean and hence loads quickly. It works on all mobile platforms as certified by Google. And it provides a simple user interface for the user to see my photographs, read my content and comment through the commenting system. The navigation is also pretty simple, though doesn’t have the flexibility of the web, but what the hell, how much can I browse on the mobile.



The mobile app for the photography portfolio offers a whole lot more functionality. My slideshows are there are so are my picture thumbnails. My site navigation has been retained and offers great flexibility in navigation. And all these have been perfectly morphed for the mobile. But, it does have its limitations. This mobile view is currently limited to the iPhone and the Android devices. And the videos do not play exactly the way I want it to. Right now, I have to click the back button to get the video to load. Still some more work is needed here, but I am very happy with the progress so far.

Would love to hear your thoughts on what you think of the new mobile views!! Here is the URL again for your reference.

Travel Blog: http://www.beontheroad.com (All mobile platforms)

Photography Portfolio: http://photos.beontheroad.com (iPhone and Android)

Do remember to enter this in your mobile browser!!

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