The Flying Subject

Yeah! It's the last day of 2013 and of course this is the last post of this year on Picsonia. By the way, I wish you all a very happy new year! 

 The Flying subject is actually a Blue and Gold Macaw of the Jurong Bird Park, Singapore. At this bird park, I had met a wide variety of birds, but this bird had fascinated me the most. Maybe, because it was very attractive and colourful. The blue and gold macaws are large South American parrots with blue and yellow coloured feathers on their body. They are known for their ability to talk, colourful body and for their friendliness with humans. 

That was the descriptive part of the post. To me, photographing with 'The Flying Subject' was an unusual experience. As I owned a standard 18-55 mm lens, I had to get very close to my subject. As I was about to photograph a bird, I set my camera to Priority mode. Spent a bit of time photographing my subject and later I made a little tests with aperture and got better results. Moreover, you can see that I got some bokeh in the first photo. I have also tried to put my subject in the centre of the frame, following the rule of thirds.

That's all in this post. Hope you liked the post and do leave your comments below. All the best for the new year. See you in the next post, till then bye.

Rising High

Hey guys! As it's December vacations, I am getting plenty of time to post on my blog. Couple of days back I had posted on City and Architecture, titled 'A bit of City and Architecture'. I hope you have read that post. At the end of that post I had told that I will post some more of my photographs related to City and Architecture. So, here's one photograph that I felt like showing you guys. Hope you will like it.

I have not been much into photographing buildings until my visit to Singapore and Malaysia. It was during my stay at Singapore that I clicked this photograph. I had just got up from the bed and I was wandering around the hotel in which I stayed. The rooms in which we stayed had windows which showed us a glimpse of a part of Singapore. As it was early morning, my mom told me to open the curtains. Eventually, I was greeted with these tall buildings in front of me. The blue sky in the background beautified the whole landscape. You might be knowing what I do when I find such awesome things. Exactly! I just pop back with my SLR and then Click! That's how I got this image into my memory card. 

For me, this photograph mostly looks like one work for abstract photography. As you can see, there are 3 twin buildings in this photograph aligned to make an abstract. I have made a good conclusion from this, photographing buildings can often help you make some abstracts out of it. This work of mine can also come under location photography, a category of photography where you bring out an idea through your photographs of a particular location. I'll end this post here. Have anything to tell me? Then just comment below! I will be happy to reply to them. 

How to make a photo collage?

It's the period of social networking and people these days love uploading their photos on the web. Out of these most of them tend to add filters to their photos or make a collage. Daily, hundreds and thousands of photo collages are being uploaded. And for those who still don't know an appropriate way to make one, you are in the right place! In this blog post I will be clearly explaining the steps in making an 'exciting' collage. So, put on your seat belts and get ready for some serious job.

There are lot of photo editors or photo editing softwares that can help you make a collage. But, here I will be mainly dealing with Picmonkey, as I find it a very simple and free way to edit photos online. Moreover editing photos on softwares like Adobe Photoshop can be cumbersome. So I feel by choosing Picmonkey can make it simpler, faster, and easier. Now, lets look at the steps.

Step 1: Go to picmonkey.com. Once you are on the home page, you can find 3 options on the top of the site: 'Edit a photo', 'Create a collage' and 'Design'. Click on the 'Create a collage' button.

Step 1

Step 2: Once you finish step one, you will find yourself in the window similar to the one below. All you need to do is upload the photos(which you want to make a collage of) to Picmonkey Editor. You will see an option, 'Open photos' on the right top side of the window. Click on that option and upload the required photos. 

Step 2

Step 3: Then, you need to drag the uploaded photos to the center of the editor(on the blank collage). Later, you need to select a layout for your collage. By choosing a layout, you can decide how you want your photos in the collage to be arranged. Picmonkey offers users a wide range of layouts, though some are for Royal users.

Step 3

Step 4: This step is all about adding swatches. This step is optional. If you are interested, then this is what you need to know. Swatches are just designed backgrounds which can be used to fill the gaps in the collage. Swatches can be applied the same way as you put the photos on the collage, just drag it!

Step 4

Step 5: And coming to the final step. Here you can edit the background, maybe change the colour of it or just deal with spacing. Once you are done with this you can either edit the collage with Picmonkey Editor or just save the file. That's all. You will have your collage done and ready to be uploaded!

Step 5

Below you can see a collage that I made for this blog post. As I told before, you can add filters, crop, add text, and more on the collage by opening it on the Picmonkey Editor. Hope you liked this post and do comment below, if have anything to tell me. More in the next post.

Result!

Center of Attraction

Let me start this post by wishing you all. Merry Christmas to everyone! It's December vacations for me and that means lot of time for serious posting. But there's a problem. There's something wrong with my SLR and I have given it to the local service center. Moreover, I haven't clicked any photos recently. I have nothing to post but I have to post something. So, I am searching for some of best photos on my old memory cards and CDs. That's what I was doing from 2 days and finally found an appropriate one.

I just love this picture, my friends, my relatives, they all love it. They keep telling me that this is one of my best work so far. So, I am feeling profoundly happy to upload it here! I clearly don't remember my experience clicking this photograph. But I will tell you the part of it which I remember. 

It was a sunny afternoon and I had just been out with my camera clicking photographs. My mom was watering the plants in the garden and that provoked me to click some photos of the flowers hanging on the plants. As I went through the garden clicking photos, something grabbed my attention. On the compound of my house, I saw this small, beautiful looking flower. One amazing thing was that, half of the surface of the compound was dark. And the spotlight like sunlight was falling on the flower that was placed in the center, making my subject the 'center of attraction'.

