New Bombay [Belapur]

This pic is taken from the 15th floor of a building at Belapur. We had gone over for dinner, where I was showing off my photography skills. The temple in the background impressed me, it looked as if there was fire being spurred out from the ground below the temple.

The other pic is the adjoining flyover to the temple.

Both the pics are exposed over 7-10 seconds!!

Lamps & Shades

We were at a friends place over this weekend, as the evening passed and the lights came up, the lamp shade and the roof light were looking beautiful... the light was also amazing, so got an angle of it.

Victoria Terminus

Yeah, yeah I know people have renamed it, but I still like to call it by its original name. After all the british built and I credit this marvellous structure to them. There are many astounding features about this structure.

You see the gargoils on the top of the building. I think there are 32 or 25 of them. The unique thing about them is, all of them are unique, no two gargoils are same. Also it was built over 100 years ago, and till today there is room for expansion. It is on the most well-planned structures in Bombay.

The classical touch

I was doing my regular rounds of Bombay-Pune via the expressway, when I saw a huge number of electric towers on the way. Adjusted to the b/w mode and caught this.

The volvo glass was also dirty [read muddy] cos of the fresh rains. So it gave it a more classical look.

What is shutter speed all about?

After I posted the link for my blog, many guys got back to me asking

"Hey what exactly is shutter speed? And why the heck do I need to control it?"

Some people asked me.

"What is the difference between different shutter speeds?"

Most of the time, when we used the classical camera [SLRs please excuse!]. We always wanted our flash working. We waited for approx 10-15 seconds between two photos, till the flash was 'recharged' back to life. I still recall we used to get a roll, rather still do get a good quality roll for INR 150. and which has only 36 pics capacity. If you are lucky you could get to 40 even! but that's the max, and the mode used to be either of the four mentioned in the previous post, but either ways the flash always existed.

2.5 seconds	4 seconds
1/40th of a second

Now you can see 3 different pics of the same place, same time, but different shutter speeds. The shutter is a small cover in front of the hole on your camera [the place where you have the lens]. The speed is the amount of time, the shutter will take to close again after opening.

The more the time you keep is open, the more light is captured on the film. It keeps adding the light to the surface and due to prolonged exposure, the light looks brighter. Hence for a dark area, where there is a small source of light, we allow a longer exposure to the film capturing the true colours.

But at the same time, one has to be careful, not to overexpose the film, else it'll become white. You need to try various combinations to get the right brightness of the photograph.

Why I hate Flash

In a camera generally there are different default exposure modes available. Along with the feature to enable or disable the flash for a pic.

Here we have two sample difference between the flash and no flash modes. The picture on the left is more brighter, richer and crisper, because the Flash is switched off. Most of the pics below, the flowers, the dragon-flies, worms, spiders, mango-orchards, the beach. NONE, none of them have used flash, hence you can find the richness in colours.

With Flash

Without Flash

Now the modes. By default you have cloudy, sunlight, tubelight or bulb mode [as the light source available]. Be careful in what you choose. Off personal experience, I prefer the cloudy mode, cos it allows the colours to stand out much better. If you are using a digital camera, experiment, the more you do, the better you get an idea of what you are looking for.

Also the LCD display, plus or minus the contrast a few points as it varies from person to person and machine to machine.

Express Highway

I do an every weekend updown Bombay-Pune and you might be wondering why there are no pics of the Expressway!

Well I'm a good citizen (you can see the halo on my head :) You are not supposed to click pics of the tunnel or the highway. Well what the heck, rules are meant to be broken!! Here's one of the tunnels.

This pic was clicked when we [Shilpa & Me] were shifting our stuff to Pune. You can even see the wiper of the tempo!!

Ek Machhar!! [mosquito]

When we entered one of the flats we are planning to hire on rent, just before we entered the broker said

"There are no mosquitoes over here"

We happily went and checked out the room, and found 4-5 big fat mosquitoes sitting in the kitchen!

"We are outta here"
"No hiring this place"

Match stick & Vijay

Vijay, a good friend of mine was impressed with the over exposed pics. He also wanted to try the stunts. This was after I did the candle figures. Well I was back home and did not have candles, so we took a match stick and I put the shutter to 4 seconds. The moment it caught fire, we clicked and this is what we got. His hand moved in the three seconds.

You can see a small arc formed because of the movement.

Vinca [that's what I think]

I don't know if this is called Vinca, but i kinda like the contrast of white against dark green background. Very crisp

Focus vs Anti-Focus

This is the perfect example of a perfect focus vs anti-focus. In one pic, the flower is perfectly focused in one and the background blured, and just the opposite in the other one... I got that by mistake, but liked the contrast

Spiderman!

Shilpa hates these, rather most of the people hate it, cos it looks gross according to them, but the point why they look dirty is cos they were crawing on a rubber tree, with all the rubber oozing off the trunk. I did not notice the other spider, until I saw the pics at full zoom, on the machine

The grasshopper!

This pic was a the true test of patience & steadyness. I was zooming at this insect very closly. Took over 10 pics till i got the closest possible macro zoom, with complete clarity. Had I made any sound, the insect would have flown away!

I like the outcome...

Dragon Fly and Worms!!

You need to look a bit carefully to find them. The dragon fly was difficult. Cos I feared it would fly away!

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

This is a pic of the pink hibiscus. The title 'Hibiscus rosa-sinensis' is the botanical name for Hibiscus, it is also called as the 'China Rose'. I liked the pink colour. There was red and white also, but this looked the best.

Lanterns...

I was visiting divagar, this weekend where due to rains there was not much of light around, so people use lanterns instead. I saw this lantern and likded the ambience around it. Did some shutter speed fun and got this out of it...