Offroading in Bangalore !

A short clip of photos and videos of our Bangalore Bicycle Championship's last race in namma Bengaluru. Shot and compiled by Sagar.






What a race !

Check out the photos I clicked here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.145784058827141.35962.100001866448053&l=e7e82fec74

Check this out too : http://blog.bumsonthesaddle.com/2011/5/16/bbch-is-awesome

Mainstream trance track for the day ...

Commuting to office by cycle in Bangalore - Part 2

I've been commuting to office on a cycle for little more than 2 years now. Time to look back at the over all experience :)

I wrote about this long back, here.

Lets go through those again !

-> Distance I commute on bike -- It varied from 16 km to 10 km to 2 km, and now 6 km. (One way)

-> Time it takes -- Less than any motorbike or car. On a serious note, cycle is actually faster. Especially if the route is packed with other polluting vehicles (did you notice the smugness, hee hee)

-> How long I've been cycling to office : Little more than 2 years

-> What bike do I have: I have 2 bikes now. One is an awesome hard tail mountain bike (Trek 4300). Other one is a sexy road bike (Trek 1.5).

-> Where did I buy these mean machines? -- I bought both the bikes from Bums On the Saddle, The best bicycling shop in Bangalore. Those folks are actual bikers who know their stuff.

-> Okay, Isn't it kind of dangerous to cycle around in crazy Bangalore traffic ? No, not really. It's intimidating for sure. Once you understand how to mingle with the rest of the traffic, it gets easier.

-> How many times I've crashed due to other vehicles : zero

-> How many times I've crashed due to my own stupidity : Two (survived with minor bruises to body, big dent to my ego)

-> How many times I've got yelled at from other motorists? None. (Surprise)

-> How many times I've given the 'finger' to other motorists : quite a few. When I am on a bike, I am very aggressive and fast. Hence, me yelling at other slow moving vehicles is inevitable.

-> How many times kids have given me 'Thumbs up' : more than a few. Kids love bikes. I always smile at them when they keep staring at the bike / or my funny attire.

The number of bike commuters is increasing day by day in Bangalore. I regularly meet a lot of bikers on the road everyday. I can't wait to see Bangalore turning into Amsterdam :)

:-)

Trip to Kanha Bandhavgarh

Phew !

An awesome week long vacation to Kanha and Bandhavgarh National parks !

And here comes the pictures :)


Lets start with state bird of Karnataka, the Indian Roller. Here is a profile pic of it.



After lunch one day, in Kanha, I see an Indian Roller sitting on a tree in front of our log hut. I had to take pics of it :)

It ended up me chasing the bird around the resort, clicking some 300 pics of the same bird !



It was like shooting a model, it went on posing, I went on clicking !



Only thing that was missing was, I just couldn't take a good pic of it flying :-( But, in Bandhavgarh, while waiting for a tiger to show up (it did not) , I get a chance to shoot this pic. This is Indian Roller, flying !



Another beautiful bird I loved is Shikra. It's a small (comparatively ) bird of prey.



Look at those glowing red eyes !

Here is another pic :



If anyone calls you Goobe in Kannada, never get upset anymore. They actually mean, 'you are cute' :-)

Here is a rare jungle owlet :



And common spotted owlets:



One more:



Birds of prey are always majestic to look at. Following are an Indian Vulture, Crested Serpent Eagle and Changeable Hawk Eagle respectively :







One rare sighting was that of a Porcupine ! Apparently they are nocturnal, and aren't easy to find in day light. But little fella graced us with his presence !



Though it looks cute n all, it is a very dangerous animal. Even tigers are known getting hurt by these !


Okay. Lets look at some Tigers !

Her name is Kankati, Kan = Ear in Hindi, kati =torn .

She is around 5 years old. Apparently, she got into a teritorial fight with other tigress and killed her. During that fight, she lost her left eye. Also her right ear is cut.



Here she is walking past our jeep ! She was walking very near to us !

Boy o Boy o Boy !




All in all, it was fantastic ! More picture are here in my flickr page:

Let me know what you think !

psychedelic trance track for the night !

I'm listening to this track over and over again. Your mileage may vary :P

Trip to B.R.Hills

So, a bunch of us went to B.R.Hills this weekend.

Highlight of the trip: Tigers and Leopards didn't get a chance to meet us. We were too busy :-(

But here is a nice one: We spotted a "Draco, The Flying Lizard"





Can you spot the lizard ? :-)


Also, there were amazing number of different kinds of birds !

Here is a good shot of Racket-Tailed Drongo !





Also I got a chance to try out Canon 500 mm lens !

Fear ...

Fear has always been a strange emotion for me. How much ever I convince myself that my fear related to few things are completely irrational, I am still left weak kneed :-(

I don't know how many times I've ranted that I want to hold a snake in my hand and take pics of it. I was almost convinced that if I see a non-venomous snake I wouldn't hesitate a second to catch it. I was very confident that I am not afraid of non-venomous snakes.

