A photograph is hidden in RAW #5 : Midday Landscape Photography.

Let's see how I created this picture.

A photograph is hidden in RAW #2 : Processing a Milkyway frame

I always wondered how it might feel to see the milkyway with your own eyes. So we packed up for a night shooting trip to Cherrpunji hoping for clear skies and the view of the majestic.

We got first time lucky and it felt awesome so see it, as you see it in the picture here.

Emotions apart some of my friends asked me to show how I produced this view. So here it is...

This is a single 25 second exposure shot on Nikon D7200 and Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 at 11mm f2.8 ISO1600. So here is the standard before and after :)

Now here are the steps how I reached here.

Triple processing.

I prepared the image on Lightroom by triple processing it. 

#1 is for the Milkyway with some clerity and contrast to the sky.

#2 is for the warm foreground and the tree fixing the white balance.

#3 for the storm clouds with lighting to maintain some details in its highlights.

Now I opened all three files as layers in Photoshop, keeping the tree frame in the bottom. 

Milkyway frame in the middle and used a mask to only show the milkyway on it.

On top of that I kept the storm cloud frame and used a mask to just bring out the detail in the clouds.

After that I used three selective contrast curve adjustment layers to add and subtract contrast in the clouds, reflecting water and the mid ground rocks.

Then I enhanced the colours in the sky independently to the milkyway centre and the storm clouds.

And finally added a little bit of bright midtones and warmed up the foreground. And voila its done.

I hope this will help you processing you own milkyway shot. 

You can visit my Facebook page and 500px page to view and review my work.

A photograph is hidden in RAW #1: Post processing a long exposure frame.

A few of my friends were interested in understanding what are the in-between steps from taking this picture from RAW to the final output.

So I thought why not write a small tutorial :)

Step 1 : Opened the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom to balance the exposure by adjusting the Highlights and Shadows and finally a little bit of increase in exposure. I fixed the White Balance of the image to what it looked like at that time. Next I fixed the lens distortion and vignetting. (I usually add a custom vignette at the last stage of the process)

Step 2 : Took the adjusted file and open up in Photoshop for further processing.

Step 3 : Added a fast exposure of the same frame and using a inverted mask brought in the static leafs of the trees.

Step 4 : Now I merged all the visible layers to create a new merged layer and opened that with Color Efex Pro 4 to add some Polarization. This has increased the vibrancy on the foliage and given some contrast to the clouds.

Step 5 : Next I used Silver Efex Pro to convert the image to B&W also added additional contrast to enhance the dynamics.

Step 6 : Finally I used a Curve Adjustment Layer and pulled the midtones just a bit to make the image a little darker. I inverted the mask on it and painted in a custom vignette to pull the viewers eye towards the subject in the frame.

And voila its done.

As you can see once you have the basic idea of what you want to achieve, it will be just few simple steps to get there.

Although this one took not more then half hour to process. I would admit that in some of other pictures I did spend days taking breaks in between to get to the final output.

Hope you guys have enjoyed the explanation here and will excuse me for the cranky language.

Till the next picture, keep clicking!!

You can visit my Facebook page and 500px page to view and review my work.

Landscape Photography Vlog#1 : Shooting the Bamboo Walkway

Hello guys I am Utpalendra Deka an user experience consultant with a passion for Landscape photography.

As always the first question I ask myself when I see Landscape photos from masters like Marc Adamus, Patrick Marson Ong and our very own Debraj Chakraborty is 

What was going on in his mind when he shot this?

So although a novice to Landscape Photography, I thought why not share what I was thinking when I took this.

The bamboo path : The amazing thing is, this walkway is completely built with bamboo on the hillsides in the bank river Brahmaputra by antigens from Majuli and the bend here feels like it's leading to infinity.
Shot with Nikon D7200 and Tokina 11-16mm f2.8
@ 11mm 1.3sec f/14 ISO100

On this day I got ready to shoot this location on the north bank of river Brahmaputra near  Guwahati city. The plan was to shoot the sunrise. So I did my ground work the day before fuelled up the car, checked the map for routes, checked weather forcast (expected slight clouds), packed food, checked memory cards (formatted), charged up the camera batteries and a few more ... sigh that's a lot!

As I was going for a sunrise shot and I had an hour long drive to the location, so I started way before first light. All the way I was hoping that its not going to be a complete grey sky.

As I reached the location and I was lucky as it is not that far from the road, I spend some time setting up the gear. Used the app Sun Surveyor to check the exact location where the sun will come up. Now its time to just watch and wait for the right light.

While I waited for first light, just to kill time I kept walking the bank of the river and found this awesome floating bamboo walkway built on the steep bank of the river. What a catch!!

As the first glow of the sun came I was heartbroken to see that the sky was as bland and grey as it gets, but now I have another shot in my mind. To shoot the bamboo walkway :)

So I reset my gear on this curve of the walkway.

A wider view of the walkway.

I chose a vertical frame to enhance the walkway, something like this.

A vertical frame worked best.

Here is what happened on the shoot.

If you want to see more of my photography visit my 500px page or Facebook page.