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- Photographs
- Videos
Journal
- Photo Essays
- Tutorials
  - Astro Composites
About Me
Contact

Experimental

Experimental Photography

the.final.shot

/I think I can call myself a filmmaker now 🖤 E

/I think I can call myself a filmmaker now 🖤

Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else in life becomes eerily easy. The main task is to keep going on day-in and day-out, repeating what you did when you started, holding on to the (often doubted by self) trust in your abilities - all this, just so that you don't miss that one opportunity. I think my life has been a testament of that. No matter what happens, you soldier on, doing things you like, sticking to your north star of delivering a feeling and enabling people to do more.

And at times, life is sporting enough to give you a power-up for all your slogging. This is my power-up. A few weeks back I posted that my film, for the first time, got shortlisted in an international film festival and that itself was a huge thing. Well, guess what, I won the damn thing. 30+ countries, 100+ submissions and 'Dear 2020' took the grand prize.

I know it is nothing but a mediocre storyteller's name inked on a glass plank, but it is also everything. My capacity for happiness, you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first. lol. So, I won't stretch the caption much and end it with a thank you.

I cannot thank you all enough for your infinite love and support. But I cannot conjure up any other compliment at the moment. So, yeah, thanks for being the real cheerleaders of my efforts 😇

BRB, crying tears of joy 🙈

"The sky grows dark / The black over blue / Yet the stars still dare / To shine for you"

🖤

/maybe this is the only meaning that matter Not a

/maybe this is the only meaning that matter

Not a long caption today as I felt like embedding it in the carousel. I had this timelapse of 1200 images during which the moon went through a lot of phases. Skimming through these photographs prompted the idea of this carousel in my head. This is unlike my general style but it somehow felt right showcasing it this way. Here's the text for reference, hope you liked it:

Every second of every day we are entering a new universe.
And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different,
comparing ourselves to other people
and to other versions of ourselves,
when really most lives
contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.
Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts
but with flashes of wonder and beauty.
Maybe this is the only meaning that matters.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composed at f/11, 55mm, 1/60, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators
#nightphotography #photooftheday #timelapsephotography #lifelesson #thatsjustlife #writerscommunity

/sketch me a photograph Let me introduce you to a

/sketch me a photograph

Let me introduce you to a new photography technique - The Pep Ventosa photography technique.
It creates final images that look almost sketch-like in appearance. What’s intriguing about his images is that you see a familiar sight in an unfamiliar and foreign perception of blur, movement, and time. He deconstructs the scene with each shot. Then he digitally reconstructs his images concealing and revealing the pixels one on top of the other. Each layer is unique and plays its part in the collective whole with its ghostly outlines. Each image is taken from a slightly different angle, post edited in different transparencies, contrast, and colour intensities. The final composite image created gives a whole new visual experience of blurred lines and you have to look really close to see what’s happening.
"What grows is a unique new narrative space that never actually happened, where the whole has traveled mysteriously further than what the camera documented. Part memory, part imagination. Not unlike the way we see." - @pep.ventosa

I wanted to give it a try but also wanted to add my flavor to it, obviously. Pep has used this technique on trees and streets, but I wanted to incorporate our natural satellite in the frame. I spotted a communication tower near my place and then mapped the location of the moon using the PhotoPills app. When I had the moon in the dead-center of the frame, I drew a circle on the floor and started moving throughout the arc - composing one frame at every step. This process yielded 20 frames which I took to photoshop and they played around with opacity and position to sketch this photograph. In order to see the different exposures, zoom into the frame.

