Ultra Wide Angle Lens

After watching a lot of marvelous shoots taken using Ultra-wide lens, my liking to own one such gear kept increasing. I had a chance to use one such lens from my friend Prashanth. Then onwards I started collecting all possible comparisons (price versus performance). Ken Rockwell is one brilliant photographer and his website is filled with abundence of information that any photography enthusiast & beginner must read. I could able to collect a lot of information from his website. He has provided valuable information related to Ultra Wide Photography and comparison of Ultra-Wide lenses. Rajesh is another brilliant photographer I found in Flickr with a lot of beautiful Wide-angle shoots that inspired me. It is worth visiting his PhotoStream in Flickr.
Finally I bought Sigma 10-20 F/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Ultra-Wide lens.

View this link to find 17 Stunning Wide Angle Images
These are some of my first few shots using Sigma 10-20 Lens.

Reverse Lens Technique

After reading a lot about Reverse-Lens technique, I decided to attempt one such shot. Reverse-Lens method is been popularly known as poor-men's Macro. All we need to do is pick our kit-lens (18-55 mm lens) and fix it in reverse direction to the body of camera and start experimenting. At the same time, it is not that easy as mentioned here. It is advisable to do little bit of reading related to reverse-lens techniques from Internet and there are plenty of details available. Note down the precautions needed before venturing with this technique.
Most of the sites advice to use Reverse Mount Adapter that enable lens to fix in reverse order on the body.
To start with, switch off Auto-Focus and Image-Stabiliser on the Lens. Make sure that the protruding end of the lens sits firmly with its body. Since auto-focus and Zoom does not work, one need to move forward or backward to get the optimum sharpness of the subject and click. ISO, Shutter-speed and aperture can be adjusted to get the proper result.
One need a lot of patience to work with this technique.
Some useful links to know more about Reverse-Lens:
Tutorial in Flickr
Reverse Lens Macro Photography Tutorial by Stephen Elliot
PhotoTakers.com
DLusion.deviantart.com
CresTock.com
RichardFlake.com
These are some of my results....

Have Fun!!!!

Light Painting

Light painting is a photographic technique in which camera kept in a dark room (most often) with the settings for long exposure and move the hand-held light source or camera that creates an optical illusion. In many cases the light source itself does not have to appear in the image.

I first came across such image in a PhotoStream of Abhijith. Recently I came across a wonderful artist who is a real professional in Calligraphy and Light-Writing. He is Julien Breton and it is worth visiting his PhotoStream in Flickr.

This is a hundred year old technique used by Pablo Picasso and in recent time its popularity increased due to some of the recent advertisements.

After watching a few such PhotoStreams in Flickr, especially the work by Julien, I fet myself to attempt for such experiment. My attempt was to assess myself the talent and technique required for such a wonderful art. These are my results and can easily conclude that it is not an easy task to master in this art. This made me to admire the work of those talented artists.






Read more about Light-Painting and Light-Writingin Wikipedia.
Tutorial: Video
Another interesting article about How to Paint with LIGHT

I was delighted to view my work as one of the 15 Amazing Light Graffitti pictures in a site named Soft@Lize.