Time to Rest

05 Oct 2013

My parents were here in Bangalore for 2 weeks and hence bit of break from kitchen ;-) It was time to drop them back to native village :-(. Never felt 2 weeks would pass so early :-(. Nevertheless, they love the native village than city life for obvious reasons. This Saturday, the return long drive from Bangalore to Kaup with too much luggage :D. Effectively we were 5 instead of 3 :-). This time, father drove from Nelamangala junction till Gundya forest gate. I had lot of room to grab videos and pictures :D. One of the battery drained and other battery almost half used ;-). This time there are drive videos along Shiraadi ghat too! Even though the roads were not good, it was delightful to watch sahyaadri ranges with tons of waterfalls and not to miss gundya river. For few kms, the river follows the highway too!

Around 12PM, we reached Gundya forest gate. Prior to that I had lot of photo shoot as mentioned above along shiraadi ghat! There was slight drizzle at shiraadi ghat and as we neared Mangalore, the clouds opened up with pounding rain. The road was almost invisible for some time. Overall it was smooth journey and we covered in 9hrs (including 90 minutes cumulative break).

Coming back, the dreadful national (notional?) highway along shiraadi ghat was more than compensated by captivating western ghats and gundya river. Father was tired driving and it was time to rest near by this beautiful gundya river and hence the title ;-). Here are two HDRs; one from western ghats and other Gundya river with western ghats at backdrop. Both are 5 exposure bracketed HDRs.

This picture was featured in incredible india g+ page. I am really honored to have my picture in their page :-). That was shared unknowingly among 200,000 followers of incredible india g+ page. Hope you will also enjoy the same.

CAPTIVATING GUNDYA RIVER WITH BEAUTIFUL WESTERN GHATS IN BACKDROP

THE WESTERN GHATS!

The shiraadi ghat road stretch is beautiful than Kuduremukh stretch due to many seasonal waterfalls and Gundya river. I am not debasing Kuduremukh ghats, only difference is that road along Kuduremukh ghats does not contain as many water spots as shiraadi ghat. Also do not miss magnificent train journey along Sakaleshpur-Subramanya railway track. One of the memorable journey you will ever have during monsoon season. Also water spots are more along railway stretch than highway ;-).

Finally one of the water spot! There were many but we stopped at only few places. Felt like taking bath but no time :-(.

ONE OF SEASONAL WATERFALL ALONG HIGHWAY

Two musics this time. 'Time to Rest' by Andy Blueman and the chill-down remix of same by Magdelayna. Both are very good but latter is slightly more soothing than original version. So rest yourself for 18 mins enjoying beautiful music but not more than that ;-).

1) Time to Rest (original mix) - Andy Blueman : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf65BcRCBMU

2) Time To Rest (Magdelayna Chilled Remake) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQY3Pfz-C0

After small rest, it was time to drive for me before father could lose patience. Consequently drove all the way to our village from here.

So, why take pain of self driving? We have never felt it as pain ;-) It is really joyous to drive CRDi ;-). Apart from this, there are many reasons. It gives lot of flexibility to halt anywhere you wish. Secondly, we can fill in ample luggage compared to traveling by public transport. Last but not the least, traveling by car has proven to be far more cheaper than even Rajahamsa bus for 3 of us. If we include, luggage we had carried, the difference is even more. Only requirement is at-least two drivers are required. Many people have presumption that driving along ghats is cumbersome. But thats not case ;-). Once you experience driving along ghats, you will feel like driving repeatedly :-). Do not miss any chance if you have opportunity to drive along western ghats!

HDR and panorama during Mantralaya visit

Here are some HDR and panorama shots taken during our yearly visit to Mantralaya temple. Few years back, torrential rains and floods from Tungabhadra river, had ruined the temple very badly. Later, many volunteers thronged to help in reconstruction of the town including temple. As a result of many years of work, the temple has beautiful look now. This panorama stitch is of temple front view. Of-course one could see barrel distortion and it is expected when you grab panorama shots non-linearly. Even some UWL lenses exhibit this nature but not noticeable as below. Enjoy the full front view of temple.

MANTRALAYA TEMPLE

Evening time, we spent considerable amount of time in Tungabhadra river basin. I wanted to stay till the Sunset and achieved it too ;-). Before sunset, I wanted to grab landscape picture with coracle. As expected, the high energy SUN eats up all the luminosity in picture consequently under-exposing the surroundings. Hence time to grab HDR shot. 5 exposure shot gave me perfect image exposing both coracle and Sun eventually :-).

