ಒ ನನ್ನ ಚೆತನ ಆಗು ನಿ ಅನಿಕೆತನ

A visit to kuvempu's house, is an inspiration. I would strongly recommend everyone to visit this place once. Located at kupalli, shimoga district, its on the lap of mother nature. Looking at the place, its as if mother nature spoke through the great man. Just sitting on those lawns, walking around his house, for lesser mortals like me, every bit of that place inspires. The location of the house itself, is scenic. Just sitting on the lap of mother nature. Growing up, i can only imagine how mother nature would have inspired the great soul.

ಕವಿ  ಶಯ್ಲ 

(forgive me for gramatics, tried my best with google here)

The rocks behind his house, where he first scribbled, are like the scared ground. The setting sun, just adds its touch of elegance to this place. I feel privileged to have been born in the era, when such great personalities lived to roam this soil. A visit to this place changed how I saw things. One thing it thought me was dedication towards whatever I do.  There can be truly one and only ರಾಷ್ಟ್ರ ಕವಿ - ಕುವೆಂಪು. You are a real inspiration sir. I am not fully skilled to interpret all his works, let alone interpret, understanding his works itself will take a life time for me.

ಎಲ್ಲಾದರು ಇರು ಎಂತಾದರು ಇರು ಎಂದೆಂದಿಗು ನಿ ಕನ್ನಡವಾಗಿರು.

When perspective of things change, everything looks different, the festival of lights look so different.
Under normal circumstances we fail to catch the many facets of light. and the way it bounces.

Just putting the camera in shutter mode, recreates things that normally are not seen.

 Having spoken of Malnad region, how can any one not talk about architecture and nature. Architecture, has many forms, and none more important than Sringeri. This temple town, is known for its architecture.

And nature in jog falls. She was not at her best when i visited, but still a sight to behold. The four water falls, majestic.

 Of all the shots of this place, I thought of putting this one. Not the best, but I personally liked this view point. This highlights the view that the visitor gets first, when he approaches the falls.with a little foliage at the bottom, just to hide the depth of the falls. But still able to see the top of the falls at eye level. I have pics, with full falls, without the foliage, but since this is the first view a person gets as he approaches the falls, I personally liked this.

Birding-an eye opener

One fine weekend, wondering where to go, we decided to go to Ranganthittu, a popular bird sanctuary just outside Bangalore. This was my first visit there. I had looked at lot of bird photos and was expecting to emulate them. On reaching the place, we started going around.
I was expecting action. I was thinking a kingfisher might just dive in and out, with a fish in its mouth. A crane or pellican might just land right next to me with a beak full of catch. A duck with its younger ones, just waiting to give a photoshoot. I was expecting all these. And what did i get..an eye opener. 

There were birds all over, more than I could name. And all the birds were oblivious to me. And all of a sudden i started to feel insignificant. Where are the kingfishers, where is the hunting action. All seemed to evaporate. Were all the photos I had seen fabricated?

 At best the birds were busy drinking water, or chattering with their relatives. And looking around I started clicking.

night heron

The only living creature which looked to be posing to me was the crocodiles, warming on the rock near by. They were happy to be warming themselves, but I was wondering where are the Nat Geo actions? or may be they occur only in Masai Mara. Here everything looked soo lazy, and not bothered to eat, feed, or just like time has stopped. May be someone just fed them well before i got there. Were they fasting??

Even the goat on the shore was so lazy to get up. Just a lazy sunday.

Finally after sometime, towards the end of my boating at the sanctuary,  looking up, I thought of silhouette shot. Some bird, i could barely recognize was building its nest. I tried my best to think, how to get a silhouette, under expose (but by what amount?), focus on the bird, and what should the metering be?? (just forget it), under expose the image.

Paradise is right here

Finally I was traveling to Mauritus. And was it really a paradise. I have no words to describe the place. A picture is worth a 1000 words indeed, but the beauty of the place is more than 1000 pictures. The long virgin beaches, the shore that extends deep into the Indian Ocean. The entire length of beach is pristine and they can only be etched in ones memory.

On the way, looking out of the window, all i could see was wings of steel.

wings in air

Couple on beach

The beaches take different shape and style during the night. In the day time, the sun, sand and the water adds beauty to the beach. While at night, its the lighting's add different glamor to the beaches.

Two to tango

The ocean is never without action. But at times it looks so tranquil. Just so peaceful, we could just sit on the beach the entire day, do nothing and stare and admire as the ocean takes different shapes at different times of day.

