Did I tell that I have been chasing flying birds ... if no ... u haven't read my blog! So, here is another attempt to capture flying kites and a mynah sitting in a tree. All of them, finally turned out to be highly cropped, sharpened and color saturated using GIMP (what wud I do without GIMP) to get a decent avatar!

I liked the 1st pic, in spite of having shades around the face, coz it gives a decent idea of the bird's plumage. By the way, for all the kite pics, sun was a major factor. Some angles, leaves the plumage bright and in some other, the face! The 2nd pic has enough details of the bird's eye and thats something I always like. Both of them are in manual mode, the first @ f/3.5, 1/640 and ISO-100 and the second @ f/3.5, 1/400 and ISO-400. I had to bump up the ISO since the light started fading!

The Mynah pic,@ f/3.5, 1/400 and ISO-400, is the most heavily cropped and most color saturated pic of the lot. Dunno, why I felt like moving the bird towards the right. May be the 1/3rd rule is getting to me. But, ideally the bird shud've been @ the left and facing the center, rather than facing outside. Isnt it :) Guess, the real reason is a tree trunk on to the right of the bird which I removed with this framing :)

I missed a higher range tele photo lens while trying to capture it using my EF-L 180mm lens (This is mainly a macro lens). Guess, its time for the 400mm!

The final kite pic is in Av mode @ f/3.5, 1/2000 and ISO-400. Again, the face goes in the shade, but the plumage is captured with decent clarity.

These days I carry the camera to office (off MG Road, Bengaluru) almost all days and mostly end up taking it up to the terrace during breaks :) So, here are two pics taken during office breaks!

Pigeons are regular visitors to our office terrace and I'd been trying to get flying pigeons for a while now. Never mind, atleast I cud get a decent portrait :) Manual mode @ f/3.5, 1/400s and ISO-400. Did increase the color saturation using GIMP. I used manual mode and higher ISO only coz I was looking to shoot flying birds (pigeons and kites) and ended up with under/over exposed or motion blurred all the time. Finally, I decided to try manual mode with higher ISO and this pigeon came and sat right next to me! Though, he/she flew off quickly before I cud click, he/she did pose for a few minutes :)

There are a few trees in the apartment complex next to our office and the butterfly in the pic came and sat among the trees. Once again, I was in the middle of taking some other macro pics (which turned out horrible) and I ended up re-using the same settings before the butterfly flew off. ISO-200, f/3.5, Av mode and 1/200s.

I had been trying to take pics of flying birds for a while now and kites are the most difficult ones. They fly fast and high, faster than my focusing and higher than my 180mm can go :( Anyways, after a lot of tries @ the top of Nandi Hills, this is the best I got :( Even this one is cropped in to almost one-third.

The first picture of the monkey is more of an accident shot :) Both pics are @ Av mode, f/3.5 in bright light, using the EF-L 180mm lens.

Pics from a paddy field near Maddur. All pics are from the EF-L 180mm lens in Av mode. The first two pics are f/3.5 and the remaining two are f/8. Also, for the 1st picture, there was a blue tinge, possibly due to a wrong white balancing selected by the camera. I used mud colored (R=150, G=139, B=107) toning for this picture to correct this, as described in the post Blue and Sepia toning using GIMP.

Pics from the Kokkare Bellur village. The village also has Pelicans, Herons and a few other migratory birds apart from the Painted Storks, but none of them is as colorful as the Painted Storks!

All pics are taken with the Canon EF-L 180mm Lens @ f/3.5 in Av mode.

 Posting after a three week hiatus. Pics from my office cafeteria. EF-L 180mm macro lens @ f/3.5 Av mode.

I'd been trying to use GIMP for Sepia toning and stumbled across this article in gimp.org, which talks about doing Sepia toning using GIMP. Though, sepia can be easily done using the Old photo built-in script available in GIMP dialog : Script-Fu : Decor : Old Photo, the procedure outlined in the article clearly outlines how Sepia toning is done. But, the best part in this procedure is the fact that Sepia (Red=162, Green=138, Blue=101) is not the only tone / color which may be used here. Various shades of blue (especially for pics with water), green (especially for pics wth greenery) and a lot of other colors may be used too. In this picture, taken in August 2007, near Ponnani river, using my Canon Powershot S2IS, I used GIMP and a blueish toning (R=0, G=128, B=255) for this result.

The original and the sepia toned versions are below:

These pics are from my Thirunelli Brahmagiri trek, taken with the EF-L 180mm @ f/3.5 Av mode. I should have used a slightly higher DOF for the 2nd pic, with or without a tripod, but was running out of time and could not try it!

In the 1st two pics, its not as dark as it looks in the pic, neither is the sun that red (atleast to the naked eye) ... well .... this is what happens when the sun is right in the middle of the frame and the camera meters at a very low exposure time of the order of 1/2000s @ f/6.3. The only difference between the two pics is that the pic on the left has an exposure compensation of +1 steps. Both are taken using the EF-L 180mm lens in Av mode.

The last two pics are more or less the same even to the naked eye. They are taken in Av mode @ f/6.3, with exposure times 1/160s and 1/125s respectively.

I dunno what to call it, a bee or a wasp! Whatever it is, I've been trying hard to take decent macro pics for a while now and this is the closest I could go even with the new 180mm EF-L life size macro lens :(

First thing I learned is that macro photography is not about shooting with the lens wide open! I've been obsessed with blurred background for a while and my default choice was always a wide open lens (f/3.5 with the 180mm). Now, the DOF available for a life size macro pic at this 'f' is minimal. While, shallow DOF can give u gr8 effects sometime, most times it is not what u want. So, the obvious choice would be to try with narrower shutters, like say f/5.6 or even f/8. But, the problem here is that, at life size, even a small movement of the hand will look like an earthquake in the frame!

So, u r left with two choices, using the flash (external better quality flashes - defenitely not the pop-up - if u want natural looking pictures) or using a tripod. If u cant use either, even higher ISO is an option.

In this particular case, I had bright sunlight available, which is good and bad (bad, coz of the shadows) and once (for the 3rd pic), I used ISO-800. 3rd pic also is the closest with a higher DFO (f/8 and a good 1/800s) compared to the rest at ISO-100 and f/5.6. Anyways, after downloading the pics to the computer, I knew they cud've been better :(