India Travel Blog reader Bala sent me an email and asked me a question about travelling with expensive equipment.

Love your work, regular reader of your Travel & Photography blog.Have a request, since you are prolific traveler and photographer would love to see a blog post on traveling with expensive camera gear in India. Kinda tips, suggestions & experiences.

I usually do carry expensive photography equipment with me during my journeys. My digital SLR costs a lot of money and so do my lenses. Since I spend a lot of time taking pictures of a variety of subjects from monuments to landscapes to birds, I tend to carry at least 2 lenses, sometimes more. If I am likely to stay at one place for a long time, I also pack my laptop, which allows me to work on the move. Together, they are expensive enough that I can’t afford not to be paranoid about loosing them. Yet, with photography being one of my greatest passions and my livelihood partially depending on it, I can’t imagine leaving home without them. Naturally I always keep an eye at my equipment and ensure that it never leaves my hand during the journey. Here is how I care for my camera gear when I travel.

By Bus. I often make overnight bus journeys if I am going somewhere within 8-12 hours distance from Bangalore. I can’t sleep in a bus, so I don’t really require maximum comfort. Instead of keeping my camera bag on the luggage rack above the seat or in the luggage box, I keep it on my lap through the journey. If I get down when the bus stops for a break, I necessarily carry the bag with me. At times when I have a lot of luggage, I split them into two bags and keep all the valuables in one bag which remains on my lap. My legs used to pain a bit after a few hours of keeping the (often heavy) bag on my lap, but now I am so used to it, I feel I am missing something without a bag on the lap.

By Train. Usually my train journeys last longer than a day. Although I have never experienced it myself, I presume theft in long distance trains is fairly common. Like in the bus journeys, I ensure that all my expensive equipment are in one bag and keep it with me all the time. Another risk in train comes during the night. When I drift into sleep at night, someone may flick the bag even if it is right next to me. If possible, I try to stuff the bottom of my bag with some cushioning material (a jacket, shawl or anything possible) and use it as a pillow. If not, I put my arm around a strap and let the bag lie next to me. Let me admit, I am very very paranoid about my luggage during train journeys.

By Air. There is not to much to worry about safety of equipment as long as it is not checked in. No one can steal your bag, open the doors and runaway with the booty! But it is important to take all the equipment in a carry-in baggage, so that they are not mishandled or stolen.

Safety in unknown places. Sometimes it may be a bad idea to walk alone in the middle of the night with a big and obviously expensive looking camera. It pays to ask for advice with your hotel owner, your guide or anyone you know and trust before you head out in an unknown location. I have probably not gone out alone in the night, but many times I find myself in deserted places early in the morning. But such places are usually remote, like a village in the middle of Himalayas, somewhere in a forest where we have camped or some such places where safety is not an issue. But I would be more careful if I were to plan shooting the streets of a city in the middle of the night. It may be a good idea if there are 2-3 people together in such occasions.

Get an Insurance. If your equipment is worth a lakh (Rs.100,000) or two, it would be prudent to spend another thousand rupees to get it insured. While my equipment are insured and I have known a few photographer friends who have done the same, I do not know of any one who has made a claim. If you know of anyone who has claimed insurance for theft or damages to photography equipment, do share the details in the comments. It doesn’t cost much to have them insured. I paid just Rs.800 per lakh for insuring my equipment.

Experiences. Personally I have never lost any equipment due to theft or robbery. But I do know of a friend, a professional photographer, who had all his equipment – a camera and a few lenses – stolen. Obviously it was very painful. He had saved money to buy a car, most of which had to be diverted to buy new equipment. How was it stolen? He had given the bag to a friend to keep it during the bus journey. This friend had kept the bag somewhere in the luggage rack. The bag was missing when they reached the destination.

