Nature Photography | Creative & Artistic

www.naturetales.net (NTN) – Forum for Nature Stories

Ganesh H Shankar — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:37:51 +0000

We (NTN Team) have been working on a non-commercial forum exclusively dedicated for telling stories of nature. We are glad to let you know that we have just launched it !!

Visit – Nature Stories Forum (NTN)

Macro Landscapes – When infinity measures an inch

ganesh — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:32:11 +0000

For last few weeks I have been experimenting with “macro landscapes” or “micro landscapes” – essentially macro photography with an attempt to show the context around the main macro subject (often we forget that in macro photography). I have experimented with combination of extension tubes, close up filters, flashes, graduated ND filters etc to achieve some of these perspectievs. The traditional challenge of working distance gets amplified here with infinity measuring an inch or two and extreme narrow dept-of-field. Here are some of the perspectives from these experiments.

A few more here (click of these these above and below images to see them larger, better)

Nature Photographer – An Identity Crisis ?

ganesh — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 14:39:54 +0000

Have you ever seen reaction of artistists (who paint) towards a beautiful image of a landscape or a bird or an animal ? a nature photograph in general ?

Often, at best it is a nice yawn ! (BTW, I write this from my own experience seeking a feed back from an artist). As medium of expression these two can’t be compared. Art revolves a lot around individual’s creativity, expression and visions while nature photography often revolves (unfortunately) around technology, right time in right place and faithful reproduction etc. I guess this latter attribute of “nature as is” makes it un-interesting for artists who want to see some uniqueness, creation and individuality which is a real challenge in nature photography thanks to the very medium of expression.

Have you ever seen reaction of biologists or naturalists towards a beautiful portrait of bird or an animal ?

Often it is “so what” kind of expressions, at best a “good one”. Simple portraits are boring to them who spend their life researching in jungles. They would love to see unique behaviours not observed earlier or discover/record new life forms, conservation issues etc – not yet another “beautiful portrait of a kingfisher”.

So most of the nature photography that we see today is neither accepted by artistists community as work of art or by naturalists or field biologists as something useful to the field of natural history or field biology. Where do most of the images of nature that we make belong then ? I think it belongs only to us as “nature photographers” !! Who is a nature photographer ? What is his purpose in life ? I am not talking about those who make living from it. Most of the nature photographers don’t make living out of it. Most of the them are passionate week end warriors who don’t mind spending $$$$ on 500mm/600mm F4 lenses and trips to exotic places to make images.

Can/Can’t the purpose of nature photography be just freezing some beautiful moments in nature ? Without having to offer something of our own ? Can/Can’t it be just “see, enjoy, share and probably get some kudos” ? Is it acceptable to us as nature photographers that most of our work neither belongs to world of art nor belong to the world of natural history ? Should we stop feeling good or proud if someone calls our work “artistic” ?

While each of these questions can be debated till death the question remains

Who are we ?

We are not artists, we not naturalists, we are not field biologists – probably a separate confused tribe named “nature photogaphers” ? May not be bad as is but worth realizing where we stand ? May be, may not be ? May be worth an introspection ?

Panoramas – Corbett National Park

ganesh — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:36:11 +0000

Life has been hectic these days and never had time to process my Corbett National Park images. Here goes the second installment (first one being – Corbet in Monotones shared below.) Nothing can do justice to natural beauty of Corbett (Dhikala to be specific). Here is an attempt at seeing this magical place and some panoramas. Hope you will enjoy seeing some of these below -

Panoramas – Corbett National Park, India

Monsoon Mood

ganesh — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 09:16:29 +0000

It is more than one and half months since I opened my camera bag – thanks to some week end work I am busy with. Yesterday morning I decided to visit my favourite place TG Halli to portray some monsoon mood. It was a cloudy moody morning – not sure how I wanted to translate that into pixels. I did some new experiments and tried to portray the moody clouds using an empty snail shell in the foreground. I tried to precisely control the depth of field and sharpness (blurness rather) to give a specific mood to the image. Made a couple of very satisyfying images after a long time. You may click the images to see them in larger size on my website or visit this link.

