Tuesday 23 September 2008

Lens Reversal Result #1


After spending a considerable amount of time and energy making an extremely simple lens reverse adapter, I realised that my fingers were in no state to hold the camera and take shots safely. So I waited a couple of days to ensure the safety of the camera, and built up the nerve to reverse mount a lens. And when I finally managed to reverse mount it, it fit perfectly! Like fingers (your own, preferably cleaned with an olfactorily enhanced soap) in your mouth.

Only after mounting the lens did I realise that I had no idea what to shoot. In my search of a suitably micro subject, I stumbled upon a bunch of roses floating on water filled in a brass or brass-looking vessel placed on a suitably unstable, foldable thing about a foot high. Upon closer inspection I noticed that all that dead flora had a very living faunal companion. A worm was cradled inside one of the flowers.

Spotting the worm was a lot easier than shooting it. First there was the lack of light, which was soon taken care of by the careful placement of a rarely used, extended reading lamp. Next was the focusing on the subject. With a depth of field reminiscent of the edge of an aerobically oxidised razor blade, even a deep breath would put the freaking worm out of focus. As a result, the fans were switched off and I started holding my breath while shooting. Thank God for the tripod... Soon, both the worm and I started losing a lot of water, me in the form of sweat, and the worm in the form of worm sweat as a result of the significantly "warm" lighting. After spraying some water on the worm to prevent it from drying up in the course of the shoot, I shot it. Worms are by far the most cooperative subjects I have ever shot.

More pictures here.

Sunday 21 September 2008

It's About Time............


It has been a while since I dropped in on my own blog to post something. This is what I have been doing these days…….

• Running a little, some working out in the gym and some swimming.

• Running the Chennai Half Marathon despite promising myself I wouldn't run it ever again as long it was held before sun down and then wishing I had kept my promise.

• Spending an unhealthy amount of time reading a lot of stuff online.

• Shooting some time lapse videos.

• Hearing The Song about a hundred and seventy three million times and wondering why I did not listen to Nada Nada earlier.

• Wondering how I could make some money from pictures I have shot.

• Hoping to post something soon.

Basically, life has been in the doldrums the past few months and it finally looks like I may be heading towards the trade winds. Taking into account the fact Geography was never one of my stronger subjects in school, I could be completely wrong. Anyway, it's about time I started posting again and hopefully, more regularly than before.