Photograph of the day - Nature (Skyscapes) (Travel)

The photo on left was taken near Gopalgad (Guhagar) during a bright sunny morning. It was a two day biking trip Satish and myself had just after celebrating Diwalie. The original photo is cropped from left, almost 50%, to bring it in portriat mode. The new photo gives a direction to the viewer from the deep blue sky to Satish walking towards the tree on right. The light streaks of clouds fill just enough life into picture avoiding the emptiness that would have arised possibly if they were not present.

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Date: November 17, 2004 (Beginning of winter)
Exposure: 1/1250 sec, f/8

Please note the blueness of sky and a very short exposure and try to relate them. This effect can be more prominent if one uses a graded blue filter for the top quarter of the image.

Waterfall Palaruvi in Thenmala, Kerala

This is a video taken at giant waterfall in Palaruvi. Pala (say Paala) means Milk and Aruvi means Fall or fountain.

Photograph of the day - Nature (Skyscapes)

This image, on left, is a result of an experiment of capturing reflection of sky in the shallow water stream passing through hill. I actually dare to call the image as a skyscape!

The image on the right, is the originally taken photograph. It is cropped on top and right side to avoid the area revealing less details. The modified image is on the left side.

Place: Ubbalamadugu Falls (Tada Falls)
Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: P mode (1/640 sec, f/5)

Photograph of day - Nature (Landscapes)

ही जागा जणू विचारत आहे, "केंव्हा माघारी परताल, पाखरांनो?"

We visited the place during 'off-season' and the place had a deserted look as if it was contemplating the birds and was asking, "when will the birds return?"

Place: Bird Sanctuary, Vedanthangal (Tamilnadu)
Date: Sept 10, 2006


Camera: Sony DSC-H1
Exposure: 1/1000 sec., f/4.5, ISO 200
White balance set to cloudy/overcast sky.

In all digital cameras, Exposure setting is done by itself via automatic mode (Auto) or program mode (P). The purpose of giving these details above is to give an idea to beginners, who are serious in learning photography, about settings.

Photograph of the day - Nature series

The photo was taken in the backyard of Makarand's home in Guhagar (Maharashtra). Guhagar is a town with wonderful beach. And Makarand's home is situated just next to beach. What a great morning we had that day!

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/80 sec., F/8, Focal length: 8 mm
Date: 17/11/2004

The Leap of Faith

Click on sketch to see a larger image.
This pencil sketch, The Leap of Faith, is inspired from a photograph found at PBASE.com and an ignited mind. A 0.5 mm HB pencil is used for this work. Interestingly, eraser was not used while sketching as it was not available at that hour of the night. It took around two hours to give it a final look. The image presented here is a digitally processed scanned image of the original sketch.

Please note, the leap portrayed here is truely a leap of faith, not a suicidal attempt. Actually it is a leap taken from a tall cliff into the deep waters of sea. One may say that it is a calculated risk taken by the leaper.

Photograph of the day - Nature series

The photo of this flower was taken at Ramling in Kolhapur District of Maharashtra. The wonderful contrast between dark background and the bright orange flower was tempting enough to give it a try. Macro mode is used here also, making even a portion of the flower on either side (normal to the screen) out of focus.

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure time: 1/500 s, f/4

Photograph of the day - Nature series

The original photo, on left, was taken in backyard of my house in Ichalkaranji. After many attempts in past it turned out to be my first successful effort to catch a butterfly in the frame. I thought the photo could be cropped from both sides and a little from top to make the composition better and to avoid the glare coming from the leaves and dry branches in the background as in the photo on right.

Camera: Canon Powershot A80

Photograph of the day - Nature series

This photograph was taken in the aquarium near Kallada Hydro-electric Dam in Thenmala, Kerala. Somebody should volunteer to tell which type of fish this is. The exposure was long (not recorded) and lightness of camera made the task of capturing image difficult. The image is processed in Microsoft Photo-editor for colour saturation and hue and in Picasa to add glow. The resolution of the photograph is limited.

