Playing with Light

Light is essence of life so is it for photography. I had to make a quick trip to Mysore on Thursday. Way back spent an hour or two at Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary - made this image there. I had an opportunity to make this same image from the other side (front lit) but decided to spend my time and energy perfecting this image. Good thing is dragon flies return to the same perch often and stay there for quite long time. I had time to try different flash out put levels. For this image use a very little fill flash using built-in flash of my Nikon D200. Click on the image to see larger, better defined version.

Macro/closeup photography is a different challenge compared to wildlife and bird photography. The latter needs quick response make meaningful image. While macro photography needs enormous patience. Our subject stays more or less there but getting the right depth-of-field and composition is quite time consuming. We need to carefully visualize and execute. Normally I have to spend quite a lot of time to make an image. When done properly we may end with a very satisfying image.

Away for two weeks...

Last couple of weeks I was at China. Unfortunately I could not access blogspot.com. Looks like the site was blocked most of the time. I visited Shanghai and Beijing. At Beijing I went to photo mall on Wukesong road. An amazing place with more than 50 photo outlets. Ended up buying SB-800 flash. Tried Arca-swiss Z1 monobal in a shop - an amazingly smooth new ball head from Arca-Swiss - even better than my Arca-Swiss B1 (but its changed quick release mechanism I did not like it much). Prices in China are slightly more than B&H price. Language is a **big issue**. No one in store knows english. The way we communicate with shop people is using a calculator !!

They type some price, we type some other price... after some amount of binary search we will agree upon a price -:). If you have to communicate some thing which goes beyond capability of a simple calculator(!) then you need to write them in english on a piece of paper. Very interesting experience indeed..


OK, finally back home y'day night...

Western Ghats in Monsoon

Two weeks back me and Ashwin Bhat visited a few places in the Western Ghats region. We visited Gudavi Bird Sanctuary, Jog Falls, Unchalli Falls, Sathoddi Falls and Magodu Falls. From a photography perspective it was a very good trip. I learnt a few important lessons. I was very interested in capturing Monsoon mood inside deep jungles of Western Ghats. It was an amazing experience. But capturing the mood in images and photography in general was not yet all easy. We (VMR, Ashwin and me) spent some good amount of time in rain inside the jungle near Unchalli Falls. Inside the forest, blood sucking leaches were every where. There were ticks, mosquitoes.. you name it. Yet the desire for capturing the Monsoon mood stood above all these. I just got away with three leaches climbing my legs.

I must admit I did not succeed in making some images which I had visualized (will reserve them for next trip - may be) but there were interesting lessons. First I was not prepared for taking care of myself and equipments. Lenses were fogging very quickly, lenses and cameras were getting wet, during trip to Sathoddi, my Lowepro bag got exposed to rain. Fortunately I had a plastic bag inside the side pouch which prevented water getting inside the bag. Leaches were every were - I was often thinking about them than about photography. At the end, I got used to it. Light was not at all ideal, exposures were very tricky - light meter may or may not help. Challenges were many - so were opportunities. But I could not make use of it fully. Hopefully next time I will be better prepared.

Some more images are at my home Nature Lyrics

Processing Feelings

Processing our images keeping in view of feelings portrayed - My new article is here at -

http://www.naturelyrics.com/articles/process_feelings/process_feel.html

Hope you may find this useful and let me know your views.

Thank you !
Ganesh H Shankar (http://www.naturelyrics.com)