Short timelapses from Belur and Halebeedu.

Architectures provide wonderful platform for composing HDRs. There are lots of perception to compose. Long time back, I had traveled to Belur and Halebeedu to revisit the Hoysala empire glory after 20 long years. My primary intention was for photography and rest includes deviation from city life, relaxation etc.. Even though it was winter season, the weather was unusually hot and humid. Consequently, the atmosphere was hazy too. To add to that, I did not carry my CPL filter (not sure why!). However there were clouds hovering around the skies which tempted me to grab few short timelapses. After fulfilling my thirst of photography wandering all around premise of Belur, I chose a platform to sit down and relax for sometime. Alongside my rest, I started intervalometer to capture a timelapse with the scaffolded pinnacle and huge premise as steady subjects. The movements were achieved by clouds and people. I believe, the clicks happened for few hours comprising of 250 pictures shot at an interval of 10secs. Eventually it turned out nice and the first part of video is timelapse from Belur. The psuedo movement is achieved by cropping the pictures using Motion Timelapser software

The second part is from Halebeedu. This timelapse was also consequence of aforementioned reason. The crux was to give myself a break :). I sat on a bench near Nandi statue and captured the timelapse. I did not carry tripod and hence could not obtain proper elevation. As a result, the frames are out of focus :(. Despite the loss of focus, the movements of clouds are appealing :). Overall did not turn up as better as Belur. I could have managed for some more timelapses if I had my own arrangements for transport. The gloomy weather coupled with time constraints tempted me to pack-up as early as possible. There are numerous HDRs composed during my visit which I will share in subsequent write-ups. As of now enjoy short timelapses from Belur and Halebeedu. Any suggestions are always welcome.

Music: New World - Let me Go, beautiful medley of strings and piano. Love the atmosphere in middle of tune and used it to fit my timelapse. If you are interested, hear full tune here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SciajNJBiJA

Sunset in your Eyes

Just returning from visit to Ramadevara betta last week during deepavali festival. The Sun had lit the sky with deepavali lamp. The sky after rains, is lit colorfully by the sinking sun with golden light. I feel, this phenomenon has some scientific fact behind it. The Sunset coupled with stray clouds paint the sky with dramatic patterns during golden hour, few minutes after rains. The patterns are vivid if the rays of Sun pierce through the shattered clouds! This time, even in Ramanagara, the scene was similar. There was significant rain for 10mins and later on the sunset with clouds created colorful medley in the sky. The rocky hills and green fields added more charm to the entire scene. The lone upright slender tree added to the rule of thirds placement to the composition :). Overall a perfect scene to capture HDR images. I had GND even this time which again restricted exposure bracketing to 5. The final HDR was composed sparing the +2EV picture for all of them since +1EV had enough shadow details. The images were blend in Luminance HDR and final editing with Darktable. Not to forget the "auto-align" option in Luminance HDR which is very important when you compose HDR hand-held. Lot of tweakings were carried out in darktable to match the "Sunset seen in my eyes" :).

The title is used to depict the "Sunset seen in my eyes" that day hoping for colorful days with vivid outlook. I hope you enjoy the pictorical Sunset in your eyes too!

This time the musical credit goes to the beautiful work by Poland musician TrancEye - Sunset In Your Eyes. Just lovely piece of music with orchestral melody and spectacular piano. Here are special aspects of music.

--> 2:20 orchestral melody followed by medley of piano at 2:45
--> the silent piano melody 3:23
--> beautiful breakdown outset at 3:51

The orchestral atmosphere from 2:21 to 3:15 is just mind blowing with gradual tempo build-up around 3:35 which sets up perfect breakdown pattern at 4:18 :)

TranceEye - Sunset in your eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv1fWYD24co

Timelapse - Distant storm formation at Markonahalli Dam

Here is one more old timelapse which I love very much. The nimbus clouds forming distant storm is mesmerizing sight to watch. Due to such patterns of nature, I love monsoon season whole heartedly. So how did I capture this? You need some experience of watching the sky especially during monsoon season. The whitish nimbus clouds illuminated by Sunlight turn dark as they shadow the sunlight. Such scenes are normal in coastal Karnataka and occur frequently during monsoon season. My curiosity towards monsoon makes me to watch at sky most of the times during monsoon season. Consequently this was one such scene which I could capture it as timelapse. The final video is edited in KDENLIVE for various parameters which I dont remember now. I aspire to capture more such timelapses during monsoon season. Hope you enjoy the timelapse.

The movements are achieved by usual cropping techniques. A little bit of boring math for cropping. The initial plane of frame was as shown in dotted line and final frame I wanted to achieve is shown as solid rectangle. Note that I wanted to maintain the the aspect ratio intact (which was 3:2). If not, the final frames would be clipped and video looks erroneous! The resolution 550D has is 5184x3456 pixels which is aspect ratio of 3:2. The motion time lapser counts (0,0) axis from top left and hence some offset corrections needs to be done to achieve movement. Consequently I fixed (x,y) co-ordinates to (0,1000) and later move the plane towards (1500, 0). To achieve this and fit the images to frame the offset correction goes as below

Frame length: (5184-1500),(3456-1000) = (3684,2456)
Movements from (0,1000) to (1500,0) with frame length of (3684, 2456).

Despite of this calculation, I had some clippings in last few images. May be algorithm used by Motion Time Lapser is different and hence I restricted final 'y' co-ordinates to (1500,200). The final math goes as

Initial (x,y)=(0,1000)
Final (x,y)=(1500,200)
Frame length=(3684,2456)

The final figure is as below. So what's the rule? There is no rule as such! It is upto your discretion to decide the co-ordinates to align with desired movements and speediness. Draw your desired movements on sheet of paper, execute simple math and set the co-ordinates in motion timelapser software which can be downloaded from here

Timelapse collection from my village and kaup beach

Here is brief video of timelapses composed in my village and Kaup beach over period of 8months. It has been lying in hard drive for no reason and I thought of compiling in bulk. Consequently here are set of footages of timelapse uploaded in batches to youtube. Except the night timelapse all of them are impromptu ones. Bangalore environment never provided me motivation to capture timelapses (not sure why) however as I reach my village, camera becomes very much active. I need to find a way to launch myself in city environment. Last but not least, comments and critiques are always welcome. If you are enthusiastic about timelapse or photography, please drop a comment so that I can contact you offline to create some footages alongside for fun.

