Want to be a Foreigner in my own country

I envy William Darlymple.

Ever since I started reading books regularly , William Darlymple has been one of my favorite writer rather person. He is a person who is living the life I dream.

It has always been my dream to travel significant places , interact with people of different diversities, study their culture, traditions and capture them not only with my camera but also in words, to share with people around the world. And this guy William Darlymple does exactly the same san the photography part (to an extent or at least he does not make it the primary objective.)

But that is not why I envy him. I envy him because he does the same thing in my own country. This guy has more access and knowledge about my own country than what I can ever garner and I personally feel its because of the fact that he is a Foreigner. I am not comparing our intellect or charm, he is way ahead on that , I just feel its the ease with which people open to strangers from abroad and that's what makes me envious.

Ever since I have started clicking people in public places , I have always experienced that Indians will readily pose if a foreigner is clicking them but will take all the objections if their fellow countrymen tries to capture them.

Its just not about photos , lets see the books that have been published about Indian culture, history and traditions in last few decades , I am yet to come across an Indian writer who has written an impartial and globally well received book about our country. Yes Arvind Adiga won a Man Booker's prize for his book the White Tiger but that book is more about a life of a particular person then India as a whole.

The movie made on the Father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi was made by a foreigner , was enacted by a foreigner and was based on the book "Freedom at Midnight" which was again written by two foreigners. The fact that they could easily retrace and reconstruct the sequence of events leading to his assassination by the Hindu extremists somehow substantiate the fact how comfortable it was for them.

Yes I agree , we Indians tend to trust fellow Indians less and always feel the other person is always going to exploit us or take total benefit out of us without crediting us. And these things make them more comfortable and trustworthy of a foreigner.

Yes we all want our 15 seconds of fame and interacting with a foreigner is the easiest way to get that.

I may be underestimating the problems that these Foreigner face as I myself don't have the first person account of their interactions or behind the scene account of their work and at the same time I still need to horn my skills of public / street photography where I sometimes need to politely first ask people about clicking their photos, so kindly forgive my ignorance about the same.

I do have due respect to these peoples people skills but being an Indian myself I know how we people react differently to our own countrymen.

My apprehensions might be getting the better of me at this moment but some day when I do embark on fulfilling my dream of being a William Darlymple I just hope I am more determined to put more effort to make people comfortable to share themselves with me :)

Photography learning II

My best photograph will be the one that I am going to take tomorrow - Ansel Adams.

This is what one of the pioneer of photography quoted when asked about his best photo.

So photography, like life, teaches you new things everyday and like life here too you will have to keep improving and rectifying your mistakes.

As I have shared some time back, after I visited Agra and Humayun's tomb, the things I need to improve upon, today too I share few things that I have learned or noticed in the last couple of months in which I have been extensively involved with photography.


Being Hasty - First of all on this list is what I often do when I see some nice people or things and want to click them as quickly as possible. .. so as  a result I get a lot hasty and pictures comes out blurry or out of focus

The above pic was taken while I was on my first photowalk to Rastrapati Bhawan and honestly after clicking those buildings for some time, I was kind of getting bored . Just then my eyes fell on these two sisters who were looking so cute dressed in same dress and at that very moment I thought to click them. I was so excited seeing that I thought that this pic was going to be the best of the walk.  But when I came back and checked this at home , I could see that the girls have come so out of focus. Had I steadied myself a bit or calmed myself  first I would have really captured them better.

Ask people if you can take their photos - Although in street photography the sense of being voyeuristic helps you portray people candidly, without them being conscious about getting clicked but I do feel that by doing so you at times miss out on other angles that would have reflected things in a better way.

As in the above pic, the pic is nice just because the girl was not only looking at me but was smiling. And this all happened because we had spent some time playing around with each other standing at bus stop.

Taking straight photos, although I have corrected the symmetrical flaw that I had with my earlier photos that I took of monuments but now I see quite a lot of issues with the horizontal axis of the photos. As you can see in the below pic , the monument seems to be falling to the right. 

At present its more due to that fact that my hand is not yet accustomed to handing the big bulky camera and I tend to slant towards one direction or other but it has been so apparent in my photos that I seriously need to keep it in mind every time before pressing the shutter down.

Less post processing - as I am currently spending a lot of time on touching them up in software. 


The left pic below is what the camera produced and right is after some post processing was applied to it.

Could I have managed this without PS ? Yes and No. 


