This Indian cormorant (Phalacrocorax fuscicollis) was drying its wings in the backwaters of Palolem. I spotted it after we fed the kites and eagles. I ran a search on Merlin to figure out which species this bird was, but was not sure if it was an Indian cormorant (which is apparently uncommon) or a Little black cormorant. Photos from other angles, however blurry, helped with the confirmation.

I have this plugin running here that auto-publishes to social networks once I publish a post. It does not, however, has support for hashtags, which if you’ve been visiting, would know I wrote a fix for a while back. They made an update, and I, not remembering that the update would rewrite my changes, updated it and lost the hashtag support. . So the last few posts didn’t have the hashtags… Thankfully, I had the code in my drive (had to look for it for quite a while), so I reapplied my changes on top of the update and I’m good to go.

Another good news, as far as the plugin is concerned, apparently WordPress only allows open source plugins in its repository. That means I could upload a new plugin with my changes for hashtags. I know some of you use wordpress for hosting your photoblogs too. Lemme know in the comments if you’d have some use for this plugin and I’ll upload it to the wordpress plugin repository…

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This assortment of cups were displayed beautifully in a clay works shop in the Shilparamam arts and crafts village. They had a ton off stuff made of clay (possibly hand crafted) ranging from Vases (duh) to Ashtrays and cup sets.

The other shops include, among others, woodworks’ shops and metalworks’ shops. Most seem handcrafted, but I can’t be sure. I got a diffuser from this shop. Speaking of, I should burn some lavender oils today. I haven’t used it in a while…

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Charminar – literally four minarets, has 4 (char translates to four) minarets.

As for news, I recently started my Art channel on Youtube, inspired from following Christine’s blog. I was slumped at work for the last week or so, but I think I’ll work on another sketch/painting this weekend…

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I loved how the parachutes looked sailing above the ocean in southern Goa. The flight against setting sun made for a picture worth remembering…

Considering the current situation in the world, I hope you and your family are keeping yourselves safe and sane…

I myself have been at home since the start of March. From about two days since I last posted. Me being pretty much a recluse, I didn’t mind it in the beginning, but it started getting to me when the country went under lockdown and the alcohol shops were closed. The spirits were keeping my spirits in a bearable state, but then things changed, and maybe for the better. They’re probably going to open the liquor shops this week, so that’s good news (to some extent).

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This is my Johnson screwdriver and tester, which was part of my Johnson combination screwdriver set, that I’d bought to work on my DIY project.

As you might already know from my last couple of posts, you already know that I had set out on a mission to make a DIY softbox. So, I made two. I got myself 10 12″x16″ black foam boards, velcro tapes (for keeping the bulbs detachable), this screwdriver set, two sets of LED bulbs (white, and warm white), lots of black electrical tape (without markings), tracing paper (for diffusion), two pin plugs, and extension board and two bulb holders. God bless Amazon!

After a few days of painstaking work, and a tired back, I had myself a couple of softboxes, the second one better than the first, having learnt from my (minor) mistakes.

This photograph is a composite of a few exposures, one of which had a white background and used the flash (in-camera slow flash, not speedlight), which helped with the glow. The rim lighting, and other general lighting are coming from the softboxes on either side. For the rest of the shots, I used the 10th black foam board, which didn’t get utilized in making the softboxes, for the background. Then an underexposed shot helped with the edge detection of the subject, which I then masked out and made a slight gradient for the background.

The reflection at the bottom is real. I placed it on a wood (probably with a sunmica layer) drawer top (only place in my house where both my softboxes would fit.

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This is the Set Wet Ultimate Hold bottle (box? can?) that was in the background of the product photoshoot I shot this in.

You can see the colonge bottle in the background here. These are not actual product photoshoots though, where I assume photographers either go the product manufacturers’ designated locations or are sent the product in mail. These are just stuff I use. The cologne is half empty. This one looks new, because I only get a haircut in about a year or a year and a half (I like keeping my hair long)…

As for the photoshoot with the softboxes I made, I think I’ll be posting the first one (from the first photoshoot) tomorrow.