While I haven’t lost any equipment, I have occasionally seen my equipment getting damaged because of carelessness. I once mounted my camera on a tripod on a rocky shore and turned out to see someone calling. The tripod was not standing firm. Before I knew I heard a thud. The tripod was on the ground and my camera’s LCD was broken. Thankfully it did not fall with lens facing down, which would have left me a lot more poorer. But I still came home poorer by about Rs.7,000. The camera was insured, but the disorganized person I am, I still need to claim the money.

If you have any tips about safety and caring for your equipment when travelling, do let us know by leaving a comment.

If you have any questions for me on travel photography, you can write to me here.

I have trekked to Goechala via Dzongri earlier in summer(See trip report), but I was keen to go back there again to do some serious photography of landscapes deep in the Himalayas. We are starting the trek on 13th and we can take a few more people along. Here is an open invitation to join me on the trek.

It will be an 8-day trek and this being December, the weather is likely to be cold. But I am hoping that the winter mornings and evenings can be so spectacular that the trouble will be worth it. If you are interested in joining, see my earlier trip report to know more details. The trek starts from Yuksom Village, where we need to arrive a day earlier to get the permits made. You can contact me here or email me at arunchs -a-t- yahoo -d-o-t- com for more details.

Below are some images from the trek.

In September, I gave a 30-minute presentation on Photographing mountainscapes at Club Mahindra Whispering Pines Resort at Mashobra near Shimla. The audience included the winners and jury of Club Mahindra My Trip of a Lifetime travelogue contest.

In this presentation, I took some images from my archives and spoke about a single feature in the image that made me take the picture, or a feature that stood out in the image. Below are the slides of the presentation.

Photographing Mountains

This week’s travel photography article is about not getting overwhelmed of taking care of thousands of images you have shot with your digital camera.

As always, the Travel Photography article has two sections. The first part is about keeping the photographs organized, such that you can easily access what you are looking for. The second part contains an image review. If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images and post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography. Don’t forget to tag them as itpcritique, so they can be chosen for review. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post, or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

ORGANIZING IMAGES

Organizing photos was never a big deal in the days of film. You would shoot just a handful of pictures in a whole year. And when a film roll is complete, give it to a neighbourhood studio which would process it, print it and put it in an album for you. Nothing else needed to be  done. Since the time the world has gone digital, we have been shooting so much that there is a deluge of photographs churned out from the camera. An active photographer may end up shooting tens of thousands of images in a year. Managing them becomes a big a job. Here is how I try to keep my photographs organized.

Delete Unwanted Photographs. This is something we always postpone. Very often, more than half the pictures we shoot are junk. There will be images that are shaken, blown out, completely dark, undecipherable pictures, or things that you don’t intend to keep ever but have shot for the heck of taking a picture. When we save it to the computer, they all get stored along with the good ones until the day comes we start complaining about lack of space in the hard drive.

When you know that you have unwanted images, delete as many pictures as possible in the camera itself. Quickly go through the photos after you download them, and again delete anything you don’t require. It leaves a lot less number of images to manage.

Organize them in folders. It is important to put the photographs in some order. If you download images to desktop or to a temporary folder and hope to put them together sometime later, it is never likely to happen. You will move it out of desktop to some other unknown place, and eventually forget about the location. After some time, you have a dozen different places where your photos are stored. It will only result in having to search hard later when you need those images.

I use the hierarchy of folders to store my photographs, as shown in the picture below.

