This is a continuation of my photographic adventures in the city, armed to the teeth with my mobile camera. This is also an effort to convince myself (and any others that need convincing) that you do not need a DSLR to take good photographs.
No, I am not replacing my DSLR with my Nexus 5, not yet. I am using the mobile to go where the DSLR might be conspicuous or unwieldy. Let’s look at some images then:
A man waits for his flight announcement at IGIA, New Delhi
Vegetable seller adds a dash of colour to my street on a rain soaked morning
Delhi on a rainy afternoon
Continuing with the theme of precipitation: Going to work on a rainy winter morning
Waiting for my dumplings to arrive, at a restaurant in McLeodgunj, Himachal Pradesh
This is where I work
A lonely letterbox awaits the eventual extinction
More Rains!! This time it is the seat of the government
I loved the sky in this otherwise nothing photo
If i could capture the spirit of my hometown Siliguri in one photo, this would be it.
I was a late adopter of the smartphone; and once I did, it added much fuel to my already flaming love for photography. Now I did not need to carry my DSLR around. As long as I understood the limitations of the mobile snapper and had help from an editing app, I could produce decent images.
It is true that my phone is unable to shoot in RAW, but in the next couple of years, most of the top-of-the-line phones will have that ability. Now, if the mobile OEMs can crack a practical optical zoom design, the point and shoot market should see a heavy decline. Are you listening Canon, and Nikon?
In this series within a series, I will post images from the life of Delhi and a few other cities that I keep travelling to. All the photos here have been taken with my Google Nexus5 and edited with the Snapseed app.
It is true that on most days, the air over Delhi is unbreathable at best; but then there are those evenings when the city throws you off with rich shades of crimson streaked over the azure skies. Few and far between they might be, but breath-taking they always are. Work leads me to commute between Delhi and Noida, and the route includes some open stretches along the Yamuna where the grasslands accentuate the beauty of the skies.
The images that will follow have bee clicked over the period of a year and range from late spring, early winter to late monsoon evenings. All the images below have been shot on the Nexus 5 and have been edited on the Snapseed app. Though the app has options for filters, I have chosen not to apply any. Instead all of them have been edited by adjusting parameters like brightness / contrast, shadows / highlights, saturation, etc.
One central aim of this series is to prove that you do not really need a fancy DSLR to take good photographs. Even though I do own a said fancy camera and a number of lenses, I have discovered that a decent mobile camera and a good editing app will cover most of your photographic needs.
Yes, there are restrictions when it comes to mobile photography. Your low light abilities are restricted. So is your ability to zoom in. But playing within these margins has helped me develop a my own style – one that relies predominantly more on the composition of the shot.
As I said in my previous post, all the images below have been shot on the Nexus 5 and have been edited on the Snapseed app. Though the app has options for filters, I have chosen not to apply any. Instead all of them have been edited by adjusting parameters like brightness / contrast, shadows / highlights, saturation, etc.
Today’s theme: Markets
Walls of plenty in Delhi’s INA market
Butchers take a break from the slaughter”INA Market, New Delhi
Labourers rest awhile post lunch: Bara Bazaar, Kolkata
Pigeon-hole shops: Manicktala Bazaar, Kolkata
There is space for everything at the market, even for offerings to the supreme being(s)
Produce: Good and bad
Hilsa fish, Bengali for “gastronomical orgasm”
Wisdom on sale: Darya Gunj sunday market, New Delhi
Yes, I am bengali hence this fishy pictures: CR Park Market, New Delhi
I am greatly in love with the frozen beauty of a moment. I try to capture this beauty as much as possible using a DSLR, or as some of my friends would like to call it, a ‘proper camera’. Most, if not all of the photographs on this blog have been shot using one. Things, however, started to change in the last two years or so when I got me a Google Nexus 5 smartphone.
This started a very bewildering phase of my life. I did not need to lug my SLR along. All I needed was the phone and for editing, a decent app. Over time, these images built up in my backup drive until one day i decided to revisit them. Turns out some of them are not half bad.
Hence this post. Ideally, this is be the first of an ongoing post on mobile photography, hopefully around themes. All the images below have been shot on the Nexus 5 and have been edited on the Snapseed app. Though the app has options for filters, I have chosen not to apply any. Instead all of them have been edited by adjusting parameters like brightness / contrast, shadows / highlights, saturation, etc.
Today’s theme: Black and White
Starting off with the iconic, albeit through induced graininess: Matia Mahal on Bakreid. Photograph taken from the steps of Jama MasjidPrelude to a journey: Passengers wait for a train to depart at the Delhi Cantt stationSweet dreams: My ten day old niece
Stillness of the night: Ode to a power cut
The Enchanted Forest: Mist rolls through the Dhauladhar mountains above Dharamkot, Himachal PradeshThoughts: Fuzzy and slightly out of focusRunning in the rat race: Rush hour at Nehru Place Market, New DelhiOn the outside, looking inThe goddess of the deserted parking lotAlmost alien: Late night at a metro station in Delhi
