Stupendous Man

Continuing my series on my favorite photographs, here is Travelogue part 2! Unlike my previous post, Travelouge part 1 where I added poetry (not mine of course!), this time I am going to add a little description about the photo itself; I kind of found it missing in my last post and decided to do away with poetry and instead let my reader know a little bit about the photo itself. I think that appeal of photograph increases if you have a background about the picture.

As always, all images are Copyright Suyog Deshpande, aka Me. Please ask me if you want to use them. Disclaimers aside, her goes:

This was one of the very first photographs I clicked with my digital camera, and it has been one of my favorites ever since. During winter, the pond at UMBC (The college I did my grad studies from) freezes up. And when it snows, its especially beautiful to look at. I particularly like this shot because of 2 things - (i) The wooden bridge (ii) The water spring which can be observed at bottom right of the picture which added a nice touch to the pic. I have done a countless takes on this same pic over and over again, and must admit that the sepia version of this same photograph rocks too. (I will probably add that as a part of Travelogue part 3).

February 16, 2003 saw a historic snow storm in Baltimore - it snowed for more than 2 days non stop, and there was more than 24 inches of snow in our area. On the third day, snow didnt deter me and my friends from stepping out for a walk. With padded shoes and triple layers of clothing, we wandered out. The pic was taken in a empty field just before a church, leading to UMBC. I love this show because of many reasons - (i) Even though this is a color photograph, given the weather, the snow, lack of sun and overall gloominess, this photograph looks almost like a black and white photograph. (ii) The highlighted barren tree kinda gives the feel of the weather (iii) I somehow find this photograph chilly. Quite literally hehe.

I have never been a sucker for photographs where people actually smile at the camera; I just hate such photographs. On the contrary I love photographs which are take out of instinct and show natural behavior of people. This is one such photograph - I and my friends had been on Sky Line drive in Virginia. It was suitably foggy and we decided to stop at an overlook. My friend stood on the edge of ghat to take overlook at the view; Out of instict, I clicked this one - When I looked at the photograph on my PC later, I loved it because it seemed like a very “natural” photograph. Nobody photographed for this - it just happened.

Honestly I didnt think that this photograph would come out as good as it turned out to be. This was taken during my camping trip with friends in 2004, near a lake. I took the first photograph of the log from 10 feet distance, from top view. Then I decided that I would have the log right in my face, but try to fit in the lake in the picture as well. To do this, I was 1 or 2 feet away from the log, eye level and positioned the view such a way that the log would seem big, but would not obstruct the lake view behind. I think I was pretty successful in getting exactly what I wanted.

During Fall, the valleys of Western Virginia are filled with wildflowers, which apparently are famous. Every few miles, you come accross them everywhere on the highway, and authorities have suitably put signposts indicating the flowers. It is of course illegal to stop on the highway and take photographs - which is exactly what we did :). We parked our car on the shoulder, ran into the center where the wildflowers were and took some quick photographs. This one was taken from almost eye level of flowers - I loved the photograph because the flowers seemed really lush in the photograph.

Thats it folks - I am preparing travelogue part 3 soon. So it should be up soon enough. And if you are done checking out this, why dont you check out my previous travelogue collection here. So long folks