I have edited this photo using Picmonkey, my favorite photo-editor after Photoshop. As I have not done any latest work, I thought I will show you people this photo. I hope you too liked this photo. That's all in this blog post. Do put up your comments below. See you in the next post. Sayonara.

A bit of City and Architecture

City and Architecture is one of the common categories in the world of photography. As an amateur photographer, I mainly specialize in Macro, Black and White, Abstract and Nature. I haven't done serious work on City and Architecture.  So, I thought why don't I give it a try! These are my first images on City and Architecture. Have a look.

Recently I had been to Malaysia, where I have clicked these images. The city of Kuala Lumpur is a wonderful place for photography. I can say that Kuala Lumpur is a city of architecture. There's buildings all over the city. Moreover, the city is a mixture of old and modern buildings. Thanks to Kuala Lumpur for building some interest in me of photographing architecture.

I have been to the Petronas Towers, Batu Caves, Merdeka Square, Istana Negara, National Monument, etc which are considered as some of the 'must-visit' places in and around Kuala Lumpur. I have uploaded some of the images of Istana Negara, the official palace of the Malaysia majesty, Merdeka Square(the last photo) and 2 photos of the National Monument.

Luckily I found shooting architecture a bit easy. I have heard that photographing City and Architecture is a bit tough, but I don't think so. Considering my experience, I would like to tell that 'angle' is a key factor in photographing buildings and architecture. The output mostly depends on how you hold the camera and how your are going to put the structure into the frames. 

You might need a tripod when you are shooting buildings with light(during night), fountains, or moving objects. In these images, I have either used a fast shutter-speed or taken a help of a natural tripod, maybe a flat surface. I didn't work much on the aperture while taking these pictures. Mainly, it was ISO and Shutter-speed which came in handy. 

I treated some of these images on Photoshop and for some I put some filter so as to bring emotions on to the frames. For me, it was fun working with City and Architecture. I hope to work on it in the future and I will surely upload the pictures. I hope you liked this blog post and do leave your comments below. I will be happy to put up some replies! That's all in this post. Adios!

That innocent look

I had taken this photograph when I had been to my granny's house. They had a pet dog named Mickey. She was a very playful and friendly dog, and a bit restless too. One day, something unusual happened. Mickey was not at all barking. She didn't even jump looking at me. I wondered what was wrong with her. When I asked my granny, she told me that Mickey was unwell. So, I decided I will spend a bit of time with Mickey, so that she will feel better. 

I went and sat beside her.  She looked at me with an innocent look. I had never seen this look of her's before. So I thought, I will take a photograph of her. I took my camera and focused at her face. She seemed to think what I was doing. Luckily, she gave a superb pose at the camera which made this photograph look beautiful. This was my experience in taking this photograph. As I wanted to show emotions, I added a Black and White filter to this photography. And here you have it! The perfect output. Hope you too liked this photograph. Please leave a comment, if you have any! Thanks for reading.

How to get more followers on Instagram?

People always have an urge to get more likes, comments, followers, etc on social networking sites. Instagram is one social networking site where millions of people upload photos and videos daily with some exciting filters to offer. Okay! So you are on Instagram? You are uploading pictures and you want some followers but don't know what to do? You are in the right place! I have uploaded some of my Instagram pictures earlier in this blog and I thought why don't I help you people gain some followers so that you build some interest for the app. Let's get started right away. Below are the 5 ways which I think will help you gain a lot of followers on Instagram!

1. Keep Uploading!

No matter what, you need to keep uploading pictures on Instagram. Maybe 2 photos a day would make a good deal! Users always tend to follow those who keep uploading stuff time to time. More the posts you have, better the chances of you having many followers. 'Keep Uploading' should be your primary aim!

2. Follow Others

Ha! The second method. Following others can truly help you gain followers. There are lot of users on Instagram who follow back. Follow back means following someone who just followed you. By following others, you not only get more followers, but you also gain some experience in the app. Some of might feel difficult in following many users. I have a solution for that. All you need to do is unfollow those who haven't followed you back!

Source: nethistory.ru

3. Share on social networking sites

Instagram allows you to share your photo or video(after you have added the filter) on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc. Keep in mind that people who know you will follow you much easily than those who don't. Moreover, social networking sites will be filled with people who know you. So, when you share on these sites, the chances of you getting more followers is more.

4. Comment, comment, comment!

To get more followers, you need to be an active user. Commenting on others' photos can be very advantageous. By commenting on others' posts, many people will visit your profile and most probably follow you!

5. The Badges way

If you have a blog or a website, add an Instagram badge so that you can make some followers by directing your site viewers to your Instagram profile. You can create your Instagram badge here. It's very simple and once you are done making one, place it on your site by copying and pasting the HTML code on your site.

Follow these 5 steps and I am 100% sure that you will build a big amount of followers in days! If you have anything to tell me, then do comment below! Thanks for reading. Bye!

Brightening up!

It was during last year's Diwali, that I took this photograph. I had been to a Diwali celebration in the town and I had also taken my camera with me. I took a lot of photographs that day. This was one of the best that I had taken that day. As my card reader isn't working, I thought I will upload this photograph.  

As you can see, my subjects in this photograph are beautiful light producing things called goodudeepa(Kannada). Though I searched for an English translation, I couldn't find a relevant one. These were hung to a ceiling and the sky in the background looked dark. I set the aperture and shutter-speed in such a way that I would get a dark frame filled with bright subjects! Later I corrected a bit of exposure, added a few filters using Photoshop and finally I got a superb end-product. I hope you too liked this photograph. Leave your comments below. Don't forget to follow my blog! That's all in this post. Bye and thanks for reading.