But,

During recent trip to back home, I ran into a chance of seeing a rat snake very close by. You see, I should have jumped on to the opportunity, run behind the snake and catch it. At least that was what I should have done.

Sigh.

So, first thing I did is to run, get my camera and take a pic.

From Blah

Then I ran towards the snake with all the intention of catching it. Just when I was this close to the snake, I froze. My mind was blank. I hesitated. Just for few seconds, I think I had no thoughts in my mind. Just staring at the snake.

That's all the time need for the super fast rat snake to run away.

So much for my courage and confidence :-(

According to my Mom, this fella is a frequent visitor for our garden.

So, as they (who ?) say, there is always next time :-)

Some Random Macro Shots

So, I bought the new macro lens (Canon 100mm f2.8), hence I had to shoot some tiny stuff.

Yet to get used to the lens, initial reaction : 'Not really impressed'.

Few shots:

From RandomMacroShots

From RandomMacroShots

This one - me likey !

From RandomMacroShots

From RandomMacroShots

From RandomMacroShots

I like this one too !

I so want to try a reverse mount of lens to shoot some super macro pics. Just need to put some effort. Also need a nice flash.

:-)

long exposure star trails photography

I've always been fascinated by the night sky, stars, space and celestial objects. And I love photography. So I had to try my hands again on long exposure sky photography this time :-)

Idea is to have very very slow shutter speed ie keep the shutter of camera open for a long time. During which, earth rotates (or stars "move"); hence the stars and other bright objects in the sky make bright lines in the pic rather than shiny dots.

Can you believe this was shot pitch dark night ?

From StarTrails Exposure: 6019.0 sec

How ever the dark the sky looks, there is always light, from near by street lamp, distant house, street lights and thousand other things that emit light. Hence it is good to try long exposure shots of night sky in remote places where light pollution is minimal.

On December and January night sky, the most famous and noticeable constellation is the Orion Constellation. That's what I tried capturing during all my efforts this time.

From StarTrails Exposure : 310.0 sec

As you can see above, instead of black background I have somewhat of a reddish color, purely because of all my neighbors not switching off their house lights :-)

Wide angle is the best option to cover as much area as possible. Also you would need tripod to mount the camera.

In Shutter priority mode, camera usually allows only 30 seconds of exposure. So switch to manual mode, keep decreasing the shutter speed and you would hit some thing called bulb-mode.

I have recently bought the remote trigger for my camera and it made my job of clicking photo easy. Either remote or some other method for keeping the shutter release button pressed.

Another thing to note, its almost guaranteed that auto-focus will not work with faint brightness of stars, hence you would have to switch to manual focus.

Here is an example of my myopic eye-sight fooling me :-(

From StarTrails Exposure : 68.0 sec

Exposure time of more than few hours is very common. But usually pictures will be shot with shorter duration and then will be stacked to reduce the light noise.

One more problem I faced: since the lens is pointing towards sky, there will be mist / moisture that gets collected on the lens. It slowly blurs the pic. I have not found any solution for this yet. methinks I can wipe the moisture off in the middle of long exposure. Not sure though.

Here is an example : Star trails are looking like they are comets !!

From StarTrails Exposure : 1863.0 sec

Its not the first time I tried the star trail photography, and its always fun.

This pic I took in early 2009 :

For a change this time I went to sea shore one night, hoping to see less light. But there wasn't much difference in light pollution though :-(

Here is a better shot I have :

From StarTrails Exposure: 1800.0 sec

One thing that you definitely need is patience, loads of patience :-)

Now, go on, shoot some stars :P

Fun with water balloons and camera ...

You all might have seen those wonderful pictures of water balloon bursting, no ?

Ever wonder how tough actually it is to take a picture of it?

I tried my hands on that, and boy o boy, isn't that difficult !

Things needed:

• Water :-)
• Balloons, lots of them
• Some thing to tie the balloon
• A needle
• And lots of bright light on Balloon
• And of course a super fast lens.

So, I set out on a bright afternoon, with intent of shooting an awesome pic of water balloon bursting.

Here is my set up :

First few attempts went down the drain :(

Then few came pretty close, but no luck :-(

Almost there :

Oh my, so close yet so far !!

Finally one pic I am proud of (sorta ...) --

Yay !! You can even see the bit of balloon flying off !

Little technical stuff:

I couldn't use remote to click the pic. There is a delay of 2 seconds between me clicking the remote and shutter actually firing, it's ridiculously tough to sync shutter and balloon bursting.

Also, I didn't want some one else to burst the balloon. Hey I want all the credit, alright ?

So, I used the delayed self timer to click and sync the balloon bursting. I totally burst some 9-10 balloons to get the pic somewhat okay.

• Camera used: Canon EOS 450 D
• Lens : Canon 50 mm f1.8 (Fastest lens I have)
• Shutter speed: 1/1000 of sec
• I shot in Shutter priority mode.

That's all folks !

:-) let me know what you think !