The first one is set of compiled star trails composed during winter season. The first clip has turned out be great :). The technique I learned was the soft moon light (say 4th day from new moon) provides perfect studio light for exposing stars :D. Especially the opposite horizon gets exposed well under moon light! However after 5th day, the moon light is of no use and star visibility becomes pale. In that situation, if there are plenty of moving clouds, it creates one more dramatic timelapse with slight star exposure. Overall it turned out well. The huge compilation brings a sense of joy and keeps viewers also engaged and curious :).

Music: Innersync remix of Andy blueman's unifinished music Away From Sun. What can I say about this music, its perfect for extra terrestrial footages :D. Innersync has immense talent creating such music. Even though Andy did not finish this music, innersync foresaw its prologue and movements well and infused his talent to complete the music. Blueman was irked by the remix since he requested people not to remix unless he finishes. Nags apart, watch the video with beautiful remix from Innersync. Good news is Blueman has promised to finish the track

Full tunes:

1) Andy Blueman - Away from Sun (Preview): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn5yj7cdctc
2) Andy Blueman - Away from Sun (Innersync remix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pu7RJ2d5E4

The next one is dancing fog with peacock. I left the camera in the plantation and luckily peacock arrived at the time when nobody was around. Also the dancing fog has come good too :). At the end, the moving shadows also created beautiful effect :D. One critique I received from Rajesh was that capture should have been longer in length. Even I felt it later. Nevertheless, the final video turned out good with peacock and dancing fog.

Music: Royalty free music from YouTube repository

I have not grabbed much timelapses from Kaup beach. Usually I visit to enjoy the nature more than photography. Consequently only two short timelapses till date! The first was snapped during the day when stratocumulous clouds painted dramatic patterns on the sky during blue hour (Read related blog here). The other one was captured during monsoon season. Overall good to be in collection but nothing like terrific capture. Hope you enjoy the same.

Music: Royalty free music from YouTube repository

Here is near 3 minute footage of pending timelapses from my village. I was forced to dispose them due to lack of disk space. This time some video editing has been applied to accentuate the presence of moving clouds and sunrise with shadows. Every timelapse has different intervals, frames/second and shot in different modes (majority 'M' mode while few of them in 'Av' mode). Even though the clip is around 3 minutes, the rendering swallowed almost 90 minutes of time :(. This is mainly due to hardware glitch. It was worth the wait since the final video turned out to be quite fantastic ;). Hope you enjoy the same. The last part of timelapse was shot at night even though it appears as day! Shooting against studio light of moon creates such an effect at night except that stars are not exposed clearly.

Music: Our one and only Andy Blueman's orchestral mix of Afternova's work of 'Serenity'. One of the top class work of Andy Blueman since his inception into trance world. I used this music to depict serene village environment and it perfectly aligned with my video. This has been my all time favorite music and I listen to it every morning to calm myself down. Never makes you feel as how 9 minutes passed off. Gives a sense of peace and tranquility and with slow moving clouds over Kudremukh ghats. Those flute and violin blend is simply mesmerizing for ears. The actual fun starts at 3:30 when violin starts ascending towards high pitch, reaching peak at 3:40 and conjoins various instruments at 3:58 creating a serene ambiance B-). This pattern repeats further ahead but with different variations. Andy's brilliance in orchestral music is unquestionable and this music is no different! He was the first musician to introduce orchestral music in uplifting trance and since then has created many followers for him! The melody he generates is impeccable and gets you moving :). Most of the European musicians are fond of orchestral melodies and design it very well. I hope my video pays due honest to his musical excellence. There is also plan to capture more timelapses to fit entire music!

Full tunes:

1) Afternova - Serenity (Andy Blueman orchestral mix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvoW5Qo3FxM
2) Afternova - Serenity (Andy Blueman remix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1NOdB1uxDo

After gamut of inconsequential information, hope you enjoy the video too :)

A Beautiful Tomorrow

March 2014,

Hot summer day, thought of visiting some beach nearby to inhale breeze from the ocean. They are natural tranquilizers and mood bringers. This time, I chose to visit Maravanthe Beach near Kundapur. I had to bank upon the public transport for my plan. I ended up catching 3 buses for mere 70kms :(. My plan was primarily for photoshoot and rest for rejoicing.

The expansive sea shore of Maravanthe does not fail lure anyone in my humble opinion. It has a partner along the other side of the highway which is Souparnika River :). Driving along this sea shoreline is one of the wonderful experiences of lifetime especially during monsoon season during which place looks intimidating. Sometimes, the waves strike highway during peak monsoon season. During monsoon season, both river and sea brims and it feels like sea wants to take revenge against the river for not merging here. However the river keeps teasing the sea everytime :). Emotions apart, here are some of the HDR shots composed during my visit. Hope you enjoy the same.

As the sun slides down the horizon during last day Hindu calendar year, he will shine us for a new beautiful next day. I watched the sinking SUN hoping for "A beautiful Tomorrow". Whatever happens at this moment, be happy and enjoy the small things in life and hope for A Beautiful Tomorrow everyday :). Nature provides curation through simple means. Be it sunrise, sunshine, sunset, monsoon clouds & rains, summer breeze along sea shore, western ghats, sound of sea tides, roaring streams in forest, thundering sound of waterfalls, the striking downpour, rejoice every moment of nature which provides immense bliss to our souls which is enough to combat morbid city life.

