NJB'S PHOTOGRAPHY

After seeing my portrait images my lot of friends & visitors asks me about my used equipments & where that shot was taken? I found most of them are having keen interest to know which was the lens I have used. But I guess sometimes they miss important thing about the expression of the subject. In portrait photography that is most important. Did you take care your subject is comfortable or not? It's not a major concern when you are shooting your family members but not is the case while shooting strangers. People photography requires a special skill & it comes with practice. I know whenever two strangers meet it's difficult to crack the bottleneck of not being comfortable with each other unless you have some work. I  have found most of the people (at least in India) are eager to be get photographed. As I have written in the description of my many images on Flickr I try to have conversation  with them. I take their early shot knowing that they are not my best one ...

In practical condition while shooting many times it is not possible to frame your subject as one is visualizing the shot. There may be number of reasons like the situation doesn't permit, limitation of lens zoom, the shortage of time etc. My best advice to novice photographer always is take a breath & stop for 1 second before pressing the shutter button on the camera. After that do the followings: 1. Look along all the corners & frame of your viewfinder & think once is it all ok? 2. Whatever they are seeing want in the frame or not? 3. Is any change in angle is going to avoid background distractions? 4. Is any change is going to avoid exposure problems like bright sky? 5. Is any change is going to give you more contrast with subject? 6. Is your Point of view is Ok with the subject? .... & much more can be asked. It comes with practice & practice. A beginner may ask like how can I see all that in 1 second? It comes with practice & until then you can ...

I am delighted to share my winning shot on a DPC contest. Recently a contest called " One In 7 Billion " has been completed. I was winner on 3rd place & got a yellow Ribbon . About the im age: I have submitted the image taken in my trip to Maheshwar on 3rd Jan 2010. On that morning at Narmada ghat I found this interesting charachter & I requested to allow me to take his portrait. He was humble enough to allow me for that. The morning sunlight & the breeze helped me for adding in the image.I really want to thank him for resulting in nice portrait & giving me a winner shot. Camera settings: This shot was taken with my telephoto lens Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS . The light was nice to get nice aperture setting as f/8.0 with high shutter speed like 1/640 sec. I even though increased my ISO to 200 because I was not with tripod & didn't want to miss the shot. He was having far distance from the stairs in the background & I was shooting with...

I am happy to announce my blog on smoke photography has been published in the Issue #23 – Dec 2009 of Photography BB. The P hotog raphyBB Online Magazine is composed by a hardworking team of volunteer contributing authors who’s goal is to teach beginners all about digital photography and image processing. You can download it at free in PDF o ZIP format. This isuue is also having another interesting articles. Thanks to the edito Dave Seeram for appeciating my work & encouraging to update my article with setup details. Hope you will like it.