Skywatch Friday - Fields of My Village

I was skimming my CRDi motor between the bitumen trail of Kaup and my village on a relatively less overcast day. On the way, I stopped nearby paddy fields to enjoy the greenery for sometime. This is first time I am taking photographs of the paddy fields nearby my village :). Especially monsoon season adds more glory to the landscape. People of this area harvest twice a year due to ample availability of water (a stream runs nearby). These are few HDR and normal images captured during my journey. Never thought they look so beautiful.

Finally here are some HDR images from my village itself. The first one was captured during morning hours while the rest was during sunset.

I was wandering around village on a clear evening day. As I was roaming, this scene caught my eyes and my camera's too which tempted me to grab a HDR shot. It turned out to be beautiful too ;). The enjoyment could not be sustained for long time since ants had ascended the leg and started biting :(. I love the starburst reflection of Sun on the watery field. The field was prepared for slush race organized recently. The water presence is still persisting due to the diversion of stream water towards the field. Also monsoon season is keeping this temporary water body alive! The monsoon is backpacking for this year and consequently there was beautiful sunset during fine evening. I used GND filter to compose bracketed shots. The advantage is reduced luminosity of orange hot balloon which reduced bracketed shots from 7 to 5 ;). Hope you enjoy the pictures. My mother was excited after seeing final image and asked if it is was captured from any rivers along highway. When I explained that it was the nearby water body, she was astonished to see the beautiful scenery :D. My father taunted the excitement stating inept images looks beautiful in cameras :(.

Music Time B-):

This time its once again beautiful music by New-World named Fields of La Tourette. This guy is amazing man. He is just 24 and creates stunning music! The way he blends high and low pitch notes is mesmerizing. His music is always flavored with ecstatic orchestral melody.

Here are few of my feelings from music

0:34 --> birds flying over field
1:46 --> slow moving clouds over the field
2:15 --> the orchestral + guitar melody
2:41 --> profound orchestral melody (rising sun over field)
3:10 --> the fantastic breakdown outset (fast moving clouds with running deers)
3:29 --> The combination of high + low pitch notes again
4:03 --> Time to fly over the field :)

I don't have the privilege of visiting the place and have a feel but his music truly reveals the the emotions of the La Tourette. I felt in paddy fields of my village :). This post is dedicated to the beautiful music of New World and hope you enjoy the same. Fly over the field relishing the melodious music from Gordon.

New World - Fields of La Tourette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox7gghnlmbE

Be his fan: https://www.facebook.com/NewWorldTrance

Not to miss equally wonderful remix from Ahmed Romel once again with stunning orchestral melody and beautiful video from Simon.

Ahmed Romel Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POoJEBriuL4

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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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HDR of Gaganachukki Falls

This is 3 exposure bracketed HDR of Gaganachukki falls. The shots were taken during my solo bike ride to Shivanasamudra and Talakaadu on 03-Aug. I had taken 5 shots however it did not come out so well and hence limited final composition to 3 bracketed shots in Luminance HDR. There was huge crowd as expected and bracketing steady shots was difficult. I found a wall along the steps where I could place the camera to compose bracketed shots without any mis-alignment.

Even with 3 bracketed shots there were slight problems. At the edges of the hills there were fringing which could be noticed only after thorough investigation. For normal viewers, it may not be noticeable but people in landscape photography forums do notice such fine details. I was really annoyed seeing it. Eventually I wanted to correct it by some means. First I gave a try reducing chromatic aberration tool in GIMP which did not work out (or I did not use it properly?). The next option was to select the damaged part of image and reduce saturation values for those colors. The major dis-tractors were cyan and red. I chose Hue-Saturation tool and selected cyan and red and teared down the value to -100%. Bingo! all fringes are gone :-). I was really excited after seeing the result. Hope you will enjoy the image too! One more thing I learned was to bracket only 3 shots for HDR during broad daylight. I believe more bracketing is required only during magic hours. Please let me know if you have any alternate opinions.

So why do I struggle so much for HDR? As mentioned in earlier blogs, the natural world looks so beautiful in HDR. Our eyes have greater dynamic range while cameras do not have. The cameras which do have are highly expensive. Hence this sort of circus is required ;-). Once again I did the same mistake, not shooting RAW. I don't know when will I correct myself.

