Convivial

Sometimes when someone says "Please take a picture" you just have to no matter what the lighting is or what the circumstances are. This is one such picture. I wasn't prepared for a late night photo session with friends as I had just got back from photographing a band and was looking for some time away from photography but I couldn't say no.

The lights in the background provided for a nice colour contrast against the warm colour of the bulb behind me as I shot my friend's mother (not with a gun...obviously).

I've been experimenting with tones and colours for a while now so I would love to know what you think of this.

Gorgeous Gulma

If you're reading this I hope you've watched our short film The Drive
If you have watched it you'll recognise today's picture from the end credits.

This is where we shot the station scene towards the end of the film. This has got to be the most beautiful and well maintained station I've visited in India. It's really small and there are very few people but it's beautiful.

This is a long exposure shot taken just as the blue hour was ending. We were waiting for a train to take us back home. We were exhausted after the shoot but were really happy since this is the place we got the best shots. A lot of the scenes were shot not far from the station.

In fact you can see two of my friends sitting on the bench on the right of the photograph.

Jesus Is The Reason For The Season

It's Christmas eve people!
Now I know there are people who don't celebrate which is why I must say that I have no intention of offending you with today's post.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas.

We do not know when the Lord Jesus Christ actually came down to earth but what we are sure of is that He came down to free us from our bonds of sin. He gave up His life so that we could be saved from our impending doom - eternal destruction in the lake of fire.

Thanks to God's unending love we now no longer have to fear and no longer have to serve sin and Satan. All we have to do to have eternal life and an everlasting and personal relationship with God, our creator is accept that we are sinners and believe in the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Since I probably won't be online much till I get back home I wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Night Lights

This is one of the many photographs I took of the Milky Way a few days back. I don't think I'll ever get tired of this because it is just breathtaking.

The was a storm cloud in the distance and the lightning within that clouds made it look really cool as did the setting moon!

Look Up

Last night was just spectacular! I got to see the milky way again which made it really special too.
The light pollution means it's really faint in the night sky but if you let your eyes adjust for a few minutes you can see it without the help of any equipment.

I took one photograph and then just stood there looking up at the stars and the lightning in the distance. It was an amazing and a really humbling experience. God's creation sure is marvellous.

The moon was setting and gave off this yellow glow that made it all the more amazing! I stayed up for a couple of hours just looking and occasionally taking pictures. Sometimes I don't bother to take pictures because I get so caught up in what I'm looking at and to be honest I don't really regret it because it's really an amazing memory!

The Light In Darkness

A few days back we had really amazing light somewhere around midnight. We had a full moon and some amazing clouds that just made the night light one from a painting.
I was out for a very long time just staring at the sky. It was so beautiful that I didn't notice time flying by.

Midnight Show

The moon looked amazing when it rose yesterday and I didn't think the night could get any better because it was already just so very beautiful.

Then around midnight I was proved wrong. The sky just seemed to come alive. The clouds were amazing and the moonlight highlighted every last one of the beautiful clouds. Honestly pictures don't do justice to what I saw. It was just that beautiful.

Guiding Light

Although I love summer this makes me miss the foggy winter months.

This was taken sometime in January when we had really thick fog. I shared a similar photograph a while back and quite a few of you thought it was the sun - it isn't. It's a simple street lamp.

Into The Darkness

I tried my hand at long exposures recently. It's tricky when you have no filters whatsoever so I decided to shoot late evening when the clouds were still visible (barely visible is more like it).

Anyway this is what a one minute exposure was like that evening.

The Block

I miss the fog now that winter is slowly going away. Today morning was a little foggy but not as much as I would like for some pictures.

This picture is from the last thick fog that we had. It was just beautiful. The lights looked amazing!

The Lights of Winter

I'm not much of a winter person. What I mean is I don't dislike the season per se. It's that it gets really cold and you have to wear so many layers that it kinda inhibits movement and doing stuff normally.

But there is one thing I just absolutely love about winter - the fog! Specifically how the lights look in the fog is just awesome.

Here is a quick picture I too today of the street outside my house. The different colours and then there is the light streak of a passing motorbike.

Shining Bright

The night I decided to go to the terrace during a recent visit to a hill station was a surprise for me. The main reason being that the moon wasn't a full moon yet was so bright that it seemed like a full moon. Actually even brighter than a full moon.

That was surprising for me. It was cloudy and I didn't think I'd be able to get a good shot but the clouds were moving fast and so for a while the moon wasn't obstructed and I was able to get this shot.

I thought the lights on the hills would overpower the stars and maybe even the moon but the stars and the moon were so bright that they actually showed up pretty bright and clear in the photograph.

No major adjustments here - just minor highlight and shadow tweaks and some noise reduction (the noise on the SX50 is bad).

In The Dead Of Night

My trip to Gangtok was just amazing. If you are ever in this part of the country I would highly recommend that you visit this beautiful hill station.