CORACLE AND SUN ;-)

Next is golden hour picture just before sunset. We were expecting beautiful Sunset, however clouds suddenly turned up and spoiled our enthusiasm :-(. Nevertheless, the nature never betrays. The Sun behind clouds was waving rays through the clouds :-). That created some beautiful colors too! This is perfect for HDR shot. Here is one more 5 image bracketed HDR. I am really happy with the image. The clouds, colors and rocks are perfectly exposed. Also my one more intention was to expose those distant power masts which was achieved in image. The only problematic part is the distant landscape did not come up with good colors. After inspecting all 5 images, I realized more dynamic was required. This is the case where one needs 7 exposures to have great dynamic range. Eventually, I am happy with the result.

GOLDEN HOUR HDR OF TUNGABHADRA RIVER, MANTRALAYA

HDR and panorama from Shringeri.

After sailing through Kuduremukh western ghats, we reached Shringeri on 21-09-2013. It was hardly 2hrs journey mainly due to ghat section. It is really mesmerizing experience driving through western ghats during monsoon season. Rolling back to mainstream, father wanted to visit Shringeri to spend some time in temple town. Despite, being only 2hr journey, lot of hurdles made us to refrain from visiting the beautiful Malnad temple. This time the visit was pre-planned and we made it too. As always, I did some experiments with my favorite partner ;-). I did not try much except for some HDR and panorama. Last time, I did shoot a HDR of preserved ancient temple which is documented here. This time, there were thick clouds over sky which tempted me to grab a HDR with Tunga River. So here is HDR bracketed with 3 exposures. I happy with clouds, vegetation and water being exposed in image except for the colors which would have been more greener if there were more bracketed shots (may be 5).

TUNGA RIVER BASIN, SHRINGERI

Settings:

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Focus Point: Auto
Aperture: f/9.0
ISO: 100
Picture Style: Landscape
White Balance: Cloudy
Metering: Center weighted average
No of images:3
Exposures: --2,0,+2(1/200s for middle one)
ML Firmware: v2.3
Softwares: Luminance HDR (Fatal operator), GIMP

From this blog onwards, I am modifying setting details slightly. HDRs are always bracketed in 'Manual focus' mode and hence I am shifting from Focus to Focus point. Sometimes we will have to make manual focus points to concentrate on subject of interest. I will mention the focus point explicitly if set to manual

Next is panorama of Tunga river nearby temple. Since the monsoon has almost ended, not much water could be seen. My intention was to grab wider image of the river with hillocks. Here is 5 image stitch of sweet Tunga river of Shringeri!

PANORAMIC VIEW OF SWEET TUNGA RIVER BASIN

Florescence

The time when flower blossoms; as simple as that. When looking into those flowers, the florescence caption flashed onto my head even though none of them were taken early morning ;-). Here are some pictures (mainly flowers) taken during my recent visit to native village. Not much text but more pictures!

BUNCH OF FLOWERS

PADDY FIELD

COLLECTION OF FLOWERS

DANGLING FLOWERS NOT POINTER ;-)

And some with flash at night.

LEAF

GRASS

SHY THORN FLOWER ;-)

PUMPKIN PLANT FLOWER

Finally I bought macro lens and all above pictures were taken with new lens ;-). The lens is Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Di 1:1 macro lens. It is really great lens for its price. I wanted to buy Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens but it was way out of my budget :D. This lens had good review and was reasonably cheap (not much!). It has very good auto focus during broad daylight but makes too much noise. Also sometimes hunts for focus. The lack of image stabilization is negative point. Hence 1/30s or less you must use tripod. The sharpness is good f/4.0 or higher but not below that value. Some say with f/2.8, you don't need image stabilization but f/2.8 gives you very less detail. Most of the pictures at-least require f/4.0 or higher to have greater detail. Slight chromatic aberration around high contrast regions but not appealing. Even good for single portraits (not group). I am yet to explore it more. Once done, my blogs will be full of insects, butterflies, flowers and may be even snakes ;-). Overall wonderful lens to have in my kitty.

Speaking of florescence, I recall the beautiful florescence album of Slovenian musician Andy Blueman. Really great piece of work. It is so true that music requires awesomeness more than singing and Andy's music is perfect example for it. Just pure instrumental music but never you get bored! As I repeatedly mention, his work  involves intelligent blending of orchestral music and synthesizers with soothing bass (not severe). His music has melodious breakdowns and one can feel the theme of the album. It is very much uplifting to hear such kind of musics. The brief retirement he announced from making uplifting musics has finally broken and he is back making great music again :-). That has really made his fans very happy including me. I wish he continues producing such everlasting music forever.

