A month ago or so, I went out with my friend to relish a yummy snack of Dabeli. My tastebuds were satisfied & I was waiting for my friend to finish his dabeli. At that time, I happen to look upwards. I saw an electric pole(the one with sodium lamps). Since I was standing exactly besides the pole, the pole seem as if it was reaching into the heavens. It strucked to me that this would be a good photo opportunity. I pulled out my camera & took a shot. Not impressed I started to observe what more I can do to enhance it. Another shot & as they say rest is history. I was hooked to it & decided to do a photo series a la Better Photography style. [Click on photographs to enlarge]

The above was the first shot which inspired me to do a photo series. I decided to frame it horizontally & tripped the shutter as a bird(crow) flew between the two arms of the light pole. No continuous burst was used. The trick here was to observe the bird from out of viewfinder & snap instinctively. Converted to B&W later as I love monochrome.

The second one was taken while I was trudging along the Worli seaface one evening. It was a nice evening that day with cool breeze flowing. Loved the repeating formation of the poles on the Bandra-Worli sealink. Added a lomo effect using GIMP to complete the image.

Once I was walking over a bridge on a hot afternoon, I spotted this view. The sun was beating down hard & I knew it would cause a flare. Generally flare doesn’t looks good in photographs but sometimes adding it can bring another dimension to the photograph. I loved the flare effect & magnified it in post process to display the brunt of heat bore by the lamps during day-time.

As I walked for some more time, I encountered this lamp engulfed by branches of a neighboring tree. In reality, it was not engulfed by the trees but it was an illusion since the tress were in front of the lamp & I took this shot from a low angle to magnify the effect.

Some street lamps have a curvy light arm. This particular lamp had one. Again a low vantage point(similar to the first one) makes this image almost three dimensional. Feels as if the lamp arm is broken. It resembles a safety pin.

Once again I returned to the spot where I this idea of photo series strucked me. Again I was lucky to get another great photograph. Since there is a pigeon home(Kabootar Khana, Dadar) nearby, the area is crowded by pigeons. This particular image displays the lamp as a temporary resting zone for the pigeons. Took this shot in burst mode. As again, B&W processing gives a magical charm to the photograph.

My vision of selecting lamp poles as a subject in this series was to tell a story about them which one doesn’t takes notice in today’s fast paced life. Never knew lamp poles were such an interesting subject & I had a great time photographing them. A good deal of credit goes to Better Photography team since I read about photo series in BP first & I loved the work done by other photographers there. It always inspired me as the photographers there always managed to make ordinary subjects extra-ordinary. I hope to do more such photo series in future.

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