GAGANACHUKKI FALLS

Settings:

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Focus: Manual
Aperture: f/22 (of-course to get vast depth of field)
ISO: 100
Picture Style: Neutral (Thought of increasing sharpness later)
Metering: Center weighted average
No of images: 3 (initally 5)
Exposures: -2,0,+2 (initially -2.-1,0,+1,+2) (1/30s for middle one)
ML Firmware: v2.3
Softwares: Luminance HDR (Fatal operator), GIMP

Boundless Light

Nature always inspires me to take my camera, lens and finally the blogs :-). It is because of such beautiful setup by mother nature which inspired me to dwell into photography. As always been murmuring in blog posts, my main interests are in landscape and timelapse photography however nowadays I am also lured towards HDR and architecture photography. These were some of the HDR shots composed during my recent visit to Kaup beach. Nowadays I love composing HDR shots after I switched to RAW from JPEG. I even wish to capture normal shots in RAW but honestly hard disks are getting exhausted :-(. Consequently for single exposures, I shoot RAW which I find interesting.

One of my favorite hobby is to stare at the sky :D especially during monsoon season to understand the formation of clouds and the storm build ups. Others include watching those glorious rays of Sun sinking down the horizon during golden hour with vivid patterns. Consequently, whenever I travel to hometown, I don't miss a chance to visit Kaup beach or Kudremukh rainforests during monsoon season. While the seascape filled with yellow shines the lovely Kudremukh forests would be painted green with pristine water flowing along brimming streams and thundering waterfalls :-).

The day, there was beautiful golden hour Sun piercing through stratocumulous clouds illuminating the sky with dramatic patterns of orange-yellow colors. That tempted me to grab the HDR shots basically to have the land, sea, clouds and sky and sun exposed in image. The shots are blend of 5 RAW images with exposures from -2 to 2 (except for second one which is 7 [-3 to 3]). Since the SUN was less intense than usual, even shooting towards SUN with 5 expsoures were enough. Usually shooting towards SUN requires 7 exposures. The images were blended and tonemapped with Luminance HDR (Fatal operator) and final touch-up with dark table. For some images, beta value of fatal operator was reduced to expose the shadows well. For second image, I was just hoping for scooter boat to remain steady and fortunately it remained so :-). Later the mighty sea tides turned it 90 degrees towards right. By then, my HDR composition was completed :-). Especially I love the first two images :-). I can use them as wallpapers from now onwards with special tag as self composed ;-).

Boundless scattered light ;-)

Boundless light behind the rocks

Today's theme for Skywatch is boundless light. Now for title, after watching those glorious rays of Sun, this title flashed on to my mind. Boundless light with bountiful colors :D. It seems like the sky is spraying colorful light on earth :D. The SUN obviously has boundless light and energy. It is also star twinkling in distant world! Let our life be filled with bountiful of light amidst darkness. Even if darkness galore, lets make sure we find little light in there.

Finally hear one of beautiful Music from Mr.Gordon codenamed New World from US, "Boundless light". I describe him as musical genius. He was just 21 when he composed such an outstanding music :-). He is right example for enthusiasm and passion. His hard work and passion in musical instruments has drawn such magical talent in him at a tender age. His unique style of crafting uplifting music (especially a brief melody at end of music without bass) has elevated him to epitome of music.  Whenever new music roles out of his talent, he is champ! The melodious lead riffs, scintillating orchestral melody are his specials :D. They are absolutely stunning :-). I have to learn lot from this young guy's passion which helped him to achieve such musical loftiness. He has been one of my favorite music producers since introduction from "Rise Above". Even though I have not found like minded people who admire such music, I am inclined to this genre which are filled with boundless emotions and energy, despite the absence of vocal. It has been more than 3 years of journey into Uplifting trance music and chillout music for me and my interest towards it keeps elevating with introduction of such musical talents :-).

As far as this music, the emotions start at 1:50, later with boundless orchestral melody at 3:00, with outset of spectacular breakdown at 4:01 and finally the light arrives with blazing speed at 4:52 :-).

Enough said, hear it here!