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This cologne (Disclosure Sapil for men), was my first attempt at product photography. This was after countless YouTube videos on product photography tutorials.

So, after a couple of usable photos from this shoot, I made a couple of (DIY) softboxes to venture further into this genre. I’ll be posting the results of that venture very soon. Although, I did go on editing the photos heavily (other than the compositing of differently lit photos). I was pretty happy with the results. Hopefully you’ll like them too…

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I got these Fantail Goldfish (Carassius auratus) in mid-November. I also got a pair of Black Mollies. Together, these guys are the longest living fishes I’ve had. The previous two batches I had, unfortunately didn’t live very long.

They have slowly started recognizing me, which feels nice… They’d swim towards me and then up when they see me, anticipating food, I suppose…

A few weeks ago, I was washing their big, heavy glass bowl, and a small piece broke off from the bottom. So, I went on Amazon and got them a huge new home. They now swim around up and down and across all day. They seem happy…

The walls have a strong total internal reflection (the same phenomenon utilized in the prisms in our SLRs), which could only be seen in the tapered edges in their previous home.

The tank even came with a built in filter, that filters out muck on a sponge, which I didn’t know was a thing. So, I won’t need to clean out the whole tank, which is a good thing, considering how big it is. For the size, the tank’s quite light (it’s made of Fiberglass). And there’s in-built LED lighting. That retires my filter and LED spotlight, that I used in the previous tank. I have found use for the spotlight though, in my photography… I will post those very soon…

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This beautiful flower is from the species of Ipomoea pes-caprae, commonly known as Bayhops or Beach morning glory or Goat’s foot. It is a ground-hugging vine.

This bed of vines was to my front-left when I was taking the picture of the kid on the beach.

I haven’t been able to post for a few days, but I did some photoshoots and I’ve ordered some components to make my DIY softbox. Photos of Glasses and bottles will follow…

The post Bayhops – Beach morning glory – Goat’s foot – Ipomoea pes-caprae appeared first on Visioplanet Photography.

This is a Brahminy kite (Haliastur indus), I spotted in its home, during the boat ride in the backwaters in Palolem. For a long time, I thought it was a sea eagle. I suppose those are bigger. We fed them some chicken too! They were circling above the boat and diving in the water to get their share.

This backwater meets the sea from a river. A paradise for many different kinds of birds in the middle of civilization.

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This salt and pepper in a shack in Palolem, Goa was taken after the beautiful sunset I posted about.

Beers, chicken, salt and pepper… Cool sea breeze, the roar of the breaking waves and the light of the stars… A good evening…

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I spotted this kid on a beach in Goa. He was playing with his older brother. They were probably a locals.

I turned around a few minutes later and he was standing there alone, looking at something. I couldn’t figure out what. His brother returned a few minutes later. He’d gone to fetch ice creams from an ice cream tricycle that was standing on the road.

This was in the town of Colva, which was the first west coast beach I’d been to.

Fun fact, this place, and in fact, the entire state of Goa was a Portuguese colony up until 1961 (some 14 years afer India got her independence). It took a local rebellion and an invasion by the Indian armed forces to liberate the state, and a few islands around the area (which were also under Portuguese rule), from Portuguese control.

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This is the sunset in the Arabian sea, I witnessed during my first visit to Goa. I went to a beach in south Goa that time – to Palolem.

Goa is on the west coast of India. On the other side of the horizon, lies the east coast of Yemen. The sea itself is the Arabian sea. To the left (like a lot further to the left), this sea meets the Indian Ocean.

Prior to this, I’d only been to the east coast beaches – Digha, Tajpur, Mandarmani and Puri. The bad part about going to the east coast was that the Sun rises above the sea (Bay of Bengal). And visiting with my friends everytime, meant that it was not possible to get up at 5 in the morning. The sunsets were not bad though, but they were setting against the trees on land.

If you watch closely, you can see two heads sticking out at the bottom. Those are people on the beach. I hadn’t noticed that before I started posting…

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This is (a silhouette of) a house crow I captured cawing behind a shack in Goa. There were a bunch of these crows fluttering around at the place at the time.