Finally hear one of perfect musical melody from Imperfection "A Beautiful Tomorrow". What a work by imperfection absolutely gorgeous melody :)

For me life is like Uplifting Trance music :D. Many people feel it to be esoteric with sequence of monotonic beats. Some people have even criticized me as show-off listening to such music. But who cares! Music is for self-healing and not to impress foreign souls. At the outset, the sounds seems to be harsh, lacking in melody, naive and somewhat boring. You feel like switching off the music at very much early stage. However actual rythm starts past 2 minutes in most of cases during which many instruments line up and make up for symphonic chords. Once the rythm outsets, you never feel like tuning off ;). The music at its peak during the heart of breakdown and also breakdown :) and the melody prolongs. The last part again seems to boring however the prior influence of harmonic tunes makes it interesting too :D.

Even our life can be analogous to above case. Initially tough, boring and feel like cursing ourselves. Only those people who have patience to hear past 2 minutes will hear the actual melody and enjoy life and this symphony continues :). Few wicked thoughts may arise as if we can skip initial part and seek past 2 mins in music player. Remember life is like radio station ;) you cannot seek the way you want as in music player ;). Either you have to switch off or tune into other stations or have patience to listen to entire song :). Phew man.. enough of fable :D. Its time to hear beautiful music. Hope you listen past 2 mins and you have an option of seeking to position you want ;)

Imperfection - A Beautiful Tomorrow: http://vbox7.com/play:b0c856f639

I did pull up a video for one of monsoon videos compiled last year here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ce2S3AGBpE

Last Note: The beautiful images does not arise without complications. It was difficult to focus on a hot scorching evening. Also there were many people staring (some inquisitive while some teasers) at my camera setup. I had to overcome all those distractions/obstacles to continue with whatever I was planning for. Also few suggestions on perceptions arouse out of thoughtful truck drivers too B-) and believe me, they were good suggestions too! All those difficulties finally lead to beautiful images of tomorrow ;). More than that, I broke my shackles shooting in public without hesitation.

Before saying goodbye, here is short video compiled during my stay at Maravanthe beach. The steady video is mainly due to the usage of tripod.

Fields of my Village

I was skimming my CRDi motor between the bitumen trail of Kaup and my village on a relatively less overcast day. On the way, I stopped nearby paddy fields to enjoy the greenery for sometime. This is first time I am taking photographs of the paddy fields nearby my village :). Especially monsoon season adds more glory to the landscape. People of this area harvest twice a year due to ample availability of water (a stream runs nearby). These are few HDR and normal images captured during my journey. Never thought they look so beautiful.

Finally here are some HDR images from my village itself. The first one was captured during morning hours while the rest was during sunset.

I was wandering around village on a clear evening day. As I was roaming, this scene caught my eyes and my camera's too which tempted me to grab a HDR shot. It turned out to be beautiful too ;). The enjoyment could not be sustained for long time since ants had ascended the leg and started biting :(. I love the starburst reflection of Sun on the watery field. The field was prepared for slush race organized recently. The water presence is still persisting due to the diversion of stream water towards the field. Also monsoon season is keeping this temporary water body alive! The monsoon is backpacking for this year and consequently there was beautiful sunset during fine evening. I used GND filter to compose bracketed shots. The advantage is reduced luminosity of orange hot balloon which reduced bracketed shots from 7 to 5 ;). Hope you enjoy the pictures. My mother was excited after seeing final image and asked if it is was captured from any rivers along highway. When I explained that it was the nearby water body, she was astonished to see the beautiful scenery :D. My father taunted the excitement stating inept scenes  looks beautiful in cameras X(.

Music Time B-):

This time its once again beautiful music by New-World named Fields of La Tourette. This guy is amazing man. He is just 24 and creates stunning music! The way he blends high and low pitch notes is mesmerizing. His music is always flavored with ecstatic orchestral melody.

Here are few of my feelings from music

0:31 --> Build up of beautiful atmosphere (gentle breeze over paddy field)
0:34 --> birds flying over field
1:46 --> slow moving clouds over the field
2:15 --> the orchestral + guitar melody
2:41 --> profound orchestral melody (rising sun over field)
3:10 --> the fantastic breakdown outset (fast moving clouds with running deers)
3:39 --> The combination of high + low pitch notes again
4:03 --> Time to fly over the field :)

I don't have the privilege of visiting the place and have a feel but his music truly reveals the the emotions of the La Tourette. I felt in paddy fields of my village :). This post is dedicated to the beautiful music of New World and hope you enjoy the same. Fly over the field relishing the melodious music from Gordon.

New World - Fields of La Tourette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox7gghnlmbE

Be his fan: https://www.facebook.com/NewWorldTrance

Not to miss equally wonderful remix from Ahmed Romel once again with stunning orchestral melody and beautiful video from Simon.

Ahmed Romel Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POoJEBriuL4

The Rainforest Again! - Verdant Shiraadi Ghat during Monsoon

Here I shared a short blog on Kudremukh Ghats. That was on winter season. The attraction of western ghats is during monsoon season with leeches :). Here are some pictures captured during our journey towards coast last week.

As we know, the monsoon started with lame note and later gained fierce momentum during month of July. The deficit as of now in Karnataka has drastically reduced and at some places it has recorded excess. Mere two months of torrential rain has transformed the dry lands to lush greenery. The western ghats were no exception too! There is never dearth of rain in these regions however threat of El-nino was looming over the region fearing drought like situation. Now everything is washed out by ferocious monsoon season :).

