Weekend getaways - Pawna Lake (Lonavala)

Mumbai is known for its weekend getaways and this one is a sheer 100km drive and the most visited mini-hill station. While I feel there isnt much to do at Lonavala due to the huge crowd on weekends, Pawna Lake and Dam is a nice getaway from the maddening Lonavala crowd.

Pawana is located on the way to Tikona Peth and Tikona Fort, leaving Lohgad on the left.

The lake is huge by my standards. I mean, I kept driving for over five kilometers at least along the lake and it didnt leave my sight even once. What surprised me however, during this visit was the number of vehicles (read people) who had just come over to spend the day. Several resorts have come up along the road that follows the length of the dam and sometimes it become too crowded to find a good parking place to click pictures.

I have my favourite spot here however; a small pumping station going several meters into the dam like a jetty. It is very strategically located, given the fact that from here a panorama will give you the view of entire length of the Lake. There is an nice camping place below this pumping station. (18688107, 73.473600)

Here is what it looks like from this point.

Pawna Lake Panorama

It is a nice place to click some great pictures with several rocks, the lake and the hills in the background. If you choose a clear day for the visit, be prepared for some dark photos due the sun in the background and blinding light due to the added reflection from the lake. However, clear day also means blue waters of the lake. During the Monsoons the lake waters appear dark and murky but everything is lush green around.

Not many places to eat around this due to the hygiene and quality (unless you are booked in a resort). Also the road is pretty narrow to always park and stop over for a snack. So I would recommend a small packet of dry food and definitely a lot of water for this trip.

Lights.... Camera.... Fireworks!!!!

With the festive season around the corner, i am often confronted with questions regarding fireworks and colourful festive low-light photography. Since its been quite some time since I wrote, I thought why not add line or two on these...


The world of Fireworks...

Fireworks have always fascinated me and capturing the colours and the grandeur of fireworks is what I have always liked. Certain points to be noted here though...

Things needed...

• Shoot RAW - absolutely necessary here since we are living in regions where the sky and ambient color keeps changing. raw shooting helps a lot in post processing like white balance, exposure, noise, etc. unless you really like orange skies to be captured
• Strong/Heavy Tripod or fixture - this one is another absolute necessity unless you have really really steady hands (read not possible). the camera's position in the 3 dimensions needs to be fixed and why so, we'll come that in a bit.
• Wide Angle Lens - preferably 18mm and below to get the whole landscape

How to...

• typically on a dark night of diwali, you would want to set-up your shooting on a tall structure (building terrace, hill, etc.) near lots of action
• mount your camera on the tripod and align your camera to get the composition you like
• set your camera on Manual, with shutter at around 10sec (not 1/10sec) and take a click at whatever other settings the camera is at
• with hardly any movement, other than strong winds, you should be getting a bright image of the otherwise dark cityscape
• notice the orange tinge (ideally for polluted cities like Mumbai), if you like it then no issues, otherwise a Tungsten White-Balance can remove the orange tinge
• a camera wireless remote or wire-triggers to reduce camera shakes
• I would preferably shoot at
• Shutter - 5sec to 20sec 
• depending on the speed of the fireworks (you dont want overlapping fireworks else it will be a ball of white light)
• remember, longer the shot, more time for the camera to process and hence more of missing action
• also longer times are good if the fireworks are happening on a wide area and not starting from the same place
• Aperture - f8 - f11
• depends on the first shot you took; if it isnt sufficiently bright move to higher apertures
• ISO - 100 or lowest values
• WB - Tungsten
• Long Exposure Noise Reduction - OFF
• if your cam has this, better to keep it off and remove the noise in PP
• once the fireworks starts.... what are you waiting for... just SHOOT!!!

Shooting People & Low-Light Photography

This one's interesting, since these would be mostly candids and missing the moment is missing the shot. Very rarely would get another chance with the same expressions and emotions. So you need your camera to capture as much details as possible in the shot.

Photography is all about capturing and light and for such quick moments, you need a fast lens - one with a large aperture. f2.8 and lower I mean. And that's because, you need a higher shutter speed for capturing moments and if you recall my last article, shutter speed and aperture are inversely proportional, so you need a large aperture.

Another way is to use flash to freeze the motion and yet this doesn't always work. Flash power and its light's spread is limited.

Finally, you can compensate for smaller apertures and higher shutter speeds by using higher ISO speeds. Limitations for higher ISO is the digital noise, which can be cleared off in post processing only to some extent.

Okies enough of the gyaan here... the most important part of photography during festivals is DO NOT keep the camera INSIDE your bag or you lose the moments.

