Twisted Indifference

I only planned to ride till Masinagudi. For the past five years I have been driving a car. I got back on the bike less than a month ago. The 35 odd kilometres to Masinagudi from Ooty seemed like a good warm up before I began riding long distances. Even though it meant passing through Kalhatty Ghat with its infamous 36 hair raising hairpin bends. Masinagudi is another one road town. Under the impression that Mudumalai was closed to random visitors I went down the road to Singara.

I held no assumptions of capturing any wildlife since the max zoom I can achieve is 200mm. While I had hoped to capture some decent landscape shots my primary motivation for being there was the ride. A few days before, I made the mistake of going to Dolphin’s Nose, a viewpoint 12-14 kms from Coonoor. I expected the destination to be a waste of time since it’s a tourist trap but I was told by colleagues who had been there that the ride is totally worth it. Man were they ever wrong. Neither is the road worth the ride nor is the view worth the abuse you take riding till Dolphin’s Nose. Given that the person who informed me belongs to the ‘All Noise No Performance’ Royal Enfield Bullet Club I should have known better than to listen to him. What I think of those junk metal piles of shit would fill another blog post.

I can digress spectacularly. The gray langur above was the only wild animal that I managed to capture. The photo is slightly blurred which may not be all that noticeable in the low res image put up here. Of course a good telephoto lens isn’t the only thing I lack, the patience needed for wildlife photography also seems to be absent in me.

So the ride to Masinagudi and Singara Power House done I figured I’d head back. Around 5 kms out of Masinagudi I had stopped to take some shots of the road and I see bunch of my batchmates heading towards me. They planned to head through Mudumalai and this was the time I was informed that there’s a bloody national highway that passes through it. Duh! Too kicked at riding through roads which put all roads in Maharashtra (expressway and part of golden quadrilateral excluded) to shame I did not stop to take any photographs.

The motorcade now included a Mercedes ML 270, a Maruti Zen and me on my Pulsar 200 DTS-i. We crossed Mudumalai and came to the border checkpost that led into Karnataka. It was interesting to note that the Tamil Nadu – Karnataka border lay less than 80 kms from Ooty. While it is essentially the same reserve, being in Karnataka it is called Bandipur. The roads got even better. I had to take the shot. Click on it to view a larger image.

The highway through Mudumalai was peppered with speed bumps. Bandipur was not. Prudence might have called for a leisurely cruise through the forests but as I mentioned earlier I don’t buy into the all noise no performance propaganda. I was also finally getting the opportunity to unleash the full capabilities of my bike. My bike is no Hayabusa but we scorched the roads of Bandipur nonetheless.

I forgot the name of the village from where you take the road leading to Gopalswamy Betta but I’m pretty sure it was the first village we entered after Bandipur. It just couldn’t get any better. It was like a karmic reward for something good that I must have done somewhere. Or I was being handed this for enduring the miserable ride to Dolphin’s Nose. Regardless I was happy to collect. Not just on the view and the road but also the fact that I managed to capture half the sistine chapel.

It’s a little difficult to say how far I rode to get there since during the whole ride there was a lot of oscillations between two destinations. My total riding that day was 192.8 kms but riding straight to Gopalswamy Betta and back to Ooty without my diversions would be a lot less. Being there was totally worth it.

Sprawling green forests and a view way better than I captured since I was also hindered by a tooth ache that was triggered by the cold winds. On a side note the root canal procedure is finished and the cold wind can do me no harm. Well it does have me down with fever but that was my fault. Riding into the wind is one thing. Taunting it by forgetting to wear a jacket on a recent trip to Pykara was essentially stupid.

Well brick and mortar to be perfectly honest. But it is in the middle of a small forest. I am currently staying in Lovedale, approximately 5-6 kms from Ooty. Lovedale does not share the same semi urban landscape as Ooty. While the road to my house (rented not owned) is fairly straightforward, anyone without a good sense of direction and/or good navigational skills might as well carry pebbles to mark the route (We all know what happened when bread crumbs were used).

This photograph was taken late evening with a fairly long shutter speed. Four seconds if I remember correctly. The attempt at light painting the car failed more because the LED flash-light I have is not so powerful than the for the length of the exposure. I could have painted for a longer time had I kept the shutter open for more than 4 seconds but I would have ended up burning the light coming from the windows. So note to self. Buy a better flash-light.

What is missing in the picture is my bike. I finally received it yesterday and am having an absolute blast riding through the mountain roads. Sure I cannot open up the throttle completely on account of narrow roads with wicked twists but the world suddenly starts looking different through the visor of the helmet. I still have to get it all cleaned up and shiny and once that is done, expect photographs.

Gets uploaded on Flickr!

For those who weren’t informed, I am now in Ooty and will be here for a year. I am doing a specialized course in photography at Light and Life Academy. Given my transition from a professional to a student again it would be too presumptuous to continue writing tutorials. So at least for a year, this blog turns into a regular photo blog. I will of course try and include whatever technical details about the shots that I can. I am shooting 24/7 right now and am on an extremely shaky internet connection. It’s like being back on dial up. Well 256 kbps feels like dial up anyway. I actually saw that buffering symbol on YouTube.

So these are the hallowed halls in which I’ll be spending a year. Week 3 has begun and the workload has started piling up. I am not complaining. Except for the lack of light. My current assignment is to shoot sunny skies and the way it’s raining here would make a Londoner feel at home.

Asking photographers to be miracle workers is a little too much. I mean yea, most of us are really hoopy froods but weather control is not part of our job profile. It has been a blast though. Especially since some of us are part circus creatures.

Another high flying act

The train shot is probably a massive cliché but it had to be done. No reasons, it just had to be. This is happily just the beginning. Lots more where those came from.

This is an old post with a new photograph. I had earlier used my dog Edison’s snap which can still be seen on my flickr page here.

First just to make sure everyone is on the same page, a little information about what a RAW Image File is all about. To put it simply, this is what effectively replaces the film negative. While the negative has to be printed to be of actual use, the RAW file goes through substantial post-processing before it can be converted to a RGB file format. So what is the difference between shooting in RAW and shooting in JPEG when they have to be put through post-processing anyway? Read on…

The RAW file is not a processed file. The JPEG undergoes in camera processing. For example, when you set the White Balance and Exposure while shooting JPEGs, you are more or less committed to that shot. While Photoshop does offer a wide variety of tools to fix errors, they are relatively limited and the editing here is destructive.

RAW processing involves non destructive editing. A RAW file literally holds all possible data for a given shot. If the in camera white balance was set to Daylight, a RAW file will also store the result of that shot had the white balance been set to Auto, Fluorescent, cloudy or Shade etc. It also stores data across 5 tonal ranges. While discussing tonal range is worth a couple of more posts, suffice to say for now that if you have shot in RAW, a significant error in exposure (under/over) is easily correctable.

It goes without saying that one should not develop a dependance on shooting RAW. Good technique and understanding of metering and colour contribute more to the shot than RAW. This photograph was taken while I was wandering around in Ooty. For all the tea estates that it boasts of, Ooty seriously lacks places that actually make a decent of cup of tea.