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.
2nd pic is cool.. Loved it.. Repetition, image leading from front to end are amazing. And orange color somehow fascinates me.. Cool image overall..
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Thank you Dharmit. Great to see you here. 🙂
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