Keep clicking... and Happy diwali...

Photography 101 - The DSLR, Aperture, Shutter and ISO

In most of my discussions about photography in general and cameras and lenses in particular, one thing that I have realized is that there is a mixed reaction towards the Manual Mode of the camera. While I can easily attribute it to laziness, a bit of introspection and inspection made me realize that there is a partial understanding of the basic concepts in the first place. While most of my friends have had the liberty to discuss these topics openly, many haven't had that chance or a medium perhaps.

So here are the basics of photography... Photography 101... for the sake of argument, this article is limited to Dslrs and Slrs, but the techniques can be applied to any type of photograph recording device.

Lets attack unarguably, the most common term in photography - A Dslr

Digital Single-Lens Reflex (camera) is basically digital cameras which use the (old) Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) technology and replace the film with a digital back (sensor). The Single-Lens Reflex is of interest to us at this point since we are going to use it further in this article and manipulate it in subsequent topics. To think about it in simple terms, think about a periscope, only in this case, the light is first bounced off a 45 degree mirror into a condenser lens finally into a Penta-prism before emerging out of the view finder. When the shutter release button is pressed all the way down, the mirror retracts and the sensor sees what you essentially saw earlier through the view finder. Hence, the term Single-Lens Reflex. Based on the sensor (film) size, they can be categorized into Crop Sensor (APS-C), Full Frame (35mm format), Medium Format and Large Format cameras. Most of us will be wielding a crop sensor camera with a crop factor of 1.5 for Nikon and 1.6-1.7 for Canon. I am going to restrict our discussion to crop sensors and full frames for ease.

Photo courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_single-lens_reflex_camera

The terms and concepts that follow have certain uniqueness. Each of them can be attributed to a part of the entire camera and normally aren't swapped or mixed.

Shutter - Body function
Aperture - Lens function
ISO (ASA) - Sensor (Film) function

Whether Film or Digital, it has always been the amalgamation of these 3 things that takes the snaps. Lets dive a bit into each of these.

Aperture and Depth of Field (DoF)
When light travels, through the camera lens, it is actually travelling through a tunnel or a pipe. How much light reaches the other side is determined by the size of the hole or the opening. Aperture when loosely translated means a opening. Based on the size of the opening, the volume of light hits the sensor. The concept of aperture has been developed from the pupil in the human eye. Brighter the light, smaller the pupil to avoid irritation. Lesser the light wider the pupil so that we can see better. The second concept of Depth of Field or DoF is again borrowed from the pupil. Bigger the pupil, more the optical aberration and hence 'messier' the image, while smaller the pupil, sharper is the image and also the distance over which the image is sharp. If we extend it to the camera lens, bigger the hole size (aperture), more the light and optical aberration and hence shallower the DoF, while smaller the aperture, less light, more is the distance over which the image looks sharper and hence greater is the DoF.

This Ladybug is around 5mm in length. Notice how the head region and the body in that plane is sharp. The back and the grass in front are all blurred out

Aperture Priority or Aperture Value Mode - A (Nikon), Av (Canon), AV (Pentax)
In this mode the Aperture value is fixed and the camera processor decides the shutter speed for the correct exposure. When you turn the dial, what essentially happens is that the diaphragms in the lens open up or close down to control the size of the hole. In film cameras this was done by an aperture ring on the lens itself. In dslrs, this is done from the camera body. But finally the lens opening is only adjusted through a small lever extending from the camera body. The visible figures on the screen look something like this - f4, f4.5, f5, f5.6, f6.3, f7.1, f8, f9, f10, f11, so on and so forth. Interesting to note here are two things -

• amount of light decreases with increase in aperture value and vice versa; ie f4 allows more light than f5.6 and conversely f11 to f8 allows more light
• f4 is half of f8 while f5.6 is half of f11. So there are two mathematical series going on here. 

Without going into the mathematical (geometric) progression (beyond the scope of this article), please remember that f4 to f8 progression is 2 stops similar to f5.6 to f11. Hence, f4 to f5.6 is one complete stop. Now here is the most important part - every time you change one whole stop, the light changes by half or double. So from f4 to f5.6 the light has halved while f11 to f8 the light has doubled.

Most of the cameras these days have the provision of breaking down the complete stop into 3 steps, but the relationship remains. The above confusing relationship is what will be widely used further for proper exposures. It is confusing in the beginning but as you practice more, it becomes much easier.

This is taken at f2.8. Notice the narrow plane of focus. The mushroom head and some grass below it is in focus.

