Looking around Kanheri – Flame of the Forest

We visited Kanheri on an overcast day. The clouds loomed around, threatening to rain. In July or August, it would have meant that I was walking around with an umbrella in the hand, the camera carefully wrapped to avoid the stray rain drops or the sudden downpour.

One of the challenges of a bright, yet overcast sky is that any photo you take looks gloomy with a white sky, and no polariser can help you add some blue to the dull sky. You could use a graduated Neutral Density (ND) filter, but you need straight horizons for that, and I don’t have one to begin with. So instead, I opted to try High Dynamic Range (HDR) instead.

The Buddha at Kanheri Caves

Stepping out side the stupa of yesterday, is the Buddha of today. This statue towers over the entrance, and while there are other, more intricate sculptures around the place, this one takes the cake because of his sheer size.

The stupa at Kanheri Caves

I am a regular at the Stuck in Customs website, and one of his recent posts caught my eye. And so at the visit to Kanheri caves at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, I And that was the inspiration behind this attempt. There was hardly any light coming in, which became a bit of a challenge with me not carrying my tripod.

Just after cursing myself a couple of times, I thought that maybe its time to try out the bagpod. So I swung off the backpack, squished the top so that it got a depression, and then balanced the camera on it. The 2-second timer helped. That kept the camera steady enough for this picture. If I had carried the tripod, I think I would have ended up with a higher point-of-view, but I like this PoV’s effect.

Sunset in a bamboo grove

The Mumbai Port Trust garden, right opposite the Colaba bus depot is a nice place to visit. Sunday evenings means the place will usually have a lot of families there but not so many that you feel you are in a fish market. If you stay off the main garden area which has all the kids running loose, you can get some pretty interesting photos.

As I was loitering around, putting the 100mm to use, I saw the sun setting. So while everyone was making their way to the sea side seating area to catch the last rays, I noticed the rays on the bamboo. I did manage to get some curious and bemused looks from the people there because there was no apparent subject that I seemed to be pointing my camera towards.

A boat passing in the night

Back in the H2 days, I took a boat ride from the Gateway of India, Mumbai. As the lights of Mumbai shrank and grew dimmer in the distance, there were other boats which were well lit that we passed by on the way out, including the Indian Empress. While trying to take shots of it, every trick in the book could not get sort out the shaky, blurry photos. I ended up so annoyed with the camera (yes yes, blame the tools) that I increased the shutterspeed to the highest value (30 secs), pointed it in the direction of an incoming boat and fired. And the picture above is the result.