Better photography, a well known photography magazine of India organizes the “Photographer of the year” competition every year. And year after year, they have organized it successfully offline, accepting entries from the best photographers across India and abroad. This year, however they decided to take this online and canvera.com being the associate partner had to come up with a web application that would enable photographers to submit their entries through a brand new site.

Three weeks was the allotted time for the completion of the project in which the design (and its thousand iterations), development, and QA and all the tweaks would all had to be completed. And my team, i.e. Mayur (a.k.a the designer), Kanupriya (product manager) and myself (the developer) were given the responsibility for the web application. It was definitely a roller coaster ride; new designs being discussed (and partly implemented) daily, new functional requirements and the architecture slowly but surely building up.

I had an option of choosing Ruby on Rails or php or Java EE to build this application, and for a two weeks time frame the former two would have definitely been faster. But we decided for Java, and built the entire application using jsp/struts/tiles/spring/hibernate/postgresql/jboss. It’s a standard web application: A home page which briefly introduces the application, some static pages which explain the competition in the detail, a registration page (with forgot password functionality), login, user profile page, category page, theme page and upload image page. Image storage and thumbnail generation have been given a lot of importance, and is pretty scalable. But to get the thing work in IE6 was a real pain. IE7 didn’t play too nice either but they all eventually fell in place

A javascript library is needed in every modern application, and although a big fan of YUI I decided on jquery this time. And I am amazed by the variety and support in jquery plugins, and slowly becoming my favorite. Although this is the first application where I hadn’t used any AJAX in the whole application, the whole experience is pretty smooth in my opinion. The image upload could have been a little smoother(and it will be, I promise ) with the flash uploader. Some more small features like an ajax feedback modal dialog box and editing image details might follow soon.

Coming to the competition, there are actually three of those. Photographer of the year(POY for brief), Young photographer of the year(YPOY), and Wedding photographer of the year(WPOY). YPOY and WPOY are being organized for the first time this year, and as you’d have guessed, YPOY is only for people under 18.

There are eight themes each for the photographer/young photographer of the year: Family and friends, Natural elements, life on streets, man/environment, twilight magic, still life, wild life and landscapes and a maximum of four photographs can be uploaded in each theme. For wedding photographer of the year, the themes are: Bridal portraits, couple portraits, family and friends, behind the scenes, emotions and photo series of a single wedding. All competitions are open for amateurs and professionals alike, so just pick up your camera, shoot some cool shots and go uploading!

All in all, it was a very fulfilling experience developing the application, in which arguably the best Indian photographers, young photographers and wedding photographers will upload their best shots! I hope that the best photographers in India would find participating in the contest simple and enjoyable.

Having a reputation a reputation helps for sure. And if the reputation is for being a nitpicker, more so! Ujjwal has sent me a couple of gems from his Shirdi’s trip which I’ll share here:

The first one is of a guy selling gay milk. As simple as that! Now I’m no Dubey that I can even try to figure out what was going through this guy’s head when he wrote that.
And forget writing it, he earns his living out of selling the homo milk, have a look:

Now this one is a little less hilarious, but definitely noteworthy. How does an merchant sell a product meant for foreigners (or pseudo foreigners) without knowing their language? At the least he’ll try to use a couple of words, which make the foreigner understand about it’s availability. Here’s what hamara hero writes:

If I were a mineral water bottle, I would do the same. i.e. Hang myself to death(see pic above, again) rather than being avelebal hear.

Where can you get a cape? That’s what it all boils down to. You spend the whole week slaving and slogging. Waiting for the online scoreboard to load on that torturous office connection. Restraining yourself when our guys hit a boundary. Stifling groans when the other guys do. It’s a tough life. Then comes Friday. You call home to say you’ll be late. You meet the guys. Sometimes, you have a victory to toast. But where to celebrate? Sometimes, a loss to mourn. But where to recover? Valuable time is wasted, looking. Because either way, it’s got to be the perfect place. And then, you forget all about closing time. Until they throw you out. So you need an all-night eatery. But where to eat? Navigation is not currently your strong point. Nor is coordination. You give up. Head for home. On autopilot. And an empty stomach. Which doesn’t really matter. Until you’re creeping into the sleeping household. Past the kitchen. Past the dining table. Hunger, strikes. Bravely, you ignore. You undress in the dark. Curse the fact that you still don’t have a night-light. But where can you get one? Slip into bed. Bed creaks. Wife stirs. So does hunger. You creep out again. Kitchen. No chips. Darn those kids. You know that 24 hour eating joints exist. Where? Where? Back to bed. More creaks. Wife wakes up. Grumbling. You try again. Hunger. Hunger. Sleep. Priyanka Chopra. Hunger. Priyanka Chopra. Hunger. Paresh Rawal. Domino’s. Bye bye Priyanka Chopra. And do you get any relief over the long-awaited weekend? Do you? Saturday morning arrives. You greet it with a whimper. Bleary eyed. Groggy. Justifiably irate wife. Laundry list of chores. Including laundry. And dry cleaning her best sari. But where? Fridge needs repair. Who to call? A 4 hour power cut strikes. You’ve been promising her an inverter for a year now. What was that number? And in the evening. Dinner with the in-laws. Anniversary dinner. Which, as always, you’ve forgotten. When does the florist shut shop? On Sunday, the kids break the flush. Again. Need a plumber. Who’s open on Sunday? 7 hour power cut. Wife goes on strike. Kitchen shut. Kids screaming for food. One wants Chinese. One wants kababs. You’re out of beer. Does anyone deliver at all? Sunday afternoon. Siesta time. Son remembers he has a history project. Due tomorrow. Mughal helmet. Or at least a replica. Where? Where? Where? Daughter needs a geometry box. You need a clone. Wife conveniently gets a headache. Night falls. Somehow, you’ve survived. A hero. A superman. All that’s missing are those blue tights with the red undies on the outside. And a cape.
But where can you get a cape?

Okay, not my creation. But it’s one of the best wall posters at the asklaila office.