These birds usually live (exclusively) around areas populated by humans. This particular group of them roost around shacks on the beaches of Goa, feeding on discarded human food. Apart from the constant cawing, they’re quite intelligent creatures. So much so, that there are stories about them from ancient Greece’s Aesop’s fables to ancient India’s Panchatantra. A quick youtube search for intelligent crows will pull up videos from modern times about them. It’s said that they operate at a seven year old human intelligence level. As a comparison, the linguistic skills of the great apes are comparable to a 3 year old level.

When I was little, I’d confuse Ravens with crows too. The only difference I found was that they didn’t have a gray neck. Well, the Internet wasn’t a thing back then (as in, not so accessible). Thankfully, my dad knew the difference…

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These detailed wooden vases were just beside the other shiny wooden vases. These vases are, I assume, handcrafted. The assumption is based on the fact that Shiparamam is famous for handicraft stuff.

As you might have noticed, these too have a blue shine, owing to the blue plastic roof they were placed under. But it’s much harder to mistake these for bronze (or brass), than the others were. The detailed design work on these were what caught my eye and prompted me to take this photograph.

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Yes, these shiny vases are not made from metal. They’re wooden. I was confused when I saw them, as they were in a wood works’ shop. These are some of the awesome crafted stuff from the Shilparamam arts and crafts village.

The place has plenty of shops relating to wood, metal, clay and glass. There’s a few flower gardens too. Sadly, they require a ‘do not pluck’ sign.

P.S. The blue shine is because they were covered under a blue plastic roof.

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I took this photo of yet another stranger playing football (soccer for my American friends) on one of my many trips to the Tajpur beach. The ball is not a football though. It’s one of those light plastic beach balls.

Football’s big in Bengal (the state this beach is in). They had league football long before it became a thing in the rest of the country during the last decade. I remember when I was a kid living in Kolkata, that the roads will be filled with people whenever there was a match in the Salt lake Stadium.

The last time I was there, was a few months after the huge cyclone Fani. The water was muddied and the beach was leveled. The tides were coming in way further than they used to. As a result, the shack owners had to make and remake their bamboo foundations twice every day. We’d not rented a car this time and went by train, since it was just the two of us this time. My guitarist, however, took his football with us this time. The beach was a lot bigger this time, owing to the leveled elevation on the beach. We went in to dribble and 6 other dudes from two different groups joined in. We played a couple of matches, with teams of 4 each. Some of realized we’re too old for this stuff. There were college kids in one of the groups. They played a lot longer than we could though. Zestful as they were, they kept kicking too hard, we ran towards the sea to catch the ball. The winds blowing towards land helped though, and we didn’t lose the ball.

I recently applied for Facebook application permissions. I was using ifttt for publishing my post links to Facebook and Twitter. Earlier, when I was hosting on blogger, they (ifttt) had developer accounts available, so I’d written an app to change my tags to hashtags, but they have since removed free developer accounts. Not wanting to pay for just being able to generate hashtags, I installed a plugin here from the wordpress plugin repository. But even that requires a permium account for hashtags. Good thing I can code (even though it was PHP, and the last time wrote with PHP was 10 years ago), and that it was licensed under an open source license. So I modified the code to generate my hashtags.

Coming back to the Facebook application. If you’re subscribed to my blog, you might have seen a few posts with the title ‘Test’ yesterday. That was their verification team checking out why I need permissions to post to my Visioplanet Photography Facebook page.

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As the name suggests, these flies feed on flesh. As such, these guys are the ickiest of the ickiest. The scientific family name – Sarcophagidae literally translates from Greek to flesh eater. Sarx = flesh, phagein = to eat. They’re known to feed on wounds, decaying flesh, dung, plant nectars, sweet plant stuff such as, fruits and nuts.

They’re also some of the biggest flies around here, at least from what I’ve seen over the years. I’ve only recently been able to discover the name though (thanks largely to Wikipedia).

These guys can cause leprosy, and in animals, usually sheep, they can cause blood poisoning. Even the larvae can cause parasitic infections.

Apparently it’s very hard to identify the specific species for Flesh flies. Only the males can be identified, and that is, after dissecting the genitalia.

Okay, that’s enough ickiness for one day.