Camera: Aiptek PDV3100i Digital (courtesy Neeraja)

Italian Connection: Sania - The Scapegoat

There is yet another controversy involving tennis player Sania Mirza. This time she is accused for demeaning the Indian national flag by putting her foot on a guitar painted in tricolour in an advertisement for Lotto. There is a clipping of the protests in Hyderabad being broadcast on Indiatimes. What really caught my attention while watching the online report was a banner held by a burkha clad woman which read, "WHY WAS THE FOOT THAT WORE LOTTO SHOES NOT STEP ON ITALIAN FLAG? - BRIGADE"

What is noteworthy here? Then see, This protest was led by Rahul Priyanka Youth Brigade. And Lotto is an Italian company! Does that light the bulb?

Other reports: http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=336017

Photograph of the day - Nature series

Snail in action.

Place: IIT Madras Campus
Camera: Canon Powershot A95

Photograph is taken in the macro mode.

Several tries of upload... but in vain!

Photograph of the day - Nature series continued

Yesterday I tried to take this snap as a shear effort to catch this bug when walking on Lake View Road. Like many of the previously posted images, this also is taken in macro mode with the same Sony digicam.

Although this photograph is good as far as the positioning of the ant and the texture of the leaf is concerned, the major shortcoming is the out of focus ant. Notice the left portion of the leaf is under focus. The red flowers on right side and the bright leaves in the background are sources of distraction.

Blogger.com has become pathetically slow, so I am not able to post today’s photograph. See you tomorrow.

Photograph of the day (Nature)

This image is extracted from one of the photographs posted earlier. The earlier image is cropped and the area surrounding the bud is defocussed using Picasa.

Camera: Sony DSC H1

Photograph of the day - Nature series (The Spider)

The photo on left was taken at the Dutch Fort itself. The tiny spider had climbed on the sunglasses I had kept on ground. Combination of green grass, green glass and the reflection of the sky in the glass was tempting enough to give it a try.

Later when I was going through all the photographs taken, along with my friends, Vivek and Gaurav, we came up with one improvised version which is the photograph on the right side. The original photograph serves the purpose of showing the excitement of photographer but viewer keeps feeling that size of the spider in the photo is very small and there are other unnecessary things like the small branch on the left side, the date that too in red letters. Then this photo was cropped closely from all sides. In the new photo the spider occupies a signifcant area in the centre of the photo thus making itself the sole object of the photo. Moreover this photo gives enough hint about the existance of sunglasses. The second picture clearly shows that the spider was well focussed in the original photograph.

Photograph of the day - Nature series starts with a Busy Bee

This is an effort do improvise the photograph posted earlier. It's just to demonstrate how much details a 5 Mp camera can catch in macro mode. Just by making the composition tighter the photograph start looking much differant. Here the key is to show a very big image of a very small object. Remember "Honey... I Shrunk the Kids!!!"

Befriending the Nature

Images captured at the Ruins of Dutch Fort in Sadras. This place is 60 km southward from Chennai.

Camera used: Sony Cybershot DSC-H1 5.1 mega pixel, 12x optical zoom






I feel that there is a lot of space in the right side fo the flowers and on the left the leaf is cropped. Equal space on both side of the object was desired. But when taking picture the bush was shaking due to breeze.


I was expecting a more blurred background. Perhaps a snap from a lower angle will have the background grass distanced from the honeybee and the flower and it will give the desired 3D effect. But then... honeybee may have to wait till you find the right angle!


These butterflies made me run beind them for about fifteen minutes. When they saw me crawling on the ground - I'm assuming that they saw me despite their 'business' - perhaps taking pity on me, they settled on a small branch of grass and I could catch this moment.

All the images are taken in macro mode. This mode allows you to take your camera as close as 20 mm from the object. This way the object relatively looks larger to the lense. As the camera is to be focussed at a very short distance in this mode, every thing in the background of the object becomes defocussed or blurred giving the main object an virtual elevation normal to the plane of the image. This effect also is called as the 3D effect. Camera was set on centre weighted focus and ISO200.

Many thanks to Amol for lending his camera for this excercise.

A Cat in the wing


Looking for greater grazing ground


Hanumant mee ithe asa