Florescence mainly consists of 4 musical tracks. Most of them seem similar but their compositions and breakdowns are unique. One can feel his musical intelligence in every track. Hear and enjoy. My favorite is the last one which is emotional mix!

1) Florescence (Intro mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhgi0cFEqlY
2) Florescence (Original mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zu5T8cfIXo
3) Florescence (Epic mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SRJjHJEnP8
4) Florescence (Emotional mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kZdkrMpho

Enjoy the beautiful melody of emotional mix from 3:00 to 4:00 as well marvelous breakdown from 4:00 onwards.

Don't miss the preview of his latest work Cydonia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-06PDaycbM

Achieving impossible with forced perception -- Squeezing the Sun ;-)

Many people love to take such photos. Such photos are easy to grab too if you maintain certain distance between objects of interest. This is called forced perception wherein something extraordinary shown with the help of few techniques. The main aspect here is that the stronger subject which should be perceived lighter than the main subject should be at far off distance. In this case the Sun is million miles away ;-). When passing time in Tungabhadra river in Mantralaya, a small thought made me to grab such an image. I placed first two fingers of left hand to hold the Sun and the right hand to hold camera. You need to basically set very high depth field and bit of under exposing to properly obtain result. In my case it was somewhere around f/22. The presence of atmosphere clouds properly scattered the sun light to have squeeze look. Finally the high aperture made sure that sun rays get diffracted by the aperture blades to have star-burst like look ;-). The image gives feeling of fingers squeezing the Sun and as a result rays evolved :D. Hope you feel the same ;-). I have tried these many times but this was first successful attempt. In future, expect more of such kinds!

FORCED PERCEPTION!

7 exposure HDR of Mundkoor temple corridor

This is 7 exposure HDR bracketed during my recent visit to Mundkoor Durgaparameshwari temple near Karkala. The main reason going beyond 5 exposure was that even at -2EV, the coconut trees were not exposed. Also the high contrast region between roof and temple, made camera evaluate bit crazily. Actually at normal exposure, the image seemed to be overexposed at the roof side while darker along corridor. Hence I had to compose 7 bracketed shots from -3 to +3 to grab more dynamic range to expose trees and corridor properly. Eventually I got the result I wanted i.e. trees and corridor properly exposed. I am happy with colors along the corridor and lighting on the sky as well as puddles on the floor. Hope you will enjoy the picture also.

MUNDKOOR TEMPLE CORRIDOR

Settings:

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 23mm
Focus: Manual
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO: 400
Picture Style: Neutral
White Balance: Shade
Metering: Center weighted average
No of images:7
Exposures: -3,-2,-1,0,+1,+2,+3(1/30s for middle one)
ML Firmware: v2.3
Softwares: Luminance HDR (Fatal operator), GIMP

Last Note:

Someone questioned as how normal picture like above can be called HDR. HDRs need not have bright colors. HDR is all about composing an image similar to your eyes see with greater dynamic range which cameras cannot capture. Of-course they seem fake sometimes but that is not the intention behind HDR captures.

Monsoon drive through Kuduremukh Ghats

This video was shot during the up-hilling of Kuduremukh ghats on our way to Shringeri. In middle of ghat section, we had small break near one of the water springs and later my father offered to drive the car. It's time for me to grab some video of driving through lush green western ghats ;-). I took many videos but compiled them to fit one of my favorite music :-). The road was very beautiful and well paved but narrow from Kerekatte cross to Shringeri (about 30kms). It takes lot of time to drive through these sections due to up-hilling, steep curves and blind spots. One needs to honk at each and every curve as a measure of safety. Also the road edges are high from ground level which makes it impossible to slip down the road. Except for well paved road, the stretch looks like village road despite being National Highway. Nevertheless, if you are watchful, everything is smooth. Our journey was really smooth mainly due to the powerful pull of CRDi engines and well paved roads (we easily could negotiate uphill in 3rd gear). Watch out for rushing tankers and gas laden trucks along curves. There was heavy rains too during return journey. At that time, I was driving and hence no videos of the same. Enjoy the virtual drive through gorgeous western ghats.

With full respect to beautiful music "Minded Constellation" from German musician Dirk Hoffman codenamed Goaschuld, here is the drive video.
Great chill music and perfect for monsoon drives ;-).

Here are few pictures!

KUDUREMUKH NATIONAL PARK GATE

WELL PAVED NATIONAL HIGHWAY - 13

ONE MORE VIEW

WATER SPOT