Traffic Police in action…

Here are a couple of pics from the vault.
Captured these pics in December 2012. The place is belgaum, Karnataka



When I was analyzing the frames for the first time, I decided at that time to delete the first pic published below. The reason I felt was the vehicle which came in front of the subject was making the pic meaningless.

But now after a year of self proclaimed philosophical talks with friends when I again came to this pic, I thought I can give this pic a whole new meaning and definition :)

To me this pic now gives a feel that there are many who doesn’t follow the instructions given by the controllers of the road i.e. the traffic police. The light trail in front of the police officers signifies the disobedience of the rash drivers. The dark patch to the right is kept deliberately and it symbolizes the result of the disobedience which is darkness.

The second pic is something which highlights the hard work done by the traffic police. The pic has a camera shake but felt like uploding it though its not perfect. Apologies for the same :)

The editing done on the pics is increase of contrast, brightness and clarity…

The Goa Chapter : Basilica of Bom Jesus

 

Previous Post(s) under “The Goa Chapter” : The Goa Chapter starts …

Churches have always fascinated me; and being at the place where you find it everywhere was something topping the list of “Things I love about Goa”.

This one is said to be one of the oldest of churches in Goa and has attained the highest position in the catholic architecture … The Basilica

The Gold plated Altar looks majestic …

Had to invest considerable time to cover the complete Altar from ground till the roof…
Was difficult to cover the complete thing in one vertical shot, I guess because of the non-wide angled 55-250 mm lens ….

Finally got one desirable and satisfying shot…

Have increased the brightness, contrast and sharpness to highlight the gold plated area …

D.J. Abhishek (Area 51 pune) photo shoot

 

The Doubtful Monkey…

I thought that the slight smile indicates doubt rather than a smile … so is the caption

Shot this in a park in Khandala.

The Goa Chapter starts …

Finally after 9 years of planning and cancellation, I visited Goa.

Here is the first pic of “The Goa Chapter”. I would be including this phrase in the caption of each pic of Goa I publish.

Now I know in this pic there are three points which I have pointed out almost all the time in all the pics I see

1) The pic has huge head space
2) The pic has text/phrases written in the pic
3) The pic doesn’t follow the rule of third and has the pic exactly at the centre

But I have also mentioned in my comments that a pic is the interpretation/imagination of the creator.

1) In this pic I wanted to keep the space between the subject and the top border coz it’s a vertical pic and wanted to give a feel that the boat is flowing away to the direction of the top border.
2) Desperately wanted to type this text “The Goa chapter” in the pic coz deep inside I feel it’s a very good pic and I love it and wanted to give a feel to myself that this pic is on the cover of a magazine :P
 3) Read somewhere that rule of third can be ignored in some pics where you want to show symmetry, or some of such scenarios. I am not sure that my pic satisfies any such scenarios but I feel that this pic with this angle and composition the boat had to be in the center

 

Commenting on the Goa trip, the trip was one of those things for which I have waited desperately for a good amount of my life time. My first status update on FaceBook for the trip was something like this

“Here I go …
A spiritualist about to reach a spiritual place
A person about to reach his lover’s place at midnight
A kid about to reach to his mother’s arms
A desert traveler about to reach a fountain
An employed guy about to reach an ATM after the first salary day
I might not have experienced all of these …
but I guess I am sharing the same excitement when I am about to reach out to an almost 9 years old dream
Goa calling …”

Covering Ganesh Visarjan 2013 ~ part 1

Its always great to go down the street and shoot.

And when the event is as monumental as Ganesh Visarjan, the excitement is always 7 skies high.

Here is the Part 1 of the series

Covering company party

It Feels awesome to take up Photography Officially;)

Burning desires

Captured this pic back in 2013. I was covering a DJ night in Pune. 

I saw the bartender lighting the bar-top and asked him if he can do it again. 

Not only he agreed but he was gracious enough to let me set up the props. The result was this memorable pic. 

The Thoughtful…

| F-Stop – f/5.6 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 100| Focal Length – 250 mm |

Captured this in a park at Khandala.

Specifications

Adjusted brightness, contrast and levels.

Path to destination is always foggy…

| F-Stop – f/5.6 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 100| Focal Length – 250 mm |

Shot this during lonavla-khandala trip a month ago. This place is in Khandala.

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness, contrast, curves and levels. And converted the pic to Black&White

Blessings from God’s messenger

| F-Stop – f/5.6 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 100| Focal Length – 250 mm |


Shot this in Kumbh Mela at Allahabad

Teaching us to stay Together

 | F-Stop – f/2.4 | Exposure time – 1/463 sec. | ISO – 112 | Focal Length – 4 mm |

The first of the many upcoming pictures with monkeys as the main subject :)

Shot this in a park last Saturday 13-July-2013, place is khandala.
With time, the monkeys seem to be very well trained to pose as soon as they see a camera :D … They embrace each other as soon they saw the cell phone in my hand.
Shot this pic from my Micromax canvas 2 phone, which is not so well known for its camera :D . I got EXIF details mentioned from the “details” tab in the “Properties” option of the pic

Specifications
Adjusted brightness, contrast, curves and levels.

May All Stay Happy :)

 | F-Stop – f/5.6 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 55 mm |

The place is Allahabad and the festival was Kumbh mela. As the subject was too conscious about the camera, had to shoot it in the time frame where he gets unaware of my presence. That is the reason I couldn’t shoot the elbow part and the tiny bit of the hair got cropped. And as I had just a day to cover the entire kumbh, which at the end I couldn’t, so couldn’t wait for the subject to be unaware again. Also the angle could have been more eye level.

Specifications
Adjusted brightness, contrast, curves and levels.

Moon – The Experiment

| F-Stop – f/7.1 | Exposure time – 1/60 sec. | ISO – 800 | Focal Length – 250 mm |

This particular experiment was something I wanted to do since a very long time.

