Srilanka - History | Beaches | Wildlife & more

The main objective of the last trip to srilanka was spend time at minneriya to witness elephant gathering. We were a bit early so the total number which can go upto 200 was not there. Still we could see about 40 ~ 50 elephants. The land topology reminded me of corbett dhikala. We also visited dambulla caves another lovely place which i have been before.

Dambulla Caves | Srilanka

Elephant Gathering @ Minneriya | Srilanka

Pasikudah Beach just after sunset.

Pasikudah Beach @ Blue hour | Srilanka

Elephants over horizon

Elephants over horizon @ Minneriya | Srilanka

Baby elephants playing

Baby Elephants @ Minneriya | Srilanka

Places - Art - History @ Europe

Image collection from different places in Europe visited recently.

Empty Louvre Courtyard in the evening just after closure for the day.

Louvre Courtyard @ Dusk

This is the train station that was converted to this fabulous museum. This is view from the upper deck that gives an overall glimpse of the layout of the museum

Musee d Orsay | Paris

Another famous structure in the latin quarter of paris is the Pantheon. Some glimpses of the external architecture.

Pantheon | Paris

Road to Pantheon | Paris

Upper level interior of the hugely popular Saint Chapelle in Paris.

Saint Chapelle | Paris

Ghent is a small and beautiful municipality in Belgium around the river Leie. Here is an image of St.Michaels Bridge at night. The bridge leads to city square which hosts fascinating cathedrals and the bell fry tower.

St. Michaels Bridge @ Night | Ghent

City of Lyon statue at "place de la Concorde". One of the 8 statues at Concorde. Each statue is representative of a french city.

City Of Lyon Statue | Place de la Concorde

Last light over Alps range from lutry corniche in laussanne, switzerland. The feel is very similar what we observe with himalayan ranges. We saw lot of mute swan's in the lake.

Last Light @ Alps | Lausanne

The leie river in ghent is flanked by these beautiful quay's graslei and korelei. It is a beautiful sight to behold from the st.michael's bridge. One of the places where you feel time stands still.

Graslei & Korenlei @ Dusk | Ghent

Les invalides which is a military museum lines itself up nicely with the pont alexandre iii bridge.

Les Invalides & Port Alexandre III | Paris

Jesuit Church in the evening. It is the first large baroque church in switzerland. This is adjacent to river reuss.

Lucerne Jesuit Church @ Sunset | Switzerland

St. Bavo's Cathedral. Oldest church in the heart of lively Ghent city.

St. Bavo's Cathedral | Ghent

Another old church from ghent with baroque style architecture & design.

St. Jacob's Church  @ Ghent | Belgium

Art of Ruins | Hampi

Made a short trip to Hampi over May 1st long weekend. Hampi was hot no doubt but still the visit was enjoyable from a photo op point of view. Did not get to make good images for Yellow throated bulbul which was one of the key purpose of this visit. Getting good diffused light in this heat is a challenge. Good light was largely till morning 8:00 and in evening for about an hour.

Vittala Temple | Hampi

Peacock @ Dawn | Hampi

Morning Wait | Hampi

Sunset | Hampi

Cirrus Cloudscapes | Munnar

En route to munnar myself and prasad saw these intriguing cloud formations with streaks of clouds in a radiating fashion. I have never seen such cloud formations before. So we made a bunch of images with different compositions. Back home did some dig up using google and wikipedia and found out some cool information about these clouds. Wikipedia has a complete classification of these cloud types. The ones we had observed were cirrus clouds and they are high altitude clouds forming at an altitude of about 6000m. At that altitude high winds blow these clouds into long streamers. Awesome. More specifically the ones we had observed was a sub variety of cirrus clouds called Cirrus Radiatus. Cirrus Radiatus exhibit these white radiating contrails that span the entire sky converging to a point in horizon.

Sikkim : Light Series

At the end of sikkim trip though it was not a conscious choice I realized most of my images were oriented towards the magical light I had witnessed over the mountains. Here is the light series from the trip.

