Monsoon magic

The rolling Sahyadri foothills are heavenly in the monsoons. The lush green, the low dark heavy clouds and the cool drops of water falling on your face...

Pataleshwar Deepotsav

The Pataleshwar Temple (पाताळेश्वर मंदिर) which is located on the Junglee Maharaj Road in Pune is an ancient rock cut cave temple from the Rashtrakuta period. This magnificent Shiva temple is about 1300 years old.

Every year on the Tripurari Pournima (first full moon day after Diwali) a deepotsav (festival of lights) is celebrated at this temple.

   

Golden sunset

Riot of colours and structures. The photo hardly does justice to grandeur of the moment... 

SOFW

Gate of A building

Gate of 'A' building and the eucalyptus tree

Photo Editing Tutorial 1: The Path

The Path


The Path (Unedited)




All photos, even a regular photo of a not-too-glamorous scene can benefit from a little editing.

First of all, let us get one thing straight: All photos are processed. A camera sensor captures light which comes through a lens of a certain specification. This data from the sensor is processed by the camera hardware chip. This data is then further processed by the Camera software. This is the ‘RAW' photo state and some cameras can save it. If the output is JPEG or other such formats then this RAW photo data is further processed and then saved as a JPEG. Now, different lenses have different specification. Different sensors have different hardware and different cameras have different camera software. So what you get finally is a result of all this variable processing. And this still may not be what you saw!

What you see with your eyes (and interpreted by your brain) gives you a ‘feeling' about the frame. This feeling is what we want to communicate with others. We can do this via multiple mediums, a photograph is one of which. The photograph has to represent what we ‘saw'. There is often a gap between what we ‘saw' and what the output photo from your camera is. Editing is the mechanism of trying to bridge this gap.

“50% of the creative process occurred in the Dark Room” said Ansel Adams.

For us today, the darkroom is digital.

Let us see what we did to this particular photo. The editing was done on an Android phone using Snapseed software.



On observing the photo we find that the contrast is high. The sky is blown out with less detail. The foliate and grass are darker. In real life, it was a rainy overcast day. The sky was dark and set the mood. The toplight was enough to make the grass shine a very bright and fresh green. The overall feel was not so contrasty and stark. So we want to lower the contrast of this photo, darken the sky and lighten the grass. This kind of adjustment can be done using the HDR tool.

So in the first step, we apply the ‘HDR filter' with the ‘Nature' template. This usually results in the photo looking too artificial and dramatic to my taste. So after applying this filter we go to ‘view edits' and open the HDR edit in brush mode. Here we apply a mask of varying intensity. The sky benefits the most from the HDR filter as usually, the phone sensors are unable to differentiate between the different tones of the sky as they are all very close to each other in the high key. i.e. they are all similarly bright so the sensor captures them flat. HDR can also benefit in bringing out some shadows. Its effect on the mid-tones needs to be controlled, though.





The result has a better balance between the sky and the path.



Since the path is our central element we enhance its tonal contrast using the ‘Tonal Contrast' filter.



Finally, we use the ‘Selective' tool to increase some local contrast to bring out the foliage. This is done by selectively reducing or increasing the brightness, contrast and structure of the selection.



That's it. Thank you. Hope this was useful.

In Part 2 we will talk about tonality, light, shadow and other such weird things.

Old sketches

Jivdhan and Nanacha Angtha

These must be from the 90's - perhaps 95. I was unwell at that time and used to dream of the mountains. The Sahyadris haunt me as nothing else. I yearn to experience the romance of the mountain fastness again. so so so much...

Solapur

Ani

After a long long time, we visited Solapur. During school years we used to visit every summer vacation. It was my mother's 'maher'.  My grandparents used to wait for us. So many cousins used to come together. We used to have a blast of a time. So much fun.  As we may have it, my wife's mother is also from Solapur. She spent her childhood summer vacation in Solapur too.  Hardly a kilometre from my grandparents' place. But we didn't know each other then.

Solapur has not changed much. My cousin Aniket was also in town from Bangalore. We went to eat mutton sheek at painter chowk. You dont get similar sheek anywhere else.  We got a little spiritual and at sheek sitting on the floor of the shack.  Next day we visited Akkalkot math.  In the evening we went to visit the farm of my mami's friend. Nanu enjoyed playing in the mud. It was such a pleasant experience - walking the farm.  How we city dwellers miss nature.



Mutton sheek at Painter chowk



Akkalkot: waiting for prasad




Swami Samarth




Akkalkot prasad. I was a great experience.


Farm






















Nanu enjoying playing in the mud.








Bhakri


Lakshmi Narayan


Pav Chatni




Punekar Kamthe.  I have had sugarcane juice here since I was a kid.