Picnic to Anna Zoological Park

We visited Anna Zoological Park yesterday. It was a fine Sunday morning. Arignar Anna Zoological Park is situated at Vandalur which is 32 Km away from the metropolitan city of Chennai on the GST Road (NH-45). On the Eastern side of the road is the zoo over a sprawling area of 602 ha. Others with me were Alok, Dinesh, Harshal, Sujit, Chintamani, Renu and one more Prasad. It was an enjoyable experience. I took some photographs and a few times managed to get to photographed also. Yesterday an Indian Sea Gull caught fancy of my camera. It turned out to a good shootout. I have uploaded all these the photos on Picasa Web Albums.

I was listening to songs of Pt. Vasantrao Deshpande, his grandson Rahul and Pt. Jitendra Abhisheki on Saturday night. 'bagaLyaachi maaLaphule', 'surat piyaa ki na chhin bisauraayi', 'sarvaatmakaa sarveshwaraa' and 'kaataa rute kuNaalaa' were among them. These songs kept playing in the my mind all the time we were in the zoo. And, in fact, they are being played on my computer even now. The mood was enlivened as Renu initiated gaaNyaachyaa bhendyaa after we boarded local train back to the city.

This zoo has some thing special in it. It was my third visit there, still each time the zoo has managed to make me immensely happy.

Picnic to Anna Zoological Park Vandalur

How to reach there:
Vandalur is about 8 km from Tambaram and about 33 km from Chennai Central Railway Station. The zoo is well connected to the city by road and rail. There is direct service from various parts of the city to Vandalur / Arignar Anna Zoological Park bus stop. Also from city all buses going to Guduvancheri pass through Vandalur stop. For coming by local train, train going to Chengalapttu stops at Vandalur Railway station which is about 1 km from the zoo gate or you may come by Chennai Beach to Tambaram local train, get down at Tambaram. From Tambaram you can take another local traint to Chengalapattu or take a bus to the zoo. The map on http://www.aazoopark.gov.in/directions.html will help you locate the place.

Zoo Timing: 9 am to 6 pm.
I would strongly advise you to reach the zoo entrance by 9 am itself so that you can have enough time to walk around the zoo leisurely. There is a toy-car ride available too. I won't advise you to take Lion Safari as, firstly, it will take a lot of your time to book your seats, and secondly, it will bring you back within a few minutes after visiting just a single place leaving you unsatisfied, well, most probably.

Photograph of the day - Nature

Family of monkeys at Rajagiri Fort

Place: Gingee
Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/320 s, f/4.9, ISO100

Photograph of the day - Nature

Caterpillar

I could not identify the type of this caterpillar. Somebody may help me do that. This link WhatsThisCaterpillar will be helpful. I could not spot here too! But I may have missed the right one as the plate displayed is full with images of numerous types of caterpilars.

Place: Citadel of Rajagiri, Gingee (TN, IND)
Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/500 s, f/3.5, ISO100, +1/3 step correction.

Photograph of the day - Flowers

Place: Kolhapur
Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/500 s, f/5.6, ISO100

Photograph of the day - Nature

This photo was taken in Cauvery Hostel (IIT Madras) in front my room. Somebody may help me name this tiny frog.

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/250 s, f/2.8, ISO100

Photograph of the day - Nature (Flowers)

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/2000, f/8, ISO100 (for bright sunny day)

Location: Rankala Garden Kolhapur (Maharashtra)

Photograph of the day - Nature series

Photo taken at garden of Taramani Guest House in IIT Madras campus.

Camera: Sony DSC-H1
Exposure: Spot metering, 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200

Photograph of the day - Nature series

Camera:
Sony DSC H1
Place:
Cauvery Hostel Garden,
IIT Madras

Photograph of the day - Nature series

Snail in action.

Place: IIT Madras Campus
Camera: Canon Powershot A95

Photograph is taken in the macro mode.

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.

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.