Chitradurga ~ Part -1 : Through the moments

Chitradurga fort is a treasure trove for anyone who wants to do some serious photography. The amount of opportunity that it provides in terms of making several types of images is simply mind boggling. This place was in my wish list to visit since long. Finally it happened few months back. It was a short visit. We were there for about an hour or two. For the scale of that place two hours is nothing. What you see in those two hours is just like a trailer! To see the movie in its entirety one has to spend at least couple of days. A week is even better!

During that quick visit I tried to make few images. I was not interested in making conventional images of that place. I had seen them in plenty. I was in a mood to do couple of experiments. First -  I was thinking if I can show that place through a set of moments, perhaps a set of fleeting moments, moments frozen into frames in space and time.  Second - in my next post! :)

During many discussions with various eminent and contemporary photographers there was always this question as to - What is it that defines photography in its uniqueness? What is it which is unique to photography but not to other form of visual art? 

It is the ability to arrest a fleeting moment that has no past and future but still exists in space and time. Making a pre-visualised photographs is a different story and that in the distant horizon comes close to the process of painting but still maintaining a thin boundary between the two. But in my view this is not the uniqueness of the medium of photography.. Uniqueness is defined by the  former argument. Latter is just another way of expression.

Here is a small write-up by Nirlep Singh written in CNP forum where he has beautifully explained this process in detail. To this day I keep visiting this article over and over again.

"An absurdity called a photograph"

Off late I have been trying to push myself into this realm. Throwing myself into the situation where I forcefully forget that I have a camera in my hand and try to flow through the experience of the place and in the flow make some images whenever I 'feel' like making one, not deliberately, with no urgency, with no pre-visualisation. I am just being in the moment and let my instinct do the photography. I am enjoying it. I am enjoying the way mind gets opened up with no constraints of any sorts. Earlier I was hesitant to take out my camera in public and point the lens towards strangers around me. It was probably because of the thought that 'What would they think about me? - Will it cause discomfort to them? - Am I breaching their privacy? -  Do they think that I am showing off? - and all other absurd questions'. I was rarely shooting street or urban photographs when there is crowd around and I attribute these questions to the lack of such experience. But off late I am not surrendering myself to that feeling and trying to break away from it. Hence you can see some of my urban and street photography posts in the recent past and that will continue.

Second experiment in the next post!

Cheers,
Ash

In search of a 'Glow' in the dark!

I had seen glowing twigs when I was studying 12th. One of my friends had brought me one sample twig and had told me that such glowing twigs are found all around his home during monsoon. His home is amidst thick forest. I had kept the twig with me for about a week at my home and due to lack of humidity the glow diminished and ultimately the twig got its moksha in the dust bin! All this had happened around 14 years back and it was a closed chapter in my life until recently I recollected the whole episode. That made me to start search for the glow which litters the forest floor in the Western Ghats.

Incidentally Sriharsha was also thinking about the same in parallel and during a normal conversation we happened to know that we both of us are looking for the same thing - Glowing Fungi!

This is how it looks during the day! 

Absolutely no clue as to it would glow so beautifully in dark!

Then happened the cycle of searches and enquiries and finally we managed to find them and more importantly shoot them.

Shooting was a huge challenge as the conditions were not favorable.

Our experiences and the results are now shared on Landscape Wizards - "Luminous Landscapes".

Don't miss to watch the video of our experience and the wonderful GIF by Sriharsha is just an icing on the cake.

Hope you enjoy.

Cheers,
Ash

Timeless 'Shivagange'

Kanooru Kote was special to me for its mystic and haunted feel. I had tried to bring the same mood in my blog post: Timeless Kanooru Kote.

I set out with similar mission and this time it was Shivagange, a sacred hill near Tumkur. There are literature available on net for its historical and cultural importance. My purpose here is not to highlight that but to present the place visually in such a way that its timelessness is felt through the imagery. My decision to go monotone was driven by this fact.

So not much text in this post. Through these images I have tried to convey my feelings while I trekked through the place.

Click on the images to see them bigger.

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts / views ?


- Ash

Let there be light....even when there is no flash!!

We often face the problem of having not enough light when we are shooting in the late evenings and during the night. I am not talking particularly about Nature Photography here but about general photography. But by applying little bit of thinking we can get some very good results which otherwise is not possible just by bumping up the ISO setting of the camera.

(Click on the image to see it bigger)

On my last trip to Kodai I was staying in a nice resort which was having a nice garden space with some very interesting lighting. When I shared my idea of making some images in that light my wife Sahana happily agreed to pose :). I had nothing but a camera fitted with 18-200mm lens. No external flash, no tripod and the max aperture rating of the lens is also poor for the low light. But I wanted to make some images under that light by some or the other means. I hate to use built-in flash as it makes images flat. I use it very very very rarely...almost never!

