Journeys: Some offer a lot more than travel photos!

“HOW COME? 

It is leaning SO MUCH…It should fall down at once! How does it stay LIKE THIS??”

I was in 5^th grade and I had seen a photo of the leaning Tower of Pisa for the very first time in my social studies text-book. For the next 2-3 years I had kept asking the above question to every knowledgeable looking elder I met. I had found that photo absolutely surprising and I hardly believed it to be true! I was so curious about this mystery of the leaning tower, I HAD TO SEE it for real and CHECK THE FACTS for myself!!

As years passed, I learnt new subjects and started taking interest in new things of life. Gradually, I lost all my interest in the tower; I started giving just a passing look to its pictures in magazines and books. I guess it happens to all – We tend to completely forget something we crave and fantasize about desperately as a child.

Interestingly, in all these past years, I never happened to watch any video footage of the tower, not even accidentally… Neither on travel channels nor in movies… Not also on internet, even during my preparations for the Italy tour! 

So, basically, I had seen this famous wonder of the world only in pictures. And today, I was going to see it directly, live, with my own eyes. But I was not excited!  My curiosity about the tower had been forgotten long enough…

Yes, I did “value” the fact that I was going to visit a very “important monument of my Italy trip” that day, and so during my journey from Florence to Pisa, I sincerely but mechanically read whatever material I had with me about the history of the tower. 

How sad…as we grow up, we start “valuing” things so much, sometimes even at the cost of not savoring those things simply for what they are…In fact, we end up running the risk of losing their very “value”!

After reaching Pisa, I got off the bus and reached the site. Surprisingly, I still did not recall my once upon a time curiosity about the tower. I just started to walk casually towards the main entrance of the site. 

It must be a distance of few feet from the entrance gate of the site when I got the first glimpse of the tower. Actually, the way the three main monuments are located there, you see the Cathedral first, the tower is behind it. But, it is no ordinary tower, it is leaning…so, from this distance it looks like it is trying to see you, even before you try to see it! It literally does a peek a boo from behind the cathedral...

So basically, the first thing I saw was not the tower itself, but, the fact that it was, well, leaning…

Photography Tip # 7

Always use a view-finder (If you have the option) to determine and compose your frame, rather than the LCD screen of your camera.

Because when you do that, you use only one eye to see the scene, turning your binocular vision into a monocular one...EXACTLY THE WAY A CAMERA SEES, with one eye (The lens!). And this gives you the most precise idea of how your photograph will actually turn out...

Image Copyrights ©2012 Gyaneshwari Dave

Photography Tip # 6

You do not always need to shoot that awesome nature landscape in, well, “Landscape” format :)

Next time when you stand in front of that beautiful vista... Just turn your camera!

Vertical (Portrait) orientation gives the photograph much more depth, emphasizes the (vast) size of the place and lends a “sense of being” to the viewer who looks at the photo!

View the complete gallery of Cyprus nature and landscape stock images here!

Image Copyrights ©2012 Gyaneshwari Dave

 

Cinemagraphs: GIFs Get Chic!

I love photography because I like to create frames, the still variety that is, something which cannot be achieved by shooting the video of the same given situation or scene. What fascinates me the most is the art of freezing a particular moment and then visualizing and interpreting the whole story or context from that one single frame…Perhaps I should put it in this way…I like the subtle nature of a single photograph as against a full-fledged video (Yes, I know videos can capture movements…but still…) 

But what if one can have advantages of both the mediums? What if one could capture and preserve one particular, delicate movement in a scene which matters the most, while keeping everything else,well, perfectly still? 

All thanks to Photographer Jamie Beck along with graphic artist Kevin Burg, who have invented this new technique called, Cinemagraphs (they invented this new term too), there is this midway to take between a photograph and a movie. A Cinemagraph which is saved as a GIF file, is an image or a kind of graphic that incorporates both photograph and video, containing within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly. While traditionally a GIF animation animated the whole frame and created a 3D effect, a cinemagraphic GIF only animates part of it, the rest of the area in the frame remain motionless.

Starting from the creation of the first ever GIF file around 25 years ago, GIFs are one of the oldest image formats used on the web. Thanks to their distinct advantages like transparency support, loss-less compression, and ability to interlace multiple frames, GIFs are widely used for small animations and low-resolution film clips. Although they support only 256 colors, GIFs are suitable for storing graphics with relatively few colors such as simple diagrams, shapes, logos and cartoon images. However during last few years, as the high resolution images and videos started flooding internet, GIF started losing their popularity. Web-designers simply wrote it off as childish and stopped using GIFs for “serious” kind of images.

Lensdepictions applauds the refreshing but very classy approach of the creative duo Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg towards the GIF format which has taken the new age digital photography and this old image format(GIF) to the next level. So much so, GIFs are experiencing a kind of renaissance in the internet space!

Personally, I feel that Cinemagraph is an absolutely beautiful and brilliant way for artistic expression and are bound to be the “next big thing” in the world of photography and web-design.

Featured in this post are some of the classic Cinemagraphs created by Jamie and Kevin.

Images Source: http://cinemagraphs.com/

Article ©2012 Gyaneshwari Dave

Cameras At The Carnival - A Photo Essay!

At a recent carnival parade in the city, I sighted cameras in all shapes and sizes. Not only that, I observed some really interesting chemistry among the cameras, their owners and even the subjects posing for those cameras! While some of these camera moments were absolutely funny, some of them were extremely sweet!

I ended up shooting a whole series of photographs trying to capture this wonderful equation between people and the cameras…

Note: If you see yourself in any image of this post and don’t want to be seen, please contact me.

IMPORTANT: All the images in this post are shot and used here for NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSE ONLY.  Using any image without prior permission will be an offense.

Images Copyrights © 2012 Gyaneshwari Dave