Travel Photography - Mahabaleshwar

My last post on Sinhagadh was written back in Oct 2015. Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I have posted anything new on this blog.  But that for sure doesn't mean that I have stopped photography. I have been travelling and busy with work and unfortunately not able to upload pictures here. 

So today I am going to share pictures and some stories about my trip to Mahabaleshwar. Most of the people living in Mumbai, Pune know of this place. It's a super popular destination in Maharashtra. Mahabaleshwar is a hill station with some really beautiful views, specially if you visit the place in the right season. 

As with all destination in Maharashtra, best time to visit is Monsoons or just after monsoons. I went there in late October of 2015 which is a decent time to visit the place. 

There are many points to visit in Mahabaleshwar. Most of them are scenic but there are 2-3 points that will make you go Wow. I highly recommend visiting these points if you are visiting Mahabaleshwar

1. Savitri Point
2. Arthur Seat Point
3. Kate's Point

Okay- so without writing too many things, let me take you to the pictures now. 

Fort of the Lion Knight - Sinhagadh

I admin, I am not very good at giving sensational Titles to my posts. But if you have studied in India, especially in Maharashtra, you would know the story of Sinhagadh Fort and why it was named Sinhagadh.  Well, I am not going to take a history class here, but the fort was named Sinhagadh in the honor of Shivaji's favorite and brave knight Tanaji, who died conquering the fort. 

More about history of Sinhagadh at - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhagad

Coming back to photography, ever since I moved to Pune in May 2015, I never really got a chance to do photography. I (along with my friends) made several plans but somehow they kept rescheduling until on 29th August 2015 where we put our foot down and decided to go to Sinhagadh Fort. 

Sinhagadh is a popular tourist destination. Anyone living in Pune, or even Maharashtra knows that it is one of the most scenic destinations in Maharashtra.  Monsoons are the best time to visit Sinhagadh (in fact any fort in Maharashtra).

But of course, as always there are many challenges when trying to do landscape photography Sinhagadh.

1.  Monsoon = Rains. And rains is something that your camera will not like, unless you take the necessary precautions.  If budget is not a problem, but a waterproof cover for your camera. That way you don't have to worry about safety of your camera. But for all other(like me), I recommend going to the fort when you know that it is not going to rain. 
2. Crowd.  As I said, Sinhagadh is a very very popular location and there will be a lot of people over there. Choose a time which is less popular among the crowd. We decided to go early morning (6.30am to 7am) to avoid crowd and also get the right kind of lighting. 
3. Dense Clouds. Monsoons will also have a lot of dense clouds. While they are great for visual pleasure, they are not so great for photography. This is one of the challenge that we faced while doing photography of Sinhagadh. The clouds were dense most of the times and we were hardly able to see anything from the fort, except of course the dark dense clouds.  My recommendation is - be prepared for this. You may not get the kind of images that you plan to take. 

Alright then, without wasting much of the time, here are the pictures that I clicked. Hope you like them. 

The Story of Mumbai's Icon - Bandra Worli Sea Link

If you go around the world, all of the big cities have an iconic place which identifies the city. New York for example, has Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building. In fact -the entire view of the city from Hoboken is iconic. San Francisco has Golden Gate as its iconic architecture.  Mumbai for years was celebrating Queen's Necklace (a.k.a Marine Drive) area as the iconic place.  But now - India's financial capital has another icon - Bandra Worli Sea Link. 

There are many overlooks from where you can see this bridge and each has its own uniqueness. Here are the options that you have -

1. Bandra Fort (Bandstand as it is commonly known)
2. Worli Fort
3. Dadar Chowpatty
4. On the bridge :-)

Well quite frankly, bridge is not an option, but after doing some research I decided to go to Bandra Fort as it is 'the' best view of the bridge. 

Getting to Bandra Fort

Well - reaching Bandra Fort is not a problem. I am assuming you are using public transport to reach there. Take a train to Bandra Station and then take an auto or taxi from there to Bandra Fort (also known as Bandra Bandstand). It's a popular destination and home of Shah Rukh Khan, so reaching there should be very very easy. 

Anyways - I reached the place around 5.30 in the evening which is about 1 hour before sunset. This is usually my preferred time so that I can go around scout for the right place from where I want to take pictures.  At first I decided to go really close to the water (to avoid having crowd in my picture). But changed my mind later as the rocks were too slippery. 

