Archive for January, 2007
Prinia Alley –Uran 27 Jan ‘07
Late last night I got an sms from Rakesh and we decided to go to Uran today. The toss up was between Uran & Karnala. Uran it was, since I was more familiar with Uran.
We decided to concentrate towards the end if the “Prinia Alley” wherem we had found waders near the track, the last time we were here. But, today the water was much lesser, and the birds much further away. We then decided to walk back and find us some “Prinias” ! In the marsh near the begining of the track, we saw Nothern Shovellers and Pochards. Got one shot off but the birds were quite far away. The marsh harrier gave us a few fly bys but, was quite far off to photograph.

I rather like this Prinia photograph since it has a kind of breezy look.
The spot today that we were able to photograph was, at the very begining of the track, just off the JNPT police station. The birds popped in and out of the bushes, and quite close at that. Mainly there was a Plain Prinia pair and, an Ashy Prinia that we were able to photograph, up close.
Here is the Ashy Prinia

Yes we did see the Red Avadavats but as usual, they kept a fair distance from us, flighty creatures that they are!
The Plain Prinias from today. Got some really nice and varied backgrounds
And my favoutite shot of the morning is this one below.
The Prinia with an attitude!
The more I use flash for fill in, the more I am convinced that intelligent flash usage really helps bring out the details in the feather of the birds.
No commentsSite Goes Down
Somewhere in the confusion of shifting the website, the site got deleted before we could take a backup. No major loss. Quickly ‘Googled’ for most of my blog pages and saved them from Google cache. Whew! I was able to get back most of my text and thats what you see here now.
You may not see the photographs for a few days more, until I upload them again. So got some serious work to do on the site this week !
1980s Thru 2004
When my parents finally shifted from Delhi to Coimbatore, I picked up a huge packet of negetives that my mum had saved. Over this new year weekend I glanced thru some of them and decided to scan a few. Since I was in any case scanning, I also decided to scan a few slides of mine from my few thousand collection. Nothing very spectacular …just a flavour of a place kind of shots. Suddenly I do realise I have a heck of a lot to scan ! So here goes…
1979/1980 Delhi Zoo with my Dad’s Minolta 7s rangefinder 35mm camera
1987 Saharanpur. Shot with a Pentax ME-Super .
1988/ 1989 Rajouri Jammu & Kashmir. Pentax ME Super again and a Tamron lens
1991 Zanskar Rafting & Kayaking Expedition, Ladakh. Of course the Pentax ME Super.
1996/1997 The Siachen Glacier . Had got a Nikon F50 by this time.
Diskit Gompa, Nubra Valley
The Nubra Festival @ Diskit Ladakh

2000 Kadmat, Lakshwadeep Islands, India
And here is a shot underwater using a borrowed Sea & Sea Underwater 35mm camera.
Realised first hand that underwater photography is tough business. I must have got just 2 or 3 keepers ( barely in focus and passable exposure at that) shots in a full roll of slide film. With digital one could shoot a whole lot more without the bother of a roll change underwater and, you could also check the histo. Interesting indeed….need to do this more often
A turtle laying eggs at Kadmat . Nikon F-50 again

2001 Rafting and Kayaking at Rishikesh
2003 Sri Lanka - in 2002 I had got the Nikon F-5

2004 Andamans - Neil Island - Nikon F-5 and wow what a meter it has.















 