• Level  1 and 2. Since the volume of pictures I shoot is high, I have partitioned the hard disk and have dedicated a drive only for storing images (The drive ‘Images (F:)’ in the picture). If you are just getting started with a new computer and expecting to store a lot of images, it would be a good idea to dedicate a drive for pictures (plus perhaps videos). If not, you could simply create a folder where all the images are stored (folder ‘digital images’).
• Level 3 and 4. Located under ‘digital images’ folder are all my photographs. I further divide the photos into folders based on locations or events. In the picture above, the folders ‘Bangalore’, ‘Coorg’ and ‘Ladakh’ fall into this category. It could also be events, such as ‘marriage in family’, ‘Ugadi celebrations’, etc. If I have too many images from a location such as Bangalore or Ladakh, I divide them further into subcategories such as ‘City by Night’ under Bangalore, or ‘Leh’ under ‘Ladakh’.
• Leve 5. I don’t store the images directly under the category of locations or events. It can very much happen that I return the same location again and again. As you can see in the picture above, I have made two visits to Coorg. It is likely that the first set of pictures are entirely different from second – I would have experienced and shot different things, and would have gone with different people. So I prefer to keep images from each visit apart.
• Level 6 and 7. Under the date folder is where my RAW images go for the given location. Within the date folder, you see another folder called ‘processed’. This is where all the processed jpeg images get stored. If you don’t shoot raw or don’t process your images, you can do without this additional level.
• Level 8. Here, I store small size images for posting on the web. From the ‘processed’ folder, I downsize the photos to smaller sizes such as 640×480, 500×375, etc. They often get re-used for uploading in various websites (such as paintedstork.com, flickr, facebook, etc), so I keep them at one place instead of discarding them after uploading.

With this arrangement, it is easy for me to find any picture that I am looking for. If I need an image from my 2006 visit to Coorg, I know exactly where to find it. Instead of fumbling through haphazardly located folders all over the computer, I usually know where is the image that I am looking for, and manage to get hold of it in less than a minute.

Tagging and Rating. This would be useful for people who have hundreds of thousands of images and find it hard to manage even with organized folders. Software like Picasa (and many other such solutions) discover all the images in your computer and let you keyword them and rate them. It may help you get hold of the precise image you are looking for in no time. The only problem is, it also takes some some additional time and effort, which would be worth it only if you have very large volumes of pictures.

Backing Up. Backing up the photos is a wise thing to do if you value your photographs. It insures your photos against possible computer crash, virus attack, physical damage and theft. I use an external hard-drive to keep a copy of all my photographs, and synchronize them once a month or so. You can also opt to burn photos into DVDs and stack them away.

IMAGE REVIEW

The image below is posted for review by flickr user mridula

It is a photography that easily makes me envious, and makes me want to be there. The location looks great and the rainbow is beautiful. The framing of the rainbow, with a fading mountain in the background and the tent in the middle gives a clear idea of being out somewhere in a remote location on a nice day. The pictures would have looked much better if the tent was kept erected. A few more combinations or framing ideas could enhance the picture: it could be a lone tree or a big rock in the foreground, or someone standing/sitting at the edge and staring at the rainbow. There is sensor dust popping up in many parts of the frame. The camera sensor can do with cleaning, but the dust in this picture can be removed using photoshop.

If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images, post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography and tag them as itpcritique.  Only tagged images are taken for reviewing. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

The weekly travel photography section is back again, after a short two-week gap. Read all earlier articles in the series here.

As always, the Travel Photography article has two sections. The first part of today’s article is about protecting your camera in the monsoon season. The second part contains an image review. If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images and post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography. Don’t forget to tag them as itpcritique, so they can be chosen for review. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post, or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

In my earlier post on Photographing The Monsoon, Shrinidhi left a comment saying, “pls add some tips on how to protect the camera in rainy season- My fear that camera may get damaged due to water entry forces me not to take out the camera if it is likely to rain.” I would have liked to treat it as a Q&A at the end of an article, but the topic was worth a separate post in itself. Here it goes.

PROTECTING YOUR CAMERA FROM RAIN

Fungus. One of the biggest problem that haunts camera lenses is not caused by the rain itself, but the damp weather. If you keep the cameras and lenses packed away in the closet and wait for the monsoon season to end, you may be surprised to see fungus growing inside the lens. Fungus in the lenses is usually a grey fibrous material that slowly spreads in the inner surface of the lens. It grows in moist weather when the lens is stored for prolonged duration without exposure to light. The simple solution to keep fungus away is to keep using the camera often, instead of tucking it away in a closet during the monsoons.

