Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Jodhpur Trip (2012) - Part 2

Its already 2013 and I am still putting together the details of the Jodhpur trip that I made in 2012. Why am I doing this now? Thats, because I am back from another trip from Jodhpur/Mumbai and have few photos to post from the recent trip. But before I do that, I want to document my previous trip. Earlier post has few photos that I took on the way to Jodhpur taken at Bangalore Airport. Here are few photos that I took in Jodhpur

This time around, I decided to visit Jaswant Thada. Its another architectural landmark located in Jodhpur. Its a white marble memorial build in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh. I enjoyed taking photos from various locations which presents different views of Mehrangarh Fort. Here are few shots



Here are few shots of the Memorial structure.







After spending some time at Jaswant Thada I walked to Mehrangarh fort, which is not too far. These are the photos that I made there.





And finally, I decided to walk down to Ghanta Ghar. The route to Ghanta Ghar goes via the old city (within the clusters of blue houses). Here are few shots that I took on my way to Ghanta Ghar.



This also marked the end of the evening. Later on after getting down to Ghanta Ghar, I had Mishri Lal's lassi.

Jodhpur trip - Part 1 (Bangalore Airport)

Wanted to document trip to Jodhpur long time, but days have busy and hardly get time to blog or spent time on photography. However here it is, as during my yearly visit to Jodhpur, I captured plenty of photographs. This time around I am posting the details of the trip in different parts as there are many photographs that I wish to post.

The trip started by taking a flight from Bangalore to Mumbai, and a 6 AM flight gave good opportunity to shoot BIA during early morning hours. Here are few shots that I managed to take during my flight to Mumbai.

Just before sunrise, with bit of mist


Sunrise at BIA

Sunrise at BIA


Bird's eye view of Mumbai City 

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Lalbagh flower show (Aug 15)

Usually I visit the flower show during weekdays to avoid the the crowd that gathers up during weekends. However this time, I was busy with other stuff because of which I could not visit during the weekday. However I did not want to miss the flower show, so decided to head off during a weekend. As I expected the crowd was huge and I realized that it was almost impossible to take macro shots of the flowers. So I decided to shoot few candid shots of people around. Here are few shots that I liked during this exercise.

Security personal standing just outside of the glass house
Its always interesting to watch the kids. They hardly seem to be  interested in the flower show, but they are always up to some thing.
Mother taking photograph of kid and kid's father
Photo inside a photo :)
Thru the eye of cam
Poor kido, was hardly interested in getting photographed, but his father kept on asking him to give different poses.
Hawkers in lalbagh
End of the day.. heading home
Kids having fun time in the park
Ek main aur ek tu :)

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Morning at Hebbal lake

6th May, 2012


After a long period of hibernation, I decided to spend morning at Hebbal lake. Actually I did not have any plans to visit, but I got a call from one of my friend asking if we can meet at Hebbal for photography, so I happily agreed to meet up. As usual I reached Hebbal lake at around 6.15 AM in morning. Soon I realized that the camera battery was not charged enough. I guessed that it might last for not more then 10-12 shots. I decided to hang on for a while and press the shutter only when I saw the shot that I wanted. There was no room for experimentation or test shots. I said to my self that If I wanted to get some shots which I could keep from today's trip, then I will have to be very selective on when to click a shot.

I started roaming round to find a perfect frame. Soon I saw 2 lone pelicans lazing around on the far side of the lake. I framed this shot and clicked.



Soon they were joined by a pair of Spotbill ducks. So I framed this one. I decided to exclude one pelican, somehow I felt three subjects in the frame will be more effective then four.


While looking through the camera for another shot, I realized that I could frame the pelican between a tree trunk and an electric pole. I felt that this was interesting, and infact I like this one more then all the shots taken today, just because it is different.


Later on I saw a crow sitting on a tree that had lost all its leaves. I thought it would be interesting to frame the black bird (crow in this case) against deep blue sky and also the fact that the branches of the tree created nice patterns which the lone crow seems to break. Thinking of this I took this shot.


