Yakshagana..

Yakshagana is popular art here at Dakshina Kannada. Its free and mostly performed at the nights. Anytime before the rainy season you can catch up these shows somewhere or the other.

My parents are a big fan of this art. Even I enjoy going to this occasionally. The OCCASION is when its performed nearby to my house ( so that if i feel sleepy i can reach home soon and go to bed ;) ) and when its on a weekend :)  

The snaps i have taken below are from a Yakshangana performed at Sada Shiva Temple, which is just a few minutes away from my home. This was the maximum I was able to zoom in at 16x zoom.

This is Lord Krishna. I simply love the variety of colors they put in to their costumes.

Just by the look of that guy gives you a impressions that he is the "Evil guy" right? 

Bird photography..

Lucky me, there are lots of trees around my room and they make a very good place for the birds to come and rest. Atleast most of the snaps taken by me are around my house itself and a couple of them are very rare ones i must say!  

I have really enjoyed Bird photography. It takes a lot of patience and very slow movements cause you cant afford to scare them off. Ya there are some that like posing ;) 

Thanks to Project Noah i have identified most of the birds. Here are some of my clicks.

 

The common one.. Pigeon :) 

This ones called White-throated Kingfisher. 

A shorebird. These are very abundent in the nearby seashores. Seen mostly during early mornings.

Majestic would be the right caption for this. This is the Brahminy Kite.

This is most rare bird i have been able to capture. This is Indian Golden Oriole.

The Mynah. A small bird but very high vocal!

 

Kite Fest..

Kite fests are something special in the coastal regions and i must say they are reallty very fun! This year i got chance to visit 2 kite fests; one at Panambur Beach and the other at Malpe Beach. Both were pretty awesome.

 

Kite fest at Panambur beach was on 22rd January this year. I had been there with my mom and cousins. If i was asked to give a one liner about this event it would be "Too much crowd!". Apart from kite flying there was so much happening around; music, cultural programs, food stalls, sand sculptures; and people just cant resist all those in the weekends. :) I managed to get some shots for my collection, The one below is my favorite.

 

Kite fest at Malpe was on 29th January, just a few days after the Panambur beach fest. I had been there wiht my friends Rajendra and Ratan. This was my first visit to Malpe beach and it turned out to be a good experience. Malpe beach is bigger and thus can handle a bigger crowd. The main feature of the Malpe beach is the sitting statue Mahatma Gandhi at the entry. I managed to get a snap of that in an interesting way :) 

There were some nice sand sculptures made by some fine artists. Here are some of them.

Water droplets teasing..

Nature and water droplets make such a brilliant combination in photography. I discovered it with some of the snaps i have taken. And i did it get them very easily; one taken at Bangalore, one at Ujire Estate (near Dharmasthala) rest are around my house. :)

Morning sunrise..

Morning sunrise view from my room. Just discovered my iPod touch can take excellent sunrise and sunset snaps :)

Light painting..

Light painting is so much fun. Whatever you want to paint into the photo, you have to do it in a mirrored fasion to get it right. :) Also you have to do these activities in the dark. It wasnt easy when i started off, but reallly enjoyed once i got the knack.

"The Knack" is not a very big deal actually. LIght painting is a very sumple technique. Here is a wiki link for Light Painting. In simple words these are just high exposure shots in the dark with a light source in the front of camera. Yes, high exposure time; in some of my shots exposure time is almost a minute.

Tools used you ask? Just my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10 cam, my mobile torch and iPod :) My cam is no DSLR, so i bet anyone with a cam with manual exposure setting feature can rip this off. 

 

I was really impressed with some of the videos i had watched on Light painting. I have shared the best one among them. 

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZohmoG981s]

Some shots in morning sunlight..

These  shots taken at my Granny's place... Morning sun can make such a difference, to the snaps and mood of the photographer :)