Speaking of this picture only, yes may be I could have done better with the camera itself but in general, I will have to quote Ansel Adams again :


“Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.”. 


So its not always possible to capture the correct color and tones with your camera as it too is a machine and you too are human so quite prone to errors.


Earlier I was strictly against using any software to enhance the photo as I used to feel its against the principle of capturing that moment correctly but now I have understood that although its still quite an important thing to be right at the first time  and many times just by knowing your machine well you can get similar results out of the camera too but at the end what matters is how the photo is presented to the viewers. If post processing helps you to convey your photo in a better way then there is no harm in it. In fact I have learned that most of the photographers shoot RAW, and since we cannot view RAW directly we have to always apply post process to them. But the final idea is to spent less time on computer and more on the field :)

Taking less snaps or be ruthless in deleting them... someone very rightly said that more snaps you take more things you learn but they take up so much space that at times its quite difficult to manage and since there are so many pictures that sometimes you get bored in correcting them that it takes a while before you transverse to the good ones and by that time you lose interest. So with advent of digital cameras, people do have the liberty to click as many pics as they want and honestly even famed photographers don't get a perfect shot all the time in first go. But at the end you should be able to discard them quickly too.

Thats all for this time.... Will share more as a learn more :)

Deoksugung Palace , Seoul

Guard Changing ceremony at Deoksugung Palace , Seoul.

Deoksugung Palace gate ...

Marching Guards ...

Once these guards take their place, visitors are allowed to go near and get their pictures clicked with the guards..

Deoksugung Palace

Happiest Day of my life...

Finally the day came for which I was eagerly waiting since so long, the happiest moment of my life. I bought my first DSLR yesterday :)

I wanted to share with you all on the day I ordered my Nikon D7000 but the first order got cancelled and I thought I should not jinx it :)

I can't tell you guys how much happy I am . Not only this is my first DSLR, its something for which I was waiting since last many years and something which will give the much needed purpose to my life.

Before I write further , I will like to thank my sister and parents for letting me buy such an expensive equipment. Especially my sister, if my parent brought me to this world, you have given me my life Didibhai. 

Upgrading from a Point & Shoot to a DSLR in itself should be a major improvement and that being D7000 itself takes me to a different world. (Its a mid level DSLR costing round 62K with lens)

I ordered it on Wednesday and was supposed to pick it by Saturday but could not stop myself and went there Thursday itself :) 

Just sharing some initial thoughts. I am yet to take it out in daylight as I picked it at around 7:30 in the evening yesterday . But I already took 300 shots while travelling back from store to my home(around one n half hour trip).

So since I have only shot at night and that too from a moving car with my less than novice technique, I din't have much keepers out of those 300. 

I bought it with 18-55 kit lens as any other lens was out of my budget and anyways the reviews of this kit lens were quite good. 

1. The first shot that I took after the shopkeeper handed me the cam was the below potrait of my dad and now when I checked on my laptop ,its something I could never take with my P&S, a potrait with just the person and rest all blurred.  (The below photo is the cropped version of that.)

2. After that I shot while travelling and that too in low light condition. Since I have never used a cam that could give me any kind of control on Aperture or Shutter , I shot first in Auto mode, which popped out the flash the moment I tried to click. 

Don't take it as a negative comment but I found it hunting a lot with me missing some shots. Actually the P&S would have clicked those irrespective of whether it could lock focus properly or not. I am not comparing the quality here, I am just saying that since it has way more IQ then a P&S, it is more choosy :). 

P&S would have clicked it irrespective of whether anything is in focus or anything is sharp or not. But the few keepers I had itself gave me the idea that if I had played around with the camera or had been stationary, it would have locked many more shots in near perfect way. 

3. Then I switched to Aperture mode and owing to lack of knowledge when I reduced the aperture to say till f22 it increased the shutter speed by quite a few seconds and owing to my constant motion and novice techniques all of them had blurred (although I could still see some interesting light patterns due to its long exposure :)) 

4. So next I moved to Shutter priority, and again due to my stupidity , I clicked it at fastest possible speed initially and as expected they all were blacked out. Then I reduced the speed and I clicked a series of photos where I can see the scene illuminating as I slowed the shutter. 

5. The Viewfinder is AWESOME. Man I din't even checked the live view till I reviewd my shutter priority mode photos and found them blacked out. The Viewfinder is something to die for and I don't think I am going to use live view ever when I have such an amazing view finder. 

