Happy first birthday Shreyansh

Today was one of my college friend's son's first birthday. When I reached his place this evening, his house was already resonating with kids' shrieks and undecipherable sounds. The birthday boy, no doubt was confused to see the balloons, ribbons, a cake that was bigger than himself and all the commotion at his house. The other kids were, beyond doubt enjoying being a new place (at that age anything outside the house is new) all the new faces around.

My friend asked me to carry my camera and get a few shots of the party and I gladly obliged. But when I reached there, I found the light terribly low and the kids restless. I was sure that I'm not going to get anything. I tried a few - with wide open aperture, high-ish ISO, with flash, without flash but nothing was really working out to my satisfaction. Then I did something terrible! A dSLR user would rather choose death than doing what I did. My fingers were struggling to rotate the dial on my D80 but I knew that I had to do it if I want to salvage any photos of the 1-year old's first birthday. Yes, I confess - I set my camera to Auto mode - complete auto mode. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that such a day would come in my photography life. The camera was choosing the focus, aperture and shutter at its will and I was a mere spectator. With each click, along with the sound of the shutter, there was a deafening laughter. It was the Nikon D80 laughing its ass off right at my face; I could just look down to it and manage a faint smile like a loser! Though I didn't say it out loud but I did think - 'every dog has its day...go enjoy yours, bugger! tomorrow will be mine'.

The camera did manage to get a few okay to fine shots of the party, which I am sure the family would like. But there was nothing incredible. Of course, that's how much you can get out of a dumb mechanical device.