The Sun...

Ive always been amazed by the snaps of sunrise and sunset and would wonder how in the snaps I saw, the sun would be this brilliant orange disk just about to set. In the snaps which I took with my digicam and earlier point n shoot film cameras, all I could manage was a white/orange dot or a small orange disk when zoomed.
Also, I was very wary of pointing the camera at the sun directly lest it burns my sensor or the camera.
However, once I discovered the funda of long telephoto lenses and got my very own 200 mm Nikkor lens, I gave it a try and amazing results ensued.
I realised that to get the best snap, I had to keep the f stop really high to get a pinhole aperture and the fastest shutter speed possible which in my case happens to be be 1/4000th of a second.
This causes the bright evening sun to look a reallly good orange with the clouds intersecting it and creating the following snaps :).

My equipment (from left) 55-200mm F4-5.6 Nikkor, Nikon D60 with a 50 mm F1.4 Nikkor mounted on it and a 18-55 mm F3.5-5.6 Nikkor.

Some snaps of a sunrise from the land of the rising sun:

Excuse the wires and the big power thingy..

Macros...

Macrophotography or photography can be a little misleading to novices. It is actually defined as taking a snap of a small object such that the image formed is as big as the object itself.
basically its about photographing small objects from close up :)
however as all good things, macro lenses are also expensive and I already have invested more than I intended to on my 3 lenses.
Thats when one of my friends told me about a reverse mount adapter. A reverse mount adapter is something which allows you to attach your lens on backwards. Since I needed to see if it could really work, I tried some macro shots by holding the lens in my left hand and holding camera in my right and somehow taking the snap.
One thing I realized before I did was that I will not get any camera assistance to determine fstop or shutterspeed etc. I was on my own n I liked that. Also, handheld lens meant there was a good chance of abbeerations in the snaps because of the misalignmnent of the axis of the lens.
These were the first few shots I got :)
The first one is a Cod liver oil capsule. One thing is that I couldnt set the f stop at 1.4 because of the fact that with reverse mount, there is absolutely no depth. So, to avoid blurry snaps, I set the f stop a little higher thus compensating on the light factor. I had to have a fast shutter as holding the lens and camera in both hands meant lots of shaking. So with a high F, fast shutter, I cranked up the ISO to 800 to get a dimly lit grainy cod liver oil tablet.

This is of a rakhi which my wife had bought for her brother. The "Om" was about 1 cm long in the actual rakhi. This is also taken using a handheld lens.

Finally during my trip to Japan in Sept'09, I got myself a reverse mount adapter and clicked the below insect using it.

and a rose as well :)

Drawing with light...

I have always been amazed by photographs of lights. I know without light there wouldnt be a photograph to begin with, but what I refer to is photographing with light as your subject. Like photographing fireworks and traffic. Also photographing some light art created bt yours truly.
My first attempt was a midnight trial with my cam on my balcony trying to get the lights of the few cars passing by and this is what I got. Luckily, I also got a lone cyclist crossing the road in an almost "Indian" way :) (Snap taken in Japan).

Above snap taken at f13 and an Exposure time of 30 seconds at ISO 100.
Sometimes one is so involved in the process of creating the perfect picture, he misses to notice the garbage bags lying bang in the middle.
Another opportunity which I got was when I got free passes to a fireworks display nearby and I went with camera tripod and all.

I had never photographed fireworks before and had bought my remote control for this occasion. I really loved the output and at ISO 100, the snaps were too good to be true (atleast for me ;) )

 While coming back from the fireworks, I tried my hand at a getting a shot of heavy traffic.

I love the way one of the cars has its blinkers on :)

Finally something which I did almost on a whim of mine :)

A walk in the evening...

My first real evening out with my new cam.. 14th March 09 started taking a walk and tried to click some random snaps..

Snaps taken at f5.3 Shutter 400 ISO

I was clicking away at the trees and ground trying to get a sillhoette of the bare branches against the setting sun. (uploaded snaps are not edited/cropped)
Thats when my friend Mani suggested trying motion blur snaps of the cars passing by. After initial failures, finally I managed to get the following two beauties :)

I really love the way the radiator grill is crystal clear.
Both snaps taken at f4.5 Shutter Speed 25 for the blur.Set an ISO of 400 to compensate for the darkness around.
The key to taking the blur was to start following the subject before you actually click and just click along the way :)
The above snaps made the half n hour walk really worth it...