Click 12 : BWS Avenue road shoot

Hello! it has been quite a long since i wrote an entry.but now that exams have neared, i've got more interest in blogging :P



anyway, I'd been to Avenue road early this morning for a shoot from BWS. It was quite a surprise to see as many as 15-20 members turning up for the shoot. lucky Saturday perhaps. And we were all treated with some fabulous photos by the busy stretch. It's the best place for street photography and there's something to click at every step. Literally. The group didn't hang around much since most of us were strangers to each other and there were too many things attracting on the road wonderfully lit up by the morning sun. So i just went around, got some satisfying pictures. Met some people whom i know since i started photography and made a couple of new friends as well...as i said almost everyone turned up there :D

It was a great shoot! I had to return home early and could not cover the entire stretch, courtesy exams. I wish to go there again and get some more interesting snaps.




tschUss!

Click 11 : Softbox treat

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I finally did it! My own very own,home-made studio soft box! :) I feel so glad that i finally made something that i wanted to make/own since a long time.It's very simple to do it and I'll be telling you how to make your own simple soft box setup at less than Rs.20 in this blog post.


here's another kinda of a softbox that you can learn too.here's the link to it.click here
Materials required:
1. A cardboard box of minimum 7”x7”x10” size (Get it from any grocery store or an electrical shop. should be freely available got mine at home)
2. A sheet of butter paper (Rs.3.50)
3. A light bulb (40W or a 60W bulb. Take it out from any unused room in your home or if not, Rs.12)
4. Electrical wires for the connection.

5. Scissors, sticky tape, insulation tape, a rope to hang the soft box, and a pencil.
Total expense: Rs.15.50. Pretty cheap isn’t it?

Method:

I’ll explain the method in the way I went about it.

1. Get ready with the electrical stuff first. Rest is all very easy and fast to do. And be very careful while working with the wires and electricity since they are dangerous. Don’t prick yourselves with the wires and if you are not sure of making the connections, get someone who knows well, to do it for you.
Take a wire with open ends. Fix one end to a plug that goes into your supply sockets. Take a bulb holder with wires connected at its terminals. Connect the bulb to the bulb holder. Twist both the free ends of the wires and if the bulb glows, congratulations you are done with the first part.

2. Take the box and cut open the flaps of one of its ends. Now cut out the butter paper to the size of the opening and stick it along the corners using some sticky tapes. This forms the base (or outlet) of the soft box.




3. Now flip over the box to its opposite side and mark the centre of the side (draw diagonals). Make a small hole (smaller than rope used) at the centre and use this to hook the box to the ceiling or a stand. You can use a rope or anything long for that matter to hang it. I used my college ID slings to hang the soft box from the ceiling (Finally, the ID cards were of some use to me :D ). Push in one end of the rope through the hole and make a knot at the end. Make doubly sure that you’ve made a proper, bigger-than-hole knot so that it doesn’t give away and cause you misery.


4. Make another hole right next to the central hole. Put the bulb socket with the bulb and its wire into the box and pull the wires out of the second hole. Close the lid of the box and seal it from outside.




5. Now we are done with the setup. Carefully connect both ends of the wires. Cover the twisted ends with insulation tape, and switch on the power. If you have done everything correctly, you should be getting a very beautiful soft light spread out of it. If so, congratulations again, you’ve got your simple soft box. :)

Now, hang the other end of the rope from your ceiling and place a subject below your soft box. It gives a very good light around the subject. You can also use a white, glazed sheet of paper to reflect some of the light for better results. Happy clicking!


You can also use this soft box for a beautiful, mild light in your home. Try using CFL bulb. It gives more light and uses less power (I used an incandescent bulb)

Although this is not a total replacement for a full fledged studio lights,its gives you a preety good light around your subjects. If you are a very serious photographer,go for a brand new set of softbox set. If you are not totally into photography,yet very passionate about it,this is an easier way doing things.

Remember:
• Always make sure the switch to the power is SWITCHED OFF when you are connecting the wires or moving the soft box around.
• Never leave bare wires visible. You could an electric shock in case you accidently touched them. Tape them all up using insulation tapes.

So here's some of the results that i got on my first trial.





This is what my setup looked like:




Thank you for reading! please let me know what you felt about the idea.Any suggestions are welcome.

Click 10: Bellandur and bliss

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Im finally free guys! Got through the exam hole and crawled out clean. What did i do next? head straight for my camera. And luckily BWS came up with a weekend shoot at the right time. I had no second thoughts about going there.

So we had a photoshoot at the Bellandur lake near Marathalli old airport on july 5,2009.

The people who were present for the shoot :
1.Peevee
2.Murali
3.Abhi
4.Rattan
5.Kannan
6.Prasad
7.Ashutosh
8.Nasirkaka and 3 others who left very early and
9.Myself

The plan was actually to capture the sunrise at the Bellandur lake.Of course it's a wonderful place to capture surise.Its got a vast expanse and a fine rural touch. As decided we all met up at the Marathalli bridge at about 6 am.But sadly the sun was up and sky was covered by clouds.It was a fine breezy morning.Would've been perfect if the sun would've given us a pose.

So,having met at the decided location we left for Bellandur village (lake in village) and were joined by Nasirkaka and a 2-3 more people.The ride to the lake was very beautiful.Its a small curvy road with wonderful greenery all around.But the greenery is just the weeds on the lake.Hardly a patch of the huge lake is visible.Rest all covered by weeds.But even the weeds looked good.