Wanted to do something like the example link, though not exactly. NOW, I had a post on “post processing” and there were discussions on “photo manipulations” in that post which defined “photo manipulation” as something where you removed some part of the pic to make it better and I heard it from many that this is something unethical. Well I have done the same here :), so apologies if anyone thinks that it is unethical. I wanted to have my imagination in form of a photograph and so did perform the following steps to achieve that. I feel that it would have been unethical if I would have claimed that this is one shot pic without any changes.

On 22nd and 23rd June heard that the moon would be the biggest of 2013. Took some pics on 23-JUN-2013 at 11:00 pm.
Out of the many pics selected 2 pics and decided to merge them to get what I wanted.
First pic is

This pic was taken by adjusting the focus manually. Here I removed the part of which contains the out of focus moon. Then adjusted the brightness and contrast a bit. The EXIF details of this pic are
| F-Stop – f/7.1 | Exposure time – 1/60 sec. | ISO – 800 | Focal Length – 250 mm |

Second pic is

Here in this pic, I increased the size of the pic such that the moon fits into the vacant space created in the first pic. Then I adjusted the levels and brightness. As soon as I increased the contrast I got the yellowish tint in the moon which I liked so kept the increased contrast as it is. The EXIF details of the second pic are
| F-Stop – f/7.1 | Exposure time – 1/60 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 250 mm | 

Now, I took the moon part from the second pic and placed it in the vacant section of the first pic. Now I had 2 layers in Photoshop, one with the moon and the other with the rest of the pic. Pushed the layer with the moon in background. 

Did some minor adjustments of brightness and contrast and the final image the one shown at the start of this post …

ਬਾਰਾਤ ਦੀ ਗੱਡੀ

| F-Stop – f/5.6 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 55 mm |

The Baraat i.e. wedding procession is an integral part of a north Indian wedding. This is basically the procession by the groom and his family to reach the wedding venue. In the procession, the groom is riding a mare and all the relatives accompany him and dance during the same.

With modernization, this ritual has undergone many changes- replacement of the mare with vehicles and other animals is one of them. Commonly seen is replacing the mare with a car in which the groom arrives at the venue. The car is decorated with flowers so beautifully that one can easily sense the happiness experienced by the people involved in this arrangement.

My friend too chose the option of a car for the Baraat. Took the pic of the roses decorated on the door of the car.

I couldn’t find a caption for this pic, so thought of typing “Baraat di gaddi” (which means the car for the Baraat) in Punjabi. Thank to the internet to give me the translation and thanks to my friends to confirm the translation :)

Specifications

Adjusted brightness, contrast and levels.

At Peace…

A holiday at kashid beach, experiencing peace :)

Thanks to Mr. Dhruv Saraswat to allow me to waste his good amount of holiday time in making him pose for my pics :D

Got confused between these 2 pics so posting both

Specifications

Adjusted brightness, contrast and levels.

| F-Stop – f/5 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 34 mm |

| F-Stop – f/5 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 27 mm |

Buy Bhagavad Gita… get a smile free

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness, contrast and levels.

| F-Stop – f/4 | Exposure time – 1/400 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 55 mm |

Studing on “how to repair humans” :P

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness, contrast and levels.

| F-Stop – f/4.5 | Exposure time – 1/40 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 74 mm |

Merchant of Faith

One question here ... Can this pic be considered in a Portrait Category?

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness, contrast and levels.

| F-Stop – f/5 | Exposure time – 1/400 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 96 mm |

One Desolate to Other…

I would like to thank my friend Mr. Sourabh Bindal to let me waste a good amount of his holiday time by making him pose for quite a lot of pics :D

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness and contrast. Adjusted levels to get the complete silhouette, original pic didn’t have the subject in complete darkness.

| F-Stop – f/5.6 | Exposure time – 1/1250 sec. | ISO – 100 | Focal Length – 55 mm |

I am Unique, Not Odd

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness and contrast and levels

| F-Stop – f/5.6 | Exposure time – 1/800 sec. | ISO – 400 | Focal Length – 43 mm | White Balance – Manual |

The Only Hope

Shot 2 types of pics of a deserted tree in Nainital which helped me with 2 captions …. The Second of the two pics is this one … The first is Fading Hope

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness and contrast and also adjusted the color balance

| F-Stop – f/8 | Exposure time – 1/25 sec. | ISO – 200 | Focal Length – 42 mm | White Balance – Manual |

Bowing to New Responsibilities… Bowing to New Happiness

The Caption means, Both the bride and the groom are bowing and graciously accepting the new Responsibilities and also New Happiness

Captured this in a friend’s wedding in Feb 2012. The place is Dhandhuka in Gujarat.
In a marriage, if out of all the members of the family all you are in acquaintance with is the guy getting married, then the best you can do is sit back relax and enjoy the wedding and the food.

But in such a scenario if you choose to shoot some pics to feed the photographer in you, get yourself prepared for many things to overcome before you can capture some pics. The people are too busy to pose or adjust for you, which is understood, accepted and respected.

Here I did try to capture a pic once the flash light is off, but flash light off and I getting a good pose was something I couldn’t synchronize.

At the end shot this will the flash light on. So is the too much bright light from the right. Keeping a low ISO or any such change to reduce light intake was something which didn’t click as that time was a fresh affair between me and my camera, or should I say me and photography. Did whatever I knew in Photoshop to reduce the effect and I did succeed to some extent. (Wooh … quite a lot I wrote to explain the flash light from the right :P :P :P )

Specifications 

Adjusted brightness and contrast and levels

| F-Stop – f/4.5 | Exposure time – 1/80 sec. | ISO – 800 | Focal Length – 36 mm | White Balance – Manual |