Imagine yourself looking at the beautiful mountains in all its glory. In a distance, not too far, not too close, you can hear the melodious chirps of the resplendent birds. Take a deep breath and smell the fresh, unpolluted air. Take another breath. The air is still magical. You feel the calmness in every nerve of your body. You don't feel like going back to your mundane, everyday life, now that you've discovered this place.
I can almost imagine myself standing in front of this magnificent place as I write this. This place is different for different people. It is any place your imagination takes you. And yes, they exist. If you could not imagine such a place, may be you haven't been to one. Maybe it's a sign to take the road less travelled.
For some, this place could be the magical Western Ghats in India, or the Himalayas in the North and East of India. For others, it could be the Swiss Alps.
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| Lake Bled, Slovenia |
Come back to the scene you were imagining. You want to capture a picture of this magical place, so when you go back to your boring old life, you can recreate some of your memories of this place.
You slowly take your camera out, and gently press the button to click the picture. The picture is secure in your memory card. You are happy. At the same time, you are sad, for you have to leave. You are happy you have some memories of this place in the form of a digital image.
You go back home, and like a child who gets excited at a toffee dangled in front of him, you excitedly plug your camera into the laptop and look at your pictures.
This is what you see on the screen
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| Bandipur National Park, Karnataka, India (Original) |
The disappointment on your face is evident. The place was magical, not like what you are seeing on your laptop. In an instant, you can imagine yourself back at that place, where your soul felt at home. But the picture on your screen contradicts every pixel your eyes took in.
It is but natural that this happens. Your eyes can take in way more detail than any high-end camera costing huge amounts of money can.
What your eyes actually saw
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| Bandipur National Park, Karnataka, India (Processed) |
Recreating what your eye sees can be done by simple processing to bring out details which the picture has, but is not apparent. The above image is a single image with very basic processing done to bring out details already there in the picture.
Take a look at some more examples below.
An image of a Pied Kingfisher I shot a while ago
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| Pied Kingfisher (Original) |
The background was a little distracting with the twig not adding any value to the picture. But the feel of the image was too good to cruelly discard it.
The final image with a tweak to the background. The image was cropped to highlight the bird more effectively.
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| Pied Kingfisher (Processed) |
Another technique to recreate what your eye sees is HDR (High Definition Range) imaging.
HDR is a simple process of merging two or more pictures so that the final picture will portray the best element of every picture used in the process of merging. Your eye working in tandem with your brain is a natural HDR imaging system. Your brain processes hundreds, if not thousands of images every second to let you see things so clearly. In a camera, however, the range is limited. Through post processing, you can recover, to a certain extent, what you actually saw.
Take a look at some of my HDR images.
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| Picture 1 - Shot to expose the sky |
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| Picture 2 - Shot to expose the houses/buildings. See the sky here, almost white |
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| Final image combining the best of both images - A High Definition Range Image |
Scroll up and check them out again :)
Another HDR where I try to recreate what I saw
Another HDR where I try to recreate what I saw
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| Picture 1 - Shot to expose the sky |
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| Picture 2 - Shot to expose the rest of the elements |
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| The final result - A High Definition Range image |
Gaurav Rajaram is a photographer from Bangalore who is passionate about travelling, teaching and writing.
He teaches Accounting and Direct Tax to students pursuing the Chartered Accountancy (CA) Course. You can read more about him and what he does for a living here
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