In a few minutes we reached the Bellandur lake.As said earlier there was nothing much of the lake that was visible.At the place where we stopped there was a small water fall (water + sewage fall rather). Just like any other natural entity of Bangalore,even this was polluted.There was lots of foam ,chemical wastes flowing with the water.The place had a pungent ammonia smell.We did some shoots of the small water fall and of the local villagers passing by on the bridge.

We moved on in search of some more interesting stuff to click.And soon we found a settlement of a group of people mainly from the northern Karnataka region.Peevee told them we were from a college and wanted to click their pictures as a part of a project. hehe its nice to imagine Murali sir few others as college students :D . But the locals didn't do much of imagination and agreed for request.The small kids were pretty surprised looking at us.They probably would've never seen people like us with heavy black stuffs in our hands.Maybe they mistook it for the guns which they might have seen on their community theater.But it was really nice to click the settlement and their life.The lighting was wonderful!Just the right amount for some good composition.

Further down there was a little girl who was the most photogenic than anyone in the place.Especially with the beautiful poses that she was giving for the cameras,she really looked like a model.There was also the old man on a stone bench,sitting,lost in his thoughts who made a very good subject for our pictures.And some of them posed with their cats and dogs.So that made all the members family being clicked by us.Maybe we made their day.

As we walked back on the bridge again,there was a group of Brahmini kites flying around ,catching their prey in the flowing water.It was little hard to click them since they were moving pretty fast and also the light was a little less for a higher shutter speed.But none the less we managed to get some great shots.We clicked some pictures of a man trying to remove the weeds from the river (or lake).I liked his intention but sadly it would probably take his lifetime to clean up the entire lake.Next we took a group photo and winded up the photo session by about 8am.

We all split after a cup of tasty tea at a bakery in Bellandur village.All in all a short but a very nice trip. :)

This was my first actual BWS photo-trip and so, i was decided to be the one to make this report.'Bali ka bakra'! ( kidding :P i loved writing this report! )

click 9

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I found a new subject to click today. An antique camera that belonged to my father when he was young. Found it while digging an old cupboard out of boredom. It looks so simple that it almost looks like a toy camera. A couple of my friends even asked me if it was a toy camera. It's not. It could even work now if i put a film roll inside it. Looking forward to do it... Not sure of it's photographic abilities but the camera surely proved to be a very good subject. Clicked it on a black background under the hot sun at a high exposure speed and aperture. Edited in photoshop to give it a vintage look.

Click 8

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Oh boy! this was amazing!!! This excitement is something more about clicking. Its about processing a very memorable photo. My friend Varun sent me a soft copy of an age old (about 12 years back) picture of us sitting together on his birthday.I still remember those days when we used to gift each other a pack with a pencil,an eraser,a pencil sharpener, a ruler, some fancy scented erasers,a thin plastic box just enough to hold a pencil and possibly everything a school kid would die to have it in his bag and not to forget, the best gift that we ever expected from each other, a Ball!! Yes, i had a treasury of rubber and tennis balls back then. Maybe he did too... that was a top secret information that couldn't be disclosed... lol! Then, as we grew up, the gifts grew too.From mechanical pencils to latest pens...and we even got creative with gifting each other a model plane and beautiful chalk carvings. Everything changed but we remained the same great friends like we've always been. This picture was shot during his 8th birthday. What a wonderful time we had together back then... This pic was a sweet reminder to all those lovely moments. He sent me a scanned picture of the original hard copy and for the first time, i tried my hand at making an old pic new in Photoshop. The result was pretty good enough but consumed lot of time though.That wasn't a concern however. Thanks for that picture Varun!

Also clicked pics another 8 year old today. His sister who studies in the school behind our home. Could've clicked some more if the 'Westernized' principal hadn't started running up and down the dais in panic. And clicked close-up shots of a beautiful Honda Civic that was parked in the school premises in the evening...But the latter experience was a lot more memorable.

(Oh,forgot to mention this...Left to right--myself,Ashwin,Varun,naveen)



this is the original picture

Click 7

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Exams are keeping me busy and repellent from my usual photography.Not that the books are attractive, its the desperation.

Still managed to spend some time with camera dear and clicked some pics.Moon and the school were my subjects.It was a bright full moon today and clicked some full-zoom shots of it.Didn't edit much in Photoshop,it looked good and beautiful as it is.Took some interesting pics of the school with long exposure. all above 20s,i got some very bright,vibrant images.Some camera shake and i got pretty and distorted images.

hey,i got something new.Adobe Lightroom.Its a new photo editing software by Adobe and is a lesser version of the hugely popular Photoshop.Just tried it out with one test picture and i felt its pretty neat to use and it's got a wonderful user interface.Check it out once but i presume you must've installed photoshop cause Lightroom worked directly with the .exe file...

Click 6

Didn't do much clicking today.As the exam season looms over me, Im not doing much clicking work....but nevertheless, took some time out and spent some time with my dear camera.

well,today i took some pictures of a photograph of juvenile Krishna sitting on Yashodha's laps. It was very good to look at on the camera screen but i got to see how it comes on a larger screen. And i spotted some kids in the school ground behind my home and took some pictures of the kids playing around after the school.It was nice looking at them play. :) thats it for the day, Have a great weekend!








I loved the kid walking back home in black and white.Remembers me of the days when i used to walk back home through the same gates :)