Camera: Canon 500D, 70-200mm f4 L Non-IS.

A full color version:

The ghats of Varanasi are a photographer’s delight, with so much interesting activity that you will be confused where to point your camera to! However, it is also one of the most shot places in India, therefore one will need to take photos which are different and not clichéd. The one is one from my travel around India on a Yamaha R1 superbike in 2009.

I didn’t intentionally focus on shooting trees or using them as elements in photos until very recently. Shooting trees and foliage can be very challenging, especially in harsh lighting conditions where there is a lot of micro contrast due to the light seeping through the leaves, ambient light and the shadows created by each individual leaf. It is enough to confuse the exposure system of any camera. Even HDR fails many times when encountering certain light situations dealing with lots of trees under the sun.

This page shows 20 of my photographs dealing with just one tree in the compositions. This is the easiest and most powerful way to use them as primary and secondary subjects and produce deep and intelligent compositions.

I am on the lookout for a single lone tree which can provide me with a logical breakup of the frame and often provides me with a natural frame in which to compose my primary elements.

Let us take each of my photos one by one:

1. Shot in Australia one cloudy evening. The light in the sky was enough to make a silhouette with it. Notice that I have framed the tree, which is the main subject to the left, leaving a lot of space on the right for any text or other elements.

2. Shot in Australia, this forms a very powerful composition with another tree lying uprooted and dead on the ground and the other one weeping and arching back in disbelief. The fog helps fade the background elements softly, eliminating any glaring distractions.

3 & 4. Shot in Australia, the fog and the diffused skylight helps create an atmosphere of mystery. The black and white treatment with soft focus helps accentuate the effect. The images wouldnt have been so powerul if there were more than one tree.

5. Shot in Australia, processed to have a light sepia and grains, this image exudes pain and suffering, and perhaps resilience of tree (the main subject) in the time of adversity.

6. Shot in Australia, this photo takes the tree to divide the photo into two asymmetrical spaces and forms a natural border for the subjects in question, the cows. The leaves and color have a positive effect of life and energy, a stark contrast to the previous images.

7. The branches of this tree provide an interesting way to have an inner natural frame emphasising the main subject, the motorcycle.

8. Shot in New Zealand, this tree was with a white bark and no leaves. The trunk and its shadow again divide the photo asymmetrically into two halves.

9. Shot in New Zealand, the main subject is again the tree.

10. Shot in New Zealand one evening, three is used to connect to the main subject, the moon and give the photo a lot more depth, something which wouldnt be possible with just the moon as the element.

11. Shot in New Zealand the windblown bare tree gives an effect of movement and mystery in the photo.

12. Shot in India. This is an example of how leaves and foliage can be used to a more create more interesting photo.

13. Shot in India, the tree creates a natural division of the photo, placing the main subject (the man) on the left side.

14. Shot in Australia, the bare tree in a parched landscape seems to be reaching for water in the clouds. These sort of obvious and philosophical meanings can be attached to these kind of photos.

15. Shot in Australia, the lone green tree stands in a bleak and rustic landscape.

16. Shot in India, the tree again divides the photos into two halves, each one having a subject of interest.

17. Shot in Ireland, the hundreds of branches make for an intriguing silhouette.

18. Shot in Ireland, the photo has been given a high key treatment with grains. The drooping naked branches exude mystery,  sadness and humility.

19. Shot in New Zealand, this extremely old tree with extremely convoluted roots made for a very interesting subject.

20. Shot in India, this photos has trees in different ‘layers’ fading into the background.

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Photo was taken on the Great Ocean Road in Australia in November 2009 with a Canon 500D and 70-200mm f4 L with post processing in Photoshop and Lightroom.

This photo was shot in my second New Zealand roadtrip in 2010 on a Suzuki BKing. The place is Cape Egmont lighthouse near New Plymouth, North Island. The map location is here.

Camera settings: ISO 200, 16mm, f4.5, 1/2500 sec with a Canon 500D and Canon 10-22mm f3.5-5.6 lens

Developing a resume for oneself is perhaps the hardest thing to do, it is basically putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and critically evaluating yourself. I have gone wrong many times and realized it later. Sometimes I would go overboard with graphics, sometimes I would make it too simple expecting the recruiter to see me as a simplistic and sophisticated individual.

Over the years I have learnt one thing, there is no single winning formula to get a job. It just depends on too many factors – the other applicants, the mood of the guy who is reading your resume etcetra.

This particular attempt of condensing my skills and experience in motorycle photography can be seen by clicking this link.

Some key screen grabs are shown below, I would recommend you see the flash resume as its meant to me along with all the photos that I decided to put into it after carefully sifting through hundreds, if not thousands.

I still am not satisfied with it, primarily because it takes sometime to download as well as it gets slow at some places. But other than that this flash resume coupled with the website that you are currently reading (motoGrapher.com) is supposed to serve the purpose some months down the line when I get content here.

See some more attempts by me to make my own resume / website:

• notJustAphotographer.com (2009)
  Self Analysis: Too simple, overloaded with text but can work if someone is looking for an individual with a wide skillset and not a particular one.
• itsASunny.net (2007)
  Self Analysis: Confusing, interactivity really serves no good purpose. However I really liked this idea at that time.
• itsASunny.net (2008) , did this on a lazy afternoon in a couple of hours. By the end of two hours I shelved it thinking it was getting too complicated and forced. However, I think, if I would have given this 4-5 days, it would have turned into something good with interactivity. But never mind.

There are 5 more designs that I made for my own website which are on my hard disk right now. Like I said if you are like me, someone who stops liking his own work the next day of producing it, then you will only get better and wiser.

Also, I think in life many things matter to get the job you want: talent, persistence, education, right friend circle, social networking and sometimes the ability to take a risk and choose a path which has darnkess in the middle with no light visible at the other end.

Often, life has put me in precarious situations due to inherent risk taking nature. But almost everytime I have climbed out, with the grace of god, with battle marks that add experience and make me wiser.

The more you stay in your comfort zone the harder life will throw you off balance and jolt you back into reality some day. Hardship is something like excercising you muscles, the only difference is that here you are excercising your ability to face problems in life and willpower.

I will end this essay which started out as the showcase of my resume but ended more on a deravative philosophical note.

Just to let you know, I think I am going to stick with this house name (motographer.com) for a long time to come now, so you better subscribe to it by clicking here!

And oops, here are the slides from my flash resume:

The silence was only pierced by the steady and mellow hum of  inline  – four engine of the BKing standing just behind me.

The final photo is a result of processing the raw image in Photoshop and Lightroom. The witch was created using a standard photoshop brush using a mouse and a little color was added to make things more vibrant.

The photo above came straight out of the camera. I was using a Canon 500D with a Canon 70-200mm f4 L (non IS) with a 1.4x extender, which further made it slower to f5.6.  The final settings were: 200mm and the extender (effective 280mm) at 800 ISO.

Below is another variant, a monochrome version without the fantasies.