Cooum and the Kolam

Few weeks back I went to beach station to give my friend a hard disk, I called him before I reached the station and he told me that he was shopping in some other area and he’ll be back in about 5 minutes. I waited for about 40 minutes for him and he still was not there,  I lost my patience and took the next train back home.

When in train he called me and told he was back and I told him I was already in the train. He told me to get down at Chindadripet station and he’ll come there to get the hard disk. I got down at Chindadripet station and was waiting for him to come and took this picture from the station window.
Think this is the Doordarshan tower.

He came in the next train and seeing that I was carrying my camera, he mentioned that Napier bridge was near by and we could take some pictures of that, and we started to walk towards it, with dusk setting in and against the dark Cooum the bridge did look magnificent.

We were walking close towards the bridge and it was getting darker by the minute and then the new lightings that were installed on the bridge were switched on.The lights created a nice reflection of the bridge and the bridge now looked even better than it was before the lights were switched on.

and while walking on the bridge I took this picture of the path we walked from the railway station with a nice reflection of the sky.

Now coming to the second part of the blog and as the title suggests the first part was about the walk along the cooum and the bridge on it, the second part is about Kolam or Rangoli. I do not know the technical difference between them, I just thought having Kolam in the title made a better title as Cooum and Kolam sounded similar 😉 with no offence to both of them 🙂 .

Navarathri ended yesterday and my mother usually keeps Golu and puts some nice rangoli along with it. I took the pictures of them in normal lighting.

This was there for few days and then she did another one.

The fact the she added glitter to them got me thinking on how will it be when I try illuminating only the glitter on them and waited till everyone slept.

I switched all the lights off and took a LED torch which I used to create long exposure photographs and illuminated the glitter part of the rangoli and this is what I ended up with

and this one

When I showed these pictures to my mother she was more proud of her work than mine and it was the vice versa for me :D.

More the time more the fun… Part I

Long exposure photography (here after referred as LEP) is my most favourite part of photography, the results that each picture ends up is unknown until composition of the picture is complete but what ever the result may be it will be a surprise and will leave you wanting for more. I have clicked a lot of long exposure photographs and was amazed the results each one produced.

The following image is one of my first attempts on LEP,this is a picture I took on a park when a car was being drove past, since it was exposed for a long time the light from the lamp post is very bright and I said the picture was taken when a car drove past but you actually cannot see any car in the picture, that is because when a picture is exposed for a long time it only captures the most brightest part of the scene, in this picture other than the lamp the car’s head lights are the brightest and so all you see is the light from the car and since it was in a movement you can see the car’s light for the distance it moved. After this attempt at LEP I did not experiment much with long exposures, and then came the New Year. As I was in London during the start of this year I decided to go to the fireworks display at the London Eye.

I was very excited to be going to the fireworks display because I knew when fireworks were captured with long exposures it would be spectacular as I have seen many pictures of fireworks online. As new year’s eve was nearing I was getting more excited and more nervous as I did not want to screw up the one time opportunity, So I went through lot of tips given in online for capturing fireworks.

Then came December 31’st 2009, I slept well the previous night as I knew it would be a very long night next day and I was all prepared for the night, I even decided on the place where I will take the pictures from. There is a bridge called “Hungerford”.

View Larger Map

I was sure that the view from the bridge would be perfect as I will have a good view of both London Eye and the Big Ben where the clock will move to 12 and of course I can get a nice panorama of the scene. I decided that I will start around 9.30 in the evening as I will reach London Eye by 10.30 pm and there would be enough time for me the settle in a good place with a good view of London Eye and Big Ben, by 6.30 pm it was midnight in India so I called my friends and wished them a good new year. After all the calls I was even more excited and was beginning to be restless and I was in no mood eat and ate only 2 bread slices and took 2 cans of coke and kept it in my bag, then made sure I took the tripod and the camera and finally I set off at 8.15pm. I took a train and reached Waterloo station which is near London eye by 9.30pm and there were huge number of people in the station. I started to proceed towards London Eye but the usual routes were all blocked and had to take another route, as I was nearing London Eye I realised that I did the right thing by starting early because there were people everywhere in the road, people had come with their family as early as 5.30 in the evening (I came to know this the next day after seeing it in the news). I started to proceed towards Hungerford’s bridge and unusually all the walkways leading to it were closed so I enquired a police officer on how to reach the bridge. I was very disappointed by the reply he gave, he told the bridge was closed, now I had to look for a new place with a good view of London Eye as going to get Big Ben was nearly impossible. I walked past the crowded streets for some 30 minutes and then decided on a place, it was not the best but was decent enough and only less number of people was there. I set the tripod and took this picture.

It was around 10.30pm so I had 2 hours till the fireworks started and I started to fell hungry so took out the coke can and gulped it and suddenly the London Eye was been rotated I thought it would look good if I captured the movement of London Eye and took the following photos.

Then after 2 long hours it was 2010, the fire works started and I started to take lot of pictures I was so excited that I did not even check the pictures while taking them if they are turning out be good. After 10 minutes of continuous fireworks it was all over and I got a chance to look at the pictures, here are some of them.

For the whole set go this link. Then people started to dance and all the people were going to the same station and it took me a very long time to get into the station and I had missed the last train to my home from that station so I had to go to another station and got a train and reached home 4.30 in the morning and for all those people who are worried that I didn’t eat anything I got a burger from McDonalds’ (yes it was open at that time).

Here is the link for the video of the fireworks  obviously I did not take it ;).

I want to write more on LEP (I know this post has very little of LEP) so I have split this post, I don’t know if it will stop with the second part :).