Moist ~ Green ~ Lively - Season's first Trip to Western Ghats

...

Cloudy weather  ~  Expecting clouds to pour down anytime  ~  gathering dark clouds  ~

Peeking sunbeams through the dark clouds, confusing if it would rain or clear off  ~  drizzling  ~  distant thunders  ~  water sprinkles  ~

sound of raindrops hitting the car bonnet  ~  bubbles on the still water on the road  ~  ripples on the calm waters  ~

looking up towards the sky  ~  street full of dark umbrellas  ~  people rarely looking straight  ~  bent heads  ~  wet roads  ~  filled pot holes, defying their depths  ~

rich greens  ~  moss on the rocks and logs  ~  wonderful ferns  ~  colorful mushrooms  ~  splendid wild flowers  ~  wet forest floor  ~  stretching and crawling leeches  ~  wet dead leaves  ~

 

 

muddy red waters  ~  full flowing rivers  ~  re-incarnated waterfalls  ~  silently flowing forest streams  ~  skiddy and slippery river banks  ~  submerged dead trees  ~

cloudy forests  ~  lively valleys  ~  misty canopies  ~  singing streams  ~  bathing rocks  ~  smiling plants  ~

This is what Monsoon in the Western Ghats is all about.

Isn't it? :)


All images are from my recent trip to Western Ghats between 8th and 10th July 2011.

Planning again in Aug. 


More details here: 
http://www.landscape-wizards.com/home/services/workshops-and-tours


Cheers,

Ash

Yana - yet again!

Yana is a place where almost every photographer has failed!!  
Why?
 ...
 ...
 ...

We started from Sirsi at around 6:00AM but by the time we reached Yana, it was 12:30PM!! The road to Yana is so beautiful that we couldn't stop ourselves from getting down and shooting on several occasions!

The streams were flowing in their full beauty through the lush green woods and the wet forest floor was adding more colors to the already vivid ambiance.

It drizzled, it rained, we got slightly wet but nothing stopped us from enjoying making images.

The road to Yana itself is a beauty! You will be driving amidst very thick evergreen forest and at some places roads were laid without cutting a single tree and hence they were very curvy!

When we finally reached Yana it was mid noon. Soon after, a thin layer of low level clouds started to gather and covered the rocks and the forest around.

It is very difficult to capture the sense of massiveness of those rocks. Till date I have not seen any single image which can even come closure to the actual feel of the massiveness of those magnificent rock formations. There are reasons to it!

In order to give the sense of anything (like height, massiveness etc) using a photograph we normally need a scale to compare. For example how much high a structure may be but in a photograph it is felt only when you make a normal person stand beside it and then our mind compares the height and gets a sense of the real height of the structure. Otherwise if we present the structure independently there is no way one can get the sense of its height.

This is precisely why NatGeo Photographer Micheal 'Nick' Nichols, while shooting the tallest tree on earth, made few people stand at certain heights on the tree. The image was published in last year's October issue. That image was a five sheet spread!! I was jaw dropped when I saw that for the first time. I had never seen anything like that till then. You can see a small video of its making and the image at the end HERE.

This is the exact same reason why every photograph of the rocks of Yana fail to give the sense of their massiveness. If you have not gone there yet then believe me the rocks are far far more massive than how they look in any image on the web. You will go breathless at least once and your heart would skip a beat for sure. Take my word!

We tried to concentrate on a lone tree which has succeeded in growing at that height, but then how do you depict the size of the tree? There are smaller trees and there are taller trees. So which one is this? How much is its approximate height? How do you portray that in your image?

There needs a massive amount of work to be done, similar to the one by Nick Nichols, to capture the sense of enormity of the size of those marvelous rocks of Yana and that is not at all easy!

That's why I had told in the beginning - 
Yana is a place where almost every photographer has failed!! 

Hoping to be successful sometime...

Cheers,

Ash

Note: You can find my older accounts of Yana HERE. 

 

Yana - a bewitching wilderness.

For the people who dont know, there is a wonderful place called Yana in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka. Amazing rock formations which are standing right in the middle of the evergreen forest. The forest around is so thick and dense that you can find leeches even in the hot mid summer!