For DoF, lenses with F1.4, F1.8 and F2.8 are called fast lenses since their apertures are very wide. For these lenses, at the Max aperture (smallest aperture value = Max hole size) the focal plain will be few centimeters wide and hence everything else will be blurred, giving a wonderful appearance. Since such aperture sizes are difficult to manufacture repeatably, such lenses are very costly. Similarly at aperture values approaching f6.3 to f8 and beyond, the DoF is several meters wide which means most of the photograph will be in focus and sharp.

This is taken at f16. Notice the sharpness which extends right up to the structures way behind.

From application stand point, Higher Aperture (smaller f value), More Light, Lesser DoF. Lower Aperture (higher f value), Less Light, Higher DoF.

Shutter and Shutter Speed

Essentially, the dslr sensor is like the film. Moment you expose it to light it will start recording data. Whether you are at the right focus or frame or is the light sufficient; it simply doesn't care. So what we have essentially here is a curtain; a piece of black cloth on a spring, which hides the sensor (film) from light till we feel we are ready to click. Hence, you might have observed that the Shutter release button has 2 stops - first, at half way, it adjusts focus (in case of auto-focus) and finally it clicks when you press all the way through. Shutter Speed would then literally mean, the speed at which we open and close the curtain to allow the light to fall on the sensor (film). This brings us to the next term.

This is the D7000 Shutter assembly. Important to notice is the marked region which shows several shutter curtains.

Photo courtesy: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d7000/specifications.htm

Shutter Priority or Time value Mode - S (Nikon),  Tv (Canon), TV (Pentax)
In this mode, the camera allows us to fix the value of the shutter speed. What you control is the rate at which the curtain opens and closes the sensor (film). In turn, what you control is the amount of time for a volume of light (determined by aperture) falls on the sensor (film). When you use the wheel or the dial for the Shutter speed, the numbers either increase or decrease on the screen. What you see for example is 250, 320, 400, 500, but what it means is 1/250, 1/320, 1/400 of a second. Now the important part in this part of the discussion - 1/250 of a second is 1/2 of 1/125. Hence 1/250 lets the same volume of light to fall on the sensor for 1/2 the time of 1/125. Hence 1/125 to 1/250 is one full stop and exposure time is half. Similarly 1/60 to /30 is again a full stop while exposure time has doubled. The series goes something like this - 1", 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, so on and so forth. Newer cameras give 1/3 stop arrangements so you can get something like 1/60, 1/80, 1/100, 1/125, 1/160, 1/200, 1/250, so on and so forth. Even though, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, is the original series, the relationship between 1/100 and 1/200 is the same.

Fireworks - it is a 87 seconds exposure (motion blur)

Water drop - taken at 1/320 of a second (freeze motion)

From application stand point, Higher Shutter Speed, Lesser Light and Motion Freeze. Lower Shutter Speed, More Light and Motion Blur

ISO (ASA)
The final of the triangle, ISO, as pointed out earlier is a sensor (film) characteristics. It is basically a medium to gather more light. Loosely, ISO can be compared to worker ants. More the number of ants, faster is the food collected. Say it is a bright day outside. For the same brightness of the image, keeping the other settings the same, the amount of light collected by ISO 100 will obviously be less than ISO 200 and so on. However, as your ISO increases, so will the digital noise. This is primarily because ISO produces brightness artificially through pre-written algorithms. Lower ISO is a darker smoother image, Higher ISO is a grainy image. A balance needs to be set and each camera has its own sweet-spot.

Here is a cheat sheet summarizing the above.

Photo courtesy: http://livinginthestills.com/cheatsheet

So long for now. Happy clicking and experimenting...

Cheers!!!
- Abhishek 

Voices of Nepal...

"the best way to overcome a temptation is to succumb to it.." once said my English teacher in school.

being assigned the lead for the project, i had the unsaid privilege of.... hush hush... traveling to the installation locati... psst psst...

nevertheless, this time, my work took me for a pleasure ride into Nepal via Patna right across the border at Raxaul, crossing over to Birgunj... phew...

none of the world-class technologies at Google could save me from the suffering that lay en-route Patna-Birgunj... a mere 250 km... Google reassured a 3-4 hour journey... we did it in 9... and trust me when they joked that they can transform Shanghai into Bihar in 10 days... they were damn correct....

anyways, we moved into Nepal did some office work and moved to the next site in Kathmandu - the land of the Gods...

yeah Birgunj's heat and hotel's chilled water did give me a 100 deg fever and i carried that straight into Kathmandu's chill, but that didn't really stop me... somewhere deep down, there were voices which kept me pushing... The Voices of Nepal indeed...

