Sunday, June 1, 2014

My Story of Still - Flight - Click

Place: Khammam, Andhra Pradesh
Date: May 10, 2014

Bird watching requires a lot of patience but when it comes to photography, we'd require more of it to click the right moment. In addition to hard work, luck may also play an important role. For this particular 'bird-photography' I was standing still (actually a balancing act) on a stool for 15 minutes with the camera's viewfinder glued to my eyes in the early hours, around 6 am. My 'standing-still- posture' holding the camera close to my face; focusing in upward direction, that too on a stool close to the tree on the backyard of the house, probably would have scared my friend Ravindhar's family members. But I am sure, the initial stance of shock would have later transformed into a giggle, or even they would have waved it off as a comic-joke.

All of this happened when we friends Ravindhar, Ramesh and myself were put-up for the night at the former's beautiful home at Khammam. The plan for the next day was to start early (intended to escape the scorching heat) and reach Sankar Nayak Thanda, Mahabubabad district. We guys were to attend our best buddy Praveen's sister marriage.

On the day of this yet-to-begin journey, after a good night's sleep I woke up at 5:30 am, slowly opened the door and walked up to the backyard to enjoy the fresh air. All of a sudden I caught a glimpse of this bird flying to-and-fro busily building its nest on the branches of the tree in the back yard. Whenever the bird flew to get some nesting materials, I instantly acted and used these time-gaps effectively to: get my camera-freeze- find a stool-freeze-stand on it-freeze-adjust the lenses-freeze-trial few shots-freeze-experiment aperture and zoom settings-freeze. FREEZE means - in the presence of the bird, I was absolutely still. The bird would have overlooked me as a stupid-statue erected close to the tree and its nest. Thank God, the bird did not think of landing on my head to pluck couple of hair for its nest (the statue would have yelled-out with pain) and while leaving as an adieu hit my scalp hard with its beak.

Without disturbing the bird, I clicked few snaps. I am providing here the best two Clicks for your viewing pleasure.

One when the bird was STILL and the other when the bird winged for a FLIGHT. That's my story of Still-Flight-Click. :-)







11 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice one Mani.... :D

Unknown said...

Hilarious... Even if ur friends had not laughed they will aftr reading ur account of events.... :P Any idea which bird this is??

Vasanth said...

Nice narration Mani..peotic and humorous as well. The 'freeze' lines are too good. Was thinking why i never got that style of narration that you used.

And definitly your patience is visible through the clicks. Escpecially the second click in which the wings are wide open is a very rare and difficult click :)

Keep rocking....

GopsNGops said...

Well summarised..usage of words and the way it is visually expressed, good..liked it all..Looking forward to read your scripts as well...ATB

Frontiers - Lets explore said...

Thanks for your compliments Gopi :-)

Frontiers - Lets explore said...

Hey hey Vasanth, very happy to see your comments on my blog post :-)

Frontiers - Lets explore said...

Thanks Karthika. I am very glad that you liked the blog post. The bird is called as sunbird. :-)

Unknown said...

Reading your blog made feel as if I was you on that day! You are good as always expressing with words. I still remember the long IndiaPost letters we exchanged during our engineering days! Keep blogging!

Frontiers - Lets explore said...

@Kannadasan V

Thanks Kannadasan. I do remember the days of writing letters when you were staying at Udgir :-)

Anonymous said...

Nice one Mani bro

Anonymous said...

Thanks :)