Flight of Faith
Tv: 1/125 (0.008 ) s; Av: F/3.2; f: 31.3 mm (35mm-equiv: 189 mm); ISO 140
This is a photo which conveys a feeling… a feeling of faith. This photo was taken in an “Othekola”, a type of “Bhuta Kola“, a religious ceremony in Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka. I like the way the look in the eyes of the worshipers has come out on the photo, conveying a sense of awe, faith and a little bit of fear.
To be frank, while taking this photo I was not concentrating much about the expressions of the people. I was looking to get the motion blur while capturing the fall towards the pile of embers. But, I discovered that adding a bit more shadows and tweaking the levels and saturation gave a whole new meaning and dynamism to the photo. I like the noise in the photo which gives it an old, grainy, spoilt look to the photo.
However, the noise can be viewed as a drawback as well. Another drawback is that people may see it as a loss of a little naturality of the photo because of the effects in Photoshop; but I wanted a different colour tone for this picture and so was experimenting with it.
I would have been better if the subject was better focussed and the background was blurred out a little.
Peacock Feather
Peacock Feather
Av: F/3.5; Tv: 1/200s; f: 46.3mm (35mm-equiv: 292mm)
This snap was shot at the annual Lalbagh Flower show at Lalbagh, Bangalore. Post-processing using GIMP2.
Comments about this photo:
- I was satisfied with this photo overall – even though the crowd at the show ensured I had very little time for adjustments!
- Decent picture quality, focus, light settings.
- The picture composition (framing) could have been better – for example, you see another feather intruding in the lower right area of the picture.
- I think the real improvement needs to be in creativity – I need to be more creative while clicking snaps like these. But before that, I think I should reach a certain level in plain-ol’-snaps. Only then should I take the next step and foray into creative composition.
- I am learning photo editing with GIMP2. Still need to properly understand the “Layers” concept. But I am already seeing a marked difference between photo-editing with Picasa/IrfanView and GIMP.
My Playground
Av: F/3.7; Tv: 0.006s(1/160); f: 63mm (35mm-equiv:380 mm); ISO: 140
This is one of my favourite “people” photos. I took this when I had gone into a dumpyard to take some other photos for a topic I was working on. This was actually a spontaneous shot. I was preparing to take the photo of the girl when she got conscious and started running. I just clicked a few shots, following her path – did not even see the bird. Only after seeing the photos at home did I see the bird.
This photo did not have the same effect in colour as it has in Black and White. I tweaked around a little in Photoshop – increasing the contrast, cropping the image, added a little more shadows to get the final outcome.
- Strong points about this photo would include the way in which this photo shows a poor little rag-picking girl enjoys her play in her make-shift play-ground ie the dumping yard. This photo also has a dynamic quality, because it shows the subjects with a hint of motion blur. This was because of the fading twilight present at the time I clicked this.
- Having said that, this photo has plenty of drawbacks. A picture with better clarity would make this photo of higher standing. And although, the motion blur is good, if there was more focus on parts of the girl and the bird, it would have been better.
RoseCrafted
RoseCrafted
Av: F/8.0; Tv: 1/500; f: 6mm (35mm-equiv: 38mm); Super-macro with Flash.
Post-processed using Picasa
This photo is of a decorative piece which was placed above a wall mirror. The rose itself is smaller than one inch in diameter. When I took this snap, I closed the aperture fully and also had a very fast shutter. The flash however still had its effect. The top portion of the snap was obscenely overexposed.
The first thing I did during processing this image was of course to set right the lighting. However, since only the top portion was overexposed, it was difficult to adjust the lighting – too much darkening would make the bottom portion totally dark.
After much trial and error, I settled finally for Picasa’s “Focal B&W” effect. Other than that, I have applied the usual sharpening, contrast and color adjustments.
Improvements?
- Well, the obvious drawback is the intense difference in exposure between the various areas in the snap. This is a classic candidate for using the exposure bracketing feature. I should have taken the snap using 2-step difference in exposure bracket.
- Having done that, I suppose using a more advanced tool like GIMP/Photoshop would have done wonders. For example, i could have created 2 layers one each for the moderately exposed halves of the photo – and merged them together to get a perfectly exposed snap.
NightLight
Av: F/8; Tv: 5s; f: 6.3mm (35mm-equiv:38 mm); ISO: 80
I am a fan of black and white photography because I feel it brings out a lot more depth and meaning to the photo when compared to a similarly-shot coloured one. That was exemplified in this photo, in fact. I originally shot it in colour mode, but as soon as I tried it in B & W in Photoshop, my mind was set on using B & W for this snap.
Coming to the process of taking this snap :
I started this photo shoot with the idea of taking a snap of a busy traffic light from a high altitude with the trail-of-lights effect. So, I used a tripod and that gave me the liberty to bump up the shutter speed to as high as 5 seconds which resulted in the beautiful trail of headlights showing a bustling and dynamic look to the traffic.
I achieved the stars-around-the-light effect by the least possible F-value (or Aperture value) with my Kodak DX 7590 which is F/8.
Next the fine tunings with Adobe Photoshop CS3 – Along with conversion to B & W, I also worked around with the levels to adjust contrast & brightness to achieve pitch black in the dark areas and thus highlighting the lights. I cropped off the sides to position the photo better and avoid the mess of the numerous banners.
Some of the things I would love to improve in this snap :
The lighting from the lamp post should have been better defined, with a star-effect around it as well.
