Canopy Contest 09 - Third Prize!

Friends,
 My image of the Shadow over the forest canopy, which I made during my last year's trek to Kumara Parvatha (KP) has won the third prize in the Photo Contest held as a part of 5th International Canopy Conference (http://www.canopy2009.org/html/P&F.html).

Below is the image and the description (as I have sent along with the image):

This image was made from the top of Kumara Parvatha, one of the highest peaks in Western Ghats. It was evening and the Sun was setting slowly on the other side of the mountain. As he was going down the shadow of the mountain slowly started covering the forest canopy beneath. Minute by minute the shadow slowly covered more and more of the canopy and within 20mins the whole region was in the shadow.

The forest including the canopy is under heavy threat everywhere. No matter if it's the tropical rain forest of the equator or the Taiga of the north. The human greed is the power behind the devastation of the beautiful green carpet of the top. The mountain shadow which slowly gulped the forest beneath looked like a symbolic representation of what is actually happening for the canopy around the world. For me the shadow represented the dark shadow of the mammoth greed of man which is ruthlessly clearing the canopy day by day.


 I feel honored to receive the prize which was judged by  - Mark Moffett, (a Nat Geo photographer), Ganesh H S , Sandesh Kadur and Shekhar Dattatri.

 First prize went to a nice image by Nanda Ramesh where he had portrayed a lone langur sitting on a branch in the canopy of a tree with wonderful clouds in the valley behind. It was a nice image. Second prize was for the image of Fire Flies by Kalyan Varma, another very rare and nice image. A tree was full of fire flies and he had captured it very nicely. Another of his image of a Great pied hornbill flying towards a canopy was chosen as a specially commended image.


Cheers,
Ash

In the preparations again....

 

   I have been busy with various activities and didn't get time to update my space. Most of the last week was spend with doctors and tablets (!!) and towards the end and during deepavali, I was in fever because of 2 things - Nikon's launch of D3s and the man who tested it - Vincent Munier! I was just recovering from my fever and his image set, made from the new legend D3s just made me to go back to bed and take rest!

HERE is the link to his images and a small video made using that. Now, dont hold me responsible if you also end up on bed, taking some paracetamol tablets!

Munier's site - www.vincentmunier.com also has a dedicated gallery for of  assignment.

Apart from all this, my exams are nearing.....again!! So I will be going back into my den to prepare myself for the battle! :)

See you after the exams with some image set from Yana and a separate blog post on Blue Channel processing for portraits.

Enjoy,

Ash

Experiment!

  That was in May, when I was in my grandma's home in Sirsi. I normally spend couple of hours in the morning in areca plantation, each time I go there. 

  That day I was not in a mood lug around with my 300mm lens and hence I  decided to put my 50mm lens on the body and went for a walk. 

  If you are familiar with the areca plantations, you will very well know that there will be plenty of lizards in the plantation. By a bit careful approach they allow you to go closer and I tried something similar that day.

  Step by step I went close. I must have taken at least 10 min before I step further each time. Every step I go close I was getting a different perspective. I was clicking each time. Because of the sound of the shutter it went couple of feet above the tree. I bet he (it was a male!) would not have heard anything like that in his entire life! Not only him but any of his ancestors also most probably! :)




  As I was giving enough time for it to get used to my presence, it came back again. Now I was closer to him. Then decided to test his boldness! I slowly stretched my hand and through the tiny view inside the viewfinder I made sure that its complete body is placed inside the frame. As I was approaching in an angle, many a times the focus was at the tip of his mouth and the eye was going OOF. After a bit of adjustment finally I managed to get the eye in focus.  Then slowly taken my hands back! Status quo was maintained! I was happy!





  Then struck another idea - how about taking an image in the bottom up fashion! Sounded interesting! The challenge here was the exposure! The sky was bright and the subject was pretty dark and this time there was absolutely no way that I can see through the viewfinder! With the built-in flash there are only very few controls available and you cant bounce the light as well. Still decided to use the flash as just fill light, just to lit its underparts against the bright background. The problem with the Auto Focus(AF) engine is that, in the condition of high contrast, it ends up in focusing the brighter subject. Most of the time it was focusing to infinity (which was the bright sky)! Being not an AF-S (silent) lens, the focusing makes bit sound, which was of concern. Then after around eight to ten tries , tilting the wrist in such a way that the AF focuses on the nearer subject, and when the distance meter on the lens read that it has focused on the closer subject, I just stared clicking. After couple of frames, adjusted my hand a little and again clicked couple of frames.





   The one that you are seeing here was the very first frame and I got only two good frames out of six. 

 

  I sometimes force myself to use only 50mm and try to look the world around only through that. If I were having any other lens with me, I probably may get tempted and hence I would not carry any other lens on certain occasions. I get to learn a lot on those occasions. This one was just one of them.

  We should not hesitate experiment with the things. Its very easy to aspire for bigger and better equipments but the real challenge lies in showing our vision through our photographs with whatever equipment we have with us. The only way to put them for better use is by experimenting with them. Using them in some unconventional ways and try to come up with some really different images and trust me you dont have to have costly equipments with you to prove this one.

Apply thought!

Cheers,

Ash

  


   

The next small step in LW!

 Its been just over a month since I became a part of Landscape Wizards Team.

 LW is one of its kind in India which is completely dedicated to Landscape Photography. I bet you will find a fine collection of stunning landscape images which is made across India and abroad.

  As a small next step apart from sharing images for viewing, the team has decided to place some wallpapers and calenders for download! Yes! Now you can download these wall papers and Calenders onto your desktops and enjoy the image in its bigger form!

You can download the wallpapers/calenders from the 'Resources' section of the website.

HERE is the link to the site, in case if you are not aware yet!

Cheers,

Ash