Vikram Chadaga’s | Blog

We have been running around Turahalli Forest (Off Kanakapura road, Bangalore South) for a couple of weeks now, and I always wanted to do night photography at that place for obvious reasons:

My friend Varun and I finished work early today and decided to head out. We first wanted to capture the sunset, but by the time we reached the place it was dark. So we deiced do a small night trek and climbed the hill. The view from top is fabulus.

Last but not the least, I wanted to click the start streak, so I did a 5 min exposure.

The rock and the trees are very clear in the picture. It was pitch dark. We can see a small start streak. We had to head back so I had to stop the camera. One of these days, I want to try this again for may be 3 hours or so

I have always been a big fan of Adobe Photoshop. More I use the tool more I learn. In digital photography post processing an image is very important. I never used to like post processing because I used to think that post processing is cheating in photography :D. But as time goes by, I see the importance of post processing an image.

Here is an image I clicked during “Sur Taal” event. Cry is known for its yellow, and I found the yellow too dull. So I decided to do some magic using photoshop.

The main steps I used for this was carefully use the “Magic Wand” tool to select the yellow. This is the most painful process. Sometimes the Magic Wand doesn’t do a good job, at those times we have to use the “Regular Marquee tool” to add/remove the selection.

After we have chosen the yellow, I used the “Curves and edited the curves as required.

Results:

I’m sure a lot of people will not like the idea of post processing the colors. But my say to it is, with digital cameras making the cost per click almost free, we don’t spend too much time with adjusting the lights. Moreover when we know that we can fix the digital photo later it makes it even better to focus more the the subject than spend a lot of time on lights.

Anyways we know that there is always photoshop to save our day!

Date: February 3rd 2008

I reached Regensburg, Germany. Couldn’t believe that my hotel was right next to the river Donau.

I start walking around next to the river, clicked some pictures on the way.

I reached a bridge where I could see the city church along with the river.

I couldn’t help getting the boat out of my focus as it was too close and the bridge railings was too high. But as as I was trying out more snaps, I notices that the boat was towing a car!!! This was a sight I had never seen so I clicked along!

Poor guy I wonder how much he would have to pay for that! After that I got a nice view of the sky. It was dusk and the sky was deep blue!

Click here to see all snaps of Regensburg, Germany.

I finally bought the Canon EF 17-40mm F4.0 L Lens.

I must say I’m in love with canon’s “L” lens. Saturday evening my friend Sachin and I went to the Stoney Creek Metro park.

Here are a few photos from my new lens:

This snap was just a few minutes before the sunset.

View of the lake:

View of the sky:

Just after the sunset:

More colours:

Finally on the way back clicked the view of a freeway:

Overall I’m very impressed with the new lens. This is my second L lens. I must say the Canon “L” lenses ROCK!!!