I shot this one with my 300mm. It came out pretty well, considering how agile they are (these are relatively much less agile than the common house flies here). But, I wanted to get a better view. By the time I’d found my lens reversal adapter, it flew away. So I had to make do with a (slight) crop.

I identified it by its size, but mostly by its huge eyes and the pattern on its body.

In other news, I’m babysitting Jackie for a couple weeks, and I showed him this picture. He seemed perplexed.

I was also thinking about how in the past, we had photoblog competitions, specifically like coolphotoblogs. But it’s long since been dead, and photofriday now only takes uploads instead of post links, which doesn’t exactly help with photoblogs, even though it might for photographers in general. Since most of you (my dear readers) are photobloggers, do you know any such new websites, would you be willing to participate if a new one came along?

The post The icky one – Flesh fly (Sarcophagidae) appeared first on Visioplanet Photography.

Incredible would be one way to describe the almost gymnastic dance she did.

This is one of the 4 shows that day in the Ramoji Studio’s Spirit of Ramoji show. Three of the four programs involved dancing, and the other was a juggling and balancing act.

This photograph is part of my Ramoji Film City series.

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This is the top part of a ride in Ramoji Film City. One of the about half a dozen rides in there, this one’s the most noticeable.

This is the central part of the studio, where all the day visitors convene to and depart from, and where all the restaurants are. It’s also where all the rides are.

Throughout the day, when visitors are visiting other parts of the studio, this part is relatively empty. In the evening, however, this is bustling with people and kids getting on the rides…

P.S. Danger just rhymes with Ranger. This ride isn’t actually labeled dangerous anywhere.

This is part of my Ramoji Film City series.

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This image is the roof of the set of the court of the epic Mahabharat.

Mahabharat is an ancient Indian epic, comparable to the classical Greek epics – Iliad and the Odyssey, but much bigger. In fact, the Mahabharat is the longest story ever written. Written as shlokas (something like verses in the Bible), it is the longest poem ever written in the history of mankind.

The original events described in the epic are thought to have happened somewhere between the 9th and the 8th centuries BCE.

One of the chapters in the epic are the famed Bhagwad Gita.

This set is either a replica of, or the actual location of the 1988 Mahabharat TV series.

This is part of my Ramoji Film City series.

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These green Euphorbia flowers are some of the many flowers in the Botanical garden in Ramoji Film city. I’d seen red Euphorbias before. I was astonished to see this shade…

This particular species is Euphorbia Milii. Apparently the name Euphorbia was given after a Greek physician, Euphorbos by king Juba the second, whom Euphorbos served.

This is part of my Ramoji Film City series.

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This is another picture from the flower garden in Ramoji Film City (from back when they did allow tele lenses)… This one being a Primula Vulgaris. Why the epithet is vulgaris is beyond me though.

I tried a lot to find what species these flowers are from, but after a lot of describing it, I remembered Google had a reverse image search. That got me the answer away pretty quickly. It’s a Primrose (the first time I’d heard of a Primrose was in the Hunger Games). I believe this particular flower is from the subspecies sibthorpii, which is found in South-east Asia.

This is part of my Ramoji Film City series.

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This butterfly is another individual that lived in Ramoji Film City’s Butterfly Garden. I believe it’s a Pioneer (Belenois Aurota), but then again, I’m only guessing based on their habitat and color…

And it’s a good thing I took this photograph when I did. Since then, they have banned tele lenses.

The last time I went, my tele lens was not allowed in the studio at all…

Apparently, most tourist places in the city have begun disallowing any lens greater than 55 mm, which is just sad…

This is part of my Ramoji Film City series.

The post The Pioneer appeared first on Visioplanet Photography.

This is another beautiful scene in the middle of the forest in Kaziranga National park.

This almost sudden grassland opening had quite a few One horned Rhinos and a watchtower, from which I took this photograph. The Brahmaputra river on the right, the green long grass on the left and the mountains behind them made for a level of green I had never witnessed before…

The post Grasslands appeared first on Visioplanet Photography.

