Calendar 2020

It is my 10 years of photography and my 10th Calendar now. Every year beginning I publish 12 of my favourite photos from last year as a Calendar for the current year. All my calendars can be seen here.

Learnings

It took me few years to understand that my real interest is in travelling & landscape photography. A clear blue sky and green land always attract my eyes. I prefer to wide open the lens and let the blue skies occupy a considerable area in my photos.

And it took me almost 10 years to understand the importance of capturing images in RAW format. Even though some of my photographer friends suggested it earlier, I was blindly following Ken Rockwell on his recommendation of the easiness in shooting JPEG. Another photographer I followed was Karl Taylor, who is mostly into indoor/studio photography with creative lighting.

Another thing I learned is that Landscape photography is relatively easy compared to candid or studio or wild life photography. But it largely depends on the time – weather and light. Same place, same angle at a different time can result in completely uninteresting photo. A landscape picture captured at a point of time can never be captured exactly as the same again, as the earth keeps moving & changing every second.

Equipments

I started with a Nikon D40, which still remains as my favourite. I was using it till 2012 before my cousin misplaced it. Some of my all time favourite pictures like this and this were captured in this simple 6MP DSLR.

From 2012 till mid 2016 I was using a Nikon D3100, which was a decent camera. Then I switched to Nikon D7100 which I am currently using. Its a fantastic semi-professional camera. I really liked the faster response time, dedicated customisable switches, two user preset modes etc.

Since I am mostly into landscape pictures, I use the kit lens 90% of the time. It was 18-55mm with the first two cameras and now it is a 18-105mm. Apart from this I have got 35mm and 50mm primes, both of which are excellent. I use them for indoor photography for something like this. I also have a 70-300mm Sigma which I bought 7 or 8 years back but rarely used. It was GAS before I realised my real interest is in wide angles.

Photoshop and Macbook remains as the favourite post processing solutions for me.

Moments to cherish

Apart from publishing in this blog, I rarely do anything with my photos. I prefer to keep it as my personal hobby and happiness. However there are few instances like:

Found an unknown colleague keeping one my picture as his desktop wallpaper
Some of my friends keeping them as their desktop & mobile wallpaper
Some of my pictures got selected in the annual office calendar given to all employees, in my previous organization.
National Geographic photographers marking my photos as “favourite” in some photography assignments.
Recently two of my pictures got selected in office annual day function, where it was printed in canvas and sold for charity.

What is next