Yelagiri Tour -- Photos

Pic #1: Hide the head competition

Pic #2: A back-lit plant & a few bokehs

Pic #3: Purple Sunbird Silhouette

Pic #4: Gateway to a red garden

Pic #5: Monkey tricks

That crazy thing called 'Bokeh'!!!

In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur,in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light." Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens  designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting— "good" or "bad" bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions. (Source:Wikipedia)

I have become crazy about bokehs ever since I learned what that term means. It is such a beautiful thing and I can go on & on about this wonderful element in photography.Here are a few images that stand out for the way in which the bokeh has been rendered. These are not the best images in terms of composition and I am presenting them here as an example for what a bokeh means.

How to: One of the easiest ways to create an image with a wonderful looking bokeh is to shoot with a wide open aperture. I have used the 50mm prime lens with aperture set at f1.8 to get this effect. A wide open aperture, a nearby object as the primary subject and light (Or water) at a reasonable distance of 1 meter would give you the perfect bokeh. I am yet to experiment with multi-colored artificial light bokehs but trust me when I say those days are not far!!!

Child Labor -- A sad state of affairs

Had been to Besant Nagar beach last weekend and when I started shooting, I got this idea of covering children working in the beach. Somehow this is one area which has greatly affected me and I wanted to bring out that mood in my pictures. Here are a couple of those pictures which I clicked there. 

Wayanad Pictures -- Part II

Picture #1: The Wayanad magic continues with some stunning images from the Meenmutty falls. This is one of my favorite compositions with the sun rays cleanly starting from the right side top corner and hitting the mountains perfectly on the forest. Incidentally, that spot is where the 'Golden Rule' of composition would have been put! 

 Picture #2: The clouds form a beautiful canopy encompassing the forests below and giving the scene a surrealistic atmosphere.

Wayanad Pictures

Picture #1: Meenmutty falls at Wayanad at its splendid best during sunset. The sun was trying to hide behind the cloud from us photographers when I clicked this.

 

Picture #2: The amazingly beautiful Banasura Sagar dam. This location is just 500m from the dam and is a place that needs to be seen to appreciate the beauty of it. The calm river flowing in between the mountains nestled by tall trees is really spell-binding.

Picture #3:The sun decided to play nice guy with us and gave us a playful little peek and to provide us with his divine rays, enhancing the entire landscape and turning our photo-shoot into a really worthwhile effort.

Smoke Photography

I always had this desire to try out 'Smoke Photography' and I also had a clear idea inside my head on how the photo should come out. The smoke photography in my mind had an old man with a white beard smoking a cigarette as black & white composition. I got lucky when I went to my wife's office to shoot some pictures. Here was an old man working on something and when he took a break, he took it the way I had envisaged it. A couple of clicks and only this one came close to my 'vision'. I will sure keep trying till I get the right image, though.

Chennai Sangamam -- Part II

Lightroom is one cool Adobe tool and I am really happy that I started using it now. I would not call it as being as powerful as Photoshop but it is nevertheless a very handy tool and the tones that you get out of this software is just amazing. Also, it does not appear as intimidating as Photoshop & hence any user can learn the ropes very easily. One of the other things that I found to be super cool with Lightroom is the ability to use the 'Presets' feature. There are some 15 presets that come packed with the software and then there are a whole lot of presets that have been developed by people around the world that can be downloaded and used. Even though these presets may not a perfect fit for the photo you have, they will surely be a good starting point from where you can start tweaking around to get the tones you have in mind. Given below are a couple of photos that I took in Chennai Sangamam processed using Lightroom.