Crab Grab

I went to Puri (Odisha, India) after almost 15 years. I guess I can ignore an one hour visit to the city around 8 years back. As always Puri beach has its own charm. One can spend a whole day or rather days sitting on the beach and just keep looking at the waves. I did the same. Everyday, I'd find a non crowded spot along the beach and sit there for hours. Sometimes seeing the waves, sometimes clicking them. One day I realized that something moved on the sand just a couple of feet away from my legs. I kept looking until I found that it was a crab and then I found several crab holes around me and actually several crabs were peeping from their doors. In the following days I found out that crabs are overwhelmingly present throughout the entire beach of Puri. But they don't emerge at crowded places during the day unless They are hungry and unless they see food.

On my last day at he beach, I suddenly found an inch long bug which overturned while landing, struggling to get straight. The camera was on and the exposure was set since I was already clicking crabs a few minutes ago. I aimed the camera and WHOA!!! A fierce crab emerged from its hole just a few inches away from it. CLICK..went my first grab of the event that was quite presumable.

Within a second there was another hunter very close.

However, It may be a common understanding among the crab community that one of them left the scene a moment later. The other one didn't loose a moment and grabbed the live bug with a swift move.

But who gives up a life without a struggle. It was an amazing thing to see how the bug snapped out of the crab's claws. And really the crab waited for the next few seconds, stunned, before it jumped again.

Unfortunately, the bug still remained overturned and could not fly away. The hunter took its time to plan the next attack.

The next part was swift enough. The crab attacked again.

The Bug still tried its best to fight for its life.

But the claws of the crab were big and mighty enough to capture its prey. and then I realized that every movement of the crab was directed towards it's kitchen.

It took the crab less than a couple of seconds to capture the bug and enter the hole.

Now, don't ask me how crabs cook bug.
Thanks to the continuous shutter mode and abundant light that I could capture the whole thing in my camera.
All the photos were taken with Canon EOS 500D using a 75-300 telephoto zoom lens.
Exposure settings: 100 ISO, f/5.6, 1/500sec at 300mm focal length.

Venus Transit over the Sun

I had planned to photograph the last 'Venus transit over the Sun' of my life time. Well, an extended sleep and a cloudy sky prevented the most of it. However, I managed to cover the last 2 hours of the spectacle. The first image was taken at 8am IST. After that each photograph was clicked at an average gap of 15 minutes.

At first I thought a very low exposure would neutralize the high amount of Sunlight. but the plan actually failed. An X-ray plate came in handy. I cut a round piece of it from the exposed darker region and put it between the lens and the UV filter.

That's Cloudy

As she stepped into the house, gone were suffering and agony. She washed away the dirt off my porch and bathed me with her love. Yes, the Clouds. That's what I'm talking about. Have you ever seen clouds portraying your mood? I have.....


The Cloud of Liberty


The Cloud of Vengeance


The Cloud of Resurrection


The Cloud of Experience

Lum-PEN

In a sense, I'm a Lumpen - often displaced people who have been cut off from the socioeconomic class with which they would ordinarily be identified. Photography, indeed is an expensive passion in terms of both time and money. But sometimes, sudden spontaneous thoughts bloom into soothing compositions. Lets get back in time from modern pens to the ancient ones.

Ball point pen

This photograph was taken at a village primary school which I visited with my friend Subhamay Mitra, who is a teacher in that school. The irony of the experience is that I was sitting inside the a terribly small room called the staff room and this student was attending his class just outside at the verandah. But still, this composition seemed to me, the best photographic presentation of Education.

Fountain pen

This one is one of the most common compositions on time and memory. Tried this for the first time. I was amazed with the performance of my new 75-300 mm lens. Such a shallow depth of field. The nib of the pen and the year 2012 on the diary page were barely a couple of inch apart.

Feather tip pen

I've no idea whether this is a good composition or not. I don't even want to induce a story to this one, although I have one in my mind. I just loved the colour.

Experi-Mental

It was a sudden thing though not accidental. I was trying to capture a profile of my buddy Pranoy Bhattacharya. He suddenly aimed his camera at me. Through my viewfinder I found myself reflected on the front of his lens. Couldn't spare a moment. You can see Pranoy's eyes at the top of the frame. Call it a self portrait or not, it was a first time experience for me.

Pan-Fried

Since the very first photographic outings, I've been seeing people trying to take pan shots with still camera. Often a good snap by those and some at exhibitions would fascinate me. But honestly, I never thought of experimenting with film rolls at that time. Now that I'm using digital cameras, its easier to do such experiments. I did some with moving vehicle lights at night. The daylight panning idea surfaced as I was travelling from Kharagpur to Kolkata with my friend Subhamay Mitra in his newly bought car.

It was a coincidence that the wind was blowing in the same direction of their movement. Seemed to me as if the greens were moving by the wind current created by the rider.


This is a strange sample where some static subjects seem to be moving but other static subjects are still. Also, the actually moving subject, the rider, seems to be frozen in the frame.


In last 3 pictures above, I've moved the camera from inside the moving car. This last image came out as the best resultant of the trip though.

Well, Experimenting was okay, but please do not ask me about what I derived from it. I'm really confused with the weird acts of relative velocity. But I think this could have helped Einstein a lot.

Sub-m-Urged

Ideas are often submerged among other ideas and come forth only when urged. I must have thought something while taking these but somehow it never came forward for so long. Well, the idea of another blog post was submerged just like these boats were.