as advised the first thing we did in Kathmandu post work was a visit to the famous Pashupathinath temple... the temple stood in pure magnificence... the evening "aarati" amazingly captivating... the enthusiasm was in the air... psychologically you feel the strength just sitting there for some time... and once again Einsteins Relativity plays tricks with you - you just wouldn't know how the hour hand moved from 7 pm to 8 pm...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKlvb0gz2ds

the banks of the idly flowing Bagmati river below the Pashupathinath temple, is a gateway for heaven for all the deceased Nepali folk... the cremation process fills one with awe... but the temple bells chiming far away gives all the hope and courage needed...

with time the spiritual visit further metamorphosized into a much glamorous one...Thamel, one of the shopping   centers of Nepal was waiting to treat us... you could just find anything here - from the extreme trekking stuff to mild and soft shawls. i got some shawls for home... claimed to be pashmina - i dunno; aint an expert...

some of the weird things the place had to offer to eat  included buffalo momo and hot beer called thungba... bon appetit...

Post completion of the work, the next day a brief visit to the King's palace (now museum) was exquisite...took about an hour to get through the palace. it showed what it is to live life king size!!! only one question that lingered in my mind - if the king and queen stayed in separate rooms, then.... never mind....

the final trip of the day was the Darbar Square... 3 hours flat and yet we couldn't finish it all... the place is huge with huge structures and with a huge number of people... there were huge old buildings resembling pagodas... temples, a kumari palace and museum too.... about the museum - built in 1770 it is made of wood and earth and nine storeys high... beat that!!!! tired as we were, we finished the evening with a late lunch and returned to the hotel...

the next and last day was a quick trip to the work zone and then straight to the airport. airport security is funny in Kathmandu... the'll will touch you everywhere to check if you are carrying something that doesn't belong in the flight.... anyways...

all in all, with the fever, with work, the trip went extremely well... we didnt plan any time for any of these places; thought that work wouldnt allow us... but i guess we were extremely efficient...

For more pictures please visit https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4738857992009.193434.1311662017&type=3

Mumbai - the last leg...

A recall of one the significant events in my last 2 weeks in Mumbai...

As I neared my flying off dates, I was constantly reminded of my bond with this city. 26yrs and I had never before felt so attached to the city.
I was again going away - from my home, my friends and most of all my city... Mumbai


Initially, I had started off writing this blog, trying to cover the Kala Ghoda festival, later only to realize that Kala Ghoda was just one of the colours of this city.

There were several others which needed to be captured... The last time I tried to do that, I found one blog to be not enough...

Being a photography enthusiast, I thought that it would be nice to capture some moments to be carried on as memories.


Places which had been long forgotten or hadn't been visited for the lack of time this city offered; I thought it would be a nice idea to revisit them.


So I gathered some friends; organised a get together and to be a bit formal and look serious, came up with a detailed itinerary about the event I called a photo-walk. Some 30 odd people - known and unknown alike, registered for it. It was unexpected and till the day of the "photo-walk", I was worried as to how would I control such a crowd and carryout the "event" as planned rather than have a chaos.

Fortunately or unfortunately, on the day, only my known friends turned out (whichever way you want to look at it). The crowd was controllable and soon the small group of mine were roaming about, around Churchgate and Fort and clicking whatever was in sight.


Finally after a lot of loitering around, we finally had a quick McD brunch and were joined by another group. This one was roaming since 6 in the morning and so some of them went home while others stayed back. Soon it seemed that long lost friends had met.I cut the itinerary short and started for Elephanta caves immediately.


The ride on the ferry was a mini photo-walk in itself. People posed, everyone of us wanted to prove to ourselves that yes we could click. But yes we all could photograph. Whether we had a camera or not, it didn't matter; what mattered was that we all were full of ideas to relish upon.


Elephanta had its own charm - a small toy train, hell lot of steps and finally the sight of the caves; not that its divine, but the sight from the top of the small island hill is breath taking.


Small shops lined the both sides of the stairs, that led up to the caves, giving the young photography enthusiasts millions of opportunities to test the skill and capture the sight in the most mesmerizing way it could have been possible.




The cave had its own charisma; provided us with the window to the rich ancient culture. I had been to Ajanta and Ellora, late last year. But every time I saw these caves, it always left me with a very intriguing question - how on earth did they manage this feat in those days??? Back of my mind I knew that there weren't any answers.




PDA is now common in my city. It shows the unique bonding one had for the other even if life has been too fast for us to even look at each other; so we just find time to bond, whenever life throws an opportunity.


