Skywatch Friday - The Rainforest

As we know, the monsoon started with lame note and later gained fierce momentum during month of July. The deficit as of now in Karnataka has drastically reduced and at some places it has recorded excess. Mere two months of torrential rain has tranformed the dry lands to lush greenery. The western ghats were no exception too! There is never dearth of rain in these regions however threat of El-nino was looming over the region fearing drought kind of situation. Now everything is washed out by ferocious monsoon season :).

Enough of story! This Ganesh chaturthi, I had been to hometown to drop parents back. How can I miss the lush green rainforests. I drove 220kms in 2:30hrs to enjoy more time in Shiraadi ghat and I was well satisfied to capture those water spots and enjoy the roaring Gundya river for sometime. There were many tiny waterfalls which I could not capture due to lack of time. Also intermittent rains hampered my program but that is how rainforests get their name! I am satisfied with whatever opportunity I could gain. After final prayer to goddess chowdeshwari, it was time to drive towards the coast to reach niche. Many a times I had desire halt here for maximum amount of time to spend quality time in between woods. It is difficult to manage while we have set goals and pathetic road conditions :(. Nevertheless, this time it was not so much bad :). May be it is better to ride two wheeler along the stretch to fully enjoy nature. Hope you enjoy pictures. No HDRs this time and most of them captured using 2stop GND filter. Using GND filter along with CPLs creates near HDR images (not all times). I did not use CPL this time (not sure why), hence had to reduce highlights on images to reduce white patches on silky flow of water.

ONE OF SMALL WATERFALL

CLOSER LOOK

HEART OF RAINFOREST

STREAM SNEAKING FROM CANOPY

GALLOPING GUNDYA RIVER

ONE MORE SEASONAL WATERFALL

MAGNIFIQUE GUNDYA RIVER

Options used in darktable:

1) Shadows and Highlights
2) Vibrance
3) Saturation and brightness
4) Local contrast
5) High pass filter with overlay as mask
6) Luminosity curve (manual) to increase Green and Yellow color appearance
7) Color zones (for few images)
8) Color temperature

I usually make use of GND filter 2 stops, half way down. Since I had actual GND this time, soft GND was not required.

Do tune to Andy Blueman's rainforest. A perfect combination of soft bass and synths creating rainforest ambience. The music on an entirity reveals perfect rainforest environment comprising of thundering waterfalls, roaring streams, clanky insects, flying birds, heavy rains and wilderness. He has promised to complete this tune soon which is good news. I love this music very much and remembered when I was in between dense jungle and thundering Gundya river. Just perfect music!

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