Karan Kauchhur's Photography

Good Morning Sarasota

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:53:57 GMT

This morning I got up a 4:55 am and went to Brandenton Beach. I was lucky enough to reach 30 min before the Sunrise. Sarasota being on the west coast of Florida, the Sunrise is inland, so the early morning is absolutely blue and then changes slightly to orange depending on how many clouds are present. The Moon was shining bright, the sand was white, and the water was clear and gushing in , although it was a low tide since it was almost morning..

This was under the moonlight.

When the Sun slightly moved in.

The first Sun rays.

Sun Rise across the bay

Longboat key Marina

Last Light ..

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:34:42 GMT

Colorado : Photographer's Paradise

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:22:16 GMT

I was in Colorado earlier this year for some project work during the cold winter. To be honest I really loved snow and the cold winds and the occasional blizzards. It used to get white, and used to look so beautiful. I was there for about 3 months, I wish i could stay back for the Spring season, heard that the Rocky Mountains look beautiful during that time. Although I was all alone there, and it used to be gloomy all the time which kinda got depressing, but the Colorado-ians are full of life and they used to be out and having fun. This state has a ton of lakes, surrounded by mountains on the west and open vast land on the east side. I managed to take a few pics there, hope you like them. I used to live in Boulder , about 40 min from Estes Park, just at the foothills, and from downtown you could see the Flat Irons. I hope to make another trip there during the Spring ..

Mesa Trail head

Barker Reserve/Lake

Right outside my hotel room.

Steam Boad Rock at the Garden of the Gods.

The Rocky Mountains

The Sawtooth Mountain

Small river in Boulder

At Deckers Lake

Reflection on one of the Private Lakes.

Robin

Broomfield

The Siesta Key Drum Circle ..

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:20:55 GMT

I was at Siesta Key Beach last Sunday to witness the rich music and culture of Sarasota. Also known as Drum Circle, basically comprises of anyone and everyone who can play a musical instrument, loves to dance, is open to listening to new music .. It started little over a decade ago when a bunch of people came together in Siesta Key Beach , played music and danced starting just 2-3 hours before the sunset until the Sun completely disappears in the distant Horizon. Below are a bunch of photographs I managed to take:

My Camera Kit and Accessories

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:09:21 GMT

Nikon D60: It came with the 18-55mm VR kit lens. It has a CCD sensor and is at 10 Mega Pixels. Its a very good entry level DSLR better than any of the other brands in the same range.

Telephoto Super Zoom: Few months later picked up a 70-300mm VR-II Nikor lens. Its quite an effective zoom lens and got me some really awesome shots. Great for Wildlife Photography as well.

Fish Eye: its a nice accessory to have depending on the kind of photography you do. I got some good shots with this lens and works 50% of the time for me and that's good enough. It screws on the the 18-55mm kit lens.

Flash: I bought a SB 400 Nikon Flash. I just needed a basic flash which would have a swivel head. Its cheap, its fast and works in most conditions. No Manual controls though.

Nikon D90: Now what can I say about this camera. The reviews are out there already.

Tripod: Recently acquired Manfrotto 055XPROB Pro Tripod, along with this I also own a Promaster Clamper to clamp on to the tripod or to various surfaces depending on the requirement.

Along with this I have a few filters and circular polarizer from Tiffen and SunPak. I have two remotes one is a Infra Red and one is a cable release both from Nikon. Also have a DSRL rain cover for rainy days and a sturdy DSLR-LAPTOP Camera Bag from KATA.

Texture

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:34:45 GMT

AirBorne ..

karanmohan@gmail.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:27:45 GMT

Lovely Sarasota Weather ..

karanmohan@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:13:47 GMT

Finally the weather in Sarasota has become awesome. It reminds me of Bangalore and NorCal .. there is no humidity, nice cool breeze, and lovely sunshine. I went to Siesta Key on Saturday to see the Volley Ball matches and to my surprise the it became so cold and the waves were gushing in. This is the first time in last 3 months that I really enjoyed being outside. here are some photographs for your viewing:

The Sun rays looked awesome ..