How did you like this frame? Share your thoughts in comments. Would you try it?
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composite of 20 shots at f/11, 55mm, 1/60, ISO 100
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#pepventosa
#createathome #stayathome
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators
#blackandwhite #photooftheday #photographytechniques #multipleexposure #multipleexposures

/you create a universe by perceiving it The long

/you create a universe by perceiving it

The long warm light of the evening sun caught him nicely. After days of roasting heat, there was a gentle cool summer breeze. Tacking gently
into the nuzzling breeze, his nostrils inhaled the mesh of rusty scents. If you look toward the sky, the scene would make your soul rejoice. The sky was deep, Atlantis-blue, the clouds were all the shades of grey and the intermittent sunlight from the waning sun ignited tiny chunks of clouds. The moon nestled calmly just above them as though resting on the cloud-bed.

His eyes were glued to the sky when he saw a rectangular slice and decided to capture it. Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you. Like this frame. He was the blues darker than the deepest oceans and wanted his slice of frame to have that color. So, he used a circular polarizing filter to capture what he saw. Hence, the darkness on the left side of the frame and the brightness illuminating the moon towards the right.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composed at f/11, 27mm, 1/60, ISO 100 with a CPF
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#createathome #stayathome
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #gun_eat #baapwalecreators #photooftheday #eveningvibes #summerfling #augustsky #cloudgasm #cloudsofinstagram #eveningsky #cpf #circularpolarizer #lucknow #uttarpradesh

/the slump and the solitude My last post was a fe

/the slump and the solitude

My last post was a few days ago and I have never had such long gaps in between posts. Although I have almost always had a repertoire of narratives/stories/frames that I can share on the rainy days, this time I don't have any. And yes, I can post meaningless junk with pretty pictures and captions off of the internet but you know, that's not me. This is new for me and I am trying to navigate my way through the slump by finding peace is solitude.

Solitude is good. I have never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. It made me think that maybe that's all our lives are. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe we get so caught up in those flashes that when reality catches up, it feels alien. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself. So, yeah, here I am, finding myself in solitude and trying to shape my next project.

Oh, and yes, a wall clock stopped working and I took out the mirror from inside of it. Placed it on the grass that grew on an earthen pot, created an ice-cream cone from wild flowers and a withered leaf, and, snapped this frame. This was the recent flash of beauty. Hopefully, I get a thunderstorm soon.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composed at f/11, 35mm, 1/40, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators
#experimentalphotography #photooftheday #mirrorselfie #conceptart #conceptualphotography #pinterestaesthetic #differentperspective #mirrorphotography

/the failed project If you've been following my w

/the failed project

If you've been following my work for sometime you'd know that I attempted to capture all the phases of the moon from my rooftop and got to capture as many as 11 from the 14-day oncoming cycle. This year I wanted to give it another shot and took a bold decision to capture the full-cycle. After I capture all the phases, I'd have to stitch them in one frame while managing different exposures. I was prepared to discover that this might turn out to be the difficult bit. What I hadn't been prepared to discover, however, was how difficult it was even getting to the difficult bit.

The thing with capturing the moon cycle from a city household is that the moon doesn't rise up to the same levels in the sky and at times might not be visible even if you stay up till 4AM. I was fully cognizant of this fact and yet I started the project thinking I'll take it up as I go. Also, I was feeling super uninspired and was terribly pleased that this project had suddenly furnished me with a serious goal to achieve. And as you can see in the image, I was unable, yet again to capture all the phases.

Instead of giving up the project, discarding GBs of data and throwing away the now wasteful-seeming months of late night efforts, I thought of turning it into art. And that's how these images came to life. I anchored the frame on the street light and repositioned the moon-shots from different images to form these patterns. I can't wait to go to a place with a wide horizon and stay there for a month. Maybe next year, I most definitely will complete this project. Here's to hoping and hard work.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composite of 11 frames taken at f/11, 55mm, Multiple Shutter Speeds, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators
#nightphotography #photooftheday #nightsky #Phasesofmoon #nightlife #astrophotography #naturephotography #landscapephotography
#landscape_specialist

/the sky is a neighborhood It was 2 AM on a cloud

/the sky is a neighborhood

It was 2 AM on a cloudy summer night. The sun had been swallowed by the horizon hours ago and yet the elements of nature were busy putting up a show for anyone who'd watch. As if they took upon themselves to assuage the pain from the burns of the summer sun on the body and the despair of the soul. He sat down on the rooftop with his phone in his hand as if he was about to write something, but did nothing. He thought of how he used to conjure up the prose and send it at these silent hours and how moments later his phone's screen be filled with figures colored in bright yellow and deep red. Happy moments can turn into pain, given time.