New World : Boundless Light(Emotional mix):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y95CW5KnlaI

Also do not miss equally beautiful remix of the same by TouchStone:

New World - Boundless Light (Touchstone Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uLfMrIHzRI 

Finally if you wish to participate in skywatch theme and share with boundless world, create a blog post with a picture (self-owned) inclusive of sky and link your blogpost here (skyle). Note that text is not mandatory! Also do not forget to visit related posts from other member's too!

Sunset - Beautiful Life

Just before monsoon began, we went to see beautiful Kaup beach. We are not sure whether we could visit this place in next 3 months or so. The beach roaring with full enthusiasm. It was like the huge waves welcoming monsoon season. The roaring sound can be even heard far away till our house which is 5kms from beach. It was fearful as well as beautiful to watch roaring sea and high waves (which was like Tsunami waves :D).

This time I took tripod along with my camera to capture some wave movements with long exposure. I did some trial even with higher 'f' stops too! This was captured with f/22. I was really excited after seeing results :). That came out really well. Even my father appreciated ;). Photographers believe that the great shot we take is in our backyard. For me it was only 5kms from backyard ;). This was different sort of experiment I did for first time. The beach, lighthouse, rocks, sun all perfectly composed (boasting myself!). I was really thrilled with depth of field in the image. My favourite part was sun and sky! Hope you too will enjoy the image ;)

KAUP BEACH SUNSET

Whenever I see Sunset, I remember beautiful remix of Sunset - Beautiful Life by Vol Deeman. What a great masterpiece! This is the only link I found which has the music: https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=105511932800432

and not to forget the equally good original version of Sunset - Beautiful Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6flAL68ePMk

Do not miss both the musics, they are really fantastic

Settings:

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm Kit lens
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 18mm
Focus: Auto
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
Aperture: f/22
ISO: 100
White Balance: Auto
Picture Style: Landscape
Metering mode: Center Weighted Average
Tripod Used: Yes
Flash Used: No

Linked to Skywatch Friday

Sooryamoorthe Namosthute -- Salutation to Sun God

From trance music to carnatic classical music, I have been enjoying the two extremes of melody. I have been listening to trance music since I got introduced to Rank1-Airwave (original mix). The primary attraction in trance music is the melody and progression in between. Initially the music has only the bass involved, however you need to hear them full length if really want to enjoy. It does not mean all of them are good but there are people who create great music all the times like Andy-Blueman. Unfortunately Andy has left trance music way back but musical work he left is really amazing and eternal.

Coming back, the music I enjoy on Sunday morning is the Sooryamoorthe Namosthute, a music composed by Sri Muttuswamy Deekshitar in Sourashtra raaga in Sanskrit language. It is perfect for me on SUNday morning. The great part of Deekshitar composition is the intelligent use of name of Raaga in his compositions. Also his Sanskrit knowledge is unquestionable especially the grammatical approach. The abhayamba vibhakti kritis created out of specific vibhakti are simply marvelous.

From Sunset-Beautiful Life to Sooryamoorthe Namosthute, here is the picture taken 3 years back. The winter SUN is magnificent to watch and photographers love it a lot :-). The SUN shows off with vibrant colors sometimes and beautiful rays. There may be physics behind it but I am not aware of it properly. Hope you will enjoy the picture!

SOORYAMOORTHE NAMOSTHUTE

If you are fan of carnatic classical music, do hear the music here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZjgS82oEMY

It is wonderful to hear in slow pace (Vilamba kaala).

I found one more great remix of Sunset-Beautiful Life by Innes Erthser. Do hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtx18zsD6wk

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Skywatch Friday - The Horizon

This picture was taken around 2 years back during our casual visit to Malpe Beach near Udupi. This is not reflections of winter Sun but peak summer Sun (around April). The dark spots you see at far end are small islands nearby Malpe Beach. There is also a light house in that area. Earlier, we could visit that place now authorities do not permit. We can only visit Tonsepar (St.Mary's island). This was just random shot which was bit under-exposed. The under exposing of the image sometimes creates great effect as one below. Also the picture was taken during golden hour. During the time frame Sun shows off with superb colors with the help of atmosphere. Apart from colors and reflections, I love the horizon too and hence the title ;-). Hope you enjoy the image.

Golden Hour at malpe beach!

