It has been ages (3 months) I wrote on my blog and I am beginning to feel sick…

Things have piled up and there is a considerable backlog of shoots and pictures to clear… So here we go…

Last December I did a few shoots at Lalbagh along with Pradeep. The idea was to get a mix of everything – candids, street shots, landscapes and portraits. Lalbagh is probably the only place that offers all these.

I reached there at 6:45 am and Pradeep joined me 10 minutes later. We walked straight into the huge open lawn near the main gate parking as this was the place that held a lot of promise. The early morning winter cold, mist and trickling sunlight make an excellent combination. Add a human form to it and now we are talking… 🙂 Heres my shot of Pradeep taking a shot.

a photographer's photograph

This is with the EF 85mm.

We spent most of the morning here and it was well worth it. There is a huge tree, must be several hundred years old, in one side of the lawn.  With the 85mm, its just impossible to cover the vast expanse of its trunk and branches. So heres a panorama of 7 handheld portrait shots which I later stitched manually and gave an infrared treatment.

The Tree

Placed Pradeep in the play of light and shadows

Between the Rays

And now some portraits. Pradeep on a pathway. A lil sleepy though :). 580EXII bare, from camera left fired via a Cactus v4 trigger. Notice the hard shadows of his jacket.

Path

Consolidating two shoots in one blog. The following shots are from the next visit to Lalbagh, on 31st December 2010.

Mist

This is inspired by Rarindra Prakasa. All that was done entirely with gradients, both in layers and masks.

A couple of more. A closeup and another one with much more environment.

Closeup

Rays