On the street, the wind was picking up, howling through trees as if attempting a language. The sky above the buildings was a cold and hostile black. The stars, which should have been blindingly brilliant points of light this far from the sun were blurred and dulled by the thickness of the huge shielding bubble. He sat there finally giving attention to the theatrics of nature when he noticed something familiar but in an unfamiliar guise. The wind was blowing the clouds far away from the core of the Earth in one direction but was taking the ones nearer in another. He was bewildered and excited at the same time. He put down his phone and picked up his camera, just like that night in October, and once again, it was his camera that made his desolate soul smile.
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Shot on @gopro Hero 9 Black
Composed by stitching ~400 photos taken back to back
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise #sunset
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators
#LandscapeLovers #BeautifulLandscape #Viewpoint #NakedPlanet #LandscapeHunter #Sky_Captures #ScenicView #Cloudscape #SkyScape #LandscapeShot #Landscape_Specialist #Splendid_Earth #Outdoors #Earthpix #DiscoverLandscape #AwesomeGlobe #IGRefined #Earthescope

/washed away The exit of summers and the entrance

/washed away

The exit of summers and the entrance of the rainy season makes for unique weather conditions. The sky is blanketed by clouds, yet there is no precipitation. The ball of fire fueled by the fusion of Hydrogen atoms is not visible, yet it's as hot as a furnace. Before the crepuscular light heralds the onset of the monarchy-purple skies, there is a period where the blanket of clouds looks like a duvet on the inverted bed of Earth. The sky is morphed into a cathedral of bright white.

I was taking a post-lunch walk when I spotted a small halo-white piece of soft cloud next to the lamp on my roof. It looked as if someone had carefully plucked it from the sky-duvet. Naturally, it made for a great frame. I grabbed his camera and had just framed the scene when to my surprise, an airplane flew into the frame. That's how this frame came into existence.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composed at f/11, 55mm, 1/80, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise #sunset
#landscapephotography #wpd_kunal2021
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators
#LandscapeLovers #BeautifulLandscape #Viewpoint #NakedPlanet #LandscapeHunter #Sky_Captures #ScenicView #Cloudscape #SkyScape #LandscapeShot #Landscape_Specialist #Splendid_Earth #Outdoors #Earthpix #DiscoverLandscape #AwesomeGlobe #IGRefined #Earthescope

/I believe I'd like this to be a post 'I can neve

/I believe I'd like this to be a post

'I can never be all the people I want & live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want & why do I want? I want to live & feel all the shades, tones & variations of mental & physical experience possible in my life' -Sylvia Plath
This was what Sylvia felt. This is what I feel. I could never champion the way she has described my philosophy of life. Those who know me, know the eclectic range of interests I have & the efforts I've made to learn & 'live' different crafts. Filmmaking is one of them; probably the one that had the most work put into.

I employ the agency of filmmaking to tell my stories in a way that empowers the viewers, inspires them to do more.. delivers a feeling. I remember the time, back in 2010 when I used to film videos of my friends doing absolutely anything, while doing my masters when I made ads, when I made videos for an NGO.. when I made my first travel film. I stuck to my north star all along & hoped that someday it'd strike a chord with the masses. & so, I'd keep my head down & work on honing my craft, hoping to get better with every iteration.

To loosely quote Thoreau: If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours & there I was- brainstorming new ideas for a concept when a push notification caught my attention. The subject of the mail said, "Official Selection".. it was hard reading any further due to the rare accumulation of salted water in front of my eyes. My heart was pumping ridiculous amounts of blood to my brain & my cognitive functions divined that this was IT!