If you do happen to notice fungus growing in the lens, do not panic. A little bit of it doesn’t make a significant difference to image quality. If you explore the lens to light frequently, the growth of existing fungus will be stunted. If it hasn’t spread too much, fungus may even shrink a bit on continuous exposure to light. But if there is a lot of fungus on the lens surface, it may be time to take the lens to a service center.

Using camera in the rains. I would not go ahead and ask you to expose your cameras freely to the rain, but at the same time, there isn’t a need to worry too much about precipitation. Most cameras are robust enough to let you shoot for a short while in a drizzle. But when you do that, ensure that you wipe the camera free of all the raindrops when you are done shooting. Do not let the water droplets linger on the surface. Don’t stay in the rain for long enough to get the camera completely wet. If you do, water could seep deeper into the body. Avoid exposing the camera in heavy rains. In case you get into a situation where the camera is accidentally prolonged to rains for a long time (or has fallen into water), remove the battery immediately and leave the camera for drying in a warm place. If you are lucky, your camera may function properly again.

Plastic bags. If you are going for long walks or treks in rainy days and intend to carry the camera with you, wrap it in multiple layers of plastic bags, or in a ziplock bag. It can keep your camera safe even if you are getting yourself wet in the rain. That way, when you reach a beautiful location and if the rains have subsided, your camera is dry and ready to work for you.

IMAGE REVIEW

The image below is posted for review by flickr user Guzman Sanchez

I am struggling to find areas for improvement in this image. There aren’t many I can think of. The positioning of the performer at the right side corner, with smoke moving towards the left works very well in the photograph. Despite being shot at a very low shutter speed(1/5 sec), the image seems to be sharp. The blurred hands are effective in showing motion. The streak of smoke on the top adds well to the image too. The image conveys the overall atmosphere very effectively.

This week’s Travel Photography article is written by Anoop. Anoop blogs about his experiments in photography on Me and My Camera Obscura. I am a fan of his images of birds in action in Mysore’s Karanji Kere. Today’s article is about a filter commonly used along with SLR cameras – Circular Polarizer. Circular Polarizers can help enhance outdoor images taken in sunny days and are also useful in eliminating reflections.

As always, the second part of this article has weekly image reviews. If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images and post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography. Don’t forget to tag them as itpcritique, so they can be chosen for review. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post, or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

CIRCULAR POLARIZER by Anoop

‘Circular Polarizer is a must for daylight outdoor photography’ – this is probably the only line I would write if I had to write just one line about them!

Circular Polarizers are filters mainly used in photographic situations involving reflections. These filters consist of two rings. The inner ring screws on to the front thread of a lens and the outer ring is freely rotatable.

Though I have my circular polarizer always screwed onto my 18-55mm lens, there are circumstances where I have had to use my camera without them. In such cases the thumb rule I follow is ‘If there is enough light for shooting photos without bothering about camera shake, leave the polarizer on the lens.’

Photo taken at Central Park New York City

Both the above photos are taken with a Circular Polarizer on, and are good examples for the two different extremes of polarization. The only change between the two images is the alignment of the circular polarizer.

The photo on the left almost completely eliminates reflections from the horizontal plane (water). Here we can see the increase in contrast of the water lilies, but on the other hand we can observe that the sky is captured as it really appears.

The photo on the right does exactly the opposite, the reflections are left alone and the direct light from the sky is filtered as a result of which we can see a bluer sky.

Both the photos above are taken with the same camera settings and with the Polarizer mounted; the difference was just in the alignment of the filter’s outer ring. Rotating the outer ring controls the plane of polarization and lets in the light selectively.

Mounting the polarizer normally increases the contrast of the photographed object, as it almost always eliminate some percentage of reflections and reduces glare, and hence bringing out true colors of the object. Being so used to shooting with the polarizer on, I would consider it a sacrilege shooting in following conditions.

• photos having a lot of sky
• photos having reflections of water
• bright outdoor photography

There is one limitation I have encountered frequently while using a Polarizer – the Polarizer does reduce the amount of light coming into through the lens. While this is a hindrance in low light scenarios, it’s not a hassle for daylight outdoor photography.

