Creativity and its tools

I saw the following signature in some photo forum

"Great poem... which pen did you use?
Great curry... which pan did you use?
Great photo... which camera did you use?"

Well... in essense, all the three statements go totally together... three creative products and the tools used to make them.

There... don't hastily conclude that the camera is the most unimportant part of the creative process of photography. My question is, if you have a leaking pen or a pen that's snaggy, will the poem come out great? Do you make a good curry if your pan is too shallow or if a coat of the pan gets mixed into the curry?

So, to correct, the camera is also quite important. It should have the features to actually help you in the creative process. I like macro photography and unfortunately, the camera I currently use is extremely bad at macro. Actually, the lens doesn't have a macro facility at all! I also like to have a good telephoto feature and my lens goes to a measly 80mm.

So, to quench my creative thrust, I will atleast need a Tamron 70-300mm LD 1:2 Macro. I will be glad if someone out there gifts that to me. But then, it costs a damn Rs.7500. I wonder what I should do.

Gawd. please help me.

There they go

Some of my fans ;) wanted me to talk about my photography. So, here they are, a series of snaps I wanted to talk about. Well, I should have just talked about them, but I seem to have "reviewed" them unintentionally. I should have just left them there for people to see.

Self portait

Me

I felt it would be worth it to add a snap of my own. The clinching point is obvious here... it's me who's taking the snap. The shutter was at probably half-a-second and observers will see a bit of a camera shake. The objective of this snap was not to shoot myself, but to record the ambience I was in, when I stayed at this Hotel in Delhi. Yes, the room has an AC and it works, but boy! Was Delhi simmering! That takes me back to the initial photo I had posted in the blog. The question is, what is the photographer's role in human life? I have three options I can see now

• To record the facts the way they are and to put in evry effort to get the observer feel the picture in its true sense
• Glorify the world around us using techniques in photography and to project the beautiful part of life, blissfully ignoring the pain and suffering
• Project the photographic knowledge and skill the photographer has acquired and put in efforts to make his photos a piece of art, regardless of what is being shown and how it is being shown

It is left to whoever reads this to suggest me the path I am supposed to take.

A sunrise at Shirdi

Aah... see the fog on the bottom left corner? This was the shot from our hotel window at Shirdi. Was it an amazing sunrise... I just love pictures like these. Now, there's another point why I placed both sunrise and sunset shots next to each other in the blog. That's because I wanted to note that sunsets are a bit warmer than sunrises, and that the sky generally remains clear at sunrise and you generally see more cloud activity during sunsets.

A sunset at Kurnool

A sunset at Kurnool

There's nothing much I'd want to say about this snap, except that I had hoped the camera woud expose the Tungabhadra river a bit better. Please look carefully at the bottom-left corner of the photo. Do you see a streak of yellow light going almost through the photo? That's the tungabhadra.

The moon

The moon

This is one of my older attempts. The exposure was for some 2 seconds and it was taken at 80mm, the telephoto end of my lens, all hand-held. The picture is of-course cropped. There's nothing much I can talk about this snap, expect that I metered on one of those clouds that is right next to the moon, to the right. As you can see, the clouds are almost at 50% grey, the moon quite over-exposed and well, the ambience, coming out pretty well. What could I do better with this snap? Well, I need a 400mm telephoto lens and a tripod. Then I will have a chance to show you how beautiful the moon looks like from the top of our apartment.

Saibaba temple at Kurnool

Saibaba temple at Kurnool. ]

Now, in contrast, this is technically a better image. The sky looks good, there's enough light on the subject and the coolest thing is that there is some detail on the gopura too. Frankly, I didn't know what settings to use, since the subject is not flat. Also, in reference to the previous shot, time was precious here since the sky was getting darker every second. I put it on auto-landscape, requested a parapet wall to act as a tripod and shot it. I really love the way the camera really analyses the scene and tries its best to keep as many things as possible well exposed. And so, here it is!

One of my initial night-shots

Here's a photo I had taken when I initially bought my new SLR.

OK. So, I had taken this snap from the shabby roof-top of a hotel in Lakdi Ka Pul. I had taken my new SLR and started to experiment with it. When I see a snap, I immediately ask what could have been done better with this. The first thing is to note down the damn shutter and aperture so that I can analyse it better. But the way things have it, I never do it and the camera doesn't help me store them either.

After the lament, I'd say I like this snap quite a lot. I initially thought that the temple itself was terribly over-exposed. But then, if I meter for the temple, I wouldn't really get any ambience. Initially, I didn't have the experience to make sure that the subject and background should not have a brightness difference more than 2 f-stops. But I waited longer than I should have. Resultantly, the camera, in its good sense, felt that the ambience was quite important in this picture and eventually over-exposed the temple. Doesn't matter.