In search of a waterfall

It was not in my list until I called up Sunil,my cousin, just the previous day of my travel. "Benne holey is a nice place is what I have heard. I think we can complete it by noon and we can have our lunch at our home in Tattisara". These were his words.
As Pramod was joining my trip the next day, I had one day extra with me and I wanted to explore some new places where I have not yet been. So Benne holey sounded a good proposal by him.

Though I was brought up in Yellapur, Sirsi had been my second home (and my birth place too). Almost all my relatives are in and around Sirsi. So being in such a place and acting like a newcomer to the town is hard to me. But I have to undergo this state at least once every year when I am there exclusively to shoot. Sunil knows it well. So he came to pick me up from the bus stand at 7:00 in the morning and we headed straight to one of the restaurants to have some food. It took around 30min to get out from there and hit the road towards Kumta.

It was drizzling. The ground and the greens around were wet. Low level clouds were moving quite fast. Light was changing every now and then. I was excited. It was almost a perfect condition how I wanted it to be. Cloudy days are the best to shoot inside the forest as they reduce the contrast.

While we were driving in the Bandla Ghat, I spotted a nice stream beside the road. It was slightly inside the green foliage. We halted our car and I went to examine the place. It looked promising. I was tempted enough to take my camera out and start making some images. It was quite slippery all around.

The water from the place crosses the road from beneath and flows onto the other side of the road. It flows beside a huge Banyan tree and its roots were looking quite amazing.

We spent nearly one hour there photographing various aspects. I am huge fan of ferns and few ferns there were very beautiful.

It was after an hour when we realized that we might get late to the final point and started from this place. If you are destined to reach a place late you will reach late however fast you go! :) That's what happened!

From the very first turn itself our car was not able to climb a small uphill and we were forced to leave it behind and started walking towards the water fall. The path was nice and the forest was full of life. It was bustling with the calls of Cicada and a Malabar Whistling Thrush was in full mood of singing!

After a walk of about a kilometer, we finally met first human on the road! He was heading towards the road with couple of cows.

We asked him how much more we need to walk to get to the falls and his reply was "You are very near. Barely another kilometer or so!". At that point of time we had no other choice but to believe him! We started again.

As we go deep inside the forest was haunting! There was no sign of any human settlement, expect the road where we were heading. To make the matter worse it was drizzling occasionally and we had bare minimum protection from rain.

We walked and walked and walked....kept on stepping.....the road seemed endless! By the time we almost exhausted we had come about 5 kilometers! Now we could hear the roar of the falls from distance.

While visiting any of the waterfalls in the Western Ghats for photography, one thing to remember is to look out for other small streams on the way to the main falls. Photographically many a times these small streams prove to me small wonders! The same thing has happened that day. We were almost half a kilometer away from the falls and a small stream caught my attention. It was looking more beautiful because of the wild flowers around it. I thoroughly enjoyed the scene and made some images. Sunil was capturing some good movie as he is a professional videographer.

The roar of the falls was getting higher and higher for each step towards it. After a point where we couldn't even see it, we started fearing that with this much full slow whether it is possible to get even the glimpse of the falls! It is notorious anyways because of few mischief people who had lost their lives, the latest one being just a few months ago!

The roar was really strong. We came to a point where we hit a small junction where we could see two roads, one leading to an open space with only few more steps and other which was leading down the valley. By that time we were quite exhausted by our long walk and no food, and the with that much roar we thought it was not possible to reach the base anyways! So we decided to head towards the open space to have a glance of the source of the roar!

Benne holey Falls as seen from the top

As we went near we could realize how tall the falls was. It was literally horrifying! The sound waves that were hitting us were inducing more fear. We couldn't stand there for more than 10minutes. We were forced to head back! The falls was quite furious! It was as if we had disturbed its meditation! We didn't want to take any more chance! We started heading back.

The streams in the forest carry very sweet water! I have tasted it many times. Crystal clear and sweet as sugar! I drank plenty of water near the stream where I had photographed while going. I had just fell in love with that place. That time it was raining quite heavily. I was in no mood to take shelter! We started heading towards the place where we had stopped the car.

While coming back we searched for the man who had told us that the falls is barely a kilometer away! I wanted to clear his misunderstanding! :) For his good fortune, we couldn't find him!

We were thinking of heading back by 11:30 or 12:00 and when I saw my watch after sitting in the car, it was showing 2:45PM! No food....only the sweet water from the stream had kept us alive all the way for 12 kms of arduous path!