Note from Arun. If you can see the example images, there is some compromise in either of the pictures. While the first one has a dull sky, the second one lacks the contrast and rich colors of the leaves on the water. Circular Polarizer has definitely helped get the best of the situation. But it can be further improved, if one can devote time and has patience to wait for a day with better lighting. Shooting in the morning or evening on a day when the sky is naturally blue would give the best result without any compromises. Patience has a lot of value in photography!

IMAGE REVIEW

The image below is posted for review by LeFlic17

Technically, I can’t find much fault in this image. The image is sharp and in focus. It is exposed properly, and eyes are not in shade as it often happens in outdoor images. It is framed well too, emphasizing the face properly and not having any distractions. But it seems more like a posed shot to me, void of any natural expressions. The man appears conscious of him being photographed. His face is stiff and has lost all the candidness. The picture would have had a lot more life, if some time was given to get him used to the camera, or if the image was made without keeping him aware. For more about this, read the earlier article in the travel photography series: dilemma of asking permission before taking pictures of people.

If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images, post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography and tag them as itpcritique.  Only tagged images are taken for reviewing. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

Monsoons have just hit the southern parts of the country. Let’s look at ways to make best use of the cloudy and rainy days in this week’s Travel Photography column.

As always, the second part of this article has weekly image reviews. If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images and post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography. Don’t forget to tag them as itpcritique, so they can be chosen for review. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post, or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

PHOTOGRAPHING MONSOONS

In my first few years of taking up photography seriously, monsoon season was the time to pack the camera and store it in the closet. The sky would be overcast through the season. It rained on and off, and I was at loss in thinking of opportunities for photography. At the end of the season when the rains subsided, I would invariably end up with fungus growing merrily in the  unattended lenses. But over the next few years, I saw the joy in photographing even in rainy days. Here are some of my observations on getting the best from the camera in the wet season.

1. Keep the sky out

Overcast sky is not a great subject. More often than not the sky gets burnt and the details are lost. If that doesn’t happen, colours in rest of the image tend to appear dull. It is hard to get good exposure and quality images when sky becomes a part of the image in bad weather. Just keep the sky out of the frame and look for opportunities on the ground. This is the season when everything looks lush, alive and beautiful. Lookout for the smaller, interesting subjects than focusing on the grand landscapes. On a wet day, you will notice that the colours are rich and beautiful, and even mundane things can look pretty.

The image below is an example of how rich the colours can it get. The picture was taken on a day when it rained on and off and remained foggy through the day. You can see the fog behind the trees in the picture.

2. Capture the flow of water

This is the ideal time to photograph waterfalls and streams. Just head to the nearest forest and walk along a stream in search of your opportunities. Good pictures are not hard to come by if you are willing to spend a lot of time working on the compositions. It helps to carry a tripod to give a frozen look to the waterfalls (more about it in later chapters).

3. Walk into the fog

It took me a few years to realize that fog offers some great opportunities for photography. At a closer range, fog can be cleverly used to create some interesting images of shapes. Often it is the outline that matters in such weather, not the details. Get into a wooded place and look for interesting shapes and structures. See the example below.

Sometimes, low lying fog can help make the landscape look surreal in the morning hours. Make sure you are up early in the morning and waiting at a vantage point to see (and photograph) such a beauty.

4. Look at people

This is not an area that I have spent time working on, but I have seen some beautiful images of celebrating the rains. Opportunities are many, like people looking up to the sky, wind harassing the umbrellas, little kids walking to school in raincoats,.. Life offers unlimited opportunities. Personally, I have found it difficult to capture people in the rains. Do you have any tips and experiences? Do share them in the comments section.

IMAGE REVIEWS

The image below is posted for review by flickr user JHarris2009

The moment is just right, and the timing of this photograph is perfect. The gentle bluish light around the performers on the floor works well. The picture is exposed properly, despite the possibility of getting an overexposed image in the dark background. One problem area  I see is the shadows on the man’s face, especially on the eyes. Also, it looks like the image was shot from a side. It could have been bettered by shooting from a position in line with the performers.

