Photography Expedition #1: Destination Delhi!
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under It's My Life, New Delhi, Photography
I know it has been a very long time since this happened, around mid-March when Varun Mishra and I decided to have fun with Gaurav’s Nikon D80. After thinking up quite a few themes to start off our our very first hands-on experience with a DSLR, we finally agreed upon a simple one… offbeat pictures of Delhi. Although we didn’t get too many impressive shots that could get anyone dropping their jaws down, the whole ‘learning’ experience was worth spending a day in different corners of the city. Anyway, here is an itinerary of what we did on the 16th of March, 2008… you might like to scroll down to the bottom of the post to have a look at the Flickr! Gallery…
Before even the whole expedition started, Varun had downloaded a video tutorial on using the Nikon D80, its different settings, et al. Although I doubt the usage of the knowledge gained from those videos, but then I can say that we did lots of experiments and learnt quite a lot which we might not have even after watching 42 of such tutorials… Anyway, our main aim was to get some HDR or High Dynamic Range photographs with that coveted ‘wow’ factor. Check these few samples out… Click to enlarge or Right Click >> Save Target As…
We started out in the morning to get the exclusive morning emptiness near the Raisina Hill. The metro rail service made travelling to Connaught Place or Rajiv Chowk a cake walk or should I say no-walk at all! Our plans of shooting from the top of the revolving Parikrama hotel got screwed. But still, we did manage to get some good shots, especially panorama material from the inner circle. Next stop was Chanakyapuri or Nehru Park, where we spent 42 minutes in grabbing good squirrel footage. Learnt a lot about the aperture and manual focus adjustments there. Hauz Khas lake and Deer Park was covered after that to end a looong tiring day.
We had loads of ideas brewing up and quite a few pics came with wonderful special effects like the ones below. They are all GIMPed or Photoshopped though… Click to enlarge or Right Click >> Save Target As…
FInally, we had almost emptied a 2GB SD Card with our pictures and RAW versions of the same. It was great fun to go out with someone like Varun… I still remember how much we laughed, enjoyed, and fooled around in different areas in Delhi. Overall, a wonderful experience worth missing the movie Jodhaa-Akbar with parents…
A few of the best pictures can be previewed in the gallery below. The pictures are taken both by me and Varun. Feel free to go through the EXIF data of these pictures. Comments would be great especially if they are of the suggestive (not the ‘pervert’ suggestive) or advisory kind! I really want to buy a DSLR now. Awaiting 600Mirrors results for now. A $750 DSLR is one of the things at stake…
PS:
* Wordpress 2.5’s in-built gallery function is amazing. Although I couldn’t use it in this post as I wanted text between groups of pictures. But then it’s really useful for me to post loads of thumbnailed pictures with links continuously.
* If you see some stains or swatches of greys and browns in those pictures, that is because we forgot to clean the lens before using it!
* Wordpress 2.5’s multi-image uploader eases out the menial labour that you might have to do have more than one picture on the blog… but then too bad that it is flash-based. Looks like Wordpress is no more cent-percent open source. 
* We saw an Egyptian Vulture in the Connaught Place inner circle. You don’t really expect to see them there! Too bad that I spent the time gazing at the creature rather than clicking its picture… 
And well… don’t forget to comment… 
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