And people were having loads of fun :-)

B&W vs Color

karanmohan@gmail.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:22:11 GMT

I wish I had asked his name. Met him on my way back to Bangalore just outside Puducherry. He got really excited when I took his photograph and showed it to him. I think I will buy a Polaroid next. And when I meet such sweet people, will give them their photographs...

A friend of mine saw these two pics and commented " i generally like pics in black nd white...but in this case i liked the coloured version coz his smile has lost it's colour.. " Those are exactly her words. Which actually made me think that how true her statement is .. The pic in Black and white gives this man a dark mood which is totally contrary to what his real expression was ..

My Most Interesting on Flickr

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:50:03 GMT

Here are few of my most interesting photographs on Flickr. Some of the pics are already posted in different entries so I just selected a few others. Hope you enjoy them ..

This i took at Denver Zoo.

This shot I took during the day under the shade of trees. There was a small river in Boulder. Snow had just melted a bit and the sun was shining bright ..

This is a recent pic taken in Long Boat Key, Florida. Sun was almost gone, was trying to capture the last few rays..

This was during a Photosafari at Treasure Island, California

And ofcourse, one of my most favorite place on Planet Earth :-)

Here is the complete list of my most interesting ..

Check out your Backyard ..

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:10:25 GMT

You don't always have to be at the beach waiting for the sunset, or at the Rocky Mountains during the early hours to capture the first sunlight , or in Scotland to capture an awesome landscape. At times all you need to do is go to your backyard, open your eyes and look around. yes that's right .. there are a lot of interesting stuff back there.

Instead of getting up at 5 in the morning and driving to a place for an hour to capture the sunrise at 6, you can still be in your bed, enjoy the sweet dream you were having and get up at 6 instead and wear your gown and go out in your back yard and you might see what I saw : -

Or may be at night instead of racing against time for that perfect sunset, just take your beer, your camera and go back there and see if you can find something interesting :-

For that matter, even in the afternoon you might come across some birds or butterflies or maybe even the perfect blue sky as a background to your subject: -

( this I took with Canon S3 Is)

And especially when its raining and you can't go out : -

and capture the rain drops ...

I guess I pretty much made my point :-) . There is a photograph everywhere, we just need to open our eyes and look around, sometimes a great shot is just behind us ..

NOIR

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:31:08 GMT

Don't Always Need a Studio Setup

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:54:57 GMT

Since I travel due to work and live in hotels all the time, it becomes difficult to even have a small studio style lights, and backgrounds and reflectors. Most of all even if you own a small miniature setup its difficult to pack it up and move around with it. So, I try to make the best of what I have.
I use chart papers, gift wrap papers as background, sometimes even different color plastic bags which I get when I go grocery shopping. I also have a lazer torch, a led torch for various lighting effects. I carry an nice sturdy but relatively lite tripod with me. I even sometimes put a chair against the wall and use a lighter to achieve various effects.
What I am trying to say here is that one should have some creativity and rest follows. I do sometimes feel the limitation of all these things and the execution goes for a toss at times. At times you don't have the perfect background, and sometimes have to go over board with post processing. Fortunately I did get some good results from all the experiments I have been trying ..

Here are a few examples ..

This shot is of two wine glasses kept crossed to each other on a dining table chair splashed with water.

Here is a wine glass again and the green color is from the the green lazer torch which I moved horizontally in a pitch dark room.

Just pouring water in a martini glass on a kitchen table.

This is a stitch on my Steve Madden Shoes :-)

This a transparent plastic box ( to go box) with water and water soaking beads I got from India.

Smoke is from water poured over dry ice in a glass.

This is smoke and green lazer torch.

The black background is a black plastic bag, and a martini glass with water and a fruit splashing in.