If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images, post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography and tag them as itpcritique.  Only tagged images are taken for reviewing. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

Today’s edition of Thursday Travel Photography is intended to help you understand what makes an image a technically poor one. Obviously, a good(and easy) way to make better pictures is to first eliminate the negatives.

The second part of this article has weekly image reviews. If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images and post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography. Don’t forget to tag them as itpcritique, so they can be chosen for review. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post, or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

TECHNICALLY BAD IMAGES

Just a small number of parameters define the technical quality of an image, which can be easily understood even by the most amateur photographer. And once understood, a constant watch at these parameters can help make improvements in the pictures. Here is a list.

1. Exposure – dark, burned areas, etc

When there is too much contrast in the frame you are shooting, it is very likely that some areas of the image get exposed badly. For example, if you are shooting a building when the sun is high, you might see that the sky may appear fully white in your picture, even if you have had a blue sky. Similarly if you have a reflecting metal surface in the frame when you are shooting indoors, the areas of the reflecting surface may appear completely white in the image. Look at the example below.

The prayer flags are looking fine in the image, but the sky is completely white, or burnt, as it is often called. Burnt areas usually make an ugly sight in a picture. The image would look considerably better if the details of the sky were visible properly. See the picture below, which was exposed correctly. As you can see below, the clouds are seen clearly and so are the peaks of the distant mountains.

The reverse also can happen, where most of the image is exposed properly but some parts have turned out completely dark. Taking the example of a building in the afternoon sky, or when the sun is right behind the building, you may also end up with just a silhouette of the building with no details visible. Either way, it makes a technically bad image. Unless ofcourse your intention was just to get the outline of the building.

2. Sharpness – camera shake and out-of-focus images

Camera shake is one of the biggest problem in photography, especially if you are shooting indoors. The image may look fine on the LCD, but camera shake may become obvious when you see the full size image on the monitor. Sometimes it is not evident, but the overall image quality will not be as good as it should be even if there is slightest shake in the image. Look for ghost shadows in the edges to determine if the image is perfectly sharp. More sharp the image, more pleasing it is likely to appear to the viewer.

The image below may appear sharp enough even when you see it in full size. But if you look carefully, you can see a yellow ghost line at the right edge of the petal at the blow-up of the image below.

The culprit here is camera shake. Such faults may not appear significant, but they make a lot of difference to the quality of the image.

In a similar way, an image where the subject has gone even slightly out of focus also affects the sharpness, and hence the quality of the image. Always check the image carefully in full size.

3. Other blemishes – sensor dust and chromatic aberration.

Sensor dust is a problem in DSLRs if you frequently keep changing lenses. It can cause black patches in the picture, which is more evident in images that have lot of sky in the frame. To check for sensor dust in the your camera, take a picture of plain sky on a bright day and see if there are any dark patches in the image. Get is cleaned at your camera service center.

Chromatic aberration (CA) is a phenomenon where you see purple or cyan bands along the edges where contrast is very high. This is a problem created by poor lens quality. Look at the example below. These bands appears only when the contrast in the picture is very high(such as backlit images). Expensive lenses tend to be better at handling such situations, but it is hard to avoid them in cheaper kit lenses in situations where there is too much variation in light.

If you are seeing too much CA with your lens, avoid shooting where the background light is too strong.

Another lens related problem is called vignetting, usually seen in wide angles lenses. It is a phenomenon where the corners of the images appear darker compared to rest of the image. It can happen in ultra wide-angle lenses, where the lens edges or mounted filters may block some light entering into the lens. Remove any filters on the lens if you notice this problem.

Some of these problems are related to the devices(camera/lens) you are using, and in such cases there is no easy solution to the problem. A steady hand or tripod can fix camera shake. Read my earlier article on holding the camera steady. To correct dark or burnt areas requires exposure compensation (more on this in future articles).

