New Series on

Click this link to see the images.

It is for some time since I have been doing various experiments with blurs and its role in artistic expressions. I have tried to analyze quality of different blurs – blur due to controlled de-focus, blurs caused by software filters like gaussian blur, blurs which are results of applying a vaseline on lens/filters, blurs due to narrow extension tubes on very wide angle lenses like 20mm etc. Interestingly all have different (artistic) qualities ! May be I will defer the comparative analysis to another blog post in future. Let me share some of my understanding of blur in this blog.
 

Appreciation of image in my understanding has two parts – first, deciphering (seeing) the pixels and then connecting them with our experience in life.Our eyes and brain are very active in the first part to decipher the image and its beauty while during the second part mind (another part in the human brain probably) tries to relate the image to our past learning and experiences in life. Personally I believe only a few images have this latter characteristic of being able to connect with the rich experience of life. I also believe an image will be remembered for long if it stimulates thoughts beyond the image itself – that is what happens in the second phase.
 

Now, what is that discussion to do with blur and sharp ? It has a role. Eyes spend lots of time deciphering sharp details in an image for long. If it gets stuck for long the second phase may never take place hence affecting the overall impact of the image itself. For example look at the dew drops image below (you may click on these images to see them larger). The eyes will have tendency to go on and on looking at those dew drops. Finally the visual process ends there. It fails to stimulate anything beyond that. The effective hand off from the image to open thoughts does not happen in this case.
 

Compare that to the image at the top. Thanks to no detail the first phase of deciphering the image ends quickly. The lack of details makes my mind wonder about the bird in space, about the black out of focus grass region, about the empty white space etc. While thinking all these the mind is loosely connected with eyes while other thoughts freely run in the mind. In a related note just a blurred image won’t help. The image should have a carefully designed content to stimulate open thoughts.

The long awaited trip to Velvadhar Blackbuck Sanctuary and Greater Runn of Kutch (GRK) in Gujarat, India is finally over. We spent 5 days at Velavadar and then 6 days at GRK. We also spent a day at Khadir island in GRK to make some images of Flamingos. It is an amazing place and one would need a month to do some justice to that place in terms of photography.

While every place offered lots of opportunities making images was very tough. Root cause of the problem is my desire to create new visuals. While the places I visited offered opportunities to photograph different bird/mammal species between a non-ideal image of a wolf and a unique image of a cattle egret I happily settled down for the latter.

Here are a few images from the trip I processed so far which gave me some satisfaction. If you see cropped head, cut beaks, cut body, unfocussed subjects etc you can safely assume they all are by design My focus is not documentation but art and creativity.

Hope you will enjoy some of them. Plan to add more images in coming days..

Below is the link to the images !

Wild Scapes from Velavadar & Greater Runn of Kutch (GRK)

I have been doing nature photography for about 17 years now. One of the secret behind doing good work is showing only good work
Large waste basket is very essential. I have been archiving some of the images which I liked during last several years into a gallery named
personal favorites. I just realized today it touched 1000 images (roughly about 5 images a month – that may be a lot, probably I was very liberal
during earlier years)

Personal Favourites Gallery

It is interesting see how our tastes change over time during our journey of nature photography..

When we have ‘nothing’ to photograph we get more creative and tend to make more satisfying images. Here is a small collection of images made from such a situation. Focus in these images is play of light and shade in the background. I tried to weave the light and shade with a dragonfly in these compositions.

Light and Shade – Perspectives of a Dragonfly

A little new article about my experience of making images of nature in color !

Expressing in Color

I don’t do much of landscape photography for two reasons – first, after seeing large landscape prints made using 4×5 and larger large format slides I don’t think my current 12 mega pixel slr can do enough justice to landscape photography (considering the potential for making large prints). I bought a large format 4×5 camera too late – we don’t have reliable E-6 processing house any more here in my part of the world. Second reason being, landscape photography is very tough for me. Grand “beautiful” landscapes refuse to stay in my mind for long. Often grand scapes overpowers me and does not let me think in the field – I often get into faithful reproduction mode which results in copies of nature which does not stay in my mind for long. Long story short – it is tough for me.

Last week end I went out to make some images of Bharachukki water falls. Though the scene was nothing less than spectacular the small format just could not do any justice to what the nature has to offer. Only very large prints can do some justice but then 12megapixel digital SLR is just not enough to make a large prints (>20×30 in) having fine fine details. If I can’t make a sharp fine image can I make blurred ones ? Is it necessary to have everything from photographer’s foot to horizon being rendered tack sharp in landscape photography ? In above images I tried emphasizing a small portion of the frame and keeping everything else blurred. You may click on them to see it much larger. It looked very different and I kind of liked them. Probably this will let me do a large prints too since blur can be better handled in print than fine details !!

Here goes my new article on -

Nature Photography – Art and Natural History – Ethical Conflicts

Your views are welcome.

Life has been hectic these days. Have not had time to process my Kaziranga images so far. Here goes some of them.

Please note Google Chrome seem to ignore attached ICC profile on Mac. Colors may appear too saturated. Mozilla/Safari seem to work fine on Mac.

Here is the link to some of the images –

KAZIRANGA NATIONAL PARK, INDIA – GLIMPSES FROM THE GRASSLAND

I have been doing nature photography for more than a decade now and my focus mostly has been on portraying nature in creative and artistic ways. Interestingly the concept of what is art to me has changed over time. Here is an account on how it changed over a decade.

In Search of Art in Nature Photography

Your thoughts are welcome – what you consider work of art in nature photography ?

Ranganathittu bird sanctuary is bubbling with activities now. Below is the link to a few glimpses from my trip last week.

Glimses from Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary

Spent 10 days touring Western Ghats regions during last week of Dec. Here are some images from the trip.

Western Ghats – Glimpses from Winter Visit

Just returned from a week long vacation to Western Ghats regions. Cold beautiful winter morning offered some interesting photo opportunities. Here are a series of images of a dragonfly trying to escape out of a spider web.

Dragonfly and Spider

A close relative of mine died last night. He was 82 and was suffering from heart ailment for more than a decade. I think his sheer confidence helped him live that long in spite of severity of the problems he had.

I was born and brought up in their house and spent good amount of my childhood days at their house. When I heard the news of his death I was able to keep my cool without really feeling sad. Frames of good old days and his personality rolled in front of my closed eyes.

By birth comes the death. Of late I have been thinking about what I would like to call “emotional debts”. The debts that are not related to money but related to human relations and emotions. When a near and dear one dies, beyond difficult days ahead due dependency issues for some, the amount of sadness that we will have is proportional to the relational or emotional debts that we have with the person who died. By emotional or relational debts I mean debts of nature “I should not done like that” or “I should have behaved better” or things of those nature. I think conscious effort in keeping the balance sheet clean will help us lead normal days without guilty feeling for years to come. One thing I think will help is to close our eyes and assume the scenario of the void created by demise of a near and dear one including ourselves and then think of the “debts” we have with them. The death as such may not scare us much (yes we will have some unfinished agendas which we would have liked to complete) but thinking of the void that we will leave and the relational debt is worrisome. Having entered operation theatre couple of times in life (fortunately with not life threating disease) so far all strange thoughts come to mind during that instant. It vividly showed my emotional or relational debts that I have with my wife, son,parents and so on. We will never see them in normal day-to-day scenario.

While some may say this is a solved problem and the solution is to leave everything and going to forest for meditation personally I don’t subscribe to that philosophy and would like to abide by the laws of the mother nature.