Photo Journal

Queens Necklace

2009-01-26T01:01:00.000+05:30

Marine drive , Mumbai's most enigmatic spot, where the sea meets the bustling traffic of the city. This photograph was selected from a series of photographs I clicked, I experimented with various combinations of shutterspeed and Aperture. The Idea was to capture the light trails and at the same time not to overexpose the blue sky and the street lights.
Sony H-7 f/8 , 2.5sec ISO 80

Boats

2008-07-19T17:15:00.002+05:30

Photographed it after Sunset on banks of Nethravathi River. Placed my camera on a tripod, framed the scene, set the auto focus to wide and aperture to the smallest f/8 .
Clicked with self timer of 2 sec to negate any camera shake, when pressing the shutter button.
A image or sky reflected on water makes an interesting monochromatic image with tonal variations. Such reflections also add symmetry to an image.

Reflectons in a Well

2008-07-10T17:06:00.000+05:30

At Kudupu in the outskirts of Mangalore is this well, nothing special about it, except that I found the water so clear that I could see more that 20 ft under. The trees reflecting on the water and on the left the palm of a coconut tree fallen and lying gracefully underneath the water all adds some kind of serenity to the well.
Photographed with the smallest aperture f/8 that i could to get in all the details ;1.2sec shutter speed.

Salad

2008-07-08T17:55:00.003+05:30

When I visited my sister-in-law at Bangalore, she made sure I had a banquet. One of the items was this appetizing salad. It was so attractive that I only had to click a snap and got a near perfect photograph. She had no clue of my intentions of blogging this one, but still the near perfect slices and the well placed coriander leaf with a tiny little water droplet on it, still makes my stomach growl with hunger.

Spires

2008-07-03T16:24:00.003+05:30

St. Patrick Church in Bangalore ; the twilight was just setting in and the sky was in rich royal blue. Dawn and dusk are the best time to shoot blue skies. The sky during winter also has pure blue shades to it. For photographing extremely dark blue, the evening sky after sunset has the best shade. Setting the WB in your camera to tungsten can also help bring out new blue hues.

2008-06-27T17:10:00.001+05:30

New photographs published in Friendly animals section of this blog.

Champagne Glasses

2008-05-18T20:02:00.002+05:30

Clicked this at a party, where I didn't carry my tripod, had to place the camera on the table top and hence my framing was severely restricted.
Probably just photographing the clear reflection would have sufficed here.
f/8 ; 1sec ; iso 100

Venus and the Moon

2008-04-03T10:23:00.002+05:30

Twilight was just about to commence , with Venus and moon rising before the Sun. Set my camera for a long 20 second exposure to get this calm looking photograph of the horizon. Since the exposure was long and the ship moving, the planet and the crescent moon have come a bit blurred.

Glimpses of Singapore

2008-03-31T15:03:00.009+05:30

A water fountain at Marina Center. I tried to frame it in such a way, that the lines would lead the viewer to the center of the photograph, wasn't quite successful though.

Singapore's Skyline with the Merlion at the bottom center.
There are innumerable water fountains in Singapore and the place provides ample opportunities to photograph reflections. Just remember to use the smallest available aperture (biggest f value).
The Cavenagh Bridge, named after Singapore's last Governor and Constructed in 1868; the bridge still boasts of its original splendour. Right next to the bridge is the bronze statue shown below.

This was my favorite of all the innumerable statues that line Singapore. Originally called the "First Generation" it shows 5 Bronze boys jumping into the Singapore waterway.

The Merlion is Singapore's most famous icon. It was designed by Fraser Brunner for the Singapore Tourism Board in 1964 and was used as its logo till 1997. The lion head and fish body of the creature recalls the story of the legendary Sang Nila Utama, who saw a lion while hunting on an island, en route to Malacca. The island eventually became the sea port of Temasek, which later led to the development of the beautiful Singapore.

Esplanade theater on the Bay, is designed to represent the Durian fruit (Fruit similar to Jack fruit). The place is a center of arts, dramas and Operas.
The city of Singapore is a wonderland for all those interested in urban or architectural photography.

Formation Flying

2008-03-30T20:09:00.004+05:30

F-16 fighting Falcons of Singapore's Black Knight perform at the Singapore Air Show 2008. I was on board the ship and my H7 camera with 15x zoom was inadequate to cover a airshow. But fortunately for me, these aircraft preferred to carry out their low level acrobatic over sea and with a UV filter fitted to my camera managed to photograph these heart pounding maneuvers.
Since these aircraft are at hight speed, there is hardly any time for framing or focusing. Hence I used aperture Priority mode, set the aperture on f/8 and set the focus on infinity and went on a shutter clicking spree and the aircrafts approached me.

Ship on Fire

2008-03-30T08:32:00.004+05:30

This is how a ship looks when it's on fire. We were at Balongan, in Indonesia when a ship 4 miles ahead of us went ablaze. The tugs surrounding the ship were involved in fire fighting and had just moved away, expecting a explosion. After being for four days on fire, the ship finally sank. All crew were saved and there were no casualties.

New Photographs uploaded

2007-11-09T15:26:00.000+05:30

New Photographs Uploaded in Sunsets and Friendly Animals Section Today.

