Clone you!

Hey buddz, wassup? So here goes a very interesting bit of photo manip!

Many of my friends keep asking me "How the hell did you do that!" whenever they see the above image, which essentially has many "Mukuls" doing all sorts of crazy things!
So here goes the recipe that made it. And like all my tuts, its pretty simple you know. I used my lovely little point and shoot Sony H50 for this one.

1) Find a place where you can get an interesting composition, I chose the park. Make sure that the light doesn't constantly vary, find such a place. Well when I did this, i had a little trouble with this part since I was out shooting in the evening , when light fades away fast. Well my mess is your bless! Learn form my blunder here!

2) Set up tripod: Very important, fix your tripod with camera on it of course!! And either set up a timer so that you can go back to the shot and pose, or use a remote control to trigger of the shutter, once you are in your desired pose. Clear? I hope so. I set up a 10 second timer for each of these shots.

3) Click away the pictures: This is the fun bit man! Your composition matters, so get some really cool and interesting shots going! Make sure that the tripod position is not altered one bit, which is why i feel a remote control solution's the best. That way you can trigger off the shutter without even touching the camera!

4) Lets clone : Fire up Photoshop and place each photo in a new layer. Starting from the topmost layer, erase the portion of the layer which hides the character on the layer below it. You should now start seeing a clone! Repeat for all the layers. Tweak the clones further by cleaning them up well. Now your cloned image should be ready. If you have the characters overlap each other, it can get a little tiresome like how it was for me, but it gives your shot much more dynamism!!! Work tediously at the overlapping areas to do as clean a job as possible, so that your image can make any one go - "What? How the hell did you do that!!!???".

Signing off,
Mukul Soman.

Motion blur? How the?

Yo! Wassup?

So what I am going to explain today is how I managed to get this shot , where the car is in perfect focus and the background appears blurred. Such shots require you to move your camera along with the subject, hence you are "panning" the camera along with it, thus it is called, a panning shot! Simple isnt it? Well not quite.

While making a panning shot, we must take a few things into consideration.
1)Slow shutter speed
By slowing down shutter speed, moving objects appear blurred. By churning it up, movement freezes. Simple enough right? Here, blur is an important part of our picture, so we select a slow shutter speed of say 40.
2)Aperture
Now, when our shutter speed is low, the camera sensor soaks up too much light. This is so because the shutter is open for a longer period of time, allowing more light to come in. So we will end up with an over exposed picture...which clearly isn't our goal. Well if it is. Go ahead.

Otherwise, set the aperture narrow. that means increase the f value. Remember, higher the f value means narrower the aperture. letting in as much less light. Also reducing Depth of focus, which here is perfectly fine, since we are going to have the background blurred anyways.

I clicked this picture on an overcast day, so i could manage to get my exposure just right by going for an aperture of f/16. On a brighter day, I might have had to crank it to even f/22.

The idea is increase f value = cut down light.

3) ISO
Now ISO setting can be left at auto if you want, I chose 200( I hate Auto!!!) The whole point is, that if despite the settings u tried with the low shutter speed and high aperture value that you had set, still if the light is too bad, bump up your ISO till you get enough exposure.

4) Moving the camera along with the subject
This is the fun part. Set your camera/lens to autofocus and try to follow the subject as it is moving. Avoid any kind of vertical shake, just pan your camera horizontally along with the car.Follow it for a second and click! Thats all!

Now what happens here is that, with respect to your camera since it is moving along with the car, the car is stationary. But since you are moving the camera the background is moving. SO the car stays in focus, while the background gets blurred! Wow! Exciting! Well ok, I found it quite exciting alright.

A few more tips that I find very useful:

Many people use tripods for panning, but I dont use them, I feel more comfortable doing it hand held. But choose what you find better! Anyways lots of practice is essential.You will suck a lot, don't get frustrated like me, you might end up with a bad headache..haha.

Position your body with your feet pointing in the direction of travel, feet together, and twist at the hips toward the oncoming object you want to pan on. As it comes towards you (or rather across the front of you), twist at the hips in the direction of travel. This way, you won't have to move your feet and you will get a nice smooth panning motion.

Tuck your elbows into your sides. This will surely help you keep your camera shake free getting better focus.

You can try slower shutterspeeds for more blurry effects.

Look for backgrounds that are not plain. A busy background will add more blur.

Here are a few more examples, al clicked with my D700 and 50mm f1.8 Lens.

Alright folks, so get out there and capture a few panning shots!

Signing off,
Mukul Soman.

Freedom...to be.

Ok folks, a bit of chicken soup for the soul, served straight from my heart kitchen!!!

Thought for the day is Freedom.

What is it about this word that rings bells in my head? Well its something my father taught me. He always stressed on the importance of me taking my own decisions and instilled the decision taking ability in my blood by giving me my freedom, right from when I was a kid(ok I am still one at times :P).

In the words of Optimus Prime, "Freedom is the birth right of all sentient beings". A lot is expressed in this one line form the movie Transformers. I believe that the most essential factor for one to live a happy life is freedom. Being free, evokes the Hero in us. It allows us to think endlessly and achieve whatever it is that we seek, but sadly, this factor is often overlooked. I know many a soul whose lives are confined by the false beliefs and selfish thoughts of society and sadly sometimes even family,and to an extend that they are so used to this lack of freedom that they think it is a way of life; this oppressed way of growing up that is, and it becomes a vicious cycle. All this does is, smother a person's intellectual development. It is when we are given all possible resources to choose from, shielding the negatives, of course and then when we are let free, that we truly reach our potential. We are all here for a purpose...lets go out there and find out our purpose of life. Lets live it with freedom to explore ourselves and take decisions to move forward and accomplish our goals.

We are like these pigeons I shot recently with the Nikon D700 and a 50mm F1.8 prime lens. I was walking around at union square, just enjoying the breeze, enjoying the freedom I have in life to do what I am passionate about, I thank my parents for this, they took care of me as I grew up, conditioned me into an adult and now they let me fly into the world to explore it and some day settle with a mate. Saw the pigeons doing the same, flying off to wherever they want, sharing the joy with a mate forever and to me, they symbolize the joy of freedom...to be.

PS: Should I have the freedom to
*Enter your house and steal money?
* Smoke marijuana or inject heroin?
* Drive at 150 km per hour?
* Say anything I like?
* Kill someone, if they ask me to?

The answer is NO. Come on , you know what i mean right :)

Signing off,
Mukul Soman.