Happy Anniversary

So it's my sister and brother-in-law's anniversary today! Congratulations to them!

This is a picture that was taken a few days after they got married. It worked out quite well, I think (and hope).

Most of these flowers are gone now and since these trees were recently trimmed I doubt they'll be back.

Well I wish you both the very best for your future :)
Love!

Horns of the Devil

The last few pictures were all taken while on a recent trip to a place called Gayabari. It's a nice place with friendly people. If you do visit you'll have to get used to the locals asking you what you're doing there.

We found this really nice cave-like place and in the excitement I almost overlooked this tiny little creature that was happily feeding on the grass.

I haven't seen a caterpillar like this in a while. I think it's beautiful. The others with me would beg to differ. I can't help but wonder what sort of pretty, little fluttering thing this will turn into.

Reminds me of the days when I used to collect caterpillars and watch them slowly transform into beautiful butterflies.

EXIF info. - SS 1/400sec. f/5.6 ISO 160 250mm Canon t4i (650D)

Inscrutable

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgements and His ways past finding out!" - Romans 11:33

I wasn't quite sure about this image. I like it but for some reason I wasn't feeling very strongly about it. So, I decided to ask my friend for feedback. Since there was positive feedback I've decided to share it.

This was taken from a place called Gayabari. Same hill from where I took the previous image. This was further down the valley.

Hope you're having a good weekend :)

Convergence

Thank you all for the overwhelming response to my previous post. Thanks for all the messages, comments, likes, shares and emails. I really appreciate the encouragement and I'm really glad you like it. I can't take all the credit because that photograph wouldn't have been possible without my friend who posed for me. I irritated her and even kept her from food (if you're reading this, I apologise for that :D ) but she willingly helped a lot. I will work on a tutorial as soon as I can. We're shooting a promotional video so I'm a little hard pressed for time at the moment but will get to it soon.

Last Saturday five us got into a taxi and went up the hill to a place I've never been before. There was a massive landslide a while back which is visible for miles - you can actually see it from my house on the plains so it was quite nice visiting this place.

Vehicles don't go to that site so we had to walk for a bit to get there. On the way one of my friends suddenly started calling for me to rush over. He said that he would show me a place like I've only seen in the movies. I was sceptical but when I saw what he was pointing I stopped because I hadn't seen anything like it before - at least not in real life. It wasn't as stunning as the ones in the movies or those travelogues but I wasn't expecting this - at least not here.

Nature sure is a great testament to the glory of God. I can't even begin to imagine what heaven will be like!

"In His hand are deep places of the earth; the heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land." Psalm 45: 4-5

A few of you have been asking me to post the EXIF data as well. You'll find that information for today's photograph in the picture's caption.

Convergence - SS 1/400 sec f/8.0 ISO-100

Emerge

My friend showed me a really stunning double exposure portrait and asked me how that was done. I'd never actually tried a double exposure photograph before but I'd always wanted to. It seemed like a good opportunity to try. I was a little worried it wouldn't turn out good. She is used to seeing and being in some really beautiful photographs so that meant added pressure.

The first few tries didn't work out so well but she thought this one was beautiful.

My camera can't create double exposures so I had to create this in Photoshop. Cycling through blending modes and working on masking took a lot of time. If you are interested in a tutorial let me know. I'm thinking of working on tutorials for my Youtube channel again since a few people have been asking for them.

Somehow portraits have been my main focus for a few weeks now. Not sure how that happened. For example yesterday I discovered this really cool cave like place that was cut into a hill. We took some really good pictures there that I can't wait to share. It was only after I got back home that I realised I hadn't got a single shot without a person in it. I so want to go back there just to get a few shots of the landscape.

Have a great week ahead everyone! :)

Angel Arise

Last month we had a light painting competition. My friend and I really wanted to win and thought we had won when the event in-charge as well as the other participants said they absolutely loved our work. Unfortunately we came second - we later found out that they make their own students win which is ridiculous!

Anyway on a more positive not today is my friend's birthday. She is the one in the picture. So that's a good thing :D
Happy Birthday buddy! May God bless you and hope you have a great year ahead! :)

Diverging

What I'm about to say is going to sound very very weird. This has got to one of my favourite trees - so far I have two. The first on is about three minutes away from my house. I like that one because it really adds to the scenery. Without that tree I wouldn't have been able to get one of my favourite pictures of this place.

This tree was a recent discovery. It's huge! So huge that four us were able to comfortably stand inside its trunk (which is hollow at the bottom). It's got amazing texture and make for great photographs. It's beautiful and we have a few good memories of this place so that makes it special.

You just can't miss this tree when you're passing by - it really stands out.

Ever since I got a DSLR last year I've been pushing myself to try new things with photography as well as editing. I'm still amazed by the amount of data I'm able to pull from a single jpeg. If it was a RAW file I wouldn't be surprised but this is a massive step up from what I was used to.

The More The Merrier

So many things have happened this past week and that's probably why I haven't been able to upload anything in a long time. My apologies for that.

Anyway, a few of us have been going out almost ever weekend for the past three weeks or so just to shoot stuff and learn new things while exploring new places. It's tiring for sure but so much fun and you learn a lot of thins along the way.

I didn't get much time to shoot because I was busy helping the others figure out how to use their own cameras and helping them get better angles and such. We stopped along the way to refill out water bottles and this flower was the only one growing at this place. This is a little strange because not ten feet away there was a whole garden of sorts so it seemed kind of odd that this one was planted separately.

This is a focus stacked image - three images shot from the same angle using the same settings but with different focus points. You get used to this when you're shooting things really close because the depth of field is paper thin. Getting this was a little difficult because of the strong wind. I would have liked to get more than three but it couldn't be helped. Getting more than three shots would have enabled me to get a lot more in focus.

Bring Me Down

Seven of us went out on Saturday. I was helping some of them learn how to use their cameras better. We left in the morning and were out till about 5 in the evening. Except for about an hour or so we were on our feet just walking around, exploring and shooting. It was a day to remember for sure.

We were on the hill when we noticed this tree out in the distance. It really seemed to stand out from the others around it. It was taller than the rest but also had almost no leaves on it. It made this particular scene really interesting.

I had to work some Photoshop magic on the original image because it was flat and boring. The light wasn't particularly exciting because this was way off in the distance so there was no clear separation or anything. The camera didn't pick up on the colours either. Maybe someday I'll get down to working on a tutorial on how I edited this image.

It reminded me of the lyrics "Can't nothing bring me down".