Malabar Gliding Frog.

The eggs of the Malabar Gliding Frog are laid above pools of water, in a heap of foam.  When the tadpoles hatch out they drop into the water and start swimming immediately.   As the tadpoles develop legs, they start climbing out of the water.

Here they develop to adult frogs.  They can glide down from the trees and break its fall by stretching the webbing between its toes when making leaps down from the treetops. It can make gliding jumps of 9–12 m, a maximum of about 115 times its length.  

The Malabar Gliding Frog is a tree frog species found in the Western Ghats of India.  These pictures are from Amboli, near Sawantwadi where we had gone on a Macro shooting expedition with mentor, Amit Rane from DCP Expeditions.   Since frogs are best seen at night and in the monsoons we were in Amboli at the height of the rainy season battling leeches and pouring rain!

But the pictures we got were well worth all the trouble!

This frog has a body length of about 10 cm (4 in), making it one of the largest moss frogs.   The webbing between fingers and toes is large and orange-red.

Wildlife Photography.

We were extremely lucky to spot our first tigress within first ten minutes of our first safari in Bandhavgarh,  Madhya Pradesh.  She was resting in the cool shade of the trees ringing an artificial water hole probably after a large meal.  It was a hot summer day and the heat brings the tigers out in the open.


In wildlife photography it is essential to know the habits of your subjects to make it easier to click them.   As explained by our mentor, Sudhir Shivaram, tigers rest near waterholes after their meals getting up now and then to go to the waterhole for a drink.  Tigers do this in a specific manner as shown in the pictures below.

Here the tigress, nicknamed "Kankatti" for reasons that will become obvious in subsequent photographs, rests in the cool shade of the trees next to an artificial waterhole at Taroba point in Bandhavgarh National Park.

As noon approaches she gets hotter and walks to the artificial waterhole.

She does not drink right away but turns around after getting into the waterhole......

...sitting in the waterhole with half her body inside the water.  Notice the torn left ear which earned her the sobriquet "kankatti".

From time to time she would dip her mouth into the water and lap up a refreshing cool drink "in situ"!

Having cooled her body and drunk up her fill she would then get out of the waterhole and back to rest under the cool shade of the trees.  Only to repeat the whole cycle again after a couple of hours!

Bird Race 2015

A bird race is an event where birders fan out across a region, from dawn to dusk, and try and record as many species of birds as possible.  Then in the evening all meet and submit their bird lists to be published like a census of all the birds in an area.   Following is an account of what happened when I participated in the 2015 Mumbai Bird Race.


HOW I MISSED THE MOTHER LODE AT MUMBAI BIRDRACE 2015!

It was a blazing hot summer afternoon by the time Salil turned his red Getz onto a small mud road off the service road at Seawoods, Navi Mumbai. The full might of the indian summer was still months away but the afternoon was already hot, calm, with no inkling of the drama to unfold before us in minutes.

We had arrived here after exploring the Uran coastline for Mumbai Birdrace 2015. Dr. Salil Choksi was in the first car along with Dr. Molina Khanna, Yogita Prabhu and Shriya Laxminarayan. In the second car were Dr. Abhay and Dr. Sadhana Deshpande, Dr. Chandra Choksi and me.

Salil's attention was constantly on the outside, spotting and identifying birds while giving a continuous running commentary on bird behaviour. 

We had started in the early hours, leaving Mumbai at 6 a.m. for Karnala, a bird sanctuary in Raigad. Having spotted and identified nearly thirty birds at Karnala, we left for Uran after having a heavy breakfast, as lunch was expected to be late at a mall in Vashi.

By the time we arrived at Seawoods we were a tired, dishevelled lot, except for Salil who was driving the lead car. For the last five hours this indefatigable man had been driving with one hand, binoculars in the other. 

On spotting a bird Salil would stop the car, get out, identify it, allow the photographers to get their clicks and then get back in and drive........ only to repeat the whole process. This had taken it's toll on us lesser mortals.

So it was a drowsy, hypoglycemic bunch that arrived at the Seawoods site that afternoon.

We had just turned off onto a mud road flanking a small pond of brackish water. There was nothing to see. 

No birds in the water. No birds on the banks. Far up in the sky a raptor circled lazily in the hot afternoon, a speck of dust in the light azure sky.

Salil stopped the lead car and bounded out, binoculars in hand. Something had stirred his instincts, deeply honed out of years of birding.

Seeing Salil get out, Abhay also stopped and got out, camera in hand. Abhay is our Bird Photographer Extraordinaire and together with wife Sadhana who is an expert bird spotter and identifier, they make a synergistic team of birders.