There are a lot of wine and martini glasses in the examples, that doesn't mean I am an alcoholic and I drink a lot :-). Its just that these were the most easily accessible and they make a good subject.

City of Gold ..

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:27:10 GMT

This was tough week at office. Specially because of the long weekend we lost 1 day, so the pressure was more to get the work done for the week in just 4 days. I was pretty tired last evening and was so happy the weekend was here. I guess I am turning in to a " phorography-holic " if that's even a word. Instead of kicking back and relaxing and having a drink or two I just packed up my gear and was out.

Last week when I was scouting the city for some nice view points I landed up in Longboat key. There is a nice marina there and it gives you a nice view of the high rises of the city of Sarasota and the long bridge that connects the keys to the land.

The shot was taken a bit too early, as in before the sun completely went down. This is a 10-15 second exposure shot. And the story behind it is that when i was there, along came a fellow gentleman who started a conversation with me. So we started talking about the camera, the composition and the light, and I was telling him how long exposure works .. before he started hitting on me :-) . After which I left. But when I was telling him about long exposures I took this pic to show him what I meant. Its been raining crazy in Sarasota since afternoon yesterday, hence the sky seems so blue because the clouds were all around and the sun was setting on the other side.

Now coming to the topic of this post, I have noticed that in all my night shots of this city, all the buildings look yellow and golden in color. This mostly I realized when I took the shots below. I then looked around and I could only see all yellow/gold colored lights and I was like hmmmm ..

And if you scroll down the page you will notice tho other night shots in other posts which look pretty much the same in color composition. Here are all the photographs from the city .. Hope you like them.

Florida National/State Parks

karanmohan@gmail.com — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:34:49 GMT

The first thing that comes to mind when you say Florida is BEACHES and then the others would be Miami, Bikinis, sunshine .. etc :-D . Well there is much more. Florida has the 3rd best National Park called the Everglades. It is a Tropical Wetland which pretty much covers the entire Southern Part of Florida. Human habitation in the southern portion of the Florida peninsula dates to 15,000 years ago.

Here is a Blog of one of the Southern Florida Photographers. If you need more insight about the place you can read about it on his page. As far as my Experience goes with Everglades, I was there 2 days back. It was really a bad day to be there :-) . First of all I was stuck in a thunderstorm just about 10 miles from Shark Valley Visitor Center. Finally when I made it to the place there was not guided tour for the next 2.5 hours. Which I can't blame the team there because it was raining pretty bad, and with the lightening it wasn't really a great idea to be out there. But the rangers were very supportive and enthusiastic, they organized a 3pm tour and took us around.

So Far I have seen alligators only in the Zoos but seeing them in the swamp in their actual habitat was quite exciting. Also finally I got to learn the difference between an Alligator and a Crocodile. For example, Crocs have 120 teeth and Alligators have 80. Crocs are Olive Green in Color and Alligators are black. Crocs are mostly found in Salt water and the latter in fresh water and few more differences.

Here's one I found submerged right next to the road.

And here is a close up.

None of these Alligators are tagged. I also did get to see a baby alligator, it must be a little less than a foot. And not to mention the birds and snakes there. There are about 27 species of snakes there and only about 4 are poisonous. You can also find the Burmese Python here. Although they don't belong here, they are exotic for this place. Although I did get to see tons of birds there and got an almost good short of one in flight..

And of course the Landscape is amazing. We got on top of the tower to get a scenic 360 view of the place. Its just amazing. I would be going there again during the dry season,

and the swamp.

Everglades is huge. There is so much more to explore. But for Florida it does not end there. Yesterday I was at the Kissimmee Park , which would be the Northern part of the Everglades. I drove down there last evening from Sarasota. I was hoping to explore one of the trails there and enjoy the sunset. I reached there around 4:40 pm, but could not do anything. All the trails were submerged, the temperature was soaring at 95 F and it was humid as hell. I did walk around a bit and enjoyed the landscape but did not get to see much. I think October end onwards would be a good time to check all these places out.

