Sunday, July 1, 2018

Finding love in Macros...


I thought that macro was a bloody waste of time - take a camera - take it close to the flower, a bee, or some stupid insect that dumb enough to give you an opportunity and press the trigger. I thought that it is so bloody simple that inspite of carrying a macro lens in my kit with Canon for a decade I did not even try to click a single snap.

Lord Almighty - how wrong could I have been. Today I dusted the macro lens, put it on D850 and I was already an expert walking with head held high. A couple of hours later I am shattered, handheld? just forget it, with the depth of field as shallow as it is - took a couple of hundred snaps and not even one bee or butterfly was anywhere near what I dreamed of - so here is one with that bee missing - of a flower that decided to stay still for more than a second and not sway.

...finding a new respect of people posting macros.

Nikon D850, 105mm Macro, f/3.5, 1/500, ISO 100. No flash

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

For the love of flowers....

I am not really a photographer - intfact every time I do try to study photography I get perplexed by the numbers, calculations and all the things that are there involving photography. Instead sometimes when I look at a thing of beauty - I love to capture it - it is more of 'Make it mine' moment when I own that memory forever.

Today while I was staring out of the window and the rain drops were drumming the window glass - I stood admiring the beautiful Lilly flowers in the bowl and decided to capture them. I do not know whether I succeeded or not - after all I feel the beauty of the moment is for every one to decide for oneself - so here it is - whether it is good or not - is for you to decide for yourself alone. The bowl of flowers...


Before I do sign off - the data - this picture has been shot with Canon 7D mark ii (My birding camera), 24-105mm L lens. Since the light was bad (Clouds outside the window) and I wanted the picture tac sharp - I used ISO 100 and a 5 second picture. The focus was the difficult part as the lens was just hunting up and down - so I did the next best thing - made the aperture small so that the depth of field is large. The picture is at f18. For the long exposure the camera was triggered using a remote trigger.

The small brown part on the right is the chair that I did move - but did not notice until I was copying the picture and converting from RAW. I am not too god at using the cloning / spot removal tools of Photoshop so it remains...

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Photography time.... Charminar

I lug my camera everywhere - I really mean everywhere. Since my aim most of the time is Birdwatching and photography, my equipment includes a DSLR camera, 100-400L lens, Flash, extra batteries, charger and tons of other accessories. In my this kit I also have Canon 24-105L and Tokina wide angle lens 11-16mm. I always used to wonder - what will take me to jump into street photography ? After all the equipment is all there but then used to think - probably I just do not have a knack.

One fateful day - I just got up and decided that I should jump into this - after all how tough can it all be? There was one hell of an effort required between the thought and the will to motivate myself enough to get going - but then one day - I said - what the bloody hell !!

A view of Charminar
So after almost one year of inertia of rest - I decided and forced my butt off the bed and before my mind could orientate - I jumped into a cab and was on my way to Charminar. I roamed around this iconic building, spending almost 2 hours - seeing the transit from sunset to night. Though I had expected the place lighted up at night but it was not so although still the vibrance of the place was worth every while spent there - of course, not to mention the street food.

Will see how long and how much effort I can put in photography - when not Birdwatching...