Moon and some planets (Jan/ Feb 2023)

I shot this photograph from a moving aircraft last month (January 2023). I was seated in a window seat and something made me open my window shade a few hours into the flight (I had closed it earlier because of the bright sun). It was a brilliant sunset, but surprise, I found a few of…

Backyard Startrails

On a clear night in winter, my sister’s backyard is amazing for stargazing. I had never quite realised this as my last few visits were in the summer when the trees are full of leaves and you can’t really see the sky from the house. However, in winter, the branches are bare and on a…

Stork-billed Kingfisher

I saw this beautiful bird last year in July at Havelock Island when out for a morning walk. It was perched on an electric wire. I had to google to identify it and I think it is a stork-billed kingfisher. Just for context, this is where the bird was sitting- zoomed out I also got…

Fabulous Snowy Egret at Fort Pulaski

Year before last, we went to Fort Pulaski National Monument when spending a few days at Tybee Island. I had a chance encounter with a beautiful snowy egret when walking one of the trails around the park. The bird was trying its best to stay away from us and I spent nearly 10 minutes trying…

Feather out of place

When you’re a crested serpent eagle looking all nice and mighty, but you have exactly ONE feather out of place. UGH! Call the fashion police!

Bird on Bird

The vacation rental home we were staying at in Charleston earlier this year had this metal ornament shaped like a bird on their terrace. A couple of bluebirds seemed to love this metal bird as a perch. It seemed like some weird iteration of life imitating art or was that life passing judgement on art?

When the stars wheeled around

It’s amazing how our perspectives can change in just a short period of time. I shot the above image when I visited the Andaman Islands in late July this year. It was a star trail of about 40 minutes (shot using my Olympus OMD EM-1’s Live Composite feature) with our villa in the foreground. The…

Tropical Island Green – A photo essay

There should be a colour called ‘Tropical Island Green’. It is not the green of the palm tree fronds lining the fashionable walkways of a desert metropolis nor is it the colour of the monsoon washed leaves of the tree clumps leading a precarious existence on the borders of the pulsing thoroughfares in a growing…

Milky Way Timelapse (and editing notes)

Every stellar sky needs its own timelapse… A month ago, I was at Havelock Island where I shot a few nice pictures of the Milky Way in the sky. I have now stitched these images together in a timelapse. Enjoy A note on postprocessing: Most digital photographs published online have gone through some kind of…

Endemic Birds- The Andaman Flowerpecker

I don’t think I’d quite heard the word ‘endemic’ before I started birding over a decade ago. Unlike a pandemic (ouch! sorry for using the P word), anything endemic is restricted to a particular (narrow?) geographical area. The Andaman Flowerpecker is an endemic bird which is only found in the Andaman and Nicobar island chain…