I cannot express how happy I am that Dear 2020 got selected in not 1 but 2 film festivals in 24 hours! I know it's not that big a deal in the greater scheme of things but for the kid in me who dreamed of telling beautiful stories, this is kinda huge. So, yeah, I wanted this to be a post- something that'll always be logged in my timeline of life & would serve as a reminder to soldier on when things are grey.

A huge thank you to everyone who has been by my side. This one's for you. Hopefully, one day, it'll reach an even wider audience.

/look at the sky, i'm still here Out in the lonel

/look at the sky, i'm still here

Out in the lonely western spiral arm of a mostly unfashionable galaxy lied a small unregarded sun. Orbiting it is an insignificant little blue green planet crowded with a carbon-based bipedal lifeform. Nestled in one of the landmasses created by gravitational forces was a structure that the inhabitants of planet C-137 called houses. On the roof of the house was a chair. It was occupied by a being who, in turn, seemed to be occupied by profound thoughts.

To take a break from his increasingly speeding train of thought he would resort to sky-gazing from time-to-time. Nephelococcygia was a thing he had picked up recently. He spotted a human face, more like a clown (slide 1) and baby Yoda spreading its arms (slide 2). Soon he noticed on the opposite end of the horizon the sun wrestling the clouds that had captured it. Light emanated from within as a volcano waiting to erupt. He grabbed his camera, captured the frames and got lost in his thoughts again.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
1) Composed at f/13, 55mm, 1/800, ISO 100
2) Composed at f/13, 35mm, 1/250, ISO 100
3) Composed at f/11, 55mm, 1/160, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise #sunset
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators #raghavrairalhan #facesinplaces #photographersofinstagram

/i'm a lonely star A thin whine filled the air. I

/i'm a lonely star

A thin whine filled the air. It whirled and howled through the trees upsetting the squirrels. A few birds flew off in disgust. The noise danced and skittered
round the clearing. It whooped, it rasped, it generally offended. "Um," he said with a reflective frown to indicate that his cognitive synapses were coping with this as best as they could, "um." He was struck with a spasm of despairing nostalgia seeing a silhouette that looked too familiar. He told himself that it could not possibly be the one who he is thinking it is. Perturbed by the heaviness that he'd experience if he didn't confirm that it was her, he ran to the other end of the roof to get a clearer view.

Catching a glimpse he realized that what happened with him was one of those curious freaks of memory which can keep images alive in the mind eons after their true significance has been lost in the mists of time. Words were there but they didn't come out. He's not his best at singin' loud Damn, he sure couldn't make it better. He was just hoping for bad weather. He looked up. The dimming sun framed a great sweep of lonely, birdshell-blue sky. A lonely moon hung above the cotton-candy cloud illuminated by the vestiges of the rays from the muted sun. He felt as if nature was mirroring his thoughts and was screaming in silence:
"I'm a lonely star, Is there anybody out there?"
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
1) Composed at f/13, 55mm, 1/200, ISO 100
2) Composed at f/11, 55mm, 1/500, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise #sunset
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators #writingcommunity #photography #perspectivephotography #lucknow #uttarpradesh

/let me blow you away Ladies and gentlemen, here'

/let me blow you away

Ladies and gentlemen, here's a long exposure concept that I promise you would have never seen (well, technically if you saw my yesterday's story then yes, but you get the idea). Even when photographers, like myself, are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience. And when we try to create a tiny element of another world: the image-world that bids to outlast us all, we find ourselves trading in an impostor syndrome.

Yet, such photographs express a feeling both sentimental and implicitly magical: they are attempts to contact or lay claim to another reality. And this image falls right into the middle of this photographic enterprise. One fine evening I was sitting in my balcony creating a timelapse when an airplane passed through the frame. As the light was fairly dim, the shutter speed was slow and I saw a small trail in some of the shots. That's how I got the idea for this concept.