Enough of story! This Ganesh chaturthi, I had been to hometown to drop parents back. How can I miss the lush green rainforests. I drove 220kms in 2:30hrs to enjoy more time in Shiraadi ghat and I was well satisfied to capture those water spots and enjoy the roaring Gundya river for sometime. There were many tiny gleaming waterfalls which I could not capture due to lack of time. Sometimes due to fog/rain, mother forced me not to expose camera out. Also intermittent rains hampered my program but that is how rainforests get their name! I am satisfied with whatever opportunity I could gain. After final prayer to goddess chowdeshwari, it was time to drive towards the coast to reach niche. Many occasions I had desire to halt here for maximum amount of duration to spend quality time in between woods. It is difficult to manage while we have set goals and pathetic road conditions :(. Nevertheless, this time it was not so much bad :). May be it is better to ride two wheeler along the stretch to fully enjoy nature (ofcourse with a puncture kit to save from disastrous highway). Hope you enjoy pictures. No HDRs this time and most of them captured using 2stop GND filter. Using GND filter along with CPLs creates near HDR images (not all times). I did not use CPL this time (not sure why), hence had to reduce highlights on images to reduce white patches on silky flow of water.

ONE OF SMALL WATERFALL

CLOSER LOOK

THE HEART OF RAINFOREST

STREAM SNEAKING FROM CANOPY

This time I waded through small stream to capture full glimpse of galloping Gundya River near Chowdeshwari Temple. On top of it, I drank little bit of water from the pristine river and it was tasty too :).

GALLOPING GUNDYA RIVER

ONE MORE SEASONAL WATERFALL

MAGNIFIQUE GUNDYA RIVER

Options used in darktable:

1) Shadows and Highlights
2) Vibrance
3) Saturation and brightness
4) Local contrast
5) High pass filter with overlay as mask
6) Luminosity curve (manual) to increase Green and Yellow color appearance
7) Color zones (for few images)
8) Color temperature

I usually make use of soft GND filter 2 stops, half way down. Since I had actual GND this time, soft GND was not required.

Here is the short compilation of clips shot during our journey. Hope you enjoy it!

Do tune to Andy Blueman's rainforest. A perfect combination of soft bass and synths creating rainforest ambience. The music on an entirity reveals perfect rainforest environment comprising of thundering waterfalls, roaring streams, clanky insects, flying birds, heavy rains and wilderness. He has promised to complete this tune soon which is good news. I love this music very much and remembered when I was in between dense jungle and thundering Gundya river. You may need to use headphones to hear the full set of instruments used to create rainforest environment. Absolutely stunning! Just perfect music!

With this post, I am introducing actual smileys which I believe conveys impacting emotions than textual ones. I made some changes to blogger HTML template and as a result smileys are here for you. It slows down loading of posts slightly but there is nothing deterministic hard real time requirement ;). Hope you enjoy :D.

Skywatch Friday: Boundless light

Nature always inspires me to take my camera, lens and finally the blogs :-). It is because of such beautiful setup by mother nature which inspired me to dwell into photography. As always been murmuring in blog posts, my main interests are in landscape and timelapse photography however nowadays I am also lured towards HDR and architecture photography. These were some of the HDR shots composed during my recent visit to Kaup beach. Nowadays I love composing HDR shots after I switched to RAW from JPEG. I even wish to capture normal shots in RAW but honestly hard disks are getting exhausted :-(. Consequently for single exposures, I shoot RAW which I find interesting.

One of my favorite hobby is to stare at the sky :D especially during monsoon season to understand the formation of clouds and the storm build ups. Others include watching those glorious rays of Sun sinking down the horizon during golden hour with vivid patterns. Consequently, whenever I travel to hometown, I don't miss a chance to visit Kaup beach or Kudremukh rainforests during monsoon season. While the seascape filled with yellow shines the lovely Kudremukh forests would be painted green with pristine water flowing along brimming streams and thundering waterfalls :-).

The day, there was beautiful golden hour Sun piercing through stratocumulous clouds illuminating the sky with dramatic patterns of orange-yellow colors. That tempted me to grab the HDR shots basically to have the land, sea, clouds and sky and sun exposed in image. The shots are blend of 5 RAW images with exposures from -2 to 2 (except for second one which is 7 [-3 to 3]). Since the SUN was less intense than usual, even shooting towards SUN with 5 expsoures were enough. Usually shooting towards SUN requires 7 exposures. The images were blended and tonemapped with Luminance HDR (Fatal operator) and final touch-up with dark table. For some images, beta value of fatal operator was reduced to expose the shadows well. For second image, I was just hoping for scooter boat to remain steady and fortunately it remained so :-). Later the mighty sea tides turned it 90 degrees towards right. By then, my HDR composition was completed :-). Especially I love the first two images :-). I can use them as wallpapers from now onwards with special tag as self composed ;-).

Boundless scattered light ;-)

Boundless light behind the rocks

Today's theme for Skywatch is boundless light. Now for title, after watching those glorious rays of Sun, this title flashed on to my mind. Boundless light with bountiful colors :D. It seems like the sky is spraying colorful light on earth :D. The SUN obviously has boundless light and energy. It is also star twinkling in distant world! Let our life be filled with bountiful of light amidst darkness. Even if darkness galore, lets make sure we find little light in there.

Finally hear one of beautiful Music from Mr.Gordon codenamed New World from US, "Boundless light". I describe him as musical genius. He was just 21 when he composed such an outstanding music :-). He is right example for enthusiasm and passion. His hard work and passion in musical instruments has drawn such magical talent in him at a tender age. His unique style of crafting uplifting music (especially a brief melody at end of music without bass) has elevated him to epitome of music.  Whenever new music roles out of his talent, he is champ! The melodious lead riffs, scintillating orchestral melody are his specials :D. They are absolutely stunning :-). I have to learn lot from this young guy's passion which helped him to achieve such musical loftiness. He has been one of my favorite music producers since introduction from "Rise Above". Even though I have not found like minded people who admire such music, I am inclined to this genre which are filled with boundless emotions and energy, despite the absence of vocal. It has been more than 3 years of journey into Uplifting trance music and chillout music for me and my interest towards it keeps elevating with introduction of such musical talents :-).

As far as this music, the emotions start at 1:50, later with boundless orchestral melody at 3:00, with outset of spectacular breakdown at 4:01 and finally the light arrives with blazing speed at 4:52 :-). 

