nostalgia: photography

Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts

Friday, May 31, 2019

Hundred and twenty-two

I was browsing through old photos and realized that I haven't edited so many of them. I always thought photos must be aesthetically pleasing. Fundamentally photography is meant for accurate documenting, later photography was considered as an art form. I started photography to document my daughter and now I consider photography more of an art. Looking at a decade old photos, I also realized that, how volatile our memory is.

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Seventy nine

I am pursuing photography from a decade. From the last two years, I had lost interest in photography. I was doing that but not with the enthusiasm of the beginning. Reading blogs, books and Youtube, I learnt that professionals don't care for mood, creativity or getting bored of doing a thing, they keep doing what they are doing. I too used similar mantra here. Whether I liked it or not I keep shooting and editing photos. Often it was boring and frustrating. Again I am back to photography and trying to even videography. It is obvious that I am spending more time on review sites and checking out prices. Though it doesn't help in improving photography, reading about gear and technology is fun.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Seventy

As an amateur, I spend a lot of time on photography forums and review sites. From the past 10 years, I have learnt many tricks and intricacies of photography. In most photography forums, we talk more about the sharp photo and less about art. Whenever, I come across pro photographers in marriage, sports or any other function, I am astonished to know that they don't understand many technicalities and relevance of camera, light and composition. I also found that they don't read any reviews before buying the camera (all this applies to India not sure about the rest of the world). But at the end of the photo session, they have more keepers than us. What do they do? In their world, photography is learnt via peer learning. They have a bunch of settings for each situation and function. Aperture, white balance, flash, lens focal length and ISO setting all are well defined. For situation A, setting X is used, for situation B, setting Y is used- simple and straight forward formula. Camera buying depends on market demand since customers are aware of full frame, APS-C etc.; before hiring, customers would ask what camera and lens will you use for my function? Therefore, even though a low-end camera would suffice the purpose, the pro will buy the high-end camera to satisfy the customer demand. Apart from that pro photographer will decide his camera based on opinions from their professional friends, service centres and camera shops. I really don't think they read a lot of reviews. A pro knows that Canon 5DMark IV or Nikon 850 or Sony A7R are fail-proof, fancy looking and proven market models. One more reason they buy only these cameras because it is easy to find used lenses, spare parts and the most important thing - there is always a fellow pro photographer is there to teach menus, settings of these cameras.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Sahyadri and monsoon

Monsoon trekking is common for Mumbai and Pune adventure and nature lovers. Lot have been written about "how to" " where to" and "what to see". I just would like to write about my experience as a photographer. Trekking is not a photography trip. They move fast and take less luggage. I just went with these monsoon trekkers to take photographs!! However, I can't take the tripod or too many lenses. Problems for photographers - 1. rain ( take care of the lens and camera is difficult. 2. Pace - they move fast, there is no time to stand and think about composition and set up long exposures etc. 3. Can't take too many gears ( tripod and lenses). 4. One more major problem is light; in monsoon very often it is overcast clouds and trek groups never leave before 9 Am, so we will miss the morning light. In the evening, all of us will be in a hurry to reach the base and hence in evening golden light we will be in the valley rather than in mountains. So if you go with the trekking group then quality landscape opportunities are very less. I am looking for some photography group that would help me to cover Sahyadri.
So I switched to micro-four-third so that I can accommodate the camera. here are my gears- Olympus OMD EM5- 12-40 Pro f2.8 zoom, 40-150 consumer zoom, Raynox 250R (for macro- an adapter), small silk 3-foot tripod, lens wipes and Canon 100S point to shoot, which can shoot in RAW mode and has all the controls like a DSLR.
Camera in hand would be EM5+ 12-40f2.8- weather sealed, in the trouser pocket Canon S100. Even in rain EM5 can be used as it is weather resistant. Missing the wide angle lens; I learnt to stitch panoramas or two photo stitches to cover the range.

I will add few more points as and when I remember. Here are photos. Click on photos to view large and slide show.