Little Egrets

Little Egret-V
Originally uploaded by santanu nandy(no videos)

Here is the catch is bigger detail. Could not make out what the fish was but looked pretty much big for it. Oh! by the way this is a male breeding little Egret. The breeding males have these plume in the head to attract the females!!

Little Egret Fishing.

Little Egret-IV
Originally uploaded by santanu nandy(no videos)

After the dive and taking the fish in the beak it flies towards the land to have its breakfast. Water in the backwater pond is shallow and fishes are many that makes for an easy fishing.

Little Egrets

Little Egret-III
Originally uploaded by santanu nandy(no videos)

At the end of Mithibandar road, Thane, there is a very large mangrove which attracts lots of birds. These are mainly egrets, comorants, kites, bulbuls and variety of other small birds. Today, I had the privilege of seeing one little egret fishing about in the backwaters.

Aarey Milk Colony

White Throated Kingfisher
Originally uploaded by santanu nandy

This has become my favorite photo shooting ground for birds!! The area near the cattle farms and the fields towards Guregaon are ideal locations. I have seen quite a few variety, including the one shown here. On a lucky day 7-10 species can be sighted though taking good pictures of them are not guaranteed!!

The challenge and therefore, the fun of shooting birds is their elusiveness. It takes lot of patience and luck to get one good shot at them. Normall, in once visit I'll click about 50 pics out of which finally 2 or 3 will make the grade.

Let me know how you all feel.

Santanu

Ring Billed Gull

Ring Billed Gull
Originally uploaded by santanu nandy

In the artificial lake before the Lincoln Memorial there was this gang of gulls playing around and waiting for tourists to give them crumbs!! It was a beautiful day and I had gone to see the cherry blossoms. Look what I did get to see!!

Photography

Here I am, a 40 year old man, suddenly getting interested in photography! Men are strange. They meander through their life and along they way they pick up these passing passions. There was a time when flight simulation took all my free time and now photography!

Why photography? Well, like most other pasions in my life it happened by accident. While looking out for some drivers for my Sony laptop, I came upon the Sony website where one of their latest digital camera was displayed-The Sony DSC H9. Thats it!! Rushed off to Tyson Corner in Virginia, picked up the camera, Telephoto Lens, Wide Angle Lens and a tripod to complete the gear. Very soon the excitement over buying the new "toy" gave way to learning. While I could always shoot reasonable snaps with a point and shoot camera, the host of features on this one made me venture out to learn something more about photography. Well, having just begun all I can say, its one helluva fun. Composition, The rule of the thirds, Lines, Balance and ofcourse framing. While some of the aspects and concepts are easy to learn, quite a few, specially, those about lights, exposure etc are very difficult to grasp leave alone master them.

I think the one word where photgraphy transitions from science to art is "light". Light is the most important variable and probably the most difficult to grasp and master. The other aspect I find difficult to comprehend is the subtle difference between human eye/brain smartness Vs. the dumb digital camera sensor and lense. Photgraphing what your eye "sees" is so damn difficult!! Invariably, there are differences and this is where photo editing softwares like photshop come in.

These photo editing softwares have a learning curve of their own and my best guesstimate is about 6 months for me. There are many editing softwares but Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paintshop are a few popular ones for PC and there are quite a few for Mac OS. You need creativity, patience and whole lot of free time in this world to master all the editing techniques. The creativity element is so high and the sense of having "created" something is so fulfilling that at the end of the day you'll feel all the time spent in learning it was time well spent indeed.

Over the next few post I'll publish my journey through this learning process. The next post I'll attempt to describe my camera, pros and cons.

Do leave your suggestions and comments. So, till then, take care and good bye!!

Santanu