Long live Western Ghats!

Cheers,
Ash

Nature Tales dot Net!

"There is no shortage of "beautiful" images of nature today. How many of them portray the hidden stories of nature ? Nature photographers can make much better images if they know hidden stories of nature. Often this is not the case. On the other hand field biologists and naturalists have this immense knowledge of nature. Nature Stories (NTN in short for naturetales.net) is a unique platform for bringing together both nature photographers and field biologists to share vivid and fascinating stories of mother nature."
- Text from the Home page of NTN

Click on the above image to enter

Our CNP team is proud to introduce another unique non-commercial forum which is dedicated for the images which tell stories. It is going to be a platform for various other aspects also which includes Photo Essays, Ask the Experts, Wild Encounters etc.

Check out and enjoy the Nature Tales!

http://naturetales.net


Cheers,
Ash

Monsoon in the Western Ghats and Ladakh - Spiti in the North!

It was lush green everywhere. I was at a place where I could see green mountains till my eyes stretch. They all were having clouds at their peaks and few patches of clouds beneath my feat as well. I was standing at the top of a mountain and it was drizzling slightly.

I got up from this dream only when our bus took a steep turn on the road to Kollur at 4:30 in the morning. I was heading to my friend Adithya Biloor place to capture some of the monsoon moods around Kodachadri hills.

The place around Kodachadri transforms beautifully into a magical and colorful landscape during the monsoon. The ‘Karighati’ region which is on the road from Nagara to Kollur is a treat to the eyes and the misty feel in the ambiance is a feeling that has to be felt rather than explain in words.

I had a nice time photographing some of the wonderful streams that gets formed during the monsoon and which disappear silently when the monsoon ends.

To see few more images from this trip on Landscape Wizards CLICK HERE .

Currently I am handicapped by not having my Mac for processing my images from the trip. I shall share more images once I get back the machine.

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On the other side Team Landscape Wizards has planned for the Ladakh and Spiti Landscape Photography Tour. That region is a pilgrimage for Landscape photography and this trip is focused mainly towards landscape photography aspect.

To get more details CLICK HERE.

As of now I am off for another trip to Sahyadris.

Cheers,
Ash

Compositions in Landscape Photography

Monsoon is on and we are seeing green all around. The streams in the mountains are flowing in full flow and the wild flowers are blooming in their intense colors.

This is the time to head towards some of those regions which are at their best in these times. No easy task though but worth all the efforts.

Now, when you are heading towards some of those places to make some wonderful landscape images you probably will need some pointers to make your compositions effective.

To help you with this we, at Landscape Wizards have come up with a guideline on compositions in Landscape Photography. Thanks to Shivakumar L who has prepared this wonderful illustration booklet which will help you in understanding the compositional aspects better.It has only images and they speak for themselves.

To download this booklet CLICK HERE and don't worry, its for FREE. :)

Cheers,
Ash

Kaziranga - a small PhotoBook

I was working on this last month and it took me about a week to complete all the processing of images for this 20 page book.

It contains 36 images of mine from my trip to Kaziranga last year. I chose only 36 images to test the print quality and it looks good.

Some images I have designed for spread and some for the background. Overall I am quite happy with the quality of the print and looks quite promising to have few more such books of my earlier images! I am thinking...

If you want to have a look at it, you are welcome to knock my doors anytime. :)

BTW, you can view my all posts of my Kaziranga Trip HERE.

Cheers,
Ash

Timeless 'Kanooru Kote'

Couple of weekends back I along with my friend Nagabhushana visited a desolated remnant of the fort of Kanooru (Kanooru Kote in Kannada) in the heart of the Western Ghats.

 

 
It is situated at around 70KM from Sagar in the thickest of the forest where you feel it as a remote corner of the world. Its truly very very desolate.

  The feel of the place is very mystic. There is a deafening silence in the place and you could almost feel it. The whole place once used to be the place of some dynasty is now shattered on ground and scattered apart on the forest floor.

Some remnants are still there to tell the story of the past glory. The whole place is now engulfed by the forest and you will find many of the remnants also look like part of the forest itself!

There are couple of temples which are robbed ruthlessly to find the buried wealth beneath the statue in the Sanctum sanctorum. The scene there is horrible and heart wrenching.