As airplanes move really fast through the limiting rectangle box of our camera's eye, I tried this concept with a slower-moving object: the moon. You all loved those shots. I was now more confident in the execution. I mapped the trajectory and flight timings, set up my camera on the roof and, waited for the moment to arrive. I failed, terribly, the first 8 times. Finally, I set up 2 shooting modes in my camera. Shot the long exposure shots on complete manual mode and the last shot on shutter priority mode. And this time, I failed, again, 17 times. I knew I was limited by my old camera and lens but I am not the one who gives up, at all.

So, I brainstormed on how I could capture such shots and an idea made blood rush to my brain. Instead of capturing photos, I switched to video mode. In real-time, I altered the shutter speed. Then in post, I exported every frame as a still image. This is equivalent to shooting photos in burst mode, only with the advantage of not missing a frame due to my slow camera. After that, it took a little bit of blending to get this final image.

Hopefully, you liked the concept and the process inspires you to try something new. Share your thoughts in the comments below :)

/Eid-al-Adha Mubarak While I was planning today's

/Eid-al-Adha Mubarak

While I was planning today's post, I noticed that the previous few posts have had the moon as their prominent part, albeit the narratives have been a little different. The ongoing third person narratives have been keeping my brain cells active and I am enjoying the process. I'll try to weave something new.

It was the day of celebrations on planet C-137. Something the carbon-based life forms call the festival of Eid. He was still on the same roof. But there was something different about the air. The simpering wind carried a fragrance with it. It was spirit refreshing for him to smell the mix of sweet fragrances which seemed to flit in and out of his awareness. There was something different about the day. He sighed with happiness and followed my smells with his eyes closed.

The sun stabbed his eyes with spears as he looked up and he had to move his head in the opposite direction. As he opened his eyes he witnessed a light moon nestled in what appeared to be a cradle of clouds. He grabbed something from his side and the next sound that we heard was a 'click'.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composed at at f/11, 55mm, 1/60, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise #sunset
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators #eidaladha #eidmubarak #eiduladha #eidulzuha

/the cloud dispenser In teaching us a new visual

/the cloud dispenser

In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads—as an anthology of images. To collect photographs is to collect the world.

Sitting on his favorite spot on the roof, he (It's high time I gave a name to this character. Can you suggest something in the comments?) Okay, back from the sub-clause. Where was I? Yes, roof.. he would observe his surroundings and try to form mental frames. He would squat, jump, move around and try to frame the seemingly static elements to represent something meaningful. As he did with these frames: changed his angle of view such that the dish TV antenna looks like it is dispensing clouds (in the first frame) and captured a burst shot of birds flying in a dystopian orange sky an hour later and exactly opposite of this antenna (in the second frame). Oh in what a contrast has nature presented itself, he thought.

Although the camera is an observation station, the act of photographing is more than passive observing. To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged (at least for as long as it takes to get a “good” picture), to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
1) Composed at at f/11, 55mm, 1/60, ISO 100
2) Composed at at f/5.6, 55mm, 1/250, ISO 200 (4 shots in low light)
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise #sunset
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators #juxtaposition #observationmag

/perfectly out of place Another summer evening, a

/perfectly out of place

Another summer evening, another scenery with pastel shades of blue and red. And there he was again, sitting on the same thick parapet of his roof... thinking, scribbling in his worn-out notebook with a shiny new pen (coz he dropped the last one when we tried to peek in his notebook). The sun marveled in the sky, yet there was certain darkness that engulfed his thoughts. Space and time had become asynchronous and with every passing minute, he questions reality. He feels like an outsider even what they say is his home. He is not at peace, for he is young and shackled by the daily drudgery of life and time of youth, if anything, is the time of activity.

He mouths the cap of his pen and starts writing something with his shadow leaning on his notebook. He wrote:

"Reality is summed up in an array of casual fragments — an endlessly alluring, poignantly reductive way of dealing with the world. Illustrating that partly jubilant, partly condescending relation to reality that is the rallying point of, dare I say, surrealism, the photographer’s insistence that everything is real also implies that the real is not enough. Why else would reality ever be thought of as insufficient, flat, overordered, shallowly rational?"

