Seeing beyond obvious

Sometimes on the field I get glued to one particular subject or scenery for quite a log time and it takes several hours for me to come out of it.

One such thing happened recently to me when I found a pair of small flowers with an interesting arrangement. I got so much impressed with their relative posture that I spent a good couple of hours shooting only them.

For me their stance resembled that of a man and a woman with the man leaning forward towards the woman.The gentleness on the flowers and their opened structures were giving a pleasing mood to the entire scenery.

It was like a handsome gentleman proposing to a beautiful and graceful lady. Resemblance of the bud is left to the imagination of the viewer though! ;)

Blame it to my state of mind but I got too much carried away by the show that without my notice I had spent a good two hours exploring all the possibilities to capture the scene with different combinations of focal length and light.

It was fun. Initially I decided to shoot with the ambient light and once I was quite satisfied then I decided to throw in some directional light using a off-the-hot-shoe flash.

The flash light added a different dimension to some of the images. In some of the images they looked like celebrities!! I started loving the feel of the result and that kept me going. By that time I was kind of addicted to the scene and was not in any mood to explore anything else around.

I had used predominantly two focal lengths - 50mm and 28mm with a combination of various aperture values ranging from f/1.8 on both till f/7.1 combined with various light intensities and directions. Each combination had its own uniqueness. Though some of them suit my taste bud and some didn't, the process of making these images gave me a very good learning.

What you are seeing here are some of those which are close to my heart.

Hope you enjoy the set. Sometimes images like these exist in our very own vicinity.

We just have to keep our eyes open to see them

Cheers,
Ash

Life in abundance

Monsoon is the life-line of Western Ghats. It not only transforms the land into a green carpet but also enriches the life forms during that time. 

One can see various types of wild flowers, vividly colorful mushrooms, richly green ferns and a rich number of other life forms like frogs, insects, cicadas and various other critters. With abundant food available it is no less than a festival time for the predators!

Last time on my visit to Jenukal Gudda, near Yellapur, I had a nice encounter with a Green Vine Snake. That was the first and the only time I photographed a Green Vine alive! Though I have been seeing this species of snake ever since my childhood, it rarely showed up since the time I started the photography. Hence I was excited to shoot this guy and he obliged happily.

During this year's Western Ghats trip in July I was expecting this species of snake to show up in one or the other place we visited. I always had my eyes open to find this one but all went in vein.
In all the places there were cicadas, frogs and other insects abundantly rich in number but there was no sign of a Green Vine.

With forest fragmented due to the construction of roads and highways these snakes have a constant pressure to sometime cross the road in order to find food or mate. That makes them vulnerable not only to the fast moving vehicles but also to their predators. These guys are masters in camouflaging. You just cannot find them once they are into some green shrubs or a tree. It is just next to impossible to find them if they don't move and they know that! For such a camouflaged guy it is nothing less than a disaster to come on the bare surface of a tar road where he is easily visible from anywhere. It is like getting onto a battlefield...unarmed!

Road kills are common across the Western Ghat region. During monsoons there is no surprise if the number goes high. The forests and its fringes will be filled with food and life and the grass looks greener on the other side of the road (!), which tempts guys like these to venture out into the bare tar roads and to cross them in desperacy!

The results are disastrous many times. We were a witness to one such road kill during this year's trip in July. It feels terribly sad to see such a charmingly beautiful creature lying flat on the road dead with its inside out!

No cheers,
Ash