White Balance and Blending

One of the advantages of shooting in RAW is, it provides greater opportunities during post processing. RAW contains the whole image in a format that can be used to extract the right information that you want out of the image. Here is one such example.

I shot this image on a late evening in mid April at Kabini back waters. The final image that I that I've presented is what I'd visualized before clicking. Unfortunately the sensor can't capture all that we want yet. So to avoid that I processed the image at two different white balances (one at a cooler color temperature of 5500 and another at 7500). However when I started I wanted to retain the dramatic evening light on the elephant. This would mean that the background forest would also look little off color. Hence I blended the two images to get the desired effect on the image. Perhaps a light meter would have helped get the same effect. But light meter is little low on my wish list now.

Boat safari to the river tern island

Bhadra backwaters welcomes around 5000 river terns every year from northern Himalayas. They come in January and stay till early June. It's also their breeding season. Till the young ones learn to fly and hunt they stay here and 6 months is just about the right period for them to learn the tricks of the trade. I managed to capture a river tern fishing in this island. The next nearby island also welcomes couple of dozens of small pratincoles. Here are couple of those frames from the island.

Break free

This is one my favorites from the Bhadra trip. I'd visualized the river tern to fly above the foliage on the ground. This one seems the river tern is breaking free and flying away to its home. One of the interesting thing about such abstract compositions is that there could be multiple interpretation of the same image. I would love to know your interpretation. Do leave your comments!

Paddy Field Pipit

A first timer for me. While on the safari, it sat leisurely for over 2-3 minutes on this stick. Though it's yet another bird on a stick image, this particular species is still a first timer for me. It is a Leucistic Paddy Field Pipit. Leucistic means lacking complete pigmentation.

River tern - Flight abstract

Continuing from my river tern series; I had shot multiple frames of river terns landing, fishing. However this time around, I've shot them with a slower shutter speed just to indicate action.

River tern scape

The island close to JLR Bhadra attracts over thousands of river terns every year. This one is an attempt show show the river tern in own world.

Being different!

Last week I joined a new forum on the net called Creative Nature Photography. It's started by few like minded photographers whose aim is to create a forum that encourages creative nature photography. I know some of them & they themselves have created some wonderful images.
Based on some of the forum guidelines, I started figuring out how to make the images that standout and are different from the normal, usual stuff. It is tough initially to come out of the crowd and stick your neck out. However I've started my journey on these lines and it's really exciting. I got an opportunity last weekend when I was at Bhadra.

Streak Throated Woodpecker

Here is one more from the streak throated woodpecker series.

Jungle Fowl

Jungle Fowl are one of the difficult subjects to photograph! Unlike cats, they're not elusive. However whenever you see them and stop your vehicle they disappear into bushes in a flash. The only way to get a right frame with them is to be with them and shoot from a blind/hide. Here is one of my shots from Bandipur.

Wild dogs in a playful mood

The last Friday morning at Bandipur had everything. We saw 2 packs of wild dogs (5 and 10). The first 5ér pack were in great mood and we got them in beautiful light. Two of the pups (Though there are grown up now) started engaging themselves in fun and showed us a glimpse of their playful behavior. During the same time a Changeable Hawk Eagle presented itself on a nice perch (though against the light). We were in a tricky situation as to shoot which action! After shooting couple of frames of CHE, I shot the dog's behavior!