Category: Nature 'n Landscapes
I had a tough time getting decent pics @ Hogenakkal. Coz the sun was too bright there, making most of the things, most importanly the flowing water, too bright to photograph.
For example, the first pic of the canyon is taken @ f/22, the minimum 'f' I could've had @ 18mm, with my 18-55 lens. Even at this 'f', the time I could use was around 1/50 seconds, not allowing me to do any experiments with the shutter speed. I would have loved to try out something of the order of 1s. Just, wished I had a few ND filters with me! I am soon going to acquire a couple of 3-stop ND filters ... btw! Hope to come back to Hogenakkal after getting them :-)
The second pic is taken on the way back @ f/8 and 1/100s, when I got a little shade and still waters ... where I could get some reflections.
Third pic is taken on the way back to Bengaluru near a place Palacode. Liked the variety of colors due to the greenery, soil and the clear bright sky. Here, the available brightness allowed me to go to f/16 (@ 1/50), allowing me to get the whole frame in focus and take the pic handheld.
For the 2nd pic, I wanted to capture the movement of people ateast vaguely and at the same time, keep the DOF long enough to cover the whole scene, as well as make the lights look like stars. Finally, had to resort to ISO 400, since that was the only way I cud've taken an f/22 and 1.3 seconds.
Usually while taking water streams/falls camera would let you freeze the action, by using the widest shutter and the shortest exposure (something to the tune of f/2.5 and 1/125s). Just try a little longer exposure and that'll give a much smoother / nicer pic. I saw this initially in Dan Heller's site (danheller.com) and tried it for couple of pics. Was initially trying to use exposure times of about 2-4 seconds, but soon realized something like 1/8 seconds is more than enough. In most practical cases, this is all that is possible with the thinnest shutter width (f/32 in my camera / lens).
Another attempt to catch birds in flight. Still not really successful. After this I was going through Canon's Predictive AF algorithm which talks about how AI Auto Focus and AI Servo modes work in the Canon camera. Looks like the camera can do a decent job of capturing flying birds in continuous shooting mode with AI servo AF. Armed with this new information, I shall try again and would surely share the results!
Atleast this time I realized that, rather than using a very low 'f' value like f/32 to ensure better focus, it may be better to use something like f/6.3 and get clean red lines in a shorter time (about 10seconds). When the exposure was abt 2minutes, as I did last time, the trails get smudged and dirty. This time, with a lower exposure time, it was cleaner and clearer thick lines. Guess ... I need more experiments .. sigh!!!
I had attempted to take the ghost trails of vehicles numerous times ... and has not got it to my satisfaction till date. 
The second one is from the ramp while coming from inner ring road and looking towards Indiranagar. f/32 again with a 154 seconds exposure. What I liked in this pic is the light coming from the lamp post with that elongated spokes looking like stars. The ghost trails itself is a little over exposed and could have been better off from somewhere a little higher and away from those high beams. I did try to cover up the lens whenever a high beam shows up in the horizon but there were too many of them to effectively do this!