Posted on in landscape, photography

Diptych Series -1

Diptych – When two photographs or paintings or art work brought in a single frame.
It is one of the visual story telling form used by artists from medieval period. The photographers adopted this technique to showcase their work.
In Diptych, the two images in a frame can be a contrasting one or from a travel series or time bound .
In coming days, you would be seeing short series of photos in the Diptych format.
Here is the first on of the series.
Light & Shades
or
Minimalism vs Entangled
The two man-made architecture – The left side image is from Qutab Minar ,11th Century architecture and right-side is taken at Kolkata Airport ,a Modern Urban Architecture.

They represent the play of Light and Shadows.
It may also represent the Simplicity of past and the complexity of the present or it may mean something else for you.
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Ligh and Shadow Abstracts.
Both of the photos are taken some where in Himalayas using a 300mm lens.

Typically, a tele lens isolates the physical space from a vast landscape and bringing a different perspective, this what we call intimate landscapes.
Posted on in documentary, photography, portrait

Dosai Amma

Our presence did not bother her.She was busy making dosas. It seems she is used to the sight of photographers.She may be around 60 years or more but difficult to guess. The reddish lips because of Betel-nut chewing habit was an attention grabber. The place was not very spacious, though.  Only a handful of people can sit and eat. But looked crowded due to smaller size.

After a while, we started to converse. The frequent interruption with dosa orders didn’t stop our exchanges. We talked about our daily chores ,increased cost of living, life-style changes ,little politics and more. Suddenly she asked “How many children do you have?”. I said,” Not Married”. There was a silence. She looked at me deeply, said “Don’t do any work just for a time pass. It is not good for the society”.

I left the place, not her words.

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Posted on in documentary, photography, wildlife

Patience is virtue

Indeed ,a hot sunny day. We have been doing safari from the morning photographing or watching many birds and wildlife.Half of the day has already crossed.It was not a dramatic day, until then.

A Lion was spotted near the acacia tree, in a half-sleep state .Our tiring safari also needed a break.We switched-off our vehicles.The bird chirps were our companion.The life seems to be moving slowly.Occasional breeze would bring some comfort.Few Zebras would cross our paths.

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The Lion stood up, the gigantic size were petrifying us. It was looking in the direction, somewhere Topi, Thomson Gazelle and Zebras were grazing.The Big Cats have highly developed vision and hearing.Though in the daylight, a Lion’s vision may be as good as human eye.

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The Lion was focussing the prey.A hunt might be a possibility. But Hunt needs a planning.The hunter has to find the target with a gullible weakness.An in-experienced prey like a juvenile is an easy target.Not every time it works.To feed a large family, a small-size prey is not sufficient.The predator should look for well-grown adult.

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Hunter has to develop the two opposing skills together – patience and swiftness for a successful hunting. A swift-action alone can bring the food.A swift-action need an extra-ordinary patience.A good hunter knows when not to strike.Patience is Virtue.

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Lion was focussing the prey base.The ears were constantly-moving , tracking the direction of sound.We were waiting for more than few hours .The Lion would move few yards and would wait for long. The warm day started to end.A gentle breeze was a welcome change for everyone of us.

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All along,Lion never lost its attention.It was constantly tracking the grazing gazelles and might have already identified the target.We would never know.The Lion started to walk at a faster pace.The tall grass were blinding us.Yet, we could guess the happenings.The alert antelope were running fast.This time, Lion succeeded in the hunt. We were watching the stalk-wait-hunt action for close to 4 hours. Still,We don’t know how long the Lion was waiting for the right time to act.

Hunt could be an excitement or us, not for the prey or predator. In their world, a hunt is an act of opportunism or a serendipity of the Life.

Posted on in photography, wildlife

Lion’s Day

Lion was lying down for long. We were waiting for the wake-up.It suddenly stood up to watch the grassland. Thomson gazelle herd were grazing at some two kilometers away. Unlike cheetah, Lions don’t run long distance. Their body metabolism does allow only short runs. Slowly Lion started to move. Its nothing but an act of stalking.

Grass were grown higher than usual height due to short rain-spell happened few weeks back. Such short spells brings fresh green growth, abundance of food at the expense of protecting predators from prey’s visibility.

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The slow movement of Lion brought a lot of curiosity, some anticipation for action scenes. The watching of wildlife actually not an interesting one. Many predators don’t hunt often or quickly. They sleep for long. They act slowly. One has to wait for many hours, some time many days to witness a hunt act.

The expectations in our jeep were very high. A hunt is a life-death problem for the animals in the scene. For humans, its an entertainment, breaking the monotony. Yet, the Hunt never happened for us. The Thomson Gazelles were alert. They have realized the sense of danger and started running. The Lion which went inside the bushes did never returned.