Tip No. 1: Always reach our location early. You want to scout the place and there may be unexpected situations. No matter what - you do not want to miss the golden hour for clicking pictures.

Below are the first couple of pictures that I clicked over there. Its not that these are bad pictures, but I felt that there was something missing. Obviously it was not sunset yet, so the colors were not really at its best yet.  But even composition wise, I found it to be a very 'standard' composition with no much distinction. 

As I was clicking the pictures, I saw a couple. There was a small puddle to my left and the couple was sitting next to it. And from where I was standing, I could see their reflection in the puddle. That was a 'eureka' moment for me .I went really close to the puddle and took the following shot. The water was more or less still (was not very windy that day). To me - this change in angle and the overall composition is much more stronger (& unique) than a regular photo of the bridge. 

Tip No 2: Observe your surrounding. Look for opportunities to improvise your composition. There are way too many 'cliche' photos of everything in this world. These improvisations are the only way to make your photos stand out from the rest. 

I like the following shot a lot where I am trying to highlight the suspension tower of the bridge as a diamond shape (with its reflection). 

Next two shots are my favorite ones from the shoot. They are actually 3 shots blended into 1 single photo using post-processing. 

Some more pictures before it was dark & lights were turned on. 

Night shots of the bridge (or any landscape) are typically challenging because of the slow shutter speeds and ability of your camera to focus properly. Tripod is a must. If you don't have a tripod, I would advise you to buy one. Perhaps the best investment you can make to improve your photography. For focusing during night time photography, I typically switch to manual focus and help my camera. Saves time and gets beautiful results. 

Tip No 3: Switch to Live-view, zoom to the area where you want to focus and manually focus on that area. This is the 'only' technique that will give you 'sharp' photos in night. 

Here are the night shots of the bridge - 

And here are my favorite night shots

In the end, I just want to say that, Bandra Worli Sea link is a delight to watch and photograph.  I hope this post helps you plan your next trip to this wonderful place. 

Do leave your feedback, it helps me improve :-) 

Kala Ghoda Art Festival 2015 - Mumbai

Apart from being my home country, I like India because it is perhaps the most colorful country in the world. The sheer diversity and unpredictability of the country makes up for the one of the best recipe for photography. With all the new technology that make photography very affordable for amateur photographers like us, the scope and possibilities for photography in India are limitless. 

For many years, I kept hearing great feedback about Kala Ghoda Art festival in Mumbai and wanted to visit it one day. This year the festival started on 7th Feb 2015 and was scheduled to end today, 15th Feb 2015. So I decided, I should go and make visit before I miss it for yet another year. 

Getting to Kala Ghoda Art Festival 
Most of my readers (at least as of today) are Indians, so they typically know the challenges of travelling from one part of the Mumbai to another. But for my non-Indian readers, I just wanted to give you an idea of what it takes to get to Kala Ghoda Art Fest (or for that matter any place in India) so just in case if you ever decide to go around in Mumbai, you are prepared.  Well basically - if you want to reach 'quick' take train. If you have time and can wait in long traffic, take a personal car. I decided to take train (from Kandivali to Churchgate) so that I could reach quickly (btw - by quick I mean 1 hour) and then there is about 10 mins walk to the place where the festival is hosted. 

What happened over there
Oh well, this is a whole different story. I was all excited to go to Kala Ghoda festival. I had all my gear, ready to take photographs. BUT - the moment I reached there, I saw an ocean of people and my first reaction was "WHAT THE HELL !!" It took about 10-15 mins for me to get inside as there was super long queue. I didn't lose hope yet, I finally got inside and all I saw was more people ! 

The funny thing is - most of the art work is covered/surrounded by people trying to take their picture with it, without realizing that the art work itself is not coming in the picture (because they covered it !!). 

The art work were beautiful, but the amount of crazy crowed kinda frustrated me. I decided not to take a lot of pictures and enjoy the art as much as I could. Reason ? because there was hardly any scope for getting a clean shot ! Most of the shots would only have people's heads OR people taking their selfies. 

After enjoying the art for sometime (and of course taking a few pictures), I decided to leave early and go to Marine Drive (Queen's Necklace area) and try my luck over there. 

Here are the pictures that I could get - 

Overall I wished I went a bit earlier OR may be on a weekday to avoid crown and enjoy the festival more... A lesson ! :-) 

Anyways - thanks for reading this post... you take care and have a wonderful day !