The above photos capture what you can expect to find in a typical market on the streets of old Hyderabad. The Charminar, and the Chowmahalla Palace have been intentionally left out. You can find them in heaps on the internet.

Hyderabad is great for old buildings, jewellery, antiques, traditional medicines, spicy food and some random things… Enjoy!

Please excuse me for making this post too long, this is the shortest I could make it!

My friend Sagar filled my brain with thoughts of Hampi, the Vijaynagar Kingdom and Krishnadevaraya to be precise! Hampi was the capital of the once flourishing Vijaynagar Kingdom, that was ruined almost completely by an alliance of the Deccan sultanates. It never recovered from that, and what we see today in Hampi is remnant of the same. It is like travelling back in time, and the only questions which remained in my mind after the trip was ‘what did the people look like back then – and what did they eat?’.

The Virupaksha temple, seen above, is perhaps the best known landmark of the place.

The people of Vijaynagar Kingdom were very religious. This is evident from the hundreds of tiny temples all over the place. Also seen are scores of statues of deities, such as the monolithic statue of Ganesha (above).

Many relics got buried deep under layers and layers of mud, that went on to become soil for farmlands, only to be excavated in the late 20th century by ASI.

Few carvings have been preserved as well as the Shiva’s family (above).

Most of the Virupaksha Temple survived the attacks. The paintings above are from the ceilings of the main chamber of the Virupaksha Temple

Of the many surviving monuments, is the Pushkarni, or the Stepped Tank.

Overall, the place provides huge volumes of history and along with that a number of awesome captures…

The awesome Tungabhadra river…

The awesome lush green landscape dotted with awesome pre-Cambrian rock structures… (pic taken from top of Anjeyanadri Hill, believed to be the birthplace of Hanuman)

Awesome crowds…

Awesome guest houses…

Awesome food!!!

Awesome us

Awesome roads…

And our awesome dear Figo…

All in all, an awesome destination, combined with 800 km of driving pleasure (well, almost – apart from the Telangana trouble in Mehboobnagar), good food and nice crowd…! Hampi is definitely a must visit place in India, but make sure you visit after November and before February!

I spent a little more than 3 long years in Pune, the city that I had come to love so much. I am definitely going to miss the beautiful monsoon in the Sahyadris, the awesome drives to Panchgani, Lonavala and other tiny places nearby. I will miss the lovely cool climate of Pune, and the lush green cantonment area.

So, how is Hyderabad? Fortunately, it is one big city in South India, where you can do without knowing the local language! Thankfully I can abuse in Telugu, but on a serious note, I am not planning to learn the language this time. I had always created an image of this city in my mind based on my interactions with the Gults in college. But I guess I was wrong. Hyderabad is a very cosmopolitan, and a convenient place to live in. It has the features that any big city should have (except public transport). I like big cities that are not too crowded – and Hyderabad is just that. I have heard it gets really hot here, but summer is still two quarters away!

Looks like Hyderabad is a photographers’ haven. Pune was almost blank, but this city is a historic place – plenty of forts, palaces and other structures in and around the city to click. City lights are good as well :) Hopefully, I will take more than a few months to explore all places within Hyderabad. Having said that, I am a bit disappointed with the fact that there really is nothing around Hyderabad – at a convenient drivable distance. Bangalore, Goa, Vizag are all at a distance of 10-15 hours. Being centrally located, the only option one has is to take a flight from perhaps the best airport in India! I am however looking forward to our drive to Hampi sometime in the first week of October :)

To capture it in short, it is not even a month here for me, and I have already been a part of an adventurous drive in the dark, and Lucky Ali concert – the concert was mediocre, but it was fun and we got free audio CDs too ;)

Neha, has some more… here!

Which pic do you prefer: the left one, or the right one?

Have you ever taken a pic of inside a dark room with bright sunlight visible outside a small window? Have you ever taken a pic where there are beautiful clouds in a bright sky and your friend standing under the shade of a canopy? You would often observe that either the sky is blown off (too bright to see any details in the clouds) or the subject is too dark. If you have a DSLR, you would often find yourself asking the question “should I meter the bright sky or should I meter the dark subject in the shade, and still preserve all details”.  Interesting thing here, is that you would be able to see the details in the sky and your subject perfectly fine, but your camera just wont be able to capture them. The problem here, is not with your photography skill, but a limitation in the camera. Let me explain:

The illumination ratio between the darkest spot and brightest spot (containing detail) is called the Dynamic Range of a scene. Typically, DSLR cameras can capture contrast ratios of around 2000:1 or 11 EV (when taken to a base of 2), LCD displays can display upto 9.5 EV. The Human Eye, can perceive well beyond that range. However, there is a catch. The human eye cannot perform both operations (viewing very bright and very dark details) simultaneously, this is done by adjusting the amount of light that enters the eye and it takes a short while to adjust. A camera cannot do this, as you have just one moment to capture, just one frame of details. If you open the shutter for too long, you get too much light (and the bright areas get blown out), if you open it for too short, you get too little light (and the dark areas remain dark).