6. The Camera is heavy but I found it quite sturdy and grip was amazing. 

7. Coming from a Canon P&S and with Canon being quite user friendly as far as button layouts is concerned, I found the buttons quite easy to use. And there are so many buttons at the back that I was just wondering if I am ever going to use them :-D 

8. Then I shot in without flash mode and man I was hugely impressed. The shots have come too good at times without flash in low light. By good I don't mean keepers but in that low light I never expected it to lock and capture so well and once my technique improves I think there will be many keepers. 

 

Below is my first attempt at Bokeh (about which I will definitely write a post once I get more hang of it)

If I have to summarize in one line then it will definitely be I'm Loving It :)

Since my Di is not here so the only muses that I have at present are my helpless Mom and Dad , who are going to be most frequent subject of my photography.

 

I just loved the above pic that I took of my Dad.


So guys be ready to start this new journey with me :)

Delhi Zoo ....

Last Month I went to Delhi Zoo with my family..... 

Like with my earlier recent visit to various places , this too was primarily to fulfill my desire to click some photographs but apart from that I am also an ardent animal lover and with my increased interest in photography that love too has increased manifolds..

Although I clicked scores of pictures but overall I was not satisfied with the final output. And together with the Qutub Minar photos (which I am yet to share), that too were clicked in similar evening , low light condition (evening and early morning are considered ideal for photography),  makes me ponder that I have a lot to learn as far as dusk light photography is concerned.

Although Humayun's tomb too were clicked in similar cloudy condition but luckily they have come out well, may be because I had more liberty of space while clicking them.

Nevertheless sharing some animals and birds that I was able to click... I have done some post processing and cropping in order for the subject to be highlighted properly.

Duck

ANTELOPES

BABOON

BaraSinghaS...

Posing for the Camera... BarahSinghaS...

CROCODILE...

ELEPHANT

Indian Ghariyal

GORILLA..

Don't know what it is ... but was quite cute

King Of The Jungle ... LION

One Horned Rhinos....

These two Rhinos were the star of the Zoo... they were so playful ..were all the time busy chasing each other... I even have a Video of these two running around but have to find ways to compress them so that I can post them on blogger....

Finally these two settled down and decided to  cool off in the pond ....

Then came these colorful Parrots...

Haven't seen a Parrot before ????

There were many animals who were at their playful fighting best.... Apart from the rhinos there were some Antelopes who too were busy fighting but I only shoot a videos of those as I find their fighting and sudden attack strategy quite amusing....

Below are two Sambars (Huge species of Deer) who were busy demonstrating their strengths to the onlookers...

Sambars...

Siberian Cranes ....

Above is a shot from the pond that was there in the center of the Zoo, in which herds of Siberian Cranes and many more big birds were seen perching .... They were quite large in numbers and worth watching...

As the wait for a DSLR is intching closer to an end.... I am looking forward to clicking many more animals and birds in flight :)

Some Macro shot of Show pieces..

Well I just tried few Macro shots at home of the various show pieces that were lying around , so just sharing those... 

Some small pottery jugs..

In case you are wondering what Macro Photography is then just to mention in layman terms , Macro photography is one in which you are quite close to the subject i.e. when the focal distance of the subject is quite less (less than 10mm). By close it does not always physically close, has you do have certain lenses which let you zoom in to an object far of and then magnify them just like macro.

This kind of photography is generally done for insects or tiny objects in order to magnify them. And also for flowers when you like to very closely show their pattern.

Needless to say, as you guys already know , its one of my favorite kind of photography ; mainly because it provides me the most sharpest photos that are possible from my camera and also because of the low depth of field which provides a blurry effect to the objects other then on which I am focusing.

My Sister has got some dolls as present which provide as quiet an interesting subjects for Macro photography

Below is a very cute couple and I have called them Simran and Raj aka Kajol & Sharukh Khan of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaenge  as the guy depicts SRK playing the Mandolin....

You can see that in the left pic only the couple are in focus , rest all is kind of blurred. 

 

if you thought the above pic looked kind of creepy (at least it seems to me ) . check this macro of an insect..

This guy was quite a patient poser...he gave me ample opportunities to click it but somehow this was the best I could manage :(. If you enlarge then you can even see the hair or spikes on its leg..

As you got to know that I love this mode of photography so be prepared to see a lot more of these kind of photos from me...