Although I didn't really go around much as that wasn't the reason for my visit, God did provide some amazing picture opportunities that I don't think I would have got anywhere else.

The second night I was there, I just ventured up to the terrace sometime after/during midnight and I saw the fog rolling past. This was something I've never seen before so I was mesmerised by this scene. It was just beautiful...kinda eerie too.

Pretty In The Dark

Many people say I come up with unusual captions and I agree with them. Truth is my captions are actually the first words that pop into my head just before I write my daily blog post.

Anyway that's that. Now for today's picture. This little butterfly was in an overgrown part of our garden. I had just gone out to check the lock on the gate when I noticed this butterfly in the grass. So I got my torch out and tried to take a few pictures but ended up getting frustrated.

Finally I resorted to using the pop-up flash. I didn't want to use the pop-up flash (I had to manually make it "pop-up") because that would result in some really harsh light and I didn't want that. But that was all I had and it got the job done.

Quick tip. If you want a more diffused and soft light then place a sheet of paper in front of the flash and then make it fire. You'll end up with some really soft light. Remember that the paper does cut out some of the light so you might have to increase the flash power.

Supermoon 2013

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know everyone is putting up pictures of the supermoon but trust me this is going to be different. "How?" You ask? Well simply because the moon was behind clouds for most the night so getting a clear shot of the moon was nigh impossible.

But I did manage to get some cool self portraits done.

I know I've always said that the SX50 HS is really bad for night photography and I'll stick to that statement. I would have preferred a better camera but you work with what you have so I tried to make the most of last night.

The moon did manage to steer clear of the clouds for a while yesterday and I did get some good details but I'm not going to share that today. The SX50 is perfect for close-up detail shots though.

I wanted to get the entire scene in focus (me included) but that was going to be impossible with the highest f-stop on the SX50 i.e. f8. Plus stopping down to f8 meant that I would get a relatively dark picture which is not what I was going for. I wish I could amp up the ISO but I can't so I had to deal with that.

These are just two of the pictures I took yesterday. I took loads more but I liked these two. As for the light on my arm - that's a torch. I used one of my slippers (flip-flops) to balance it on a brick so that it was shining on me the entire time.

Hopefully I'll have a better camera during the next supermoon.

Robert Bruce Moment

I just though I'd start off with a post about something that amazed me.

If you are arachnophobic, look away NOW!

The trap is laid; the hunter waits patiently.

I never thought I would ever say this but I was amazed by this spider. I've been observing it for the last few days. It appears out of nowhere almost like part of a magical performance everyday around 6:15 p.m. and starts working on this elaborate and massive web. The web itself is surprisingly large, given the spider's tiny size.

It weaves it across three different trees that are about 4 meters away from each other. This in itself is an amazing feat. I have no idea how it gets across these trees, then again I don't know much about spiders.

The first time I saw the spider I took a silhouette of it against a street lamp. I shared the following image a couple of days back on Google+ and Facebook.

When I saw it again yesterday I just knew I had to try and capture the spider ad its web. It was late when I finally got down to taking pictures as I had to wait for everyone to leave and then lock the gates. The people here think anyone with a camera is weird. They just stare and stare and stare until you feel so uncomfortable that you can't wait to get away from their gaze. So I let the dog loose (a real watch dog) and got my tripod out and set it up.

I didn't expect to get good pictures because I don't think the Canon SX50 HS is the best for night photography. I expected focusing to be a real pain. I was wrong. Surprisingly auto focus worked well - thanks to the AF Assist Beam. 90% of the time it focused right where I wanted it to. Of course I had to use the on camera flash due to lack of a better option. One great thing about the SX50 is that you can shoot RAW which made the task massively easy.

Waiting. Watching...

While taking the shot part of me expected the spider to get mad and come down from its web and bite me. Another part of my mind was on the dog that kept running past me at full speed. I was worried he would knock the camera over. Thankfully that didn't happen. Yet another part was thinking how great it would be to get Spiderman's powers :D

At one point the spider suddenly moved and I literally jumped when I should have run away. Turns out it wasn't interested in me but rather in a strand of webbing that the wind had broken.

To make matters worse (seems like there are always things that do) the mosquitoes really wanted my oh-so-sweet blood. I'm guessing it was sweet since I had eaten a few pieces of cake prior to this photo shoot.

I was pretty satisfied with the pictures that I managed to get. I also managed to get quite a few mosquito bites but that's something I can ignore...for now.

I'm waiting for the spider to come out again tonight. If it does I'll be waiting to shoot it...with a camera, that is.

This somehow reminded me of Robert Bruce (hence the title of this post).

For all these shots I just set the camera to Aperture Priority mode.
For the shots where you can actually see the web, I used the on-camera flash.

I'm sorry if the pictures spooked some of you. I do hope this doesn't stop you from viewing my future posts. Don't worry there will be very few pictures of spiders...if any. :)

Take care.