    Pramod, shiv and self were there in this monsoon as a part of our western ghats trip this season. Even though I had been there 5 years ago i dint have a complete memory of how the place was exactly (I was not into photography then). So I was also as excited as Shiv and Pramod.

   We reached there by around 7 and it was slightly drizzling. After sitting inside the jeep for around 15min we decided to walk in the rains itself. It was mild and we were hoping that it will stop soon. So it did. When we reached the place we all were totally dumb struck by looking at the beauty of the place. The main rock - Bhairaveshwara Shikhara was looking so huge and majestic that none of us could talk literally for some time. The rock is huge and it is surrounded by lush green and dense forest. The monsoon mood was in the air and everything around was wet.

      Notice a tiny looking reddish spot on the right side of the tree, its a Scarlet Minivet!


  The bird life in the place was so much active that we saw Ruby Throated Bulbuls sitting very near to us. The scarlet minivets and the Yellow browed bulbuls were almost everywhere! They seem oblivious to our presence and kept themselves busy in finding some food for the morning. As we all were keen on making some landscape images all we could do was just enjoy seeing them. A Malabar Whistling Thrush was busy singing in various notes and it was giving a melodious background score for the scenary out there. Soon it came out and sat on a tree trunk for sometime and disappeared into the woods again. Then came an Emerald Dove in a sudden bullet like speed and went back into the woods in the same speed! After sometime we realised that at that time we were the only humans in the vicinity. Probably the Dove was not expecting the two legged creatures at that early time of the day and  we probably have surprised them.

  The local poojaris of the temple arrive at around 10:30 and till that time the place belongs to various birds and probably for some mammals as well, we dont know!

   As the Sun started rising slowly above the forest canopy and over the rocky formations, Pramod had a wonderful idea of the image below:
 

  
 It was around 10:30AM by the time we were little exhausted, more mentally than physically. Frankly, none of us were expecting Yana to be this much full of opportunities.... and we have not even explored the cave like path which runs around the temple!

  The place is full of opportunities for a Nature Photographer and it is currently in my must visit place for the next monsoon as well.

  Started back from the place at around 12:00PM and all I remember later was the wonderful time we had there and the way our Jeep driver drove back us to Sirsi... all the time above 80 or 100 kmph, in those curvy wooded road!!

 Cheers,
 Ash

Yana - graphically!

Though I belong to the region of Sahyadris and close to Yana, I have been there only for couple of times till now!....The second time in that "couple of times" was just over a month ago!! :) Curse me and I take that!

Yana, I must say, is a wonderland for Landscape and abstract photography. You get some wonderful perspectives if you spend some time there.



Pramod, Shiv and self were there on an early morning and the whole place was completely void of any human beings! The pundits of the temple and a small coffee shop owners are from a nearby village and they arrive there only by 10 - 10:30 in the morning. Till then the whole place belongs to the fairy blue birds, scarlet minivets, Malabar whistling thrushes, Emerald Doves,Golden fronted Leafbirds and above all for the wonderful Ruby throated bulbuls! They all literally rule the place till almost 9:30 and as the sun starts his routine walk over the Bhairaveshara Shikara, they all fine their way into the thick forest again where some go to the canopy and some on the forest floor and some to the nearby stream beds!

The rock formations of Yana are no less than any Natural wonders. Stud in the middle of thick evergreen forest of the Western Ghats, they look huge and majestic when you see them for the very first time. I bet, everyone on their very first visit will skip a heartbeat when they see the main rock - Bhairaveshwara Shikhara. It has to be seen to believe.



While we were shooting, an idea came to my mind after seeing the unique edges of the rocks. 'They look like graph' !

I exposed only the top portions of the rock and underexposed the image very much so that I get the edges but as completely black.

Then while viewing on my computer they looked very interesting even if I invert the image! That what I did for the below one.




So if any of you have not visited the place yet, just plan your next trip there. Its not far, but more than worth visiting.

Some more images of Yana will be shared on Landscape Wizards.

Cheers,
Ash