Domain names in co.in – naturephotography.co.in ..

ganesh — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:18:42 +0000

An year back I found some interesting domain names were available in co.in. I was interested in

naturephotography.co.in
wildlifephotography.co.in
naturephotographer.co.in

Just before I made a decision to buy the first two someone already registered them. An year later I found that(last week) they are available again I bought all the three above. As of now I am pointing all of them to my web site – naturelyrics.com ! In future I may have a better use for them. May be I can present naturephotography.co.in to my son in case he wants to take up nature photography as a serious hobby/profession.

Corbet National Park in Monotones

ganesh — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:33:36 +0000

I made a visit to my favourite place Corbet National Park, India and returned two weeks back. Never had time to process images. I had black and white images in my mind this time and tried some experiments – most of the blurs/tones/softness/grains/extreme contrasts/muted tones are all intentional in these images – not sure whether it touches your senses though. Here are a few B&W white perspectives from Corbet. Yet to process lots of images (no time) but here goes the first installment of 30+ images…

Corbet National Park in Monotones.

More later…

Another image in IUCN Species of the Day page

ganesh — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:33:01 +0000

I wrote this blog some time ago. IUCN picked up another image for mine for Species of the Day today. The actual IUCN page is here. The larger version of it in my site here..

DoF Chart – from 12mm to 24mm

ganesh — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:07:19 +0000

Recently when I was photographying sloth bears at Daroji badly needed hyperfocal distance chart for different focal lengths ranging from 12mm to 24mm at different f-stops. While depth-of-preview button gives nice visual feedback of depth I often ended up wanting more dof when I open see the image at its actual size on screen and in print. Though there are nice DoF calculators I felt it is desirable to have a short printed chart which covered my entire focal range (12-24mm) in a single handy chart. So I made this small chart which covers focal lengths from 12mm to 24mm (for 1.5x croped body). Please feel to print a copy for your personal use – may be useful for landscape work too. DoF numbers will be very slightly higher for those bodies with 1.6x crop factor.

DoF Chart from 12mm to 24mm (for 1.5x crop sensor)

Ram and Talking Stone

ganesh — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 05:50:38 +0000

Box

These days I am scared about home work ! My little son in 3rd standard comes home often with complex home work to be completed – guess what, I don’t qualify to do justice to some of them. The recent one made me thinking a lot. “I need to write a my own story – can you help ?” he asked. Good he wanted my support in finding the right Hindi words (he knows I can find them on net) and not in arriving at the story. For a moment I started thinking about making “my own story”. Alas, I just could not think of a “new” story. All my attempts were leaning towards either some real life experiences (so not genuinely “new”) or some variations of Akbar-Birbal/Panchatantra/Tenali Rama etc. Looks like the “creative instict” is dead a few decades ago ? A few minutes later my little one said, “ok, I have my story and need your help in drafting it in Hindi” – what a relief !

I was keen to know what the “new” story was. Though it looked quite simple it had a subtle learning for me. The story being – While going to school Ram falls down and gets injured due to a stone. It wasn’t an ordinary stone but it had some supernatural powers. Suddenly he hears stone talking to him and consoling him. Stone asks Ram why he looks so dull. Ram says he comes last in foot ball play and everyone laughs at him. Stone blesses him which makes Ram the best foot ball player in the school.

What is the learning for me here ?

The ease with which these little minds give life and personalities to stones !!

Can we do that ? I certainly find it very very difficult. Not only stones stopped talking our mind long back there are several other thick masks in front of our mind today which seem to seriously limit our abilities for creative thinking, creative expressions or creative image making.

Wave

Not only kids can “create” original stories, they seem to geneuinely “create” new images. I am just using my son’s earlier “creations” here for illustration but I am sure every kid has this ability. In the Box image above bright graphic color qualities seem to be part of their mind. Mixing dimensions (3d vs. 2d) is a non-issue !! They seem to have amazing observation capabilities – as evident in usage of colors in the “Wave” image below. Again, shape of the waves and laws of physics is a non-issue !!

When did we last not worried about aligning in the horizon or water level in our images to perfectly and scientifically make the “right” image ?

These images above to me are really original and creative – needless to say they portray innocence too.

Compared to above images this one below is made by creativity starved yours truly !

Scientifically Perfect

What is that I “made” here beyond capability of my 600mmf4 lens to blur the background and faithfully portray just the bird ? The years of “learning” planted firm barriers in my mind which prevents me from even having creative thoughts coming to mind. Over the years it appears we want to “see” things in some way and unfortunately in those ways only ! If this being the case how can I make “my own story” ?

How can I make my own images ?

Wish the answer was easy..