Arc de Triomphe

One of the topmost visited monumnet in Paris after Louvre and Eiffel. it is war memorial similar to the one we have in India - India Gate. There similarities between the two monuments are really appealing.

More of Arc here

and more about India Gate here

green green grass...

Marken

Grote Markt

Shot it in Antwerp - Belgium. Has a really great architecture and ofcourse the chocolate from here is quite famous.

More of it here

Sea side

Clicked it at whitesands near st. Davids in Wales. the beach is besides a mountain cliff making it a beautiful place for photography

Noble steed

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Shot this image near river tiefi in wales. The car Vauxhall Astra was our steed to go around in wales.

Walk...

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taken on our way to beale park in Reading, the park is about six miles from home and has around a mile of walk. It is a nice place to visit with a full picnic basket. It has all the makings of great family day out.

Path to Paradise

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.
-Paulo Coelho

FishGaurd Port

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Chanced upon this scenery by luck . while going around in wales by mistake I took a wrong turn on our way home and got to this place. Got down and took the shot.

Wales Trip

This time around rather then posting a single image I have sat down to write a travelogue. There is more information for a new technique of photography called Geotagging at the end of the blog

We made a trip to wales on last weekend. Some of my musings of the same have been described below.

As always a long weekend was arriving and I my lazy self hadn't planned for any particular outing. Once my wife showed me her glaring eyes on Monday (28th April)that I swung into action ;). As it would have a trip to Scotland and Swiss was out of question as we hadn't booked earlier.

A little poking around revealed a beautiful country of Wales part of UK but not of england. I and chida ( my friend along with whom I was planning this journey) started looking for a place to stay, what was revealed to us was that Wales is waste if you go and stay in a hotel and are planning to go by Train.

So we went around searching for a car rental and the validity of my Indian License to drive in UK? As luck would have it the Indian license was valid for twelve month in UK.So we hired a Car Vauxhall Astra 1.6 and booked a cottage in Trefach, Blaenfoss, Pembrokeshire. The cottage was set in farmhouse of the main road and was typical english countryside that your have read in Enid Blyton novels. The only thing left was to buy a map and get started. A revelation hit us that time , this was not India and if you are lost you wont be able to ask a by-passer for the correct road as the roads would be secluded and empty. We went ahead and hired a GPS system.

Now we were all ready for a trip to wales.

Day1

We started at around 10 am on Saturday 3/05/08 . Had a few qualms about driving at first as there are so many rules in Uk not like India where you can drive as you like :(. This photo was clicked on M4 motorway on one of the recreation and service centre. The car was amazing with power steering, abs, power windows and tubeless tyres. I was able to manage 100 miles per hour at some time.







Our first stop was Carmarthen National botanical garden. An amazing and beautiful garden with large

variety of flowers and plants. the Image that you see is the one inside the park. There is Glass dome with tropical forest environment setup inside it. There are are many places with tulips growing variety of colors. To view the complete set click here.



Finally after driving for a whole day we reached our destination Trefach. This farmhouse housed our treasured
cottage. The 18th century cottage was tastefully renovated with 3 bedrooms, a huge hall and self catering kitchen. We couldn't have reached this place without out trusty GPS guiding us.The house itself was amazing to have spent a whole week reading the best novel and having wine or tea in the sun. To view the full set click here




Day 2

Woke a little late and then had a our breakfast, We had taken lot of ready eat, breads, Jams and butter along with some nice Chai. Had our breakfast and then left for the Poppit Sands Beach. The overcast day didn't dampen our spirit. Poppit sands was an amazing place the beach had Grey sand. It was windy on the beach but scenery felt amazing. spent around 2 hrs there and then came back to the cottage for nice lunch. Then we spent the whole enjoying the cottage and then going around the farm.To view full set of Poppit Sands click here



Day3

After relaxing on the day two , today was the day of action we covered lot of places today and as the day was warm and sunny has some great pictures shot.
We left early today for Abereiddy Lagoon. As it was early morning we were treated with morning mist as this lagoon.