After roaming around for hours in the caves, the group gathered again and we had the much needed group photograph.


Tired as we were, after the entire days ordeal, we scavenged the hilltop for a restaurant. We finally gorged upon the food that the lone hotel on the hilltop served and rushed back to the "last" ferry for the day from the island.


Our ride back on the steamer was unlike the one we had while going to the caves. Anyone hardly spoke; the day seemed to had drained our energy. But the surprise guests who visited us injected life back into us - the beautiful aerial friends of the sea; seagulls.


As the sun began to set we had a wonderful view in front of us - the island city. The sun began to dive into the city's skyline; it seemed it bade farewell to all of us in the ferry, specially to me and we let the mesmerizing sight sink deep into us.


As we neared the city, another wonderful sight awaited us - The Gateway of India. I would like to credit the British for having thought of such an ecstatic name for the stone monument. After some good captures, we settled down to disembark from the ferry.


Everyone was tired, but the faint glimpse of smile was enough to convince me that the things were in place and everyone would have cherished the day as I had planned.

I reeled through my days catch and was filled with a strange sentiment looking at the photographs - something perhaps that just cant be described in black and white.

It just can be felt - in my city, my Mumbai....

Mumbai Diaries - A Day in the Life of Mumbai...

When I received this invitation for the Dhobhighaat photoshoot, I was excited since it would mean big if I could win. My spirits were dampened first by seeing the number of people participating in the shoot online and then by actually seeing the people present onsite!!!!


God played tricks with me all the time...


Anyways... I refurbished my dreams of winning and I went ahead to shoot the life of an average Mumbaikar...for that matter even a below average guy.

I started with finding someone who wanted to freshen up. I mean on a holiday, I wouldn't freshen up so early in the morning. But when I tried to find one... I found several.
Okie moving forward, I tried to capture the next instant after one freshens up - morning tea. Today wasn't my lucky day I guess. Throughout those 5 hours I couldn't grab a single brother drinking the morning beverage...tough-luck for me I guess.
I had decided to not take my car today.... wherever I would have gone, it would be either on foot or by train or bus.... not even rickshaws or taxis.

So I fought my way into the train and finally when I was comfortably placed (read got space for both feet), I started to look around for something interesting. What I found was overwhelming!!!!

Dreams of every kind were floating around the eyes of every shape; some covered, some sleepy, but all of them hanging on to make it to their destinations... ahem... too heavy

I had googled for the location of the dhobhighaats in Mumbai and landed finally in Mahalaxmi. I had never been before here; I mean being at the race-course is one thing but definitely not at the dhobhighaat...

Its an experience in itself; this washing clothes industry is huge and I can vouch for it. In around just 5000 sqft at least 50 Tonnes of fabric of all kinds were being washed - doctors gown, towels, sarees, regular clothes and an array of white shirts (didnt shoot that cos how much ever I tried, the photograph was overexposed)...



The place seemed to be packed with emotions... thoughtful, controller, agnostic.... every kind of them



Mandarin, mauve and harvest green seemed to be the colours of the day.... an array of each of these colours spread over several lines...


Content with what I had shot for sometime and dampened by the number of people trying to shoot, I moved ahead... this time to VT....



The first one to for me to encounter there was the symbol of peace.... hard to make out, however, was the fact that the dove herself was frightened of something....

My long time friend had suggested that I should cover the Fashion Street once; today perhaps was the day... maybe not the right time however....

Colours, however, were awesome... they can just captivate you and anchor you at your place, untill you are woken from your slumber by the nudge at your elbow from a potential seller....

Collection of the junk jewelery was something that bowled me over... my friend was right.... she has hell lot of experience I guess...

Here too, I managed to pull out the emotions in the air... perhaps friendship was the cue here....

Walking through the complete fashion street (which seemed impossible in the beginning), I finally reached the place which I had heard about in many movies during casualties... Bombay Hospital...my photography spree would have ended here, but for these 2 gentlemen...

Finally on my way back home, I got the essence of the practical mood of Mumbai too... Survival...

So as I finally wind up with emotions from my previous walks around Mumbai and this one, I was at loss of words to describe this city..... my friends from my firm-to-be helped me out on this..... this is what they gave me in 50 words from my collection comprising of, by and for Mumbai...


"Bound together by a strong undercurrent to survive and outperform - Yes, this is Mumbai. City, that steps forward and meets every morning with a 'salaam', regardless of what fate brings along. Running through the day with its vintage charm, it pauses only to ponder 'Can I make it large?'"


Aastalavista....
Abhishek