Another one I visited a few weeks back was the Myakka State Park. Its quite a serene place. Drove all the way down to the Myakka lake. I need to get myself a boat so that I can do some more serious exploring here.

Clouds on top of the lake.

There is so much more here to explore. I have been quite amazed and surprised with the state parks and wild life here. Till now Florida for me was all about sun sand and beaches. I am glad I am here and I am getting to see all this. Hopefully in October when I am back in the Everglades will get to see the Florida Panthers, that would be an experience I am sure ..

“The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand.”

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:00:55 GMT

I kind of now have a collection of Moon photographs shot in different locations in the US of A. Some of these shots are special and some I just wanted for my collection :-) . and Two from the collection are dedications ..

This one is my favorite because it was my first shot from my 70-300mm Nikor Lens. The best part is that this is a completely hand held shot. I just placed my elbow on my car and took this shot. Well I did take about 20 of them and this one was the best. It was taken in Bay Area, California.

This shot was taken in Boulder, Colorado out side my hotel room. I think it was just before the blizzard.

This photograph was taken outside Estes Park next to one of the lakes there ( Colorado). I remember it was freakishly cold and my hands were going numb setting up the camera. It almost came out okay ..

This last shot was taken tonight in Sarasota, Florida. I have been taking a lot of night shots and today I really had to wait for this one because there were so many clouds and there was no clear shot.

Sarasota Nights ..

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:29:53 GMT

This weekend I have been mostly going out at night and taking some photographs. Sarasota becomes a tourist destination around september onwards. I can already see people coming in checking out places. So I decided I'll go at night to avoid any tourists in the photographs. I actually could not resist taking another photograph of the Kiss Statue but this time I had a different take to it..

Point Of Rocks, Sarasota, FL

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:19:51 GMT

Point of Rocks, evidently is the the only point ( South tip of Siesta Key ) along the coast of Florida which has some kind of rocks/rock formations. The thing is that this place is advertised as a tourist attraction but there is no direct access to this point. You need to park your vehicle atleast almost a mile from the beach and then walk down. The part which has the rocks is attached to a private property, so you need to pass through the waves to get a good view. Although the waves are not strong and the water is not cold and the depth is just knee length if you want to walk across. Its definitely worth checking out this place. The beach is full of people and you can see some doing fishing over there.

You can have a look at the rest of the album on flickr ..

Bangalore, India

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:11:05 GMT

While I was in Bangalore I had a lot of time on weekends to kill. Few of my friends notice that I hardly have any photographs of India. That is only because when I graduated to a DSLR I was in the US and my trips to India were very short, hence I could not go out much and shoot instead chose to spend time with my family.

Everyone knows that Bangalore is the Information Technology hub of the country, and I was not very keen to shoot the IT park and the high rises of Multinationals there. So I decided to talk to my local friends and get ideas on where I can go and capture the real essence of the city - The City before the IT revolution there. I know for a fact that there are so many temples there, so I spoke to my buddy (Kiran Bhat) and came up with a plan. Few of the photographs I have posted here. Although I was a little sad after my trip, not because the experience was not great but to see how the city is growing so fast and encroaching on the the land which belongs to these 4 to 5 hundred year old temples. None the less the experience was awesome. I have been living here for little over three years and never opened my eyes and looked around mostly because the traffic the pollution and the local commute was enough to tire my mind.

Few of the places I visited were:

1. Ramanjanya Temple
2. Bull Temple
3. Vidhan Saudha
4. Khao Galli
5. Gavi Gangadeshwara Temple.

You can see the rest of the photographs here ..

Gopurams @ Bull Temple

The Bull @ Bull temple.

Gavi Gangadhareshwara Temple

Preist at Gavi temple

Sri Ram and Hanuman Hugging each other before the war.. @ Ramanjaneya Temple

This is the Vidhan Saudha ( The Politics House of the State). This pic is the only kind, you will not find a panaromic view of the building anywhere atleast as of now.