Thinking of Horizon, I remember beautiful music by SoundLift and Andy Blueman "The Horizonte". Both are uplifting musics. The magic of Andy and SoundLift is the intelligent blending of orchestral music and synthesizers. Of the two, SoundLift's version has slight edge over Andy Blueman's work in my opinion. Hear and enjoy the musics if you wish

1) SoundLift - Horizonte (Andy Blueman Intro mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfof2N3WEC8

2) SoundLift - Horizonte (SoundLift's Original mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHIMBq2_Big

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Deepavali gift to myself

This deepavali I gifted a weird stuff [relatively ;)] to myself. It is quite unusual too. So what was it? I was scratching my head so much from many days that why my camera does not see like my eye. After so much R&D around net, I finally realized that I need a 50mm lens :D. The search was ON. First 50mm/f1.2 IS USM lens. I was shocked at its price and immediately went to 50mm/f1.4 IS USM lens. Its cost was also very high :(. The only option was 50mm/f1.8 EF II lens. It was relatively cheap than rest two. However the major drawback is no IS :(. The lack of IS could be felt sometimes. Nevertheless it is quite good for a beginner though. So I tested some captures and videos in my hometown and it came quite nice. I could achieve very nice shallow depth of field. The best thing about the lens is that it can maintain f/1.8 even at high shutter speeds. At nights it can grab more light so that you can capture very good image. I also captured some videos+images in beach side. I know it is not meant for landscape but still wanted to have a try ;). Overall it is good buy for money.

So here is the compilation of images and videos I took in my 50mm lens. All of them [Images+Videos] were taken in Manual Mode with lens in Manual Focus.


As every-time please comment on video so that I can improve further.

Music: Rank 1 - Airwave (Aaron static 2009 remix)

Update: I realized later that my realization was wrong :(. For a crop sensor DSLR, you need 35mm to mimic eye's 50mm focal length. Nevertheless, this lens is great lens in your kitty (few portraits have come really well). Recently I gifted photoframe of my parents and they were excited to receive the gift :). What do you need in the world than the happiness on face of parents! Also my father was convinced on investing few bucks on DSLR :D

Skywatch Friday - Pictures from Hoysala Empire

Here I shared my travel to Belur and Halebeedu and related short timelapse from my journey. Today I am sharing few HDR from same places. The weather was hazy that day but was able to grab few HDRs despite that. I forgot my CPL filter too :-(. Nevertheless, some of them turned out to be quite good! Following are streak of HDR images from Belur and Halebeedu. The images were bracketed in Luminance HDR with final editing with DarkTable. Most of them are 5 exposures while few of them constitute 7 exposures. This time I did some juggling with tone and luminance curves too in dark table! I am still not sure as how to anti-ghost in luminance HDR. May be few layering techniques in GIMP should help; Never tried though. I will share once I experiment on the same. Hope you enjoy the images! Comments are critiques are always welcome.

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HALE-BEEDU PICTURES

BELUR PICTURES

Skywatch Friday - Memories

Early morning at 5:45AM, the bus dumped me at Kaup highway station on voting day. It usually arrives around 7AM however this time it made it early! May be driver was in hurry to exercise his right to vote  ;-). Couple of minutes later, I reached my village with welcome from humid weather. As you stand, it started out of sweat all along body. I can name it as sweatfall ;-). After savoring tasty early morning tea, I went out to play with my nephew with his new cycle :-). Being longer in length, I could step onto it and fortunately beared my weight too :D.

For a brief period, he parked the cycle on one of the paddy field nearby. At once, I just looked at cycle as normal object however later on my mind wandered into those childhood days when we used to cycle everyday without fail. We were peddling around 15-20kms everyday all along the rural landscapes. Oh yes, I was lucky to be stayed in rural areas which provides enormous room for cycling and excursion. TV was of less priority and no irritating summer camps. We were on our own enjoying each moment of joy. All through the day, we played beating the scorching orange balloon and early evening it was time for cycling :-).

Back to present! I took some HDR shots of parked cycle on field with coconut trees in backdrop. The gloomy weather had covered skies with clouds (rather thick ones) which compelled me to compose bracketed shots to give bicycle a Halloween look :D. Later on nephew started cycling again and no respite from heat as clouds faded away teasing the village :-(.

