Trip to Ragihalli

5th Dec, 2010

My hobby of photography and the recently purchased telephoto lens has inspired me to visit different places for bird photography. This weekend decided to visit Ragihalli. I had gone through few blogs to find out what to expect. Ragihalli is a village somewhere near Bannerghatta and some part of the route to the village goes through the forest area of the Bannerghatta NP.

We (Vinay and me) started at around 6.15 AM and reached at the Ragihalli junction at around 7.30 AM. As soon as we went little further down the road we started spotting birds. The first one was Pied Bushchat. We stopped and approached it slowly but it flew away. Then soon we spotted Red Whiskered Bulbul but that too flew off before we can take its shot. We moved on thinking that we will get lucky later. Soon we spotted Bushchat and this time it did stay still for us to get few shots. Here are the shots

Pied Bushchat (Female)

Pied Bushchat (Male)

 After these first sightings we were not very lucky. After a long drive we spotted a Red Vented Bulbul and Green bee eater and managed to get decent shots.

Red vented Bulbul

Green Bee Eater

Red Whiskered Bulbul

Moving ahead towards Ragihalli we found an open space which presented a lovely view of the forest from top. Till then we did not have very successful birding experience so decided to try hand on few landscapes shots.

Well there are defiantly more birding opportunities that what had got. Another tip to Ragihalli is defiantly on the cards.

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Visit to Bannerghatta Butterfly park

19th, Sept 2010

Last time I had been to Bannerghatta park, to test my sigma 150mm macro lens. Though that trip was satisfying enough, I was not too happy with the butterfly shots. This time around I decided to visit just the Butterfly park and was determined to spend entire day in the butterfly park itself till I get few decent shots.

Entrance to the park

First little bit about the park.
The country's first Butterfly Park was established at the Bannerghatta Biological Park. The Butterfly Park is spread across 7.5 acres (30,000 m²) of land. It comprises a butterfly conservatory, museum and an audio-visual room. The butterfly conservatory has a polycarbonate roof and is a 10,000 sq ft (1,000 m²). circular enclosure, inside which the living environment has been carefully designed to support over 20 species of butterflies (info courtesy wiki)

As usual I started at around 8 AM from home and took a Volvo bus to the park from Majestic. I reached the place at around 9.30 AM. This time I wanted to spend time only in the butterfly park, so I headed directly to the butterfly park. I was the first visitor to the park, and I was pretty happy with that as there will not be any disturbance when I am dating the butterflies :)

On the way to the park, I saw couple of beautiful wild flowers and captured them in my camera. The breeze was constantly moving the flowers and I tried hard to get a decent shot, but all in vain, so I did not waste much time and moved on.

As I entered the enclosure where the butterflies are kept the first ones that I saw were the usual ones - Common castor, Common indian crow (yes this is the name of the butterfly) and Common Mormon. I had captured these guys during previous visit, so this time I wanted to shoot different and more colorful species.

After few minutes of looking around, I saw Red Pierrot flying close to the ground. This guys never flew above couple of feet from the ground. I got couple of decent shots of this species.

Red Perriot

Red Pierrot

While I was still looking for more colorful species, the caretaker approached me and told that he can take me to the place where butterflies are kept before releasing them to the park. He asked for 50 bucks for the favor, which I happily paid as I thought that there might different species over there. Unfortunately when I saw the place, I could see only Indian crow and Common Mormon. Now that I had already paid the caretaker, I spend some time in capturing them.

Common Mormon

I moved back to the park and spent good amount of time trying to get few decent shots of the butterflies. By this time, couple of enthusiastic shutter bugs like me were in the park and were chasing the flutterflies :)

Pioneer

Blue Tiger

I was now looking for some other interesting subject, and I noticed a wasp playing around a flower. So I clicked few frames of it too.

Wasp

Next I saw ants moving around a plant, so got them in too.

Ant

By this time, I was getting tired and was planning to leave. I saw one guy who was a photo enthusiast like me, trying to take butterfly shots from very close distance, but as soon as he got little closer the butterfly would fly off.I had noticed that there were couple of butterflies who where happily basking in sun, and were not moving at all. I showed him the still guys and he shot it to his heart's content. Later on we exchanged our lens, I mounted his Nikon 60mm macro and he tried out my sigma 150mm macro. I must say that Nikon's 60mm macro is real sharp optic, though because of 60mm the working distance is not too flexible which required to get real close to the subject. Another feature of this lens was that it could stop down to f/57 at life size.

He was also carrying nikon 70-300mm lens. I tried out that too. There was one large butterfly flying far off, and the reach of 300mm helped here.

Not sure about ID (Taken at 300 mm)

After shooting for a while with the new lens, we switched to wide angle lens to take some shots of the artificial waterfall that is build in the park. I also photographed a butterfly with the same wide angle lens.

Artificial waterfall in the park

Pionner

Well, by now it was almost 3PM and I was too tired so finally decided to call it a day. Took the bus to Majestic and then home. This trip was comparatively more productive then the previous one. Next thing on my list would be to capture the more enthralling compositions of butterflies along with beautiful flowers and also capture some more varied species of butterflies.

Signing of for now till next trip!!! Leaving you with some of the shots from the trip.

Common grass yellow (not sure)

Pionner

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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.

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