Other People

karanmohan@gmail.com — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:33:48 GMT

A friend of mine told me that most of the portrait pics I have in my collection are of my own :-) . Which is partly true. The thing is that since I have been traveling outside my country ( thanks to my job), I generally end up in places where I don't know a single soul. And since I like to photograph I generally end up taking my own ..

Trust me , I am not self obsessed :-D that I would keep taking my own pics but what option do I have .. So this post has a bunch of photographs of other people ..

He is my Cousin brother - Tegpratap Singh

And Teg's younger sister Shamsheer

And my sister - Kiran

And here is Shamsheer again posing for me :-)

And here and here is an old post from last year. There were taken during Lovefest - 08 in San Francisco.

Rain Drops keep falling on my Window Pane :-)

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:14:20 GMT

Specially for the past year the only thing apart from my regular job I do is Photography. I find it a great way of relaxing, freeing mind, releasing my stress. I follow a few blogs, surf on Flickr, and of course do a lot of sightseeing so that I can take photographs. I have a very basic camera kit. I have a Nikon D60, with 18-55mm camera kit, a 70-300mm Nikor telephoto, a tripod of course and an fish eye adapter for the 18-55mm and a SB-400 Ni external Flash.
I have come to realise how important it is to have a hobby. I think I have found my passion. Hopefully one day I will excel in it .. let see.

Here are a few pics I took in the last 30 min. It was raining outside and I was getting bored to decided to click :-)

A good friend really liked this 2nd Photograph, and she decided to call this "Reminiscence". So thats what you lookin at right now "Reminiscence" :-)

Pondicherry, India

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:04:32 GMT

After wrapping up my stuff in California, I went back to India. Had to go back to Bangalore ( that's where my office is) to start work on a new project. I was there for a month and a half, with not much to do I decided to go to Pondicherry. I actually did not want to go alone, specially because I don't understand the local language of that part of the country, so I did not want to take chance of going there and not being able to see anything of relevance. I tried to convince my friends there but none of them had the enthusiasm for it, essentially because Pondicherry is a costal town and it gets very very hot and humid that time of the year. None the less I know I could always bank on Sartaj, who loves to travel and is a great friend of mine. Moreover he has been there a couple of times.

Pondicherry was essentially a French colony for a long time, and this is quite evident from the street names and the architecture there. So we decided to drive down from Bangalore to Pondi at 5 in the morning on a Saturday. We reached there by 10:30, took up a nice Executive stay hotel room and our first order of business was to order room service ( lots of food) and smoke some Cuban Cigars, which again was thanks to Sartaj :-) . We decided to go check out a museum first ( don't have any photographs from there because photography was prohibited). Then we decided to drive to Auroville, which we really didn't want to go to.. not because its not worth checking out but the because it was so hot, temperature soaring to 47 Degrees. We were almost dehydrated. But we still mustered up some strength and drove down. Unfortunatly for us the visiting time was over, so we just bought a small souvenir from that place and came back to the hotel. I was down with a sever headache so we decided to rest for a few hours and get back out int he evening during the sunset. The only shot I could get that day is below. It was inside Auroville.

Much too our surprise when we got up in the evening and looked out the window there was a thunder storm. I have never in my life seen such extreme climates in just one day itself. I decided not to take my camera out, instead we walked at Promenade and went to this super awesome French Restaurant and had an awesome meal.

Te next day we only had time till 12 noon because we had to drive all the way back. So i got up at 5 in the morning tokout my camera and went for a walk along the coast. When I reached there I calle dup Sartaj ( who was sleeping) and he joined me after a few minutes. The photographs from that morning are below:

Statue of Gandhi

Law enforcer still endorsing the French uniform ( at least the cap)

Lighthouse.