Mountain Light

Flow of Light

Light and Clouds

First Light

Light Layers

Sikkim & North Bengal

Made a trip to Sikkim and Northern part of bengal in the last week of Dec 2010. Covered Lava,Neora Valley,Kalimpong and Pelling. Here is a curtain raiser shot from the trip.

Rangit & Teesta
Teesta at 315 km is the life line river of sikkim. Rangeet which is its tributary forks off at the border between Bengal and Sikkim. In the image water with darker blue tint is Rangeet and the lighter blue tinted one is Teesta. The Upper part in the image where sadhus are meditating on the banks is sikkim and the lower part is Bengal.

An Evening in Kutch. A B&W image from Kutch trip.

Two images made at Binsar zero point. The pink tinge over the horizon happens at sunset. From Binsar zero point the span of Himalayan range visible is about 300kms.



A slightly wider view with moon rise over the mountains.

Eastern Himalayas - Pano

A pano shot of eastern himalayas. A composite stich of 12 individual images. Right click and choose "view image" to see the image in one shot. ( If required increase monitor brightness to see different color shades correctly )

An early morning view from Pangot. The cloud span over the horizon covers the city of ramnagar and corbett national park.

Moods of Kumaon Himalayas - 1
I made a series of images of the eastern himalayan range from pangot and binayak. These are small villages away from Nainital by a distance of around 20kms. The first time you look at a himalayan range it hits you captivating you by its sheer scale and size. Though you make innumerable images you still come back with a feeling full justice has not been done in showcasing this wonder of nature. Nevertheless here is my attempt. A view of the kumaon eastern himalayan range from pangot. The highlighted range in the center is trisul flanked on the left side by Shivling and on the right by Nandadevi.

Nanda Devi in Mist
Back from a one week trip to eastern side of himalayas touching places like pangot, binsar and sattal. I had planned this primarily as a birding trip to pangot and sattal but on arrival at pangot the birding lens broke down. The north east birds are a beautiful set and it was disappointing the birding setup broke down. Though by the end of the trip the birding setup became ok by that time though my mood had totally switched to primarily doing landscapes. Here is a curtain raiser shot of Nanda devi which is part of eastern himalayan range in mist during evening sunset.

- Great Rann of Kutch -
GRK ( Great Rann of Kutch ) being a low lying area floods every year and the water starts to evaporate once the summer sets in with its 50deg heat. The evaporating water leaves behind an earth coated with hardened salt. The residual water is so strong with brine concentration the water body turns pink and the horizon over the water glows with a pink tinge.

Camel flock crossing Banni grasslands herded by Rabari tribals.

Over a span of 4 days we covered various parts of kutch. Primary aim was to cover the grasslands

Day 1: Banni Grasslands
Day 2: Naliya Grasslands
Day 3 : Phot Mahadeo forest & Banni Grasslands
Day 4 : Banni Grasslands -> Great Rann of Kutch - > Banni Grasslands

This image was made on day 2 sometime around evening. This is Naliya grasslands. The grass is primarily spear grass which looks soft and nice from distance but in reality is spiky and painful to get rid of once it sticks to the dress/skin.

Made a 5 day trip to Kutch. Different experience compared to the forests of south india. Here is terrain of Banni grasslands that spans 4000 sqkm post monsoon showers. The earth caked and baked by the 38deg Kutch heat.

First rays of light over the horizon just before sunrise at Bhadra backwaters.

Waiting for Sunrise @ Bhadra Backwaters
Spent 3 days at the lovely backwaters of Bhadra. Got to see the Osprey and White bellied sea eagle which I would say were the highlights of the trip. Quite a number of images to process/cleanup. Starting with this one.

Rocks & Clouds
Went in search of the Rock eagle owl again to Turahalli last weekend. Though could not locate that guy the morning light was good and used it to make some landscape images.

Foothills of Nilgiris
On the foothills on one instant it is perfectly clear and suddenly you see this huge cloud of mist that covers the entire mountain. I wanted to catch the transition point. After trying for 2 days and multiple trial and error attempts was lucky to get something close to what I had visualized. Click to see the bigger version.