Continuing the series of pictures from my trip home to Nepal last October, here are a few more pictures. For full galleries, please visit my blog at josheeFOTO blog .

Thanks for the pic..Mailadai..kasto ramro pics , nepal jana manlagyo..:)

Wow... All photos in your blog are great.

do you use filters with the camera?

माहिला दाई फोटा साह्रै राम्रा छन , मन देखी नै मुरी मुरी धन्यवाद , मैले के घुमाये सम्झना दिलाई दिनु भो

Thank you guys for your comments.

i_my, I use Circular Polarizer in certain situations. I also use neutral density filters and graduated neutral density filters. The grad neutral density filters have the neutral density part on one half, and the other half is clear glass or resin. This helps balance a scene where the sky is really bright and below the horizon is dark. Neutral density filters essentially cut down the amount of light without affecting color. Graduated Neutral Density filters are a must if you take pictures of landscapes, especially during sunrise and sunset. They allow you to hold back the amount of light on bright sky and expose dark parts of the scene more, so that you get a photograph that is more balanced, rather than the foreground being properly exposed and the sky way over exposed. I hope this helps.

Thanks

- Suraj

माहिलादाइ उर्फ सुरज ब्रो, एसो सानो कमेन्ट हलुम है, यो तस्बिर लाई एसो मिलाई एउटै फ्रेम मा हालुम न यो मुसो लाई हलाउदै हैरान भए ।

तस्बिर एक दम राम्रो छ , तपाईको खूबिलिटीको बयान गर्नु भनेको कुबेरको ढुकुटीमा मेरो कौडी पर्नु झै हो, तपाईको साईट अनी हेरियो एकदम राम्रो छ । केही हप्ता अघी तपाईले फोटोग्राफी सम्भन्द केही टेकनिक पनि लेख्छु भन्नु भएको थियो राख्नु भाको रहेछ भने मैले चाँही मिस गरे , छैन भने त्यसको आपेक्षामा अझै छु 

बैरे

बैरे जी, धन्यबाद तपाइको जवाफ को लागि. मैले फोटोग्राफी को बारेमा लेख्छु भनेको थिए, तर समय नपाएर लेखेको छैन. येही topic को अन्तर्गत नै लेकुला यो हप्ता, कृपया फेरी हेर्नु होला.

Hello all,

I had promised a couple of people here that I would post a few words about some of the
technical aspects of photography that I use when taking pictures. I have to start by saying
that I am not an expert, I am entirely self taught in photography. I am an engineer by trade
and profession. However, my passion lies in photography. It is the only hobby that makes
me truly happy. Thus my methods may not be the best or the correct ones. Should any of
you feel that I have stated something incorrectly, please let me know so I can learn.

I started shooting pictures years ago, before digital, using a simple all manual Minolta
camera with a few lenses. I mostly shot slides and some black and white that I used to
develop myself in my college newspaper’s dark room. It really comes a full circle once you
have developed a print that you shot.

These days I am using a Nikon D700 camera with various Nikkor lenses, a far cry from the
old Minolta that I used to have, however, the ultimate purpose is the same: to make a
photograph. I shoot mostly in manual mode, which is the M setting in most cameras. When
I am shooting pictures of people then I shoot in the A mode, select the aperture and let the
camera choose the shutter speed.

In the manual mode, if I am photographing landscape or temples for example, I use an
aperture between f/8 and f/11. This ensures that the picture will be sharp due to an
increased depth of field. I did a quick search and found this site that explains the basics of
exposure: http://www.photonhead.com/beginners Read the links under Photographic
Concepts. Here is another good resource: http://photo.net/learn/basic-photo-tips/aperture-
shutterspeed-iso Then I use the camera’s built in meter to check to see what shutter speed
I need to set on the camera to ensure proper exposure of the scene. You cannot rely on the
camera’s exposure meter 100% of the time. There are times when it will be fooled by what it
sees, examples of this would be white sand or snow or fog. For snow, the camera will think
that it is too bright and try to underexpose the scene. This is why sometimes even in full
program auto mode, the pictures don’t quite come out right. In these situations, how well
you know your camera and basic photographic principles really plays an important part. You
have to decide, you have to tell the camera that “it” is wrong and make the right decision. I
am still trying to teach myself this concept so that it becomes second nature.