The Rocky Coast

Fishermen

I wish I had asked his name. Met him on my way back to B'lore just outside Pondicherry. He got really excited when I took his photograph and showed it to him. I think I will buy a Poloroid next. And when I meet such sweet people, will give them a copy ..

Rest of the Album is on Flickr ..

"Unconditional Surrender" Kiss Statue

karanmohan@gmail.com — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:31:13 GMT

Last evening I was planning to go watch two movies .. Generally for me Thursday nights are movie nights, thats because not a lot of people are out to the theaters on thursday, so that makes it easy to get a nice seat and you can always buy the ticket on the last minute. So I started of with Inglorious Basterds. I must say Quentin Tarantino is really a genius. I loved the movie, and not to mention Brad Pitt, he once again proved why he is Numero Uno . I totally recommend this movie.

So after this got over I came out and bought another ticket for the latest edition of Final Destination. Its was a totally crappy movie. Anyways.. I have like 2 hours to kill because this was a midnight show. And a good thing was I had kept my camera with me, because i knew i might go in for another movie and would not want to come home in between. Unfortunately tho .. I forgot to keep my tripod. So I drove down to N. Tamiami Trail and Main St crossing, thats where this big statue is.

For the past one month I have been driving on this road to my office and every time I see this statue I plan that either that night or the coming weekend I will shoot this, but every time I forget :-) or mostly get lazy. So 11pm was the perfect time because there was some slight rain, and it was close to midnight so there was no one around and I could take photographs without and tourists coming in my way.

I used a flash fun to take this pic, because like i said I forgot to bring my tripod. This statue also sometimes reminds me of the song by Frank Sinatra called strangers in the night , although at the time I was listening to Kid Cudi .. It was quite apt at the moment :-) .

You see what I mean :-). Also on the other side of the statue is the bay and you can see the Hotel building across, with the lights reflecting of the water, and on one side is the marina, where all the rich folks have their sails, boats and yachts anchored. Its quite a beautiful scene, but the problem at the moment was that I did not have a tripod, so I took the camera and placed it on the cement pavement and took the below shot :-

It actually worked out well for me because I got a whole different view and oh yeah.. totally forgot to mention the moon , needless to say it looked beautiful.
Below is another photo of the statue, here I placed the Camera on my car and took a long exposure. I like this one too, again for the same reason that the angle and the view is totally different, and the angle adds a lot of d mood to the shot.

You can also see these photographs on Flikr ..

Pigeon Point Lighthouse, California

karanmohan@gmail.com — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:28:06 GMT

A few months back in April I was in California. Was wrapping up my work there and preparing to go back to India. I had a whole weekend to waste and had my uncle's Convertible at my disposal :-) so decided to go for a nice long drive along the coast on CA 1 south bound. I have been on this road couple of times but I never had my camera with me, except for once I had my point and shoot (Canon S3 Is). So this Lighthouse is just a few miles south right after Pescadero. Once in a month on Saturdays they put on the light at 8 pm and you have a whole flock of photographers trying to capture its beauty. I was one of the lucky few to have seen it at night, but unfortunately did not get a good enough shot to put here. Although I do have some day shots posted below.
This is a good place to checkout during mid April because you can spot few Whales swimming North towards Alaska, and you have people sitting there enjoying the nice bright sunshine and taking photographs .. Its quite scenic : -

And the beaches close by are pretty nice too . There is one called the Pebbles beach .. no not the one in Monterey. This beach gets its name from the gazzilions of small pebbles which form the beach .. as you can see below :

You can see the rest of the photographs at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigsexy/sets/72157616928232467/

Key West, FL

karanmohan@gmail.com — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:37:58 GMT

Key West is known as the southernmost city in the Continental United States. It is also the southern terminus of U.S. 1, State Road A1A, and the East Coast Greenway.

Key West is 129 miles (207 km) southwest of Miami, Florida, and 106 miles (170 km) north-northeast of Havana, Cuba.