My cellphone Nokia E-63 came for my rescue! It has an LED torch on its back.Though the torch is not that great, it looked like it was quite ok if I use it properly to get some of the images that I had in mind. 

(Click on the image to see it bigger)

The series of images in this blog are shot using the torch light of my E-63 to lit the face and by keeping the camera on either a table or on the compound wall. All the images are made using very low shutter speed. The key here is to place the torch in such a way that it should lit the face properly and expose the frame for the light on the face so that everything else is rendered just like it is, the mood of night.

So the next time when you are out on any vacation or trip and want to make some images under the evening light then remember this trick. You dont have to have a DSLR to make these kinds of images. Any point and shoot would also give almost the same result if you apply this method. Just use your brain! :)

Without my mobile, in the below image, I could not have got both moon and Sahana in the same frame with this lighting.

No need to say that it is my image of the trip! An image in which I have both the moons
- one ruling my Sun-Sign (Cancer) and the other ruling my heart! :)


My first post after marriage! It took quite long to get back here.
Feeling good to be back!

Cheers,

Ash

Winter web site!

Last time when I went to my practice nets - TG Halli, I had forgotten what I had thought before leaving the place the previous time! I had spotted few web sites! Yes, spider webs! But it was too late that day and Sun was high. So I had left the place thinking that I would visit to that place first in my next practice session. But almost the same was about to repeat, if I had not decided to take a leisure walk.

There were some tall grass shrubs on which there was a tiny colony kind of webs all over. It was then I suddenly remembered my previous visit and rushed to get my camera. Sun was just coming up and the ambiance was mildly misty.

Instead of using my regular macro lens to make some web patterns I decided to go wide. I used my wide angle macro this time which allowed me to go very much closer than the wide angle lenses, thereby achieving the magnification, and retaining the wide angle aspect in the image at the same time. I love my wide angle macro lens - Sigma 28mm f/1.8 - which gives me some unique and amazing perspectives. More about that in a separate post sometime later.

I wish I had spotted it sometime earlier that day. As I was making the images, the mist was slowly disappearing and the light was getting bright. Thanks to the straying clouds I got few spotlights as well.

The next time when I go there this would be high in my list and will try to better some of the results.

Cheers,
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

  


   

Angle of light and Texture...

Photography is all about the way of handling and controlling light. It may be either the light falling on the subject or the light falling on the CCD/film. In most of the forms of Nature Photography, controlling the light falling on the subject may not be possible, in which case we need to control the light falling on the CCD to make the image how we want to portray. But in some cases it is possible to control the light falling on the subject and that opens up a Pandora's box of opportunities.

In macro photography it is not only the amount of light which matters but what also matters is the angle in which it falls on the subject. In most of the cases the angle defines the structures and gives more textured feel.

In the below series of images I will illustrate how does the angle of light change the feel of the image.
All the images were shot with/compensated for the same exposure values. I have used Nikon SB 600 flash for the experiment, with Body: D300 and lens: Nikkor 50mm f/1.8. I have NOT applied sharpness for any of these images while processing and they are just out of the camera with only JPG conversion and resizing for web publication.

The below image was lit with flash almost perpendicular to the plane of the tree bark. Note that there are not much details visible on the bark. The image looks very flat and the moult of the Cicada is also not visually highlighted.



Now consider the below one where I have lit the bark from the top right corner. This highlights some of the textures which were not visible in the previous image. But still the image looks flat on the bottom portion.




In the next image I tried lighting from the bottom right. This added a bit more drama on the right side of the frame and the textures have come out good. The Cicada is also lit from the side and gives a better anchor for the visual. However the left part of the image went too dark and creates an uninteresting empty space.




This time I lit the bark from the bottom and almost at the center of the lower edge of the frame and close to the plane of tree. This created good amount of drama. The play of light and shadows created a nice feel to the image (at least for my taste!)



So we can see that, how the texture and feel differs depending on the angle of light falling on the subject. If you compare the first and the last image you can see a mammoth of difference in terms of the texture and feel of the image. If you had noticed carefully its the shadows which create drama and dynamism in these kind of images and to make the most use of it we need to experiment on the angle of light falling on the subject. If we cannot move the light source then we need to see if changing our shooting angle helps in creating this drama of light and shadow.

This is nothing new thought. Just an experiment from my side. You can read a related post by Ganesh H S - HERE .

Regards,
Ash