Enough said, hear it here!

New World : Boundless Light(Emotional mix):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y95CW5KnlaI

Also do not miss equally beautiful remix of the same by TouchStone:

New World - Boundless Light (Touchstone Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uLfMrIHzRI 

Finally if you wish to participate in skywatch theme and share with boundless world, create a blog post with a picture (self-owned) inclusive of sky and link your blogpost here (skyle). Note that text is not mandatory! Also do not forget to visit related posts from other member's too!

Skywatch Friday: Into the Sky

Never knew there was a place to share common theme in a blogpost. Recently I stumbled upon this site which lets you to add your blog post pertaining to a theme each day. For Friday, it is Skywatch :-).

Skywatch should have blog post with a photograph inclusive of sky. For this theme for this Friday, here is HDR of Kaup beach light house shot few weeks back. I just love the colors :-). It seems like lighthouse is ready to launch itself to sky :D. The final image was brutally tweaked to obtain the desired effects (name it white-balance, shadows&highlight correction, sharpness, contrast, saturation, level etc.. etc..)

KAUP BEACH LIGHTHOUSE

Despite brutally tweaked, the image is devoid of any noise or distortion. Thats major advantage of shooting in RAW and compose HDR. I am enjoying the workflow right from start of Luminance HDR till the end of dark table. Dark table is too cool :-) gives fantastic results and its open source too!

Nowadays its difficult to find time for myself to elaborate a topic and hence nothing much detailed post. When I am free, will try to share my workflow so that people can comment on improvements.

Into the Sky, hear beautiful music by Afternova one of my favorite music producer and fly into the sky. It has one of the finest orchestral melody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbaz9eWw6i8

Arisen

Early morning around 5:30AM, we woke up to a snippy weather at Kodachadri with stormy breeze challenging the mighty hillocks and tall trees with powerful gusts. We refreshed ourselves and ready to start to Sunrise point which requires a hike of 800m along narrow ridge. Since the SUN was not yet out, we had to bank upon torch light to follow the trail properly. Half way along the hike, the trail gets very narrow and gusty winds tend to push us down to the valley. After cautiously passing along this path, we reached the Sunrise point. The powerful wind was pushing us very hard and cold weather requires everyone to cover body with winter wear.

The time was 6:50AM. We were foreseeing a dazzling sunrise in few moments shimmering the beautiful Sharavati river back waters. I had kept camera for sunrise timelapse and turned out be nice too ;-). Few minutes later, there goes the initial appearance of shy Sun piercing through clouds at the distant horizon sparkling the Sharavati river backwaters with orange spectacle. We cheered with enthusiasm and welcomed the Sun of the day :-). Of-course, the red carpet for the Sun's arrival was laid by Sun itself ;-). After few more minutes, the Sun was completely "Arisen" and it was time to take the picture of blazing Sun of golden hour! Here is the picture of "Arisen" Sun. Later on we stayed for some more time to garner Vitamin D.

ARISEN SUN!

Not to miss our lovely guide to Sunrise view point :D. He was little bit ahead of us and followed the trail providing us direction. Whenever we stopped to rest, he also rested and as we moved on, he was guiding us :-). For some more time, he enjoyed the Vitamin D before reaching base camp!

OUR GUIDE :-)

Do here magnificent music "Arisen" by British musician Laurence Rapaccioli codenamed Arksun on this occasion flavored with wonderful breakdown!

Arksun - Arisen (Original mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIA2fFiy9ac


If you wish to hear only breakdown, hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKf7r6j5bwc

Also do not miss the beautiful chilldown remix of Magdelyana of the same

Arksun - Arisen (magdelyana Chill mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxQi3RO_znU

Sunset and Sunrise at Kodachadri Peak - A short timelapse

Here is one more timelapse from Kodachadri Peak. This is 12th timelapse video in my youtube channel :-).

It was 5:30PM on bright Saturday when we reached Kodachadri peak after trek from Santosh hotel for about 5kms. We were sweating vigorously following long hike. After seeking blessings of Lord Shiva at Sarvajna Peetha, it was time to rest on one of the rocks awaiting sunset. In between casual chat, Rajesh pestered me to start a timelapse. I was bit lethargic but he was persistent :D. Finally, I started the intervalometer for 2images a minute. As a result it turned out to be wonderful fast setting sun ;-). Since there was an hour of time for complete sunset, I kept interval for 30s capture. I did not use manual mode since wanted to grab bright Sun always. The problem with Manual mode is it turns out quite darker gradually as sun loses intensity. As you know, the disadvantage of using Av is variation in lighting which can be corrected with software approaches. I did not carry tripod and consequently mounted camera on rocky surface for interval shots.

Next is sunrise timelapse. I realised a bit late there was only few time left for sunrise and hence tuned intervalometer to grab a shot per 10 second. The mode is Av mode due to said reason as mentioned above. Even this capture was based on Rajesh's input. I was bit skeptical that heavy breeze would shake camera which may result in out of frame pictures. However, the camera stood upright ;-). This time also I placed it on one of the rocks in sunrise point. Once Sun was arisen with golden colors, I could not resist and turned off intervalometer :-). The timelapse of Sunrise was achieved though ;-) however with less interval. Combining both the timelapses, here is a video. I thought of combining these with the already pending ones to form a bigger one. However, demand from boys and draining disk space forced me to compose the video and share. Hope you enjoy the same.

Settings:

I do not remember exactly. Both scenes were shot in Av mode. The video is rendered in KDENLIVE 1080p 25fps and 2pass encoding MPEG4/MP3.

Music: After lot of internal tussle, I settled for the Simon O Shine's musical brilliance - Your Distant World. Other options considered were excerpts from Sunset-Beautiful Life (Vol Deeman Remix) and SoundLift - Horizonte (Andy Blueman Intro mix). All of them matched well for video however could not resist the fabulous orchestral breakdown and eventually applied for the timelapse. It did fit too ;-).