The boats, people and the skyline add their own charm to the Ocean. Capturing the different moods is fun in itself.
Clicking photos against with the sun infront was tricky. I had to play with exposure, and play fast. One of the toughest challenges while shooting during sunset is, the sun sets very fast. And the window is very small. A lot of things can go wrong. But when captured right, they are amazing postcards. One has very little time, when the sun starts its decent towards the horizon. Getting the exposure component right is the key. Many get it right at the first time, I had to play a bit to get the trick. Ones you have got it, it wont leave u. Just putting the exposure down by a couple of stops, and focusing on the right object will do the trick. Also the metering will play a part, but for all my sun set shots I preferred the matrix metering on Nikon.

Turtles are one of the best animals to have as subject to photograph. You will have your space, they are friendly and most of all you have tons of time when they are around.

Old and wise

The sea shore gives a field day for street photographers, it is never dull, and there will be lots of things catching our eyes. Just having the camera is the trick

I always wanted to get the color balance of the setting sun, and the sky without photoshop. I am very sure, there are experts out there who can turn the pics into mindblowing things. But I wanted to see how far can I push my camera to capture the right essence, without photoshop. But for this i had to just tweak the curve a little just to highlight the sky. Not that I am happy, but i wanted no photoshop, but gave myself an excuse of curves (who does not like some nice curves at right places and thats what i did, tweaked the curves so that it is proper in right areas).

setting sun

Birds with feathers...

My good friend Abhi, once said lets go to Kanva reservoir, its a good place to just spend the afternoon to have some drinks. I was all game, took out my camera and headed to kanva. Those were the days, when the only birds i knew was "crow, pigeon, sparrow". Rest all were just "Birds". When we went there, there was quite a bit of water, and "Birds" flying all over. I had my D60, with 18-200 and focused and started clicking. Just clicking. 

Brahmiy kite

Brahmiy Kite with prey

Erget

jungle mynah

At the end, I was happy, and thought, i will visit again. My composition was still bad, as I was always thinking, the only aspect in photography is clicking...rest all is "just done", we dont need to worry.
And for the first time, i really felt, this was a challenge, clicking birds, this got me thinking. It somehow interested me. I did not know anything much, but still i loved the challenge.

mistakes galore

While the journey on the road continued, I was too deep in my mistakes and here am just highlighting some of the very common mistakes I did. On the retro, i would not have made them, if I was a little careful. I would not have posted this at all, but thought its a reminder to me what not mistakes to commit.

Mysore Palace

The below couple of pics are taken in Auto mode (at the time i took these i was still believing in Auto mode being the best suited for me)

Bibi Ka Maqbara - Aurangabad

In between i tried to take waterfall shots with the dreamy effect. Switched to shutter mode. The below is a hand held shot. But as can be clearly seen, its over exposed, forgot to change the exposure compensation. Though the waterfall looks dreamy, the surroundings are overexposed, typical of the shutter speed. If only i had tried to pause-think-click. Lessons learnt

While sometimes, i got the things right, the lightings, exposure and all, but still they were long way from being "nice"

Lone Ranger

The below image would be easily deleted, but i kept it. Typical mistakes of overexposing. What not to repeat.

But as i had said, I was managing a couple of good shots in 100 clicks. I was just too eager to just click and not worry about anything. It took a while for me to learn all of those. To get away from "click-click-click-dont-think" to "see-pause-think-click"

caves at ellora

Under the falls

My experiments with water

This was always on my TO-DO list. Now that i had seen some of the amazing water droplets photos, it was worth trying out. So what do i need, a big bucket?? But then one bucket filled with water for one drop? sounds ridiculous. I first tried it that way..but the result was not what I had thought of.
Second time around, I wanted pick something smaller, and I tried with a glass plate. Unfortunately, the results were no as expected. Finally I picked up a glass mug, mounted my camera on a tripod, set up the lighting, used a torch, study lamp, and focused it on the water surface, and asked my wife to drop water from the filler, drop by drop. And i started clicking.

Not all were shot in continuous mode, most of them are single shot. The entire experiment lasted for more than 1 hour. And my wife really helped me a lot here. At the end, I had to do some cropping, but over all i was impressed. Getting the timing right is a trick.

Patience and perseverance always pays.

Equipments used : Nikon D60, 18-200mm VR, glass cup with water, and some lightings.