B for "Bokeh"

I was eyeing every little thing that passed me today, packed the compact camera in my bag all set to shoot for today's alphabet.  I ran almost 100 words that starts with B that I could try and shoot.  I captured bike, bin, beauty accessories, bathroom, broken wood, bench, Bigben, books, bulb.  But nothing satisfied me today.  And finally shot this with manual focus - bokeh (in simple - aesthetic blur).  If you read this post, you will understand what bokeh is.

Here's the wikipedia link too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh 

Post Processing the photo

While taking photography itself is an art, and mind you, is a difficult art, making the photos look beautiful is even tough.  Sometimes the background / foreground might not be what you wanted, or there are some additional things that fell into the frame while shooting, or simply light is not enough, or there's too much light. You only want to see what you intended to see, not something else in your frame.  If there's something more than that, it does disturb you, and the quality of the picture.  

Framed a moon!

First ever proper moon shot I made. It was taken yesterday around 1am in the morning.  When I gazed through my window and saw this half-beauty, I couldn't stop myself from taking a click!  I have experimented various modes for capturing moon and nothing came close to this shot.  

I used 70-300mm Tamron lens for this.  Aperture was set at f10 and Exposure at 0.001sec (Handheld mode).

Photography Gyan # 8 (Stranger Photography)

Moving away from technicalities of photography, I am going to talk today about taking pictures of strangers.  Don't think I'm weird.  Portrait photography is an interesting and deep topic to discuss just in this post.  And I'm too far from being a good portrait photographer.  This is also equally a challenging styles of photography.

Photography Gyan # 7 (General)

If you are serious about improving your photography skills, another basic thing you need to do is share your pictures. And don't expect people to write "beautiful, lovely" or relevant adjectives, but some really good critics on your photography.  I'm not a great photographer, but I aspire to become one. If you do want to, you need to open your pictures for comments and critics.

Photography Gyan # 6 (Long Exposure)

I know this is the 100th time I am saying this, but can't stop myself without any inkling!  If you are using a slow shutter speed you definitely need to use a tripod. And the previous gyan's last picture is taken with slow shutter speed (1 sec).
Learning slow shutter speed (long exposure) is so much fun.  And learning them with not-so-great photos is even more fun.  To me, learning is at its best - only when we learn from our mistakes and not from what makes us proud.
Do you know how to make jelabi, sev etc. Why am I jumping from photography to food topic?  Confused??  See the below pictures.
Here's the Jelabi!  (Shutter speed used is 4 secs)

Here's some Sev! (1/2 sec)

And some Thenkuzhal (2 sec exposure)

 

How relishing are they!  I'm talking about these photos.  I don't know how many budding photographers have liked slow shutter speed Light trials and experimentation, but I simply loved them.  Isn't it so much fun to make all kinds of Indian snacks and sweets using your camera?

These are some of the myriad scrap photos that I had.  They are definitely not the best ones, but they are mine - still precious to me.  So I am using them here to explain slow shutter speed.
Setting low shutter speed means increasing the time.  Refer here.

If you are using point and shoot (Henceforth called as P&S), set the camera to night shot mode. It will automatically chooses a slow shutter speed depending on the light conditions.  When you press the shutter button, move around the camera in any desired direction and make your own Jelabi, jangri,thenkuzhal and murukku!

If you are using a SLR, set to S mode, increase the shutter speed to 4 or more sec and rotate, tilt or zigzag your camera, and you can see these light trials (perfect lines that are formed due to long exposure).

These can be done handheld.  But if you want these light trials to be perfectly lined, you need tripod.  Take a look at this picture here.  It's taken with 8 sec exposure.  Aren't these traffic light trials awesome.  I haven't tried my hands on them yet, because I don't get to travel a lot in the night time with a tripod.
A long exposure will increase the clarity of the picture if it is positioned in tripod.

Some examples of how a picture looks if they are handheld with long exposure.   This one's taken with just 1 sec exposure.  Keeping your camera standstill for 1 sec is very difficult - try it out and you will realize yourself!

And this one's taken with 1/2 sec exposure.  Taken during diwali in our very own Chennai. 

And this one below is even less - 1/3 sec. 

You now realize the importance of tripod?  

Now it totally puts me in shame to even publish above shown pictures in my so-called-beautiful-blog that has some nice pictures.  Even worse are to watermark them with my name! As if there are 1000s of people to steal and misuse these pictures!
Below is one of that million dollar picture I have (badly framed though), taken with a proper tripod stand and set at 8 sec exposure.  This is the image of Sri Parthasarathy temple Gopuram, as seen from my in-laws' terrace. 

So it's time for you to try out your favorite snack or sweet in your camera!

PS: I've just past 10th Feb by 26 minutes. I spent around 2 hours researching my archives to pick right pictures and realised just now that I'am already on 11th Feb. So I'm taking the liberty of post dating the post to 11.45pm on 10th Feb. 

Photography Gyan # 5 (Shutter Speed during Night)

There's a famous saying "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it"(quote by Benjamin Disraeli). So I started writing about photography to share my experiences and learning, and partially(read secretly) to improve my own knowledge as well!

Photography Gyan # 4

I hope by now, you got a bit familiar with what I was attempting to tell in previous gyan about Aperture!  And did you all had enough time to try them out.  Now give me honest answer folks?  Were you really able to understand?

Photography Gyan # 3

Many of them say Photography is art!  It's true, but it's not just art.  To me, it is a combination of science and art!  You need both of these elements to take a good photograph.  Without any delay, here we go!

The most essential principle in Photography is Exposure - the amount of LIGHT that hits the lens to form a picture.  If there's too much of light it will wash out the picture, similarly less light will black out them.  So, it's obvious we need to have the right lighting! How do we control this lighting???  

Exposure is controlled jointly by 3 pillars - Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO - Each of which determines how much light should a picture have.  3 pillars of photography cannot be explained in 1 single post at all - they are the essence; they are everything.  Just to give you a heads up on all these concepts, I'm ATTEMPTING to give you a rough idea about all these.  

Aperture is an opening / hole/ gap - a space in the lens through which the light passes and hits the sensor. 

The larger the hole - increase in aperture ---> more lights gets in (more exposure)

The smaller the hole - less aperture ---> less light (less exposure)

These apertures are measured in f-stops.  Look at the below diagram to know examples of aperture count.  If you read the picture, you will definitely be confused.  It's not just you - but every other photographer who tries to understand aperture in the first place.  Large apertures are given small f/stop numbers, while the smaller apertures have large f/stop numbers?? Confused???

f/1.4 is the largest aperture than f/16 or f/22.  You'll get the hang of it! Don't worry!

image courtesy: google

If you can master aperture, you have a creative control on your camera! Aperture can be controlled/changed in DSLR camera only. If you are wondering how to change the aperture numbers, refer the user manual.  And the best way to get your head around aperture is by experimenting them.  Use different f/stops (without changing any other features) and see the result.  

I know this isn't interesting or easy to learn.  But you are interested in photography, you have to swim through this.  So, I will not complicate your learning process by explaining the next pillar right away.  Try this out and share your experience here.  

Photography Gyan # 2

Today has been a long disgusting, stressful day at work.  Did not really bother to write down.  But I don't want to give up - definitely not at this early stage of my project.  What - I've just written for a full 10 days now!  

Photography Gyan # 1

I was looking at writing tips on Bokeh photography, but it sounded a bit complicated to explain.  So thought that it's better to start with simple basic rules as they are really important to understand photography!

Some eye spoilers!

I'm getting addicted to what is called as Bokeh.