Composing timelapses makes me exhilarated. Ever since I stumbled upon timelapse photography from internet sources, it has been one of my favorite hobbies. I enjoy composing timelapse despite requiring longer time. From my experience, timelapse requires persistence, perception, a bit of intuition and lot of patience more than camera techniques. To some extent few video editing techniques help a lot too! In order to bring up my mood (when I am down) and also since my disk space is exhausting at faster pace, I hope to upload more pending timelapses in coming days :-)

Ashutosh also pulled a wonderful timelapse and here it is. He has also some collection of star trail timelapse which he might share in his channel.

Shri Vishwanatham Bhajeham

Shiva is sign of energy, simplicity and unpredictability. One needs energy to move on during unpredictable times and simplicity to lead peaceful life. These are  qualities which I learnt from the almighty. Today on auspicious day of Mahashivaratri I would like to share some of HDR and panoramic pictures from Yana visit known for surreal rocky landscapes. I wanted to write detailed blog on Yana but due to lack of time could not commit. This is the only day wherein devotees are allowed to enter sanctum sanctorum of temple. The place will be heavily crowded today with myriad of pilgrims visiting to have darshan of Lord Bhairaveshwara. The post is dedicated Lord Bhairaveshwara of Yana who is residing deity of the place.

Yana is one of those beautiful treasures of coastal Karnataka located in between spectacular rainforests of Uttara Kannada district. One needs to travel in order to feel region shrouded under dense canopy of western ghats. Amidst this magnificent nature lies Yana which has almost 61 limestone rocks stamped on its surface. Of them, the prominent are the two large peaks namely Mohini Shikara and Bhairaveshwara shikara. Lord shiva is self formed under Bhairaveshwara shikara and water drips from top of shivalinga all through year. Precisely the Lord is described as "Ganga Chandika Bhairaveshwara". The reason behind such a name will be described in my detailed blog (or you can google it!). The environment beneath the monolithic rock is natural AC :-). It is so cool under the natural air cooler of western ghats! There are plethora of streams which run besides thick tall woods finally merging with Aghanaashini river near Kumta. If you ever visit Gokarna or Kumta, don't ever miss to visit this alluring natural splendor. Here are pictures after boring narration ;-).

PANORAMIC GLOWING PICTURE :-)

CLOSE UP PANORAMA

 This one is not so well composed. Just posted for archive.

PANORAMA WITH TEMPLE

The below picture is not composed with RAW files. Nowadays I compose HDR in RAW and I can see difference from JPG files. One can tweak resulting image to vast extent without losing quality or infusing noise. Eventually I have corrected myself :-).

MOHINI SHIKARA IN HDR

Even though trajectory of Sun starts to change around Makara Sankranthi, Shivaratri signifies the end of winter and beginning of spring. Usually a week or two before Shivaratri, strong breeze pervade the region signifying end of winter. It is also period of sickness too due to significant transition in weather!

On this day, I would like to share one of my favorite composition "Sri Vishwanatham Bhajeham" by Shri Muthuswamy Deekshitar, a Sanskrit rendetion with blend of 14 raagas. The beauty of Shri Deekshitar composition is the aligning tint of raaga with song literature. He describes the majestic shiva in 14 raagas with fabulous literature. The song starts with "Shri" raaga and ends with "Bhoopala". The song is divided into two sections. The first section comprises of Shri, Aarabhi, Gowri, Gowla, Naata, Mohana and later follows the reverse path. The second section comprises of Saama, Lalita, Bhairava, Saranga, Shankarabharanam, Kambodhi, Devakriya, Bhoopalam and later goes all the way reverse path of 14 raagas with spectacular progression :-). The depth of Shri Deekshitar's scholarship is evident from this  masterpiece.

If you admire carnatic classical music, do hear this bautiful music sung in chorus in two parts.  The delightful rendition is of this song goes to Smt. M L Vasanthakumari however not finding link anywhere :-(.

1) Sri Vishwanatham Bhajeham Part-1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73BKPMkNWgg
2) Sri Vishwanatham Bhajeham Part-2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxS9uMP1T3g

Timelapse - Melting Ice

After intense pestering by mother, I finally decided to clean fridge. This was shot few months back. As part of process, I was taking out ice pellets from freezer. Initially I did not notice but few minutes later, hey melting ice caught my eyes :-). I deviated from cleaning and setup a timelapse show of melting ice ;-). Initially I thought of capturing melting ice timelapse from inside freezer but did not have tripod. Hence, the melting cubes were only the option. I stacked up two books on a plastic table, poured those few ice cubes on the dosa pan, adjusted the elevation and started intervalometer. Why dosa pan? That was the only black object I found. Only black objects can expose properly this colorless ice :-). After the setup, it was time to resume cleaning activity :-(.

The final result? Yes it is this timelapse :-). The notional movement was achieved using motion time lapser tool (details at the end) where in we can gradually crop the sequence of images to have moving look. The actual movement can be achieved if you own DIY slider with servo motor. I do not have one since it is expensive and this was the only trick I could get around for movement scene. Hope you enjoy the timelapse.

The mistake I did was tuning camera in Av mode (aperture priority mode). That created flickering in middle of process :-(. The environment had unchanged light and I should have shot in Manual (M mode). Nevertheless, final one also turned out to be good :-).

