And Flowers too..

Spring brings lots of lovely flowers, baby ducks, and good sunshine till 7 pm.

Yay! to the Sun who decided to be around us till 7 pm. I tried to make the bestest use of it.

It has been raining and pouring for so long here - that I dont even remember for how long this rain was going on. I had almost forgotten and given up taking pictures of some flowering trees of the spring. All those flowery trees were gone past the flowering period and has even got leaves now, but I have not yet taken one single picture this year. I just kept watching them bloom, wither and shoot up with new leaves, without a fine time to pull out my camera.

But then atlast, there was one last bunch of bloomers - late bloomers especially for me in a car parking lot on the way to Sujaya's school. So went there on the golden hour - the last one hour before sunset, and managed to get a few pictures.













I have missed a beautiful yellow flower field ( mustard - I am not sure), right in front of my eyes. I had set an eye on for a shoot with Sujaya, but because of this rain, I was so badly held back, I missed it blooming yellow and turning green right there - in front of my eyes, in matter of 10 days! I have marked this spot for next year :)

And on the camera settings:
Lens : Canon EF 50mm
Aperture:  From 1.8 to not more than 3.5
ISO : 200 , 400 for shady spots.

The Lower aperture helped me get the beautiful white flower bokeh. I did not get this result last year when I did with the kit lens, f 4 or 5.6

Also did a basic editing of adjusting the contrast, warming up the pictures to add more yellow to the setting sunlight and needless to say some cropping and color boosting with Photoshop CS4.

And one more - that says we had lots of rain. Mosses on a tree branch.



Happy Spring!!! Let the Sun shine every where and on everyone.

Spring brings Ducklings!

Spring is here, spring is here, spring is - spring is - spring is -- here - ATLAST!!!

Spring brings, baby leaves, lots of flowers, rain, tweeting birds and DUCKLINGS!!

I just spotted a cute little bunch of ducklings, dutifully and submissively following the mama duck. (How I wish I had a well behaved child like that).

To capture decent shots of the ducklings I cant go near them with their over possessive mama around so 55-200 mm was the only choice, in which the f stop doesnt go beyond 4.6 or sometimes 5.6, and what am I supposed to do with that f# and an OVERCAST day?! Huh!

But we were lucky - super lucky, that the moment I came out with camera, the sun started to shine - for one blessed hour just enough time to take some pictures of the ducklings - the little darlings.

The mama duck took them all into the pool and the babies didnot know how to climb out of the pool. So they kept swimming the whole stretch of the pool - up and down. And yes, they were taking their swimming lessons in the swimming pool.

But certainly the ducklings WERE squirmier than Sujaya - they wont stay still for a second to lay my focus on, let alone click them. They kept quacking and swimming and wiggling, and they were more restless because, they were not able to come out of the pool. All the "young ones" be it mine or the ducks, are the same - difficult to get a decent picture of! And to my side was Sujaya, starting to fuss and complaint about the ducklings not playing with her.   She had a serious heart break, when they didnot come to play with her after she called them out several times.

And for these pictures I have used the photoshop CS5 for post processing. I dint do much of editing, since I dint know much with photoshop. I just did basics like tweaking the brightness, contrast, cropping  and tried my level best to pull of some color of the blue pool to make it look natural.

So here are some pictures of the ducklings.













SPRING HAS SPRUNG! ATLAST!! 

Valentine's Day

Wish You All A Very Happy Valentine's Day.

I know its been more than a month and the wishes very very belated. :)

And some of the pictures that I had taken for the Vday, of Sujaya are:




















It was a fun shoot. First of all, Sujaya was so very happy and excited to see her candy/lollipop.

She started talking, instead of eating or licking it, which I did not expect. She started off with describing the shape, color, patters, then continued with whom she was going to share it and so on, which made the shoot really really complicated.  Since I was using flash, the camera was not ready whenever I wanted to click a decent moment. And Sujaya would not co-operate when the camera was ready, which made things really tough.

The set up was, a basic white bedspread on the back which also extended on the ground, and kid sized natural color chair. I didnot use a bit of natural light also, since I had previously decided on using the camera flash. So I dint want to combine natural and the flash light.

The only light source for these pictures are, 0 indoor lights, 0 sunlight or anything, but the camera flash light.  But I had used the light scoop only. And I actually love the reflection of the light source in her eyes which many pros talk as a + for portraits.

But since the indoor paint is kind of yellowish I had corrected the actually too warm pictures to make them look neutral or bit cool. Some of them are too blueish which I know, I had left them as such, since converting them to make them warm didnot look well with the skin tone.

I had used the Canon EF 50mm lens, which is the best and versatile. I chose this for various reasons:
1. I was shooting indoors- meaning poor light. 50mm keeps it simple even without external flash , since it opens wide (1.8)
2. For portraits, 50 mm or even 35 mm are preferred than the regular kit lens.

But sure did I have some difficulty with this, considering, Sujaya was the subject. It doesnot zoom in/ out , so I had to step back and forward, (or scoot back and forth in this case, considering her height) to compose the picture.

Had kept the ISO at 200, Shutter speed at somewhere 120-160, and for aperture - made the best use of the 50mm, I used, 1.8F.

It was just not easy to make her sit in a place at all. She kept running to me saying, she  was a big girl now and wants to share her lollipop with mommy. Ah !! Mommy's perfect Valentine - I know.

Lots of Love!!!