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Dzukou Valley, Nagaland- Revisited !!!

This July, 2017 I made another trip to Dzukou Valley, Nagaland. Unlike last year, I travelled very light this year, only a backpack with a small sleeping bag and a set of fresh clothes, sealed in zip bags . Photography gear wise, I was carrying my 5D mkII, canon 70-200mm f4, and the Fuji x100. For protection from rain I relied on my rain poncho.  And that just about it.  It took us 3 and a half hours from Vishwama to reach the basecamp in Dzukou valley. We spent 2 nights up there.  It rained most of the time with temperatures ranging between 18-20 Degrees at night. The weather in Dzukou has always been unpredictable, changing every few minutes. The only photographic opportunity we got was when the rain stopped. A gust of wind thinned the cloud cover enveloping the valley, allowing for the sun rays to diffuse through and lite up, rather selectively, the crests and troughs that comprise Dzukou. This time however I found plastics everywhere. And this is where tourism tends to bothe
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Recent posts

Riverside

  As the day's last rays of light hit the cowshed, the family makes smoke by burning straw, to be used as a mosquito and fly repellent. 
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"Make at least one definite move daily towards your goal"-- Bruce Lee.
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  How I wish sometimes that the companies would customize their incentive program for their employees too. How about a 10 days, no phone call trip to Tso Moriri on achievement of quarterly targets? Wishful thinking I guess .  
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"Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph." - Paul Strand - "The Art Motive in Photography"
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Rules of Composition !!!

    During a recent trip to the mountains with a group of photography enthusiasts, I realized something funny about the way in which we approach digital photography. It seems more and more importance is given to the 'Rules' of composition over one's instincts or intuition. Needless to say, on coming back, everyone from the trip ended up with similar images, displaying a lack of creativity. This trend isn't surprising as most of the online content on "Taking_better_pictures" swear by the Rules of composition. They tend to create the impression that without the 'Rules' photography doesn't exist. Photography contests and Digital Saloon exhibitions seem to prefer photographs that adhere to the laid out rules of composition, indifferent to the types of photography. Judges check if the photograph fall 'IN' or 'OUT' of the set rules. I have also been to some workshops, both basic and advanced, where the mentors try to etch such rules 
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Musings

Vivian Maier...street photographer extraordianaire, discovered posthumously, shot more than 150000 photographs which, surprisingly, she never published. It seems that many of her negatives never made it to print.   She kept all her work to herself. An artist, in contrast, today spends a lot of time and effort in promoting himself or herself and his or her art through various mediums of communication. In the present day scenario, with the internet bustling with photographer and photography pages, artists compete for space and an audience. Vivian Maier's story is thought provoking. What might have been her motivation to photograph random people or streets ? Why did she isolate herself? Will I photograph solely for myself, without any audience to derive feedback or inspiration from?    
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Dzukou Valley

Got a call from a friend asking me if I would like to join them on a trip to Dzukou valley, Nagaland, as they needed one more person to make the trip happen; I jumped to the opportunity. The itinerary was a simple three day program. We started early on  11th June(June), boarding the 4AM inter city train from Jorhat to Dimapur. We reached Dimapur at 7.30 AM, had our breakfast and booked a tourist taxi to Kohima,  which is about a 2.30 hrs drive. Once in Kohima , we met with Roko and her Eastern Green Tours, and made our way to Viswema village and began our climb. We were informed that the trek from Viswema is comparatively easy with respect to that from jakhama village , which, though shorter(2-3hrs), was more steep . One hour into our climb and I realized how ill prepared I was.  A bag full of clothes that got wet, and thus heavy due to  non stop rains, made body balance and climbing difficult. Moreover, I was carrying too much camera equipment. After three hours and many pit
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Client is always right !!!

A couple of weeks back, I came across a post by a noted photojournalist(new into the wedding photography market) about his   interaction with a prospective client that went wrong. In the uploaded screenshot was his conversation with his client, where the client states his preference for a particular kind of image effect, and where the photojournalist sarcastically refuses to let go of his ‘many years of learning’ and ‘in-camera expertise’. And no surprise, his fans and followers (except a few) began to belittle the particular prospective client for his lack of ‘taste’ for ‘real photography’. Within no time our photojournalist turned wedding photographer’s post had hundreds of likes and many shares. My take on this is that the ‘client’ is always right. After all he/she is the one who is going to show me the money. My kind of ‘Creativity’ or what I   call ‘Art’ may not necessarily sync with the expectations of my client. I would take great care in getting a clear idea of my client’s
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Impressions ll

Off late I have become increasing fond of 'Blurs'. I have been practicing a technique popularly known as 'Shutter Drag' to create impressions such as below. Now, there are so many things to consider viz ideal shutter speed, DOF, flash, pleasing background and also importantly the speed at which I pan the camera with respect to the subject. All these factors need to be in 'sync' for a pleasing impression. But the funny part is that I have absolutely no control as to how the final picture would look like. And this uncertainity or the lack of control, I guess, is what makes the process of creating these impressions so enjoyable.
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