IMAGE REVIEWS

The image below is posted by flickr user vdeepu

I can’t find much fault in this picture. The lighting here is good - sky and the temple are exposed properly. The image also looks sharp. But to me, it also looks a bit dull and more like a documentary image showing something as it is. I do not know how the surroundings of the temple look like, but if there was some element of life, or if there was was more to it that depicted the tower against its environment, the picture would appear more enriched. It would also work well if the Gopura was framed within another frame(such as pillars of a mantapa). Or another possible option would be to stand under a tree and have some hanging leaves on the top of the frame. These are just some possibilities. More such options would exisit and is best decided on location, depending on the environment. Including the atmosphere around the tower helps provide a context to the viewer, and gives a better outlook of the atmosphere. The lamp in the top-right that has sneaked into the frame can be avoided.

If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images, post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography and tag them as itpcritique.  Only tagged images are taken for reviewing. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

In this instalment of Thursday Travel Photography, let’s talk about the good old secret of getting better at things – to keep trying.

The second part of this article has weekly image reviews. If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images and post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography. Don’t forget to tag them as itpcritique, so they can be chosen for review. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post, or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

KEEP GOING BACK

There are many occasions when I have been to a beautiful place, but came back without pictures that reflect its beauty. The reasons could be many. It could be bad weather, or that I may not have had enough time to get a good shot, or that I simply may not have managed a good composition of the subject. Whatever be the reason, it pays to keep trying.

The most important rule about trying again and again is to choose a subject or location that is easily accessible. It is obviously impossible to keep going back an exotic location in a faraway place.  A better choice would be a hillock outside the town or a pretty place that makes a good weekend drive. It pays to choose one of your favourite places where you always look forward to return to.

Looking at my own images, I can’t help but see that some of my favourite images were shot after repeated visits to the same location, trying again and again to find a good picture or a good composition. A good example is Nandi Hills, where I might have gone nearly a dozen times but had not made it back with images worth recalling. But last winter, in yet another photo-trip to the hill, I finally had a shot that I felt good about.

A picture of Nandi Hills last winter. Despite many visits earlier, this is a perspective that had never occurred to me. The weather also worked in my favour that day.

The same applies to the picture of Ayyanakere below, which was taken in my third visit to the place.

In my first visit to this lake, I hardly managed a decent picture. In the second visit, I more or less had this composition in my mind, but the weather was not in my favour. Everything fell in place for the picture in the third trip.

The good thing about returning to the same place is that you often know what doesn’t work well. You have already worked on the location earlier, and have many wasted compositions that you already know about. It helps you to explore new things, push to your limits and go and experiment more possibilities. It helps you find new perspectives.

Besides that, repeated visits may help you see the place in various weathers and moods. For example, Nandi Hills tends to be flat and bland even in early hours of the morning during summer. During the monsoons, it stays wet and foggy till 10am or even later, and the perspective you get is completely different. Visibility drops down to a few meters, and the views of the neighbouring hills just don’t exist. In winter, low lying fog or layers of clouds create a completely different kind of magic. The more you visit, more variations of these moods you will find. More familiar you are with the place, more new things you will discover, and better images you will come out with.It is important to keep going back instead of being done with the place in the first visit.

I remember coming back unsatisfied from my last visit to Badami, unhappy that I could not do justice to the beauty of the place with the camera. Most of my time there was spent seeing and discovering, leaving me little time to work on photography. I intend to get back there again in a month or two when the monsoon is at its best. This time, I have a few thoughts already etched in my mind about the locations and compositions. And as I wander the hills of Badami trying to execute those composition, my mind will also be working on new possibilities for another visit. It could very happen that I may not make good images even in my second visit. But that only helps me make plans for my third trip.

No place will be exhausted easily, and the more visits you make, more mature are your images going to get.