I think this was the last shot, after which the camera battery drained out. I was satisfied by this trip, not because of the shots that I got, but because of the fact that I took about 10 shots out of which 4-5 shots were successful. Usually I tend to take many shots and keep very few.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Visit to Somanathapura and Shivanasamudra

I wanted to document this trip long time back, but somehow was not finding enough time to do it. So here it is. Since the trip was arranged from my office we all gathered near our office and left in a mini bus at around 6.30 AM. Our first stop was for breakfast at Adigas on Mysore road. We had dosas, idli and all kind of south Indian dishes. We also parceled our lunch because none of the place that we were about to visit had a decent restaurant.



Next stop was Somanathapura temple. Somanathapura temple is one of the finest example of Hoysala architecture. The condition of the temple is also pretty good, though there was some repair work going on when we had visited. As we went around and saw the lovely architecture of the temple I took few photographs.




After spending about an hour and half at the temple, we moved on to 2nd destination, which was Talakad. Talakad is a small village situated at the bank of Kaveri river. There is also some history associated with this place. For us, it was all about having fun bathing in the river. I took a boat ride and also spent some time photographing my friends who played volleyball in river.


Sometime later we move on to the last destination, which was Shivanasamudra. By far this was the best and the most scenic place. I also managed to get few decent shots here.




Soon I followed my friends to the place which you see in the photo just above and this was when I slipped on a wet rock and fell in water. Luckily I managed to keep my hand out of the water because of which my camera was saved from getting dipped in water. Nevertheless it did get wet because of water that was splashed around when I fell. To prevent any short circuit I removed the battery and the camera remained out of action for rest of the trip. After a while we went to another water falls nearby called Gaganachukki. We had to climb down about 100 stairs to reach this lovely place, but the effort was worth it. Here we spend about half hour bathing under the water falls. It was really amazing experience, last time I remember I had such fun was about 5 years back when I had visited Khandala with my friends.

This was pretty much end of the trip. When returning back we stopped at Adigas for dinner and reached Bangalore at around 9 PM. Visiting so many places was pretty hectic for a one day trip, and place like Gaganachukki itself is such that one can spend entire day without getting bored.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Urban winter

Feb 26, 2012


Most of the time when I visit Hebbal lake I usually concentrate on getting frame filling shots of birds or shooting macros. However now days such shots no longer seem appealing to me. Kinda looks boring or very repetitive. Probably that is a reason why these days I end up keeping only 2-3 shots from any trip, while deleting most of the shots in camera. This time when I visited Hebbal lake, I found decent early morning atmosphere. Though winter was long gone, early morning atmosphere at Hebbal lake still showed some passing signs of the season. I thought of capturing the beauty of nature and also emphasizing on fact that this beauty exists within an urban setup. Not sure if I was able to pass on this idea to viewer via the photographs, but I defiantly got some different shots as compared to my previous shots from Hebbal. Here are few shots that I liked from this small trip.



 
This one doesn't match the theme, nevertheless I liked this one so kept it.



Sunday, March 4, 2012

Rainy evening at Nariman Point

14 Oct, 2011

Last year I had visited Mumbai with my family. One place that I usually never miss to visit when I am in Mumbai is the beautiful Nariman Point. I still remember those days when I joined a company in Mumbai some time around 2004. Invariably we used to spend evening during weekends at Marine Lines or Colaba. Watching the sun go down behind the city skyline was such a fulfilling experience. This time around I witnessed another angle of nature's beauty amongst the high rises of the Mumbai city. As soon as I reached Marine lines, I realized that there was a massive cover of rain clouds which seemed to engulf the city skyline. Never ever had I seen such massive formation of clouds. Luckily now a days I always carry my camera along, because of which I was able to capture this amazing phenomena. Just within few minutes after I got these shots, it started raining and it rained heavily for about 2 hours.

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