We then drove to Whitesands beach. It had a amazing landscape with white sands facing a small cliff. We had our lunch here sitting on one of the cliff looking over the sea. The problem here is that u can easily miss the sunset or sunrise as in summers the sun sets at around 8 in night and rises at around 4 in morning.to view full set click here







We then moved on to St.Davids Cathedral which is a 1500 yr old cathedral. The cathedral provided a backdrop of some of the most amazing clicks.to view full set click here












On way we covered the Fish guard port and then back to home for a nice sleep.












Day 4

Our last day at wales, we went and covered the cilgerran castle and river teifi in the morning and then left for Reading.

The complete collection of wales trip can be viewed here









During this trip I used a new technique of photography getting very popular these days "GeoTagging". This technique generally involves tagging your photos with lattitude and longitude of the place so that they are visible on Maps like google earth and flickr maps. this way you can tell people where whic image was clicked. Some new cameras have have GPS . for me I used a simple technique is use picasa and google earth to tag my photos . Upon uploading these photos to flickr they are recognised automatically as geo tagged and placed on the flickr map. Just let picasa find your images. then slecting the image go to tools and select google earth . google earth opens with picasa image selected you can then just place the crosshair on the desired location. My flickr map is here

this was a long post . Awaiting eagerly for your comments.

London Eye

The London Eye. Managed by the British Airways is called "the Flight". One revolution takes around 1/2 hour and is pretty amazing experience. The only thing is not amazing is the price . But maybe for London it is still decently priced.

On the bank of river Thames , through the eye you can glimpse most of the london and its history , maybe that is why it is called an eye.

Know more about it here

The Big Ben

Shot in London near River Thames.
Not very good at my geography ,I always thought that Big Ben was in US (excuse my GK).
When my wife told me that this Big Ben, I actually thought of debating her then left it at that. The architecture is amazing . Guy Fawkes tried to blow the parliament which you can see in the bacjground.

This clock has really amazing history to read about, click here to know more

Naval College

This Image was clicked on our way to Royal observatory in Greenwich. This is the Naval College.
The college campus is amazingly beautiful and full of greenery . Even at a dull day like this it was colorful.

Shot this while trekking in Reading going towards prospect park.

The sky is always overcast these days so cant avoid the bad lighting condition. The HDR comes handy in these situations.

Many people still think that HDR is a processing and makes image unreal. But somewhere I wish my camera had HDR as my eyes. Many camera comapnies are investing in HDR equipment and I am sure a day is not far when we have cameras as good as our eyes.

Station

An HDR of reading station. We were caught up in sleet when I clicked this. for the first time felt the cold of reading.

Slippers

Thanks for the comments on the last post

Clicked this as a HDR in order to capture the contrast. The lonely pair of slipper, waiting for its pair to come back

Green and blue

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Trying to post from my archives as have not been able to pursue my photography due various personal commitments. My blog visits have dropped. Will try to make up for the lost time

Regards
Somitra

Valley...

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Taken in Ambajogai, is a wonderful place during the rainy season.The image is a HDR Image.There is little blurriness as I didn't have a tripod to mount my camera on.

Qutub shahi Tombs

Thanks for the comments on the previous post , as promised a HDR Image. Not the best but still best HDR out the one I clicked.

these Are Qutub Shahi tombs, All the Kings and relatives of Qutub Shahi Dynasty rest here.

My First Trial with HDR images. This Shot was taken in Golconda fort. Took three shots with "Auto Exposure Bracketing" merged the three in Photomatix HDR.
You can find amazing No. of articles on the same available in the net. Just try keywords as HDR.

Just a Brief intro on HDR . HDR actually mean high dynamic Range. Human eye has a very high dynamic range i.e they can see many more shades of colors and hence more vibrant visuals. By taking three images in different Exposure setting and then merging them you can replicate similar range. The merge operations merges the color range from all three photographs giving you a more vibrant picture. It is extensively used to solve the problem regarding back lighting.