Details:


Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Mode: Aperture priority(Av)
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: Auto
ISO: 100
Exposure value: -0.6EV
Metering mode: Center weighted average
White Balance: Florescence
Magic Lantern Firmware: v2.3
Picture interval: 6s (I think so)
Duration: (2frames/image)*(112 images)/25fps = 9s + 5s banner = 14s








Tools and options:

Video Editor: KDENLIVE under Linux Mint 16
Notional movement: Motion Time Lapser (Ran with wine)
Editing: Changed aspect ration to 16:9, slightly contrast increase, WB adjustment and RGB adjustments
Crop scale: 4500x3000 to 5166x3444

Here is my entire timelapse playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4EE9291CE4B94285
Subscribe to my channel if you wish to have instant updates: http://www.youtube.com/user/nakumar85/videos

January

This is a vertically composed panoramic picture of Aghanaashini River near Kumta shot after completing journey from Yana. The magnificent river has breath taking landscape with blue waters and bent coconut trees spread all along its banks. Also not to miss the distant western ghats, which provides great depth to the landscape. It has been one of my favorite spots ever since I stumbled upon this magnificent splendor. Most of travelers feel startled after coming across such a beauty along the National Highway - 66. It is indeed a requirement to have wide angle lens to accommodate entire scene filled with required subjects. As I have been stating, the wide angles are out of my budget as of now :-). Rather than fretting over what is not in my kit, I compose multiple shots and stitch to form panorama picture to accomplish the task of wide angle lens. I got excited after stitching individual shots (thanks to Hugin for the perfect stitch!). Everything is present :-) name it the blue water, the sky, the stream of coconut trees and to some extent distant hills! Also the picture was shot around 3PM which makes it perfect time to photograph eastwards wherein soft light of SUN illuminates the opposite horizon with perfect colors. As you can see even HDR is not required ;-). Hope you enjoy the picture.

LOVELY VIEW OF AGHANAASHINI RIVER, KUMTA

Winter is one of great season for photography mainly due to absence of haze and presence of azure sky. Also winter sunrise and sunset is colorful sight to watch especially near water bodies and mountain tops (seas, lakes or rivers). Personally out of three seasons, winter lies at bottom of my list but love to shoot landscapes during this season. The slight cold weather coupled with molecular particles on atmosphere, spills some ecstatic colors on sky especially during golden hours. The picture was shot during first week of January 2014 and  signifies the calm winter environment of Coastal Karnataka.

Speaking of January, hear beautiful music "January" by British musicians Med & Phil Metcalfe. Despite having slightly intense bass, the breakdown is mellowing.

Med & Phil Metcalfe - January (Original Mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktY89GokSmM

Apart from original work, do not miss the equally great remix by Jaden Merrick.

Med & Phil Metcalfe - January (Jaden Merrick Remix)): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfr6D1DwdfE

The beautiful chilled remake by Magdelayna

Med & Phil Metcalfe - January (Magdelayna Chilldown Mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCwDUhKahgM


I feel the beautiful Kaup beach sunset while sitting on the rocks and listening to soft melody of sea tides while hearing this chilled remake of Magdelayna

Magic Lantern LV Display Gain : A small tutorial

Slightly digressing from what I have been writing over the years, here is a small tutorial on Magic Lantern firmware as how to use LV Display gain facility. As canon DSLR users are aware, Magic Lantern is free and open source firmware for selected canon DSLRs for customizing certain functionalities. Apart from customizing, it also adds new features on top of Canon's factory default firmware. Note that ML firmware is installed on top of Canon's firmware and does not override existing Canon firmware. One can easily roll-back to Canon firmware if wished. Unlike Canons, Nikon DSLRs already have the glory of built-in intervalometers, HDR bracketing and many more options. Honestly, Canon is way lagging behind in terms of feature sets and Canon owners like me are fortunate to have ML firmware. It is annoying that Canon makes all fancy processors and cool displays without providing basic features like intervalometer. One gets feeling of being in mansion without furnitures. The Magic Lantern firmware is community driven project wherein some enthusiasts come forward to make it stable.

Enough of rant ;-). Sometimes back, I scribbled about Star Trails and the mistake I did. One of the solution was to focus to infinity around evening itself and waiting for darkness. However, that is not required if your Canon DSLR is equipped with ML firmware. There is a cool feature called "LV Display Gain" which increases sensitivity of Live View Display to some absurd value. The LV will constitute fully of noisy grains on the display. This feature is useful for photographing stars at night when focusing stars is cumbersome task in darkness. The view finder is of no use at all. The LV is almost black. The only rescue is LV display gain. By using this feature, I was easily able to focus on one of the brightest stars on sky and adjust focus ring. Here is set of screenshots from the feature. These screenshots were obtained using another feature in ML on which I would be writing soon!

Switch to ML menu and proceed to Display main and select LV Display gain. Set the desired value (max is +7.0 EV in EOS550D).

Switch back to live display and hunt for stars. Now, all of those grains are not stars ;-). You need to twiddle the focus ring to spot the stars. Even though, it looks useless in picture, in practice the bright stars are visible. As you rotate focus ring, the diameter of stars vary which enables you to focus accurately. Adjusting the focus ring varies the sharpness of stars which you can notice! I have encircled some of the stars for reference purpose.

Difficult to spot!

 Set the desired camera settings you wish and enjoy shooting the distant world :-). This was one of the image I shot with the help of feature.

Last Sunset of 2013

These were Sunset shots snapped during our descent of Kuduremukh western ghats on last day of English Year. Do not mis-interpret it as last sunset on earth. If that was case, I would not been able to write this post anyways ;-). As our car was coasting down the ghats, this show off by nature caught my eyes. How can I miss such a mastery art of nature ;-). I got down from car to the creepy jungle and took some shots. To compose good shots, I did under-expose way down to  -3EV. That created beautiful silhoutte with bright Sun in background. I also took few deep breaths in middle of dense jungle and relished those pure air. That was really rejuvenating. It is soothing experiencing to breath air from western ghats. Whenever I visit western ghats, I drink those pure water from streams and take deep breaths in the serene environment. The intimidating sound out of jungle made me immediately hop into car and resume journey :D. Also there are myriad of monkeys  to disturb your peace :D. Hope you enjoy the Sunset pictures taken on last day of English year.

Speaking of Last Sunset, do hear beautiful music by Simon O Shine "Last Sunset". An intelligent young musician from Poland who is master in uplifting orchestral music. I admire him for his great work "Your Distant World" which was quite popular when it was released.