Despite peddling for a longer duration, my nephew never seemed to be tired. That's the energy of kids :-). He could easily cycle all around the place without fear due to the fact it was rural area and deprived of traffic heck. At a moment, he fell down negotiating a narrow pass which was new challenge for him. The injury did not deter him from proceeding further. After being persistent for many trials, he finally coasted along the narrow pass with ease. He paused the ride for a while, approached me fervently and shared his joy and continued cycling along same path for minimum of 50 rounds :-). Oh God, that smile, that enthusiasm of kids is just mind blowing :-). I was astonished and at the same time exhilarated by his persistence and expansiveness. I did not forget him to compliment too!

It's not only my nephew but rather characteristics of most kids. Even I have fallen down during early days of cycling and it never stopped my continuity! Yes, the kids teach us indirectly the importance of persistence. Not to miss, even small progress fills them with joy. They feel victorious even if they cross small hurdle and move on to next level. The earlier victory provides them positive bias to combat next levels with confidence. In similar way, rather than concentrating on final goal, we have to enjoy every moment of successful progress. It is such tiny progresses which leads us to path of victory. Never under-estimate the progress however small it feels like. Even if nobody honors it, make sure to honor yourself. It does not mean to get into your head rather view them as confidence booster. Even my nephew honored himself with two pieces of laddus ;-). On similar way, honor yourself with small gift (may be even a dose of churmuri :D). Always be humble in life and learn from kids to elders. Never rate a person based on his age but on his values. Accept that you cannot be right always (and no one are) and respect people who strive to correct you. My father always says this quote "Some lessons in life is learnt from selfexperiences but do not miss an opportunity to learn from other people's experiences. It enables you to create lesser mistakes"

Just a look at cycle created adrenaline of thoughts in my mind. Whatever is expressed is not universal however I write them down to educate myself and engrave those qualities to certain extent. The above mentioned thoughts may be useful to someone or may be just a rambling for few. It is not to educate anyone and I have not grown to an extent of providing life advices ;-). Early in evening, he crosses same path repeatedly to make sure he never gets it wrong!

Music time! Enjoy the music "Memories" by Ronny K. vs Ziki and its remix by New World and cherish your childhood days. The best, as always is from New World and there is magical talent in him. I have deep respect for his music and he never disappoints his fans like me during every new release. I always feel mesmerized by his music and his brilliance of tuning those strings to theme of music! Being in US, he could have been easily lured towards pop/jazz/rock music. However, inspired by Andy Blueman, he finally ended up in Uplifting trance which can deliver true emotions :-). His interest in uplifting music has created masterpieces every-time (especially the 'Outreach' which is musical marvel). Despite being younger than me, I strive to learn lot from his hard work, persistence and passion. I always feel amazed by such Uplifting trance music producers. Despite having great talent they do not earn patronage like rock bands or Bollywood musicians. Still they persist to produce such music since it makes them happy :-).

Ronny K. vs Ziki - Memories (Original mix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zPeoXWt38k
Ronny K. vs Ziki - Memories (New World Remix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiD5J9xvS1c

Share your memories with pictures at skywatch page.

Skywatch Friday - A Beautiful Tomorrow

March 2014,

Hot summer day, wanted to visit some beach to inhale breeze from the ocean. They are natural tranquilizers and mood bringers. This time, I wanted to visit Maravanthe Beach near Kundapur. I had to bank upon the public transport for my plan. I ended up catching 3 buses for mere 70kms :-(. My plan was primarily for photoshoot and rest for rejoicing.

The expansive sea shore of Maravanthe does not fail lure anyone in my humble opinion. It has a partner along the other side of the highway which is Souparnika River :-). Driving along this sea shoreline is one of the wonderful experiences of lifetime especially during monsoon season during which place looks feary. Sometimes, the waves strike highway during peak monsoon season. During monsoon season, both river and sea brims and it feels like sea wants to take revenge against the river for not merging here. However the river keeps teasing the sea everytime :-). Emotions apart, here are some of the HDR+normal shots composed during my visit. Hope you enjoy the same.

