Monsoon Mood - Hope

Monsoon Mood - Hope: "Monsoon Mood - Hope"

*** BLOG MOVED TO MY HOME ***

Friends !

I have moved my blog to my web site itself. The new link is - http://www.naturelyrics.com/blog/

- Ganesh H Shankar.

Back from Kaziranga..

Went with a few friends to Kaziranga National Park in north east of India a week back. Currently busy processing some of the images from the trip. Kaziranga is a beautiful place. I was told that it rains during all months at Kazi. But we had ample sunshine during our stay at Kazi - I wish it rained just one day though. We were fortunate to meet Steve Winter, a National Geographic photographer at Kazi. I was just humbled by some of the images he made at Kazi (and else where). He has spent a few months now at Kazi. All I can say is creativity and meticulous planning at its best.

Lots of images to process. Hope to make a gallery just for Kaziranga images at my web site Nature Lyrics and get it up and running in a week or two - stay tuned !!

24th Feb 2008

I have set up the gallery. All images I have processed so far can be seen here. I will add more images to this gallery (I am not done with the processing still).

- Ganesh H Shankar.

Lost Compositions...

Macro lenses and telephoto lenses make us try as frame filling as possible. When I initially started nature photography using $30 worth point-and-shoot camera I made some nice compositions. Later I got into the frame filling game. It took years for me to get out of it. Seeing nature through mind's eye using 12mm to 600mm lenses using 50mm physical eyes has always been a challenge and will remain so for years to come I guess!

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Interaction of border with image

Here are some of thoughts on how different shades of grey interacts with the image when used as border or frame.

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Flash Light Photography

As mentioned in my previous blog below I had fun time experimenting with various flashlights for nature photography, macro work in particular. Here is the link to my new article on use of different flash lights for nature photography.

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Western Ghats - New Images

Back here at concrete jungle (Bangalore) after visiting a few regions of our Western Ghats (our rain forests). Lots of memories are cast in silicon. You may want to see my new set of images here. A few of them have made into my Creative Visions and Favourites Galleries too.

I had thought of exploring photography, macro photography in particular using different flash-lights (with different white balances). Made a few satisfying images using this new technique. You can find some of them in my new images gallery. I hope to write an article on it soon. Stay tuned !

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous new year 2008 !

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Away till 2nd Jan...

From tomorrow till 2 nd Jan I will be away from concrete jungles. No access to blog/mail till 2nd Jan!!

Seasons greetings to all !

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Home being renovated..

I wanted my website to be very simple and artistic. I did lots of search on available gallery softwares and tried a few like gallery2. While they are feature rich I did not like them for artistic reasons. Initially I chose Photoshop's gallery creation software and plugged into my web site. It served the purpose of being simple - but not as artisitic. This also gave me a rude surprise when I started looking at my web statistics. Web hits due to search engines were very low. This I realized is due to the fact that web gallery generation had no option to associate information with images. Due to this reason good collection of my images were not indexed by search engines. To solve this I started writing a simple gallery software (in C) to suit my taste - spent a few weekends so far on this. The new gallery design is again static but I can associate information with each image which hopefully search engines with index in future. One advantage of being static gallery is I can automatically generate sitemaps to cover **all** images at my web site easily - not very easy if I use php. I hope to extend my tailor made software to include sitemap creation etc in the near future - for this I will need a few more weekends and late night hours !!

So here goes my partly rennovated site. Slightly more artistic I guess (not satisfied fully though!). I have migrated two galleries (Creative Visions and Personal Favourites) to this scheme. Need to complete the rest. Added some information for a few of images in these two galleries. My gallery software takes an ascii file containing file name of the each file and some associated information. It then automatically creates all gallery structures, html pages etc. I have been entering information related to each of those images. It may take months before I can complete them - what a boring job - yet very important !!

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Day of Macro Photography

I spent some time today morning at TG Halli photographying butterflies. Though I went out there with my 600mm f4, I quickly packed it to try some macro images. Light was excellent, so were macro opportunities. Here are couple of images I made today - you may want to click on them to view them at their actual size to really enjoy them.


Other images I made today are at my New Images gallery or in my Macro Gallery

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

BOS (Bird-on-a-Stick) v/s Creative Composition

If you have observed any avian gallery for some time you will quickly see a pattern there - lots of images look beautiful at the first glance - scientifically very well executed - right exposure, head turn, nice perch, catch light, eye contact, eye level - *conforming* in general to *well accepted rules* of making image of birds. During initial few years of my avian photography I practiced this a lot. After some time I realized I need to find my own way of conveying how I see my subjects. This led me to experiementing with various compositional possibilities, use of light and shadows, use of habitat, use of "positive space" in the frame amoung other things. Not easy since it is not formula based, I may not be successful always and may end up in a typical BOS or its variation, but when I succeed it is a very satisfying. For me the image above is a typical bird-on-a-stick image without much originality while the below one is not (for my tastes). It is interesting to note though that differences between them are very subtle !!



You may want to click on above images to see them in their actual sizes. Blog's resizing algorithm appears bad and hence some critical details are lost which are essential to relate the point I am trying to make here.

PS : I am out of station durning 25 Nov - 30 Nov and may not see my blog.

