Ramanagara still Rocks!

It has been quite long since I went to one of my favorite places around - Ramanagaram.



The vultures always fascinated me and the ambiance there was something that would enjoy the most... The huge rocks and the view of the surrounding peaks give such a nice feel that I almost loose myself everytime I go there.

Today morning Adi (Adithya U N) and me headed to Ramanagarm with the thought that it may be cloudy and the opportunity for the photography may be a bit less. But we were proved wrong!




The morning was good with a positive sign of very thin and fast moving clouds.


I spent experimenting with my new flash with the possibilities of triggering it remotely with the help of built in flash as commander. Liked some of the results. Looks a promising strategy whenever I am photographing inside jungles of Western Ghats.


As slowly the Sun was coming up so were the Egypsian Vultures started scavenging... There were a pair of them...




And luckily this time they gave us some real good opportunities...





Then entered another hero of the of the area - Shaheen Falcon! On all my visits whenever I saw him, he was very far off! This was my closest encounter with this guy of the area. Their speed is something which should be seen to believe! Incredibly fast they are and they kill their prey by their sheer speed before they hit them in air.




On our way back after packing everything, it was a small blue king fisher which again made us to go on ground again.




Bird looked to be quite bold and allowed some close approach.



All in all, a quite satisfactory visit it was and that too after quite a long time....Good to see that Ramanagara still Rocks! :)

Cheers,
Ash

A pretty common friend - Pond Heron

At last, here I am....back on my blog with something....at least!


All these days I was very busy at the office and all I could do was just looking at various images from various photographers and enjoying online...Thanks to my office work which was allowing me to go home only by night 10 and morning at 8 I was there back at my seat!

At last I am back here with images of some common birds and my thoughts on how does the images of common birds also look soothing and pleasant depending on the weather condition and composition.

It was a usual Saturday morning in June and it was a bit of cloudy. In our regular backyard - TG Halli there was not much activity apart from few Larks and bushchats. The immense activity of the Whiskered Tern was absent and so were the birds. A few pond herons and Egrets were occupying the place where we had witnessed some wonderful action a couple of weeks back. Everything was calm and quite.



Only majority that day was that of Pond Herons. Not much though but probably because of the absence of the other birds pond herons were getting a chance to showcase themselves! :)

Some were quite bold as they allowed us to go a bit closer than they regularly do and some were even fishing freely!



As the morning was cloudy, which helps in a way to reduce the extra contrast that a sunny condition will result in, I decided to concentrate on a pond heron which was sitting on a mud boulder with some nice patches of green grass.



Initially there was very less wind and hence almost no waves on the water. The surface was calm and smooth.



Then a small breeze created a thin layer of waves on the surface...The absence of direct sunlight made everything look soft and saturated.



Keeping the grass in the foreground as out of focused, I captured some images of the bird which has a smooth green wash over the whole image. I liked the feel of the green wash over the image.

By that time it was about 45 min since I was with that guy and I decided to take the advantage of that and made a slow move ahead...he called it 'enough' and decided to explore a different place!




Contended with the set of images as I got up from the ground I saw that the distant Savanadurga was wearing a cloudy cap! Again on ground I crawled in a different direction to keep the Egret in the frame while capturing the scene.


Cheers,
Ash