31 Photos From My Portfolio — A Quick Collection

It’s the Indian new year today. The last year was a tough one. My father was diagnosed with cancer in Jan 2014. He left us on 25th Aug 2014. He was my inspiration behind music. And he was the one who let me hold a camera for the first time ever. I don’t remember the brand or make, but the camera had no film inside. For me he cut a roll of translucent paper and inserted the roll inside a camera just like you do with film. And then he instructed: “Every time you press the shutter you’ll see an upside down image of the scene that’s in front of the camera.” I had to keep the camera’s back open and I played all day. I made my brother pose and act in front of the camera the entire time — not that I’d see much since it just worked on the principle of the pin-hole camera, but I did want a real subject to pose. It was a manual camera with no auto forward. So after some clicks the paper roll would come to an end and had to be reinserted.

I bought the Nikon D80 in the early half of 2008. I had another not-so-serious Nikon film camera earlier which I rarely used — no fun clicking and not knowing what you shot, unless you spend the rest of the film shooting the walls and the sky and rush to have it developed. I made around 60K pictures with the D80.

I bought the Sony RX1 in 2013 and have made quite a few good ones with that as well. However as you know my primary job is to design websites for my clients and that’s my bread and butter. I never got a chance to make a proper collection. However recently I was thinking of a gift for a friend of mine and I decided I’d make a collage of some of my non-personal photos. So very quickly I rushed through my collections and narrowed down on these.

The famous Gwalior fort has been photographed from many angles and by so many photographers that it’s almost become a cliche. I never planned to get this shot. This was shot with the RX1 when the light-and-sound show was in progress. The high ISO of RX1, the dynamic range and the bit-depth all came together to make this a unique one. The scene is so dynamic and RX1 was even able to capture the blue in the sky even though shooting a bright subject.

A sunset… one of the many sunsets I’ve shot. I seem to have so many sunsets in my collections that now I consciously avoid photographing them. I don’t play with white-balance for these. I just turn down the exposure compensation to a negative value (-2 or lower) to get the saturated colors. Else you see the sun is high and so bright that it will totally wash away the scene.

The moon behind a coconut tree while I was enjoying the beach breeze in Goa.

My first sunset photograph before I became a sunset expert. I waited for an hour at Gwalior fort to get this one right. I like the golden lining on the clouds and the framing that gives it a narrative and context.

The common every-night roof-top moon. I played with in-camera white-balance.

My daughter’s shoes. She was less than a year when these were bought. Women go gaga over this family of pink tones.

At Lonawala on a family holiday.

An electric Diwali-lamp.

The roots of a tree. I liked the forms and planned to turn it black and white. But I liked it with an emerald touch.

Another sunset. I planned to have some florals to add a touch of beauty. This is what came out.

I was on this beach at Goa and had this leaf figured out. But my son conveniently walks into the scene. I kept this one for the trivia.

A boat ride. I chose it for the colors.

Some flowers.

Some more flowers.

A lotus. It had been plucked by someone and was handheld when I took the shot. You’d discover an ant at the top of the stem on careful inspection.

The Tighra dam reservoir. I went for the golden waters.

Some rocks on a beach at Goa.

Another sunset. I tried to capture the beautiful tones instead of the sun.

I was returning from the country-side when I saw this fire in the field. I loved the combination of the deep blue and the orange.

Another sunset.

Oops. Yet again.

I had walked 20kms and finally climbed a hill to reach the Tighra reservoir. What I reached was a moon smiling from behind the beautiful florals.

This is what the reservoir looked like when climbing down. The spiral adds to the composition.

The last sunset in this collection. I promise.

It looked like a normal pond on a cold, breezy, clouded, chilly, winter day. Then I played with white-balance.

Car tail-lights.

A lotus.

A saree (dress) I bought for my lovely wife.

My violin.

Some “rakhis” displayed hanging at a shop.

I’ll leave you with some flowers.

Time and again some readers have questioned my skills as a photographer. I’ve also been declared as an internet expert. Let’s just say I’m not a pro. But I hope you’d agree I do get lucky sometimes. I hope you enjoyed these. Please do share these with your friends and let me know which ones you like.