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Patience paid off - A winning entry in the National Wildlife 2007 Photo Contest

When I made this image I had to spend a few hours in planning, waiting for this Tailed Jay butterflies to show up on the flower and thinking about right shutter speed, background to use etc. Happy to know this is one of the winning entries in the 2007 National Wildlife Photo Contest.

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Perspectives - Creative Visions of Nature

Perspectives - Creative Visions of Nature is a new gallery at my home Nature Lyrics. I skimmed through a fairly large collection of my images and picked those images where an attempt at seeing things differently are evident - at least to me -:) Does that mean there is not much of "seeing" in rest of the large number of images in my galleries ? I would humbly accept so. Not confusing between originality and beauty I keep rest of the images for the latter reason in my galleries. I wish and hope to add more images to this gallery of creative visions in future.

189 Critically Endangered Birds of the World

Rare Bird's Year Book 2008 has been published recently which can be bought here. Since I contributed a few images of Indian Vultures (subspecies of Long Billed Vulture) I got a complementary copy of the book. Initially I was happy to see a few of my images in the book but soon I realized what the book is all about - for me it symbolically stood as evidences for misdeeds in this world which pushed some of these beautiful creation of God towards extinction. I hope a book like this will atleast help create awareness amoung some people of this world towards conserving them. I only wish thickness of subsequent books decreases during years to come. Part of the proceeds of each book sold (4 pounds out of 19) will go towards conservation efforts. I encourage you to buy them ! I have ordered 5 more copies as a small token of my contribution towards this conservation effort..

- Ganesh H Shankar ( Nature Lyrics )

Ramanagara Rocks - Seeing Challenges

"Ramanagara Rocks" - Yes, pun intended. Rocks of Ramanagar are very scenic. Every time I go there it offers me different "seeing" challenges. Long Billed Vultures roost and nest at "Ramadevara Betta" (Mountain of Rama). This is the best place to see these critically endangered vultures. I have seen about 7-9 of them at this place.

May their tribe increase...

Back to seeing, vutlure and its habitat offers some fantastic opportunities. Couple of images above are some attempts at seeing differently and also portraying its habitat. The below image of rock and the vulture was a non-trivial composition for me. While tracking the bird in the view finder, I found this arrangement very interesting.

**UPDATED on 11 Nov 07 ** Made this image below today at Ramanagar..

More images from the trip are at my home Nature Lyrics.

Photographying Snakes

Being a nature photographer, I think one of the tough subject to make meaningful image of are snakes. Unlike birds they don't have favourite perches to sit and pose for! They are long, unless they are made to coil getting them whole on a frame is tough, most of the time they move quickly and disappear in under-growths. I don't like lots of snake images because most of them are made in an un-natural manner - like for example irritating them to open the hood, mouth etc. Why a cobra opens its hood looking at a photographer ? Snake in a perfect clean out of focus background ? I think some those images lack natural feel.

During my recent trip to Dandeli, I tried making a few images of Common Bronze-back. I tried making images of it without disturbing its natural behaviour. One technique I learnt is just observe and make images at right time. 300mmf4 lens appears like a perfect fit for this task. It is possible we may not make images which I prefer it more than irritating them to open hood or mouth.

You can see some of these snakes (and other) images by clicking
new images link at my home - Nature Lyrics

No access to net..

I am planning a trip to my native place (Western Ghat regions). Will not be available, may be till 20th Oct. Happy Dasara to every one !!

Mimicry in Nature

During recent a trip to Western Ghats region we found this spider !! To be precise I did not see it - thought some fallen leaf on the web but my friend Ashwin recognized it ! What a beautiful spider and mimicry in nature !! Incidently only two of this kind of leaf mimicking spiders have been discovered so far in India. (Thanks to Sindhu Ramachandran who shared information related to this spider)

In this blog I talked about camouflage in nature. Mimicry serves similar purpose. Here is another superb mimicry that I was able to record again in Western Ghats region recently - Blue Oak Leaf butterfly !

We need to spot them when they are flying - otherwise they are some fallen dead leaves !!

Here is another example of an image of stick case moth caterpillar (thanks to Sindu Ramachandran again to help me id this)

Designs in nature are not only beautiful but are very functional. Mimicry is another strategy for survival adopted by life forms in nature similar to camouflage.

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Composition - as I see it

I have been thinking about writing my views on composition. Of late my commute time to office has exponentially increased! This gave me some time to crystalize some of my thoughts during these long journeys. I got up early on Saturday to give these thoughts a shape in the form of an article. Here is the link to the article.

As always your thoughts are welcome.

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)

Micro Arts

During last weekend I had to visit my in-laws house which is situated in foothills of Western Ghats bordering Karnataka and Kerala. I just carried my macro related equipments and thoroughly enjoyed the trip from photographic perspective. Mostly I spent couple of days photographying frogs, dew drops and other very small life forms. Most of the images I made during the trip are beyond life size using either 55mm extension tube (two pk-13s) on my Nikon 105mm f2.8 AF Micro lens or using 87 mm extension tubes (added 32mm Kenko on top of two PK-13s. It was just fun. But believe me, compositions are just not easy. With such magnifications we spend lots of time getting the basics of composition and dof right. At times it may be very frustrating.

Some more images from the trip are here. Enjoy !

As always, click on above images to see them in larger size (I hate the blogger's resizing algorithms which compromizes quality of the image posted).

- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)