He thought of how some his images at times patronize reality and how his current state of mind seems as if reality is patronizing it. How, he, in all this, is perfectly out of place. Unlike this photograph where the elements in the frame are exactly where they should be.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composed at at f/11, 55mm, 1/60, ISO 100
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#createathome #stayathome #moonrise #sunset
#landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators #susansontag #thoughtsonpaper #photographersofinstagram

/rumble The best thing about the scorching heat o

/rumble

The best thing about the scorching heat of June is what follows in July. When the skies take shades of blue that they don't usually take throughout the year, and that too, at night! Its beauty is such that even the being above the clouds gets into photography mode with their flash on :D

There's something about these night rain sessions that speaks to me. The split-second influx of luminance in the nebulous purple skies pumps up my adrenaline the same way a goal scored by Barcelona does.

I was taking a brisk walk on my terrace when a scar of bright light hung in the bat-black sky. The clapping and bellowing thunder ripped the fragile veil of silence. The alien lightning buzzed and crackled, painting the sky purple.

Experiencing all this in a matter of seconds, I did what any photographer would do: ran inside to get my tripod and the camera :P The sky rumbled and grumbled for some time before the first splatters of rain forced me to bring my setup inside. Nevertheless, I had managed to capture some good shots.

This frame is a composite of 5 shots from the night.
Hope you liked the literary journey as well. If you did, do let me know in the comments below.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composite of 5 shots taken at at f/3.5, 18mm, 1.6secs, ISO 400

*scorching sun (my habit of not proof reading when

*scorching sun (my habit of not proof reading when I am in the flow will embarrass me big time someday 🙈)

/heat wave

As he sat on the parapet of his childhood house in the middle of June thinking, is déjà vu actually the specter of false timelines that never happened but did, casting their shadows upon reality?, the cotton-candy-like clouds bathed in the molten red beams of the vanquishing-yet-scorching.

The dimming sun framed a great sweep of lonely, midnight-blue sky. It felt as if the clouds had shunned the metaphor, literally turned into cotton candies and quenched their thirst for color by dinking the sunlight.

He tried hard to stop himself from dropping in the still-life painting of memories and did so by scribbling in his worn-out diary. On looking closely just over the bottom of the diagonal pen that was completing the set of ellipses, it seemed as if he had written,

"Sometimes, all I think about is you
Late nights in the middle of June
Heat waves been faking me out
Don't know if you know me, do you now...?"

His hand was blocking the rest of the page. All that visible were a few lines on the next page which read:

"How can you miss someone you've never met?
'Cause I need you now but I don't know you yet
But can you find me soon because I'm in my head?
Yeah, I need you now but I don't know you yet..."

We couldn't read any further as he noticed us peeping in his diary which he slammed shut dropping the pen from the parapet onto the road.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composed at at f/9, 18mm, 1/120, ISO 100
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#writers #writersofinstagram #writerscommunity #poetry #writingcommunity #writersofig #poetsofinstagram #realfiction
#fictionwriter #landscapephotography #myindianphoto #prose #idontknowyouyet
#alexander23 #tripotocommunity #_ip #glassanimals #heatwaves #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators

/specter of time Deep in the forgotten hours of t

/specter of time

Deep in the forgotten hours of the night, he sits on his roof and stares at the great beyond- into the nothingness.

The period is quite the opposite- filled with an onslaught of nostalgia, of conversations with self.

His mind's eye conjures memories- the memories created during the same nocturnal hours, the memories of going 95 at night.

Suddenly, the landscape in front of his eyes annihilates the landscape of his mind as it ups the tranquil factor.

He looks at it in awe. It is beautiful but also crushing to experience.

...like a secret window into the person he used to know.