This is yet another photograph I took during one of my many visits to the Tajpur beach. SHe was taking a photograph of her family…

In other news, apparently wordpress doesn’t have in-built location tagging for posts. I’ve lost all the locations when importing my posts from Blogger. Now I’ll have to figure out how to do this here…

The post The Photographer appeared first on Visioplanet Photography.

So, it’s been almost a year since my last post. The reason was Picasa going away, making the posting program I wrote useless. I could have posted manually, but laziness and other priorities made that a problem.

Anyway, if you’ve been a regular visitor to my blog, you’ve noticed I’ve moved to WordPress from Blogger. That took some effort. Rewriting the posting program, not so much. Anyhoo, I’m back!

The post Mannequins appeared first on Visioplanet Photography.

Yet Another Construction by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

It’s mind boggling when one thinks of the scale of deforestation and urbanization. What little greenery we do have is slowly going away. The day’s not far now when we’ll regret not having heeded the warnings, but it will be too late then. It may already have been too late now…

Anyhow, this building’s complete now. It was almost finished when I took this.

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La Familia by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Yes, some of my post titles are in European languages (sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in Italian and sometimes in French). Not that I speak any of them other than the few common words I’ve picked up here and there.

I took this photo during my latest visit to Tajpur this December.

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Green bee eater by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I had to go through a list of all birds of Goa to find this one (and the ones in the following posts). It’s not the first one I’ve seen sitting on high-tension electrical lines, but it sure is the first remotely clear (in the photo).

In other news, I woke up really early today, thanks to Jackie… The next few days will have me sleeping early and waking up really early…

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Isolation by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The last few days were rough. Some things you just can’t help. Nor is there any fixing them. It’s tough, but then you get back up and persevere one day at a time.

Well, I’m back to posting again. So I guess that will help a little. Jackie‘s going to be at my place for a few days. That guy’s a savior…

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Orange by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I have seen the same kinds of this plant in different colors. Some are white, some are blue, some are orange, but mostly, I’ve seen pink ones. I still don’t know which plant this is though. If you do, let me know in the comment…

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The overjoyed one by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This guy was the only lively one that afternoon. This Chimpanzee always gets happy seeing people. The last time I was in the zoo, he was running around too much for me to have been able to get a decent picture of him. This time, he was eating oranges sitting there on his spot…

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Black and White by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

By the time we go to this Zebra, it Sun was already setting. Judging from the state of the rest of the animals there that afternoon, I’m pretty sure this one was sleepy since long before I took this picture…

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The Lioness by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This Lioness was, like most other animals that afternoon, asleep when we got to her location, but luckily woke up a few minutes later. I’m guessing she was trying to gauge how many visitors were looking at her…

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The Call by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This blue eyed Malabar Pied Hornbill was a sight to see. It was trying to make a call. The beak’s what caught my attention. It’s huge, to say the least, and the sound was unlike anything I’d heard before although, if you ask me now, I don’t remember what it sounded like then…

The post The Call appeared first on Visioplanet Photography.

Tired by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

And from the looks of it, bored to sleep. Again, with my classic forgetfulness, I forgot to take a picture of the placard to know which bird it is, but a quick search in Wikipedia led to the finding that this is a Greater Adjutant of the stork family.

In his defense, he looks old and tired of all the visitors around…

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Lovey Dovey by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Full disclosure, I’m not sure if its a dove (I’m terrible at writing down or remembering names of the species and such). This one was also taken in the Alipore Zoo during last month.

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Tweety Pie by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Not exactly our dear old Tweety – The canary. It’s a Cockatiel. I took this picture in the Alipore Zoo last December. By now, I knew beforehand that I’ll need at least 800 for the ISO to get images anywhere close to doable (the last trip there had been helpful with that). Although, the resulting grains were stubborn…

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Connection by Sudipto Sarkar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I observed this mother and son duo standing there, for what seemed like at least 10 minutes. No words between them, just gazing out in the distance. Unusual, I thought to myself. Kids that age rarely are quiet for that long.

In bad news, apparently Google’s deprecated the picasa API I was using to post here. Found their code for extension to use it till March. But from what it looks like, I may have to move out of Google’s APIs soon because Google Photos won’t work for posting to Blogger.

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