Lalbagh flower show January 2012

No, I had not been to Mars which would explain my long absence from the blog arena. Its just that these days I haven't got much opportunity to travel or visit any new places. However when 26th January was nearing, I was ready to go to Lalbagh to get few floral pictures. Looks like visiting Lalbagh during flower shows has now become a routine. I think I haven't missed a single flower show from the time I have been in Bangalore. The challenge from photography point of view is to get different shot and compositions from each visit. This is what I got this time during my visit to flower show.

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Lalbagh flower show (Aug 2011)

12th Aug, 2011

 This is my 4th visit to lalbagh flower show. During my last visit I had faced some difficulty in doing photography because of large crowd, so this time I decided to take a leave from work on Friday and visit the flower show hoping that because of working day I will find less crowd and can shoot the flowers more easily.

I reached the flower show at round 8.45 AM, got the ticket for Rs. 30 and headed straight to the glass house where the flowers are kept for display. I was happy to see that there was not much crowd in this time. Soon I got my Nikon D40 and mounted Sigma 150mm macro lens to capture the floral beauties. I always try to look for opportunity to shoot flowers along with some insect to give a different dimension to otherwise boring flower portrait. This time around there were not too many variety of flowers, same set of flowers were put up in different sections of the glass house. Having seen my shots from previous visit, I realized that last time I got many shots of colorful flowers bunched together in a group creating interesting colorful patterns, however there were no individual flower portraits or any real closeup shots that emphasized on the design or color of an individual flower. So this time I had decided to make some different shots as compared to my previous visit on 26th Jan 2011. Here are few intimate closeups of the flowers. Got in real close to emphasis on the colors and design of the flowers

There were few insects and bees around, which gave nice opportunity to shoot them up close against colorful flowers.

Sometime it was just so difficult to isolate a single flower, so shooting them in a bunch was only option, however this also give a nice composition as the patterns created by bunch of similar flowers look really nice. Here are some

And finally, after moving out of the the glass show, I got my 18-55mm lens to shoot some frames of the glass house itself and the Lotus temple built out of roses (which happens to be the major attraction of the flower show). Here are few shots.

Overall, it was very satisfying experience. Will be looking forward for the next flower show.

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Macro madness at Hebbal lake

Off late I have kept my telephoto aside and am using my macro lens for good amount of time. I thought I was getting into a rut shooting birds all the times and looking at my  recent shots from trips to Hebbal lake I realized that I was not capturing anything different. It was same old shots of the same birds. So I decided to take a break from shooting birds and move on to shooting macro subjects.

Also, these days the mornings are not really dramatic. Its cloudy most of the days, so no point in shooting birds. However I found such cloudy and wet conditions really helpful in doing some macro photography. The cloudy sky provides nice diffused light and the wet conditions brings out the colors in the green foliage really well. During last couple of visits to Hebbal lake I have been shooting only macros, using my trusty Sigma 150mm Macro lens. I have also started putting my cheap tripod to good use. Now I have realized the benifits of using tripod, especially when doing macro photography. Doing macro work hand holding the camera really tires you out and under certain conditions it becomes virtually impossible to take a sharp shot.

Here are some shots taken during my last couple of visits to Hebbal lake. I have been lucky to get some rain the previous night, so the following morning  provides nice refreshing scenes.

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Pollinator

25th June, 2011

Now a days usually on a Saturday I laze around in my house and Sunday morning is kept aside for photography. Today morning as I was watering my garden I realized that one of the plant which bears yellow flowers was  visited by a small fly like insect every now and then. Looking closely I found that this fly was smeared with yellow pollen from the flowers which it was frequently visiting. In no time I got my sigma 150mm macro lens and mounted my camera on a tripod. This fly was hardly of a size of a rice grain and it required lots of concentration to get correct focus and dof. Because of such a small size of the subject, I choose to focus manually rather then relying on the camera's Auto focus.

I spent almost 2-3 hours shooting it and had shot almost 50-60 shots, most of which I have deleted by now. These are the only few shots that I decided to keep. Once again nature amazes me with its beauty and one more instance which make me believe that one need not go to exotic place for getting good photographs. Your backyard some times gives opportunity to shoot some winners.

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