I could see no reason why I should get out of Abhay's swanky new air conditioned automatic as there were no birds to be seen. Reluctantly I got out and joined Salil who was examining the raptor through his binoculars. 

"A kite? No! No! It is an Osprey!" whispered Salil excitedly. No birder ever raises his voice for fear of frightening away the birds.

The raptor started losing height as it came down. It had seen something in the water below.

Hearing the word 'Osprey' I turned to get my camera out of the car. The osprey had started to wheel around in a circle. It came to a hovering halt about hundred meters from us, some thirty feet above the calm waters. Abhay had already aimed his camera on the osprey and was clicking madly.

Just prior to this we had shot at Uran where the birds were mere white blobs on the horizon. To get sharp pictures I had closed down the aperture. This had decreased the amount of light entering the lens and I had to slow the shutter to compensate. Since the Uran birds were stationary in the hot afternoon this was of no matter. However it would prove to be a fatal mistake when shooting a fast moving bird like the osprey. 

The hovering osprey stretched itself to it's maximum height and dived vertically feet first into the water below. Below the water his talons closed around a big fat fish even as his wings beat strongly for take off.

I aimed my lens at the osprey just at this time, focused the lens and kept my finger pressed for continuous clicking. The fish below water started to struggle to get away and this dragged the osprey half into the water. The osprey then used the full might of his wings to lift the writhing fish clear off the water and started to rise. With a steady continuous beat of his wings the osprey rose and flew off with the prey firmly clutched in his talons. The whole thing was over in less than a minute!

In the sudden excitement of capturing the osprey I had totally forgotten to increase the shutter speed to freeze the bird in midair. The slow shutter speed I had set at Uran caused the fast moving bird to blur up in the shots. Never again, I resolved, would I shoot birds in manual mode!

See all the pictures at :  https://www.facebook.com/vinbhat/media_set…

Butterfly Photography.

The best time to click butterflies is in the early morning just before and after sunrise.  They are not very active then and are found sitting on leaves or tree trunks.  Another time when they are not very active is when they are mud puddling.   This is the time they take in minerals from wet mud and discard the excess moisture.

This is a photo of the blue oak leaf butterfly shot at Ovalekar Wadi butterfly farm at Thane, Mumbai.   Note that it always sits facing the ground, unlike other butterflies.  It's wings form a shape of a dried leaf which appears to be attached to the plant at it's upper end.  This is how it looks after the wings are opened :

In butterfly photography it is important to get the plane of your camera sensor to be parallel to the wings of the butterfly as can be seen in the photo below :

This is a photo of the Commander butterfly shot at Tungareshwar, Vasai, Mumbai.  

Star Trails Photography.

Star Trails photography can only be done on clear sky days for obvious reasons.  Mid summer or October when the monsoon is over is the season for star photography.  For star trails the camera is kept in a continuous shooting mode for at least one and a half hours.  Then you composite all the pictures in a special software like StarStax.

This is a composite of many photographs taken on continuous shooting at Naneghat, near Mumbai.  It helps if you are at a higher altitude to escape the smog and the light pollution from the city.  Since one camera is continuously occupied shooting it is better to take another camera to shoot the Milky Way or Light Painting.

Here a wide angle lens is de rigueur.  First step is to identify the Pole Star since it does not move.  In the above photo it is seen as a pin point of light round which all the stars "move".  The stars are actually stationary objects and it is the rotation of the earth which gives rise to the star trails.  Identifying the wheelbarrow constellation aka Big Dipper is the key to locate the Pole Star.

Set the lens to focus just before infinity and take a test shot to check if the stars can be seen in the image.  Set the shutter speed to 30 seconds and using a cable release put the camera on continuous shooting mode.  Lock the cable release so that the camera continues clicking for the next two hours.  A tripod and a cable release are essential for shooting star trails.

A fast SD memory card is also needed so that the camera does not waste time buffering to a slow memory card.   I use a Lexar Professional 600x Speed SD card of Class 10.  It helps wherever continuous shooting mode is required.

Bird Photography.

For bird photography you will need a telephoto lens of more than 300mm focal length.  As birds are very shy a zoom lens capable of more than 300mm focal length will enable you to get a closer look at birds sitting on tree tops far away.  A prime lens with fixed focal length of 400 or 600mm will also get the job done.