Summer Day Reflection

2007-11-06T09:03:00.001+05:30

As a thumb rule, when photographing reflections, use the smallest aperture possible (the largest f value); unless you want to capture a blurred reflection. In this photograph, I did want to frame in the entire tree crown, but the water body imposed constrains in doing that. Here I have used a f/8 aperture the smallest possible with my Sony-H7. Since the image is a reflection and the smallest aperture was used;a slower shutter speed had to be used, and to prevent camera shake, I did use a tripod. Now Since the water was still, the image turned out to be sharp, in case of a moving water body, then the above settings may not give the best results. In that case either use a higher ISO or a little bigger aperture.

Rolling Out The Red Carpet

2007-10-31T20:23:00.000+05:30

The clouds were moving in to cover the blue sky and the red rays of the setting sun were creating a riot of red in the sky. Perfect time for a long exposure photograph. Just long enough to create a silhouette of the landscape.
Shutter: 0.62 sec , F/2.7, ISO 80

Trails of Light

2007-10-25T15:04:00.001+05:30

Trails of moth circling around a sodium vapor lamp. I never expected to photograph these moths, I was interested in photographing the beam of light and set my camera on a 2.5 sec exposure. Interestingly the movements of the moth was captured by the camera, and gave rise to the trails.

New Photographs uploaded in Animals Section and Black & white section

2007-10-15T21:42:00.000+05:30

Check out for the New Photographs under the "More photographs" section and Pls do comment.
Click on the photographs for full size images.

Crude Dhow

2007-10-15T21:03:00.001+05:30

The sun had just set and the sky was blood red, then from nowhere a dhow popped out. I had to quickly set my tripod and in the fading light photographed this rusty red panorama.
When framing a photograph like there it is a tendency in many to centre the boat and make the horizon divide the photograph into half. If you have been doing this then next time, photograph the scene, with sky occupying 2/3rd of the frame and land or water 1/3rd of it or vice versa.
I am sure the photograph looks much better if framed this way.
This is actually a thumb rule is photography and called the rule of thirds.According to the rule an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph. In the above photograph the horizon sits at the horizontal line dividing the lower third of the photo from the upper two-thirds. The dhow sits at the intersection of two lines i.e. The Lower horizontal and the right side vertical. Photographs clicked this way have a aesthetic appeal to them.

Moonlight and Coconut trees

2007-09-28T19:08:00.000+05:30

Gibbous Moon

Two photographs of the moon clicked at the same time and place, The lower one with a wide angle lens and the upper one with a telephoto lens. The coconut trees were lit only by moonlight and I used a 30 second exposure and f/3.2 aperture to photograph this scene. The long exposure has however overexposed the moon and it looks more like sun on a cloudy day.
The moon above during its gibbous phase.

Casting The Net

2007-07-26T08:51:00.000+05:30

It is always a delight to witness a scene like this and happiness manifolds when one can photograph it. I was following this boat for quite sometime, knowing for sure that the fisherman will cast off his net. With One eye in the viewfinder I kept following the boat for about 20 minutes and when I was about to give up, the net was cast and I was more than willing to click the shutter. Since the light was in the background I kept exposure on auto and pattern metering, knowing that it would underexpose the boat creating a Silhouette effect. Just like I wanted.

Awaiting Dusk

2007-07-19T14:14:00.000+05:30

What amused me was the colour of the sky, pretty unnatural , more pinkish than red and it really looked cool.

Once in A Blue moon

2007-07-05T18:02:00.000+05:30

Photographed this moon in Twilight with Light setting on Fluorescent.

Greased Lightning

2007-07-04T18:27:00.001+05:30

Well, how did I manage this picture? First find a Dry location to keep the camera, cos Lighting and rain generally go hand in hand.Then Locate the Cumulonimbus cloud that creates the Bolts. Then focus the camera in that direction , keep the shutter open to the maximum duration possible with the camera (in this case 30 sec) and click, if a bolt hits at this time viola, u got a picture, Else try try and try again. Its Ideal to have a location far away from city lights , moonless night. In this case the picture was taken in the middle of the India ocean. Ideally suited for a shot like this.
Ride Into the Lightning- This was Photographed in the Malacca straits. The bright light is the stern of another ship, on close inspection you can see that she is being hit by one of the lightning Bolts

Ride the Lightning

2007-07-04T18:12:00.000+05:30

These were captured off Minicoy Isalnd in the Lakshdweep.

City Lights Hong Kong

2007-07-04T17:55:00.001+05:30

the lights of Hong Kong are masked by Smog or Mist and after 9Pm most of the lights are turned off as the offices close down. So i had a small window period to get this Picture. The mist dimmed the light and hence required longer exposure. But longer exposure created problems on a ship which was rolling slighty. The solution was to Boost the ISO levels , here I increased it to 200 and shuter speed of 1.2 sec

Blue Dusk

2007-07-04T17:50:00.001+05:30

The Cyan effect was achieved by selecting the White Balance setting as Fluorescent light. The picture was taken While the Ship was Underway and hence could not increase the exposure level to create the flow effect of water. Exp 1/15 sec.