On a trip to Kanalpiruvu (Canal Piruvu), near Kanjikode in Palakkad, Kerala, I found myself in the midst of a lot of natural beauty. The place was a little too hot but worth spending days with the camera. Bright skies and lush green paddy fields in day time and clear starry sky in the nights with hills in a distance. I committed the cardinal sin of not taking the tripod along and missed out on a lot of pics to be taken in the night and late evenings. Even in day time, the pics I have taken doesnt really do justice to the beauty of the place and people there ... but well ... I am putting up a couple of them mostly to remind me of a lost opportunity.

There is hardly any special technique involved here. For the first pic, I used a higher DOF @ f/10 to get the whole scene focused. This is contrary to what I do for portraits, which is usually done @ f/2.5. Well ... I guess for full length pics with some background to it and enough light to play with, using a higher DOF makes sense. But, it was back to the same old f/2.5 settings for the bottom left pic in the 2nd set. Paddy pics are Av mode again with f/4.5 and f/6.3. For the top middle pic of 2nd set, I again used a higher DOF (f/5.6).

Btw ... the smiling lady in the top middle pic is the owner of this field too. I wish she smiles like this her whole life!

The first pic is against the evening sun, which gave the brownish tone to the hair. Shutter wide open @ f/2.5 in Av mode, with 1/80s.

The real hair color shows up in the 2nd pic, taken with a mid noon sun in the front. Av mode again with +1/3 compensation, @ f/6.3 and 1/100s.

Thanks to Sameera thatha/chechi/didi for allowing me to take a shot of those beautiful poetic eyes!

The only difference between the two pics is the exposure time, 1st one @ 1/40s and the second one @ 1/50s. Both are taken with maximum shutter width of f/2.5 to enable a shallow Depth of Focus.

The first pic is of a tank bund found soon after Mysuru towards HD Kote. Second one is a paddy field before Bavali in the Kerala - Karnataka border and the 3rd is of rubber estates near Kanjirangad / Makkiyad after Mananthavady. Common thing abt all three landscapes is the higher DOF used @ f/10. Most of the landscape pics, its better to use as low a 'f' value as possible, something like f/8 to f/16 in dayight conditions. Anything thinner than f/16 may result in much higher exposure times and blurred images.

For the first two pics I was able to get 1/200s and for the 3rd one it was 1/60s. Though, I didnt use it, a tripod may not be a bad idea in these situations to get higher DOF.

These are some people I met during a drive from Mysore towards Mananthavady. Its quite easy to just dial the 'F' to 2.5 in Av Mode and keep clicking, and the abundant sunlight made this possible :-) Only problem is to make sure that the subject is not under direct sunlight. In couple of the pics I moved the people towards the shade of the car and in some other case under trees or other people's shade. The problem was mainly when I tried to take group pictures. I found it tough to get uniform lighting whenever there was more than one person in the frame and ruined most of those pics.

Meet Vaishnav / Unnikkuttan, my cousin brother Rejuettan's son.

The biggest problem in taking portraits indoor is always light. A flash is not as useful as people generally believe. It just spoils the pic most of the time, with uneven lighting. In indoor lighting conditions, with all curtains raised and lights on, I get abt 1/25 with the aperture set to the maximum (f/2.5 in my 50mm compact macro) @ ISO 100. I now understand what those wedding photographers are going through and why those elaborate lighting equipments are needed. Its indeed a tough ask to create uniform lighting.

In the first picture, I used ISO 100 and somehow managed to get one picture @ 1/25s without blur. The second and third pic is taken with ISO 800, giving me abt 1/160s. I somehow dont like trying out higher ISO, but here, this was the only option I had. All pics are taken with the maximum aperture width of f/2.5.

The first mosque is from the KR Market overbridge in Bengaluru. I liked the white clouds and the blue sky in the back drop and clicked with the best DOF I cud have @ f/8 and 1/500s.

Second mosque is from Ramnagar, 40 kms from Bengaluru towards Mysuru. Pic is taken with f/8 and 1/160s. I used Av Mode, with a +1.3 Exposure Compensation to make sure that the details in the mosque pillar is there in the pic.

Pics from Golden Temple @ the Tibetan settlement in Bylakuppe, near Kushalnagar, Kodagu aka Coorg.

The first pic is of the owner of a small hotel (Hotel Riya) were we had lunch en route Madikeri, abt 10km from Kushal Nagar. One of the best and sumptuous meals I had outside home @ just Rs. 20 per head.

The other two are also people we met en route Madikeri, the hunk in the 2nd pic just outside the hotel and the boy further up in the ghats.