I had clicked this picture of the Indian Roller at Bandhavgarh, Madhya Pradesh.   It was shot with a Sigma 150-500mm lens mounted on a Canon 6D camera.  Since we were in a jeep inside the National Park I had to shoot from a top angle.  We were forbidden to get out of the jeep.

It is also essential to know the habits of birds.  When eating, after having caught the insect, birds like to toss up their prey and catch it.  It is their method of biting the insect before swallowing it.  Luckily my camera was on a continuous shooting mode and I managed to catch a shot of the insect in mid air as the Roller tossed it up.

This shrike was clicked at Bhandup Pumping Station, Mumbai.  One of the important tenets of bird photography is to get a reflection of the sun or flash in their eyes.  This is called as catchlight.  It can be seen in the picture above.

High Dynamic Range Photography.

This is a high dynamic range photograph of the boating lake inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai.  These type of photographs are actually a composite of three, five or more pictures of the same scene taken at different exposures.


As I had not taken a tripod along I placed the camera on a ledge, part of which can be seen in the foreground.  A tripod or a stable base is essential for such photography.  Your camera should also have the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) function which automatically clicks 3/5 photos at different exposures from underexposed to overexposed.


The photographs are then combined in Photoshop or other specialised HDR software like Photomatix to produce one single photograph.  As you can see in the above photograph there are no totally light or dark areas though it was taken at nearly noon on a monsoon day.


Generally this technique is used in landscape photography.  The dynamic range of a photograph is the difference between the brightest and darkest areas in it.  A high dynamic range photograph allows the viewer to see the detail in the dark as well as the very light areas.


Landscape photography requires apertures from F/11 to F/20.  These apertures give reasonable depth of field so as to have the full photo in sharp focus.   Apertures smaller than F/20 can cause colour diffraction to occur leading to undesirable results.

Tips for Macro Photography.

This is a photo of a microlepidoptera namely the Plume Moth taken at Nagla Block SGNP Mumbai in 2015.  These generally have wingspans of under 20 mm and are about the size of a small mosquito.  To take photos of so small subjects one needs a macro lens.  It can also be done by attaching a reversing ring to the camera and using your kit lens by reversing it.


In Macro photography one needs to use very small apertures so as to have a greater depth of focus.  Macro lenses have very small depth of fields and will give you blurred legs if you focus on the eyes of the insect.  To get the whole insect in focus use apertures like F/20, F/22, F/29 etc.


Using very small apertures decreases the amount of light entering the camera.  To counter this use a ring flash which attaches on top of the lens.  As the subjects in macro photography are very small light from the in built flash may not reach them.


The plane of the camera sensor should be placed parallel to the wings of the butterfly or moth to get an ideal view of the subject.  The subject placed according to the Rule of Thirds (ROT) lends to a pleasing composition.


A fast shutter speed is essential to avoid blurring due to shaking hands.  To get a faster shutter speed increase ISO setting to maximum permissible level to avoid noise.   Too high ISO settings causes photo to break up into pixels showing noise.

Using wider apertures to blur backgrounds.

This was a photo I clicked two years back.  I had the concept in mind before I set out to find a suitable setting.  I finally found it in a ganpati pandal in Khetwadi, Mumbai during the annual ganesh festival.  As everyone knows, the mouse is the carrier animal of the mighty Ganesha and whispering your wishes in his ear is a method of communicating your wishes to Lord Ganesha.

Khetwadi area of Mumbai is where you can find many Ganeshas in various avatars during the Ganesh Festival.  Generally the mouse is placed by the side of Ganesha, but here he is placed facing his lord and a couple of meters away from him.  The devotees line up to whisper their wishes into the ears of the mouse presenting the photographer with an ideal opportunity to show the lord seated in the background, his big ears all set to catch what his carrier the mouse conveys to him.


Here I used a vertical composition so as to get the whole portrait of Lord Ganesha seated in all his splendour.  I used the 50mm Canon lens at an aperture of F/2.8.  This is one of the widest apertures used causing the depth of field to be shallow.  This causes the background to blur throwing up circular bokeh of the reflected lights on top of Ganesha's head.


I focussed the lens on the mouse and the child throwing them into sharp focus on top of the blurred background.   Instead of getting a glassy smooth background I got a recognisable Lord Ganesha because He was not too far from the point of focus.  It was important for the story in the picture to get a recognisable Ganesha smiling benignly in the background.


Wide apertures are indicated by small F numbers on the lens.  F/1.4, F/2.8, and F/3.5 are some of the wide apertures used by photographers to blur the background.  Blurring the background immediately focusses the viewer's attention on the subject of your photograph.