Simon O Shine "Last Sunset":  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwUPrLY4DZQ

Last Note:

There is some hidden information without which we could not have seen such beautiful sunset. The car tyre got punctured near Kuduremukh :D. The horrendous road from kuduremukh to Horanaadu, ripped off the tyre's skin causing the puncture. We realized it after traveling for few kms (which is typical feature of tubeless tyres).  Fortunately it was in middle of grassland not the forests. We were unaware as how to replace the tyre but my father read manual carefully with which we could replace tyre in 30 minutes. Even though my contribution was less as compared to father and uncle, I learned to replace the tyre with jack and spanner :-). This delay enabled us  to enjoy the beautiful Sunset along kuduremukh western ghats. I was really happy to learn replace the tyre as well enjoy beautiful sunset :-).

Annapoorne Vishalakshi

During holiday season, we had been to few places nearby hometown. I have lot places to wander around 200kms radius of my hometown especially towards UttaraKannada direction [except the westwards where I can only trace water ;-)]. The pictures were shot during our recent visit to Horanadu Annapoorneshwari Temple situated nearby Kuduremukh. This beautiful Malnad temple is surrounded by equally beautiful hillocks which makes it delightful place to visit. Also the pilgrims of temple are fed with free lunch and dinner prior to MahaPooje. It is to make sure none of pilgrims have darshan in hunger. The temple is neatly maintained too! Also you can buy wide variety of indigenously grown spices and dry fruits. Along the Kuduremukh-Horanaadu stretch, one can spot many tea & coffee depot and stop by to savor them with natural aroma. It would be great experience to sip it during heavy monsoon rains of Malnad. Here are some HDR and panoramic shots composed during my visit. The pictures are not so well composed but uploaded here for archive.

On this Friday, the day of Mahalakshmi, I dedicate this write-up to goddess Annapoorneshwari of Horanadu. Let's pray the goddess to bestow people on earth with sufficient nutritious food.

HDR of TEMPLE

PANORAMIC VIEW OF HILLS

If you appreciate carnatic music, do hear beautiful Sanskrit composition of Muttuswamy Deekshitar, "Annapoorne Vishalaakshi" in "Saama" Raaga rendered by Smt. ML VasanthaKumari. The Raaga "Saama" is also one of my favorite Raaga which embodies great devotion.

Annapoorne Vishaalakshi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amzIKIX50Ak

Our Distant World - The Orion belt

Orion belt visible in sky only during winter or spring. Anyhow monsoon season, we can only trace cloud belt ;-). During my recent star trail experiments in night sky, I captured orion belt  both in kit lens and 50mm f/1.8 lens. The former has maximum aperture of f/3.5  and hence not appealing as one shot in 50mm f/1.8. Nevertheless, the belt is easily  recognizable though! When glanced around internet world, it was mentioned that we could spot the belt in  southwest sky. However, I spotted along southeast sky and later on it moved to southwest direction.  I do have number of star trail timelapse of night sky. I am not sharing it as of now ;-).  Hope you enjoy the pictures of orion belt and let me know your comments on same. Next step is to spot the north pole star (Polaris)   to capture the stars circling around it.  Also need to find a location to capture milky way too!

Distant Orion belt with kit lens at 18mm

Closeup orion belt with 50mm f/1.8

Enjoy beautiful music by Simon O Shine "Your Distant World" on this occassion. What a masterpiece and perfect blending of  synthesizers and orchestral music. One of my favorites too :-). I am really lucky that I can comprehend such music despite mockery  by few people ;-). This music was quite popular during the days of its release. Transport yourself to exotic world with beautiful HDR timelapse photography!

Simon O Shine - Your Distant World: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m0IOw9L2ZQ

Simon O Shine - Your Distant World (Orchestral Mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PINjBybf9VA

CPL filters

I have been flaunting a lot about CPL filters in my previous write-up but barely with any examples. I did only demonstrate, how haze was nullified as well as how cleaner the sky looks. Somebody asked me if I can really show an example where applicability of CPL filter could be understood. Consequently, here are two pictures of lotus pond shot without and with CPL filter. Basically both of them were shot with CPL filter on the lens ring. Only difference was the first one was shot at a position where CPL had no effect while the latter was shot twiddling the CPL ring to get rid of reflections. Note how clear are details of foliage with CPL filter especially color saturation.  Also shimmering pond is eliminated too! The shots were taken at an angle to Sun's axis (not exactly 90 degrees). Note that if you shoot straight into Sun or exactly 180 degrees along axis of Sun, the photo will give undesirable look than without having CPL filter. The phenomenon can be even corrected with softwares however they may degrade the quality of image by infusing noises.

WITHOUT CPL FILTER

Band of Colorful Moon

These shots were taken during bright full moon day of Raksha bandhan. Just casual shot. After noticing the moon, I was tempted to grab some pictures of the bright shining energitic moon. Consequently pulled my camera, mounted the tele lens and started snapping the moon. What are those colors then? They were taken with varying white balances ;-). That creamed moon with vivid colors ;-). My primary intention was to learn how white balances work. I am still amateur photographer and needs lot of practice to strengthen my skills. This is one such practice carried out to learn a concept. Hope you enjoyed the picture. You can additionaly splice moons with a string to transform it to rakhi ;-).

COLORFUL MOON SEQUENCE!

The colors represent daylight, shadow, tungsten and cloudy white balances correspondingly. So what is WB? It is amount of color temperature shift required to retain white object as white in picture :-). What is color temperature? Back to physics :-). It is the color emitted by black body at particular temperature. If you recall concept of black body radiation, more the temperature, higher is the frequency emitted by the body [how? please read Neil Bohr's atomic model ;-)]. So at high temperature, the color is violet while at lower ones its red (visible range). Similarly when you increase color temperature of picture, the photo turns violet and red as you lower it. White Balance is amount of shift involved in balancing the color temperature. So lower the white balance, more bluish the color while red on other side of temperature. Both WB and CT are measured in in Kelvin