To overcome this, photographers use multiple exposure-bracketed images to create one single image with High Dynamic Range. Are you getting the hang of it now? In principle, take three images - 
Pic 1: A little darker, so that details in the bright areas are maintained (-1 EV). The darker areas in this image would be blank with no details.
Pic 2: A little brighter, so that the details in the dark regions (shadows) are clear (+1 EV). The bright areas in the image would be blown off.
Pic 3: The last pic with an average exposure of the two above  (0 EV). Taking just this pic would not help in situations of extreme contracts, such as bright exteriors and dark interiors.

I took this set of bracketed pics at the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette, Illinois (an affluent village 14 miles north of Downtown Chicago). This was the first of the seven Baha’i Houses of Worship currently surviving. The first pic is –1 EV, the second pic is +1 EV, the third is 0 EV. (Click on them to see large)

Now put the three pics on top of each other in any image editing software and use the bright portions (highlights) from the first pic, dark portions (shadows) from the second pic, and the mid-tones from the third pic! Thats about it!

It sounds straight forward, but to do that, you need a few things:
1. Take exposure bracketed images of exactly the same frame – use a tripod and the AEB feature of your camera. Turn off auto-focus!
2. Use a photo-editing software to put the three HDRs together. I am not sure if you can do it in Photoshop, but there are plugins you can install.

Alright… If you have come this far, it makes some sense to go a bit further…

Perhaps, you did not realise, the method I walked you through to create an HDR, will still not make your images look stunning. Reason: Your LCD monitor can display images only upto a certain contrast ratio. Its dynamic range is lesser than your camera’s standard dynamic range. Now you have an image with dynamic range much greater than that of your LCD monitor and even your camera. So what do you do?

You tone map the image! Basically, you reduce the contrast ratio of the image from something like 16 EV to about 8 EV, or, from 100000:1 to about 255:1. The JPEG images you see usually, are 8 bit images, that contain upto 255 levels of illumination (from darkest to the brightest). So the goal of tone mapping is to reduce the contrast ratio but to preserve the detail. This, can be done using two techniques – Global Tone Mapping, or Local Tone Mapping.

Global Tone Mapping is the most basic operation. It is similar to contrast reduction in Photoshop, or even your LCD monitor! It reduces the contrast in each and every pixel of the image, uniformly according to the most appropriate function for that image. This, does not help us in what we wish to achieve. Really.

Local Tone Mapping reduces the contrast of each pixel based on the contrast and illumination of the surrounding pixels. If you have studied Calculus/Derivatives in school, you could think of it to be something like Global Maxima / Local Maxima. Local Tone Mapping on an image having shadows and highlights would have different impact on the dark areas and the bright areas. In fact, it would bring out more details than you thought were present in the scene! HDR tone mapping using Local Tone Mapping has become extremely popular amongst photo enthusiasts for exactly this reason. These photographs have a distinct look and seem attractive to many! Often one would get comments like “This looks so much like a painting”, or “This is like a computer game scene”. Limited dynamic range is never a problem in paintings, whereas computer game manufacturers use tone mapped HDR graphics to improve the look and feel of the play. While HDR in video games make scenarios look real, HDR and local tone mapping in photography makes real scenes look a bit graphic!

 
HDR created by merging the 3 bracketed images above. Minor tone mapping applied.

Major tone mapping applied to reveal extra details. Looks more graphic than the one above.

Sorry about the long blog post :) I should keep myself in check so that I do not go overboard and do too much of local tone mapping. My name itself says adi… which means, excess!

Recommended softwares:
1. Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom
2. Oloneo Photoengine (the one I used)

becomes…

This does not mean the feet are dirty, this just amplifies the difference in the skin color of different areas of the feet. Look at the details showing up on the pebbles and the floor.

Another example of HDR creation is:

This pic of the dilapidated bungalow was taken somewhere in the Camp area in Pune.

Pretty, aren’t they?

The place to have a photowalk, we decided was Pu La Deshpande Garden, also known as Pune-Okayama Friendship Garden. Let the photos take control…

L-R: Vinayak, Neeraj, Purva, Shital, Neha, Aditto, Aloch