Today's theme for skywatch is "A Beautiful Tomorrow" with skies from Maravanthe Beach. As the sun slides down the horizon during last day Hindu calendar year, he will shine us for a new beautiful next day. I watched the sinking SUN hoping for "A beautiful Tomorrow". Whatever happens at this moment, be happy and enjoy the small things in life and hope for A Beautiful Tomorrow everyday :-). Be it sunrise, sunshine, sunset, monsoon clouds & rains, summer breeze along sea shore, western ghats, sea tides etc.. etc.. rejoice every moment of nature which provides immense bliss to our souls.

Finally hear one of perfect musical melody from Imperfection "A Beautiful Tomorrow". What a work by imperfection absolutely gorgeous melody :-)

For me life is like Uplifting Trance music :D. Many people feel it to be esoteric with sequence of monotonic beats. Some people have even criticized me as show-off listening to such music. But who cares! Initially the sounds seems to be harsh, lacking in melody, naive and somewhat boring. You feel like switching off the music at very much early stage. However actual rythm starts past 2 minutes in most of cases during which many instruments line up and make up for symphonic chords. Once the rythm outsets, you never feel like tuning off ;-). The music at its peak during the heart of breakdown and also breakdown :-) and the melody prolongs. The last part again seems to boring however the prior influence of harmonic tunes makes it interesting too :D.

Even our life can be analogous to above case. Initially tough, boring and feel like cursing ourselves. Only those people who have patience to hear past 2 minutes will hear the actual melody and enjoy life and this symphony continues :-). Few wicked thoughts may arise as if we can skip initial part and seek past 2 mins in music player. Remember life is like radio station ;-) you cannot seek the way you want as in music player ;-). Either you have to switch off or tune into other stations or have patience to listen to entire song :-). Phew man.. enough of fable :D. Its time to hear beautiful music. Hope you listen past 2 mins and you have an option of seeking to position you want ;-)

Imperfection - A Beautiful Tomorrow: http://vbox7.com/play:b0c856f639

I did pull up a video for one of monsoon videos compiled last year here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ce2S3AGBpE

If you wish to participate in weekly skywatch theme, do link your blog comprising of a picture with sky here. Do not miss to show patronage to other's work and make their day beautiful.

Twilight magic at Maravanthe Beach

Few months back, I was browsing through my redundant hard drive where I backup my pictures. There are humongous amount of pictures and the hard drive is almost full. Will need to buy a new one. The collection had begun way back around 4 years and now it is almost impossible to track where is what :-). My main interests were the old pictures taken way back when I started to shoot some basic stuffs. Even now I am amateur photographer and there is long way to go.

My eye peeped into the folder of Maravanthe beach. I saw this photo and wanted to share. Last year, during our return journey from Murudeshwar, colorful twilight covered Maravanthe beach skies with vivid patterns, near Kundapur. Who does not know about Maravanthe beach ;-). The natural beauty where Souparnika river teases Arabian sea in between highway, is one of the wonders of nature. Candid travelers commuting from Kundapur to Bhatkal will have instant surprise watching this combination of river and sea :D and as expected lots of people exclaim too ;-). So here is the picture taken during the twilight time when sky was showing up with bright orange colors with amazing pattern. Hope you will enjoy the picture ;-).

What's special with this picture? There were people which was removed using GIMP re-synthesizer plug-in :-). Do you see anymore ;-).

PATTERNS IN SKY!

After few minutes, the sky turned full pink :-) and here is picture. I have shared this in Murudeshwar blog and re-visiting again. I was really lucky to be there when sky showed up with dramatic patterns. The setting was around f/4 and 1/30s I believe for both pictures. f/4 was chosen mainly to grab more light into sensor. The only regret was not capturing timelapse. The sky turning from orange to red and eventually pattern fading away, would have been a great timelapse. Nevertheless, I am happy with whatever results I achieved.

PINKISH SKY ;-)

Also, I shot video too which I am re-sharing.

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Single lens challenge (Landscape with 50mm lens)

09 August 2013

Recently in one of the photography blogs, there was a mention to voluntarily challenge ourselves with single lens in hand. This is basically to understand the significance of each lens you own. This was really different sort of trial. During my visit to hometown, I decided to take up such task. I chose 50mm lens for landscape :-). Generally landscapes are shot in less focal length (18mm or below). I wanted to try some landscapes with 50mm lens and also 50mm was relatively less utilized lens in my kitty. Hence I decided to work out with 50mm lens.