Wrote it last night 🙈 - thought I'll use this post as an outlet for the thoughts.

The first frame was taken at 4 AM. The second and third at around 1 AM. If you notice, the last 2 frames are of the reflection of the moon on water with the nearby street light casting the shadow of the plant kept in the vicinity of my setup.
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
1) Composed at at f/3.5, 18mm, 20secs, ISO 200
2) Composed at at f/5.6, 55mm, 3secs, ISO 100
3) Composed at at f/5.6, 55mm, 3secs, ISO 100
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#baapwalecreators #nocturnal #nightphotography #midnightcravings #3amconversations #nocturnalphotography #slowshutter #gun_eat #specter

/view from my window Windows make up most of the

/view from my window

Windows make up most of the south wall of my lobby. They are old-style, door length windows broken up into 2 panes. My house is on the third floor and faces another building. Before the lockdown, we used to go to office and return home only at night when it was dark outside. And weekends used to fly away in attending to errands and going out with friends. But during this lockdown, I sat to work on the table kept in my lobby. The window usually had curtains on but that day I opened them completely for natural light to come in and lighten my make-shift workspace.

It was the month of May and in Bangalore, the monsoon arrives usually towards the end of May. As the day progressed, I would look out occasionally, spot moving clouds and sometimes get lost in the scenery only to be brought back to reality by the meeting notification from my laptop. That day, looking outside the window that I had till then taken for granted thinking, eh, it’s just a window with a normal apartment in front, I discovered a view so rich with life and change and process that I permanently discarded the curtains and sat there to work every day. I noticed the landscape change in front of me, day in and day out and one fine evening an idea struck my head, what if I photograph the change through the day and stitch together the shots taken at every hour of the day. And that’s how this picture came to life.

Here are two renditions of the timelapse photograph. The first frame shows the scene at every hour of the day as you would see on the clock with the day starting at 9 AM and finishing at 9 PM. The second frame comprises of strips that indicate a 2-hour window.

This is by no means even near to perfection, there are messy wires which I didn't factor in while shooting and were a headache to clean in post. But hey, that's how we learn. Initially, I didn't want to post it but then I was like, chuck it, it is what it is. Hope you liked the concept. And with this, the series 'phases' comes to an end.
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/phases (scene 6)
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
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#baapwalecreators #lockdowndiaries #creativityinc #stayathome #createathome

/the magnificent moon v2 The previous post garner

/the magnificent moon v2

The previous post garnered tremendous response, you I thought why not post another one that I shot last week. This one required more work- from me as well as from my computer. The frame that you are seeing is a result of more than an hour of shooting and about 600 shots. The last frame featured the tree in front of my house. This one features a non-operational street light.

This is not just any street light. This is the one under which I used to play football and cricket during childhood. Naturally, it has gifted me with the memories of a lifetime. I wanted to show this street light in a new 'light' (get it, ha ha). It is only us artists who lyricize the experiences gained from even the most vapid objects- for we find admiration for them which normally people won't. Rest well, oh street light.

How did you like the concept?
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/phases (scene 5)
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Shot on @nikonindiaofficial D5200 with the 18-55mm kit lens
Composite of 600 shots taken at f/5.6, 18mm, 1/20, ISO 100
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About the series: Welcome to a new mini-series called 'phases'. The frames of this series are my humble attempt at showcasing the passing of time through a static frame. I know you might be thinking that isn't the purpose of photography is to freeze the moment in time. Yes, it is. But I've tried to take it one step further. What if we could freeze different slices of time in one frame. I believe that photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow, and yet, they have this innate ability to capture the flow. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, that one can keep, look at again, and live!
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#frozenintime #timelapsephotography #experimentalphotography #timelapseart #shotongopro #landscapephotography #myindianphoto
#tripotocommunity #_ip #raghavrairalhan #gun_eat #baapwalecreators #stayathome #createathome #lockdowndiaries #stayathomechallenge #lockdownphotography

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