Cold winters are here. They will remain for few more months. Thankfully, my fireplace is now repaired and I can at least keep myself warm in the evenings. Today, after a gap of many weeks, I laid my hands on my camera. The repair work is over and I can now enjoy the finer things of life, photography being one of those.
With the festival season going on in full frenzy, the village near my place also celebrates the season in its own way. Due to Covid-19, the celebrations were toned down. There was mask on every other face. People avoided gathering up in crowds… and yet the season was festive.
One of the major attractions in the region is ‘Ramlila’ or enactment of the Ramayana. It lasts for ten days. This was an opportunity to capture some interesting scenes from the spectacle and from behind the scenes.
Coo..coo…coo…tweet…tweet…coo…coo…
It’s 5:45 AM in the morning. I get woken up by the melodious song of a Blue Whistling Thrush. This one had made a nest near my roof last year. The call is just in time to wake me up for early morning light on the Himalayan peaks.
Few days back, one of my readers pointed out that apart from the basics involved in capturing night landscapes, star trails, milky way, etc, I should also write about the challenges and common mistakes. Every other time, whenever I am out photographing the night landscapes, some anecdote or the other happens. From simple mistakes to incidents that have become memories to cherish, every photo-shoot is unique.
I have been clicking lots of nightscapes and star trails lately. Just a few days back, I saw a photograph of Milky-Way, shared in a Whatsapp group. More than the photograph, what interested me was the statement that the person who had captured the photograph, had spent a large number of months (maybe years) and lots of failed shots before achieving that photograph. The photograph was nice but this statement appeared exactly out of the reality shows, trying to strum some emotional chords in the hearts of some gullible readers. I thought, why not click some milky-way shots as well when I am doing star-trails next time.