After mounting the lens, I headed towards the paddy fields. Even this time there was not much rain also bright SUN showed up many times. This turned out to be boon for me due to which I could visit Hanumangundi waterfalls. In contrary to that, it was raining heavily in Western ghats :-). However due to sunny weather at hometown, I could convince mother to visit waterfalls :D.

Coming back, I started off with few flowers. The backlit SUN exposed nice colors of flowers. Later I shot some pictures of streams too!

BUNCH OF FLOWERS

SOME FLOWER

THE WALK PATH

HIBISCUS

Next is paddy fields. Now after seeing that peacock, I felt like having tele-lens :-) but I remembered my intention before lamenting further. Good thing was, the peacock did not fly even at this distance. Usually they fly away by looking at humans from distance itself. May be this peacock knew that I did not have tele lens and stood calm :-).  These are the walk paths we used to travel along during childhood days while going to school. I still remember those days when heavy rains would unify both wells and paddy fields. It was difficult to wade through this path during those days and differentiate between well and paddy field. But still we used to manage very well and never crib ;-)

PEACOCK AT A DISTANCE

THE MONSOON STREAM

PADDY SAPLINGS

ARRAY OF GRASS

MONOLITH CLOUD

This one is one major streams in our village. There was good amount of water flowing. It originates from one of hillocks nearby. The picture was taken standing on rock surface. The surface was too much slippery too! The main problem with nifty-fifty lens is that there is no image stabilization. I forgot to carry tripod too :(. There was good possibility of milky way shot if I had carried tripod with me.

STREAM GUSH

SOME ABSTRACT LANDSCAPE ;-)

THE STREAM PATH

The conclusion is that, 50mm lens is generally good for abstract landscapes and vegetations. However, the full landscapes can be only felt using lower focal length lenses. Whatever may be the conclusion, I was happy with some of the results except that I did not have zoom lens to capture peacock!

Long back I had misconception that 50mm lens mimics eye's focal length. That's not true for crop sensor cameras like mine. It applies only to full frame cameras. Whereas these lenses produce an effective focal length of 80mm in crop sensor cameras like mine. So you basically need 35mm lens to mimic eye and not 50mm if you are owning crop sensor DSLR :(

Feedbacks and critiques are always welcome.

HDR of Kunigal Bypass

Travelers commuting towards Mangalore, understand the importance of Kunigal Bypass which saves almost 20 minutes compared to commuting inside town. As we travel towards Mangalore, we enjoy the glorious landscape of Kunigal Bypass which is only 2yrs old. I feel like taking so many snaps. Due to some or the other obstacles (usual excuses!), the plans had to be dropped. This time on our return journey from Markonahalli Dam, we stopped at Kunigal Bypass for some time to enjoy the landscape. The puddle after rain, snaky national highway 75, beautiful landscape and monsoon clouds tempted me to grab a HDR shot. The problem with normal images are either sky will be exposed or the land. If we need both of them in the frame, only option is HDR. I somehow became fan of HDR nowadays. Although not many of them are successful, I am happy with successfully composed HDRs. The natural world can only be enjoyed with HDR! However cameras cannot match human eye. Hence we have to grab bracketed shots to compose an equivalent.

Here is HDR composed using Luminance HDR of Kunigal bypass. I am really happy after seeing the results. The bracketed shots were composed using magical open-source  Magic Lantern firmware for canon EOS DSLRs. What a great add-on it is! It automates everything once adjustments are done. The Fatal operator did again very good job in Luminance HDR. Some saturation and alpha values were adjusted to tone-map the image. Later GIMP was used for color correction and luminance adjustments. Hope you will enjoy the image too! I should have shot images in RAW but could not remember :(

KUNIGAL BYPASS ALONG NATIONAL HIGHWAY - 75

Settings:

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Focus: Manual
Aperture: f/13
ISO: 100
Picture Style: Landscape
Metering: Center weighted average
No of images: 3
Exposures: -2,0,+2
ML firmware version: v2.3
Softwares: Luminance HDR (Fatal operator), GIMP