IMAGE REVIEWS

The image below is posted for review by flickr user paandu

I can hardly find any faults in this beautiful picture from Orchha. The river looks clear and nice, and the structure looks pretty too. The composition looks neat, with some interesting foreground. The main subject gets its due prominence. The morning light is slightly warm(yellowish) and adds a nice tone to the colour of the building. Shadows cast by the light on the building and the rocks are not harsh. There is little to complain about in the image. I wish the cables in front of the building did not exist, but I can’t see a way around it either. I can only think of a small improvement in the image by composing it a little tight, zooming in a little more towards the subject. You can see my choice of crop by going to the flickr page for the image and hovering the mouse on the image.

If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images, post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography and tag them as itpcritique.  Only tagged images are taken for reviewing. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

In today’s Thursday Travel Photography column I am going to talk about cropping.  The second part of this article has weekly image reviews. If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images and post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography. Don’t forget to tag them as itpcritique, so they can be chosen for review. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post, or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.

CROPPING

The camera sensor or a frame of film has a fixed dimension. However, the image you have in mind may not always fit in those dimensions very well. Consciously or unconsciously, we tend to live with the picture that we have got from the camera. Sometimes, getting rid of unwanted part of an image can enhance it by a great deal. A tasteful cropping may improve the aesthetics of the image, but in many occasions, it is simply a practical tool that doesn’t demand much intelligence or an artist’s eye. You can just eliminate parts of a flat sky on the top, a disturbance in a corner or an element that doesn’t fit well with rest of the frame.

This is very straightforward when you look at the examples below. The picture of Thanjavur Temple and the cropping speaks for itself and needs no explanation.

Let’s look at it in some more detail. Why did I even include the garbage in the first place? Small elements may creep in unnoticed in a picture. But here, that is obviously not the case. I could have recomposed the shot by removing the lower part and including the sky instead. But there are two reasons for not doing so.

First, the cropped image to the right is how I conceived my picture irrespective of what the camera would capture. Be it sky or the ground, I was going to crop that excess anyway. Second, I chose to include ground instead of the sky, as it would allow me to hold the camera horizontally. Including more of the sky instead would need tilting the camera vertically, and would have resulted in a distortion, making the towers look converging. Allowing the garbage to seep into the frame and cropping it later was the easy choice.

In many occasions, choice of cropping is not necessarily so obvious. In the picture below, where people are intensely watching a cham dance performance in a monastery in Ladakh, there are no obvious eyesores similar to the above image. However, getting rid of the portion beyond the right pillar helps create a neat and good looking frame, and removes a distraction in the picture. Also note that I got rid of the cable hanging on the top.

There are several such occasions when cropping can help. Here is a quick list.

1. When there are unwanted elements in the image, like the garbage in the picture of Thanjavur Temple.

2. To provide a neat uniform look to the image by removing any distraction, like in the second example above.

3. To get rid of too much of bland elements that may not add value to the image, such as a very plain sky.

4. To emphasize your subject subject and keep the viewer focused on it. For example, if you are shooting a particular building, you could crop any neighbouring buildings that sneak into the frame, if you can’t avoid them at the time of framing.

5. To remove technical errors that may crop up in the image. For example, wide angle lenses may produce images that are slightly skewed at the edges.

Cropping helps you to overcome the physical limitation created by the size of the sensor. I would advise having a cropping in mind at the time shooting, like I had with the picture of Thanjavur Temple, than try to look for a crop at a later point of time.

IMAGE REVIEWS

The image below is posted for review by flickr user mallumax

Flowers rarely fail to make good choice of subject. Same applies to this too, and focusing on just a part of the flower usually works well. The simplest way this image could have been improved was to shoot it against a clutter free background. A completely green background would have easily made the subject stand out in against background. My earlier article in the thursday-travel-photography series on backgrounds gives a better idea of how a uniform background makes a lot of difference to the image, and ways to achieve background blur.

If you would like to have your images reviewed to know what worked well and how it could have been improved, choose some of your best images, post them on group pool of India Travel and Photography and tag them as itpcritique.  Only tagged images are taken for reviewing. You can also post your questions related to photography as a comment to this post or in India Travel and Photography group discussion. I will answer them in next week’s article.