The Self Critic Shutterbug

Av: F/8; Tv: 0.01 (1/100) s; f: 30mm (35mm-equiv: 50 mm); ISO: 800; Metering mode : Pattern

I’ve been wanting to take a photo of my stethoscope and make it look cool and good. I finally got to try my hand out at it during my studies when there was a power failure and I saw a nice opportunity with just my study lights on and casting interesting effects on the steth. I then spread some white blank sheets on the table and placed the steth and started clicking away. In fact, I suggest the basic table-lamp with preferably a CFL (white) lighting is a very good light source for tabletop photography.
I took many shots in different angles. I liked this shot because it covered most of the steth with interesting shadows. All though, this is actually a colour photo, a Black steth with pretty white lighting and a white background makes it look like a Black and White photo itself. Post-processing involved only fine tuning the levels and cropping a bit of the boundaries for better composition.
Improvements in this image -
If you were to use this photo for the cover of the product, one would want to take the shadows away to define most areas of the steth in good lighting. For that, using multiple light sources from different angles is helpful.

P.S : Yesterday being the Doctor’s Day, I thought this post was apt for the occasion. But, because of the prevailing power shortage in my region, my post has been delayed by a day. Better late that never, though, I suppose.

Here is wishing all the Doctor’s of the World a Happy Doctor’s Day.

Tags: Black and white, doctor, doctor's day, stethoscope

Av: F/6.4; Tv: 0.013 (1/80)s; f: 28mm (35mm-equiv: 46 mm); ISO: 200; Metering mode : Pattern

I was walking by on the old streets of the coastal tourist town of Gokarna, near the famous temple, when I saw this shop of colours and my attention was instantly drawn to the amazing array of colours of different shades.
What I like about this photo is obviously the different colours… In post-processing using Adobe Photoshop CS3, I cropped to remove the unnecessary edges and got a wide-angle shot. I played around with the levels to get a decent amount of contrast in the picture to bring out the colours even better. And I had to burn a few areas towards the bottom of the image to get out few washed-out details because the scorching hot sunlight had washed out some areas of my photo.
I also liked the tinge of green I got while playing with the levels. It gives a different look to the photo, something reminiscent of the photos of the age of transition from black and white to colour.

Coming to the improvements in this image, I guess it would have taken the image to a higher level if I could have captured the emotions of the people a bit more closely. But, I wanted the whole range of the colors to be part of the image.
A lower Exposure setting would have captured the scene even better with more information about the colours and the shadows coming out giving a different depth to the photo.

Tags: colours, gokarna, old man, powder, red, shop, street, travel