Visit to Bannerghatta National Park

After a long period of hibernation, couple of week back I finally decided to head to some place during the weekend for a photo shoot, and this time it was Bannerghatta National park.

First something about Bannerghatta park. Bannerghatta National Park is situated 22 km south of Bangalore, Karnataka, India. The journey to the park takes nearly one and a half hours from Bangalore. This hilly place is the home for one of the richest natural, zoological reserves. The zoological park makes this a major tourist attraction of Bangalore. (courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannerghatta_National_Park)

I started off at round 7.30 AM as the plan was to reach the park at 9 AM i.e when the park opens, hoping that in the early period there will be less crowd which would allow me to take photos leisurely without much disturbance. Even before I left I had some shots in mind which I wanted to take. I especially wanted to take some really good shots of butterfly s in the Butterfly park. So as planed I reached the park at around 9 AM and as expected there were hardly any people around.

This time I was equipped with my 55-200mm lens and Sigma 150mm macro lens. With 55-200 mm lens attached to my camera I headed to the crocodile/cayman section of the zoo as I wanted to get some frame filling shots of crocs. Unfortunately it was very dull and cloudy day and the crocs had not yet come out from water for basking. So I moved on and was roaming around randomly.

Soon I came across the section where peacocks were kept. There were around 5 peacocks and same number of peahens and the peacocks were busy wooing their female counter parts. The male peacock was flaring out its feathers to get the female's attention, and boy, it was a wonderful sight. I took several horizontal and vertical shots to capture the beauty of our national bird. I spent around 20 minutes there and was really happy to get some good shots early on. Here are couple of them

Then I moved on to the reptiles section. The snakes were too far from reach of my lens to get a frame filling shot, however the Star Tortoise was within the reach so I took couple of shots. By this time I had also changed my lens to sigma 150mm macro as I had spotted lot of spiders around and wanted to take closeup shots of them. One of the spider (1st one) is called Orb Spider.

After roaming around for some time I spotted a small lizard/gecko on a rock. I am not sure about the name of this species. I think its a Rock Gecko. As the rock was high enough, I was able to get some eye level shots of the reptile. This is one of my favourite shot. I loved the way this reptile camouflaged with its surroundings. At a first glance it is difficult to distinguish it from the rock.

By this time the sun was high and my legs were getting tired. So I decided to move out of the park and head to the Butterfly Park with high hopes of taking some good shots. I had never shot butterflies before so did not know what to expect. On the way to butterfly park, I saw a small beautiful wild flower and couldn't resist to take its shot.

Once in the butterfly park, I got too exicted and started clicking every butterfly I saw. After a while I reviewed the images on my camera's LCD and was disappointed to find that not a single image was worth keeping. Some of the shots were bad in composition and many of them were not at all sharp. So I slowed down a bit, and from then onwards I concentrated on making a better composition and taking a sharp photos. I managed to get a few but still not to my liking.

By this time, I was damn tired and hungry so finally called it a day. I took the volvo bus to Majestic and then back home.

Though I managed to get some good shots, for me the trip was not as productive as I had thought. I took many shots but when reviewing them on my laptop I rejected most of them, majority because of lack of sharpness. One thing that I learned from this trip is that just taking more frames dosen't mean that you will get better shots. If each shot is taken with little bit of thought and concentration the success ratio is more. Another thing that I realized was taking macro/closeup shots require good amount of practice and skill, other wise most of the time you will find that the picture taken is not focused correctly and is not tack sharp.