Whenever I can, I use the lowest ISO setting my camera offers, which is 200. This is kind of
equivalent to film speed, how sensitive film is to light. The higher the number the more
sensitive it is to light. In digital, higher ISOs tend to increase the noise level in the pictures.
So stick to lower ISOs and pictures will be clean and clear, and colors will be rendered
properly.

When shooting pictures, I try to ask myself few basic questions: Why am I shooting this
particular picture? What message do I want to convey by capturing this scene? With digital
cameras, taking pictures is so easy that we often forget to slow down and enjoy the very
things we are photographing. I tend to fall into this trap more often than not, snap snap
snap, then look at the LCD. I have to constantly remind myself to slow down, think about
the scene or the subject, then make sure the camera is settings are correct to capture the
mood, and then only take the picture. I think the very concept of “Oh, I am not burning
through expensive film, they are just digital files, I can delete them if I don’t like them!”
makes us “snap-happy.” That is the difference between a Snap and a Photograph.

As far as processing on the computer goes, I use Adobe Lightroom for pretty much
everything. It is a great program. It imports pictures from my card, catalogues them, and
creates a library. In Lightroom, I use a few basic editing tools. Since I shoot RAW format all
the time, most pictures need to be “developed.” If you shoot JPG, then the camera develops
the pictures in camera using the basic algorithms and picture processing engine built into
the camera and saves on the card as a JPG file. However, a RAW image needs to be
developed using a software program. Fortunately, most RAW processing programs are able
to read and interpret the camera settings that are imbedded in the RAW file and
automatically apply these settings when you open the picture using these programs.
Lightroom does the same, but first it needs to be calibrated to the model of camera that you
are using, so that it renders the pictures correctly.

Once all the pictures are imported, I typically make a slight contrast and brightness
adjustment to the image. If I have an that I didn’t expose correctly in the camera at the
time of capture, and I like that picture, I end up spending more time editing it. It may
involve adjusting exposure, cropping the picture to remove unwanted portions of it, etc.
Cropping is the process of resizing the image by selecting the portion you want to keep.
Cropping is pretty important, film developers used to crop using the enlarger, when
exposing the negative to the photographic paper. Now we do the same on the screen with a
mouse. You can’t always zoom just right, or take a picture that has no unwanted portions in
it. This is where cropping comes into play. Cropping can take an ordinary image and make it
interesting. Sometimes there is an unwanted hand, a tree branch, a dog’s tail etc on one of
the edges of the image. Crop it out and you have a cleaner image. I use Adobe Photoshop
only if the image needs heavy processing or I need to turn it into black and white.
Lightroom is fantastic for most of the editing that I do.

Besides these, I typically sharpen all pictures slightly, still in Lightroom. Sharpening when
done correctly and appropriately, can greatly improve the look of the image. I usually
sharpen as the last step in processing an image.

Well this is kind of my process from start to finish, it’s not perfect, it may not be right, but it
works for me. I am constantly trying to be better at both taking pictures and processing
them. If anyone has suggestions or comments or corrections to what I have written above,
please reply to this thread. I welcome all of them. If you have questions please let me know.

-Suraj

http://www.josheefoto.com

Maaila Dai,

Do you prefer using Lightroom over Adobe photoshop CS4, I use CS4 but am not hooked to it with the addition of multi layers, Although its a good technique I still feel that it clogs more of my time.

 

Thank You very much for your insight. Hope to hear and see your work in the near future

Baire Ji,

Lightroom and Photoshop are not the same programs in my opinion. Their purposes are totally different. Lightroom is meant to be a workflow management, image magement and catalogueing software. Whereas Photoshop is for image editing and processing. While Lightroom allows you to do quite a bit of editing within itself, you will still need Photoshop when extensive editing is required, for example stitching a panorama or performing complex layer based editing.

Photoshop is intended for photographers and graphics designers as well, whereas, I believe Lightroom is primarily a tool for photographers. It does a superb job of catalogueing the pictures in a library, and if properly tagged, images can be retrieved in a flash.

I use both, not as a substitute of one another, but as complimentary parts.