Reaching this place was no easy task. The route is awful and very steep at places. It took us quite a lot of time to find out that we are on right track and by the time we reached the place it was 4:00PM! I had about an hour to document the place and that short time is not enough for this mysterious and beautiful place to give justice through the images.

It's in my list to visit again.


I know nothing about its history and Googling also didn't help in getting anything more than the fact that it is a nice trekking spot for the trekking enthusiasts which is perfectly true. So if any of you know about its history or any useful information around this place please feel free to share it as  your comment so that it becomes a good documentation on this place on web which is lacking at this point of time.

Cheers,
Ash

A Pano from my land

I had been to my native last weekend to attend a marriage. On Sunday morning when people were busy in getting ready for the function I managed to squeeze in some time to climb a hillock in the backyard to see some opportunity to shoot.

The morning was little cloudy and the Sun was playing hide and seek behind the clouds now and then. The view from the top was serene and the only way I could capture that vastness was by doing a panorama.

I used my Tokina 12-24mm lens (at 24mm) for making this image. This pano is a stitch of only two images. As I didn't have a tripod with me, I had to choose wider focal length rather than mid range in order to get the alignment correct and for having less number of frames.

You can find some more very nice panoramas made by my friends here on Landscape Wizards

Cheers,
Ash

A 'guftagu' with Ibisbill

Nameri has a number of different opportunities to shoot. It has dense pristine forest, small scrubby patch and a wonderful river bed. This river bed holds some very nice opportunity to shoot one of the very beautiful birds found in India - Ibisbill. The second day morning was mostly dedicated for the ibisbills which are normally found only while rafting.

The rafting starts almost 14km upstream and the total duration would be around two and a half hours. The currents are not very strong except at couple of places rest of the waters is quite calm. A bit care is indeed required to protect the camera gear from becoming wet but it is manageable.

The landscape of the region is very picturesque. The morning was bit cloudy which had dual effect on our photography. For certain type of images it helped and for some other it didn't. There were two people who were guiding the raft and one of them was a local expert on birds. He was very good in locating the birds in the highly camouflaged environment and identifying them.

The river bed was a calm and quite place and no wonder why the bird density was so healthy. There were large cormorants, river terns, Stone Plovers, river lapwings, king fishers, brahminy ducks, mergansers and of course the ibisbill.

River terns were having a nice morning fishing so as the pied king fishers. Photographing through the raft is quite a difficult task especially if you are using a fixed focal length lens. Zooms are perfectly suited for this condition where you will never know from where the bird approaches you.

After covering about half a kilometer our guide pointed towards a group of stones are called one of them as - Ibisbill!! I was baffled! I checked 3 - 4 times to see the characteristic long red bill of the bird but failed. I started doubting his spotting capacity.

But he was right. There WAS an ibisbill among the wet rocks which was so well camouflaged in between the rocks that for any first timer it was almost impossible to spot them. The difficulty manifolds because of the movement of the raft as well. At the second look I was able to spot the bird and spent next few minutes to help my other two team mates to spot the bird. I was very much impressed by the spotting ability of the guide and thanked him.

We spotted few more ibisbills just after that and one gave us a good opportunity to make some images of the beauty.

They are  very beautiful birds and at the same time they are very shy and sensitive too. A bit of disturbance and they are gone...After that very less chances that you will be able to see them again on the downstream.

Not only ibisbill gave good company to us but also couple of huge flocks of great cormorants and couple of pied king fishers well.

We finally saw the mergansers from a bit closer than the last evening. For our luck one flew quite close.

The riverbed offered us some more interesting opportunities. As we moved along we saw a huge monitor lizard just entering a hole on the bank. As we moved further we were able to see only a part of its head stretched out.

Then we came across a barking deer (Muntjac) on the bank of the river. On the white rock the deer was looking amazing. Whatever mammal you get on those white stones is a bonus.

The experience of the rafting was simply amazing. Even though it doesnot come anywhere near to the actual white water rafting, but as this was added with photographic opportunity this was a unique and nice experience for all of us.

We were back on the ground by 10:00AM. Headed straight to the eco camp and started packing our stuffs.

A visit to the pigmy hog conservation camp was pending in the last. We completed that one as well just before the lunch.

By the time we started back to Guwahati it was 2:30PM and my mind was still hearing the voice from within which said - 'One and a half days are no where enough for this wonderland called NAMERI'.

Cheers,
Ash