Vulture - A Portrait

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Ganesh H Shankar
Vulture - A Portrait
I am re-doing some of my B&Ws now. Kind of liked how this one turned out - tried to emphasize the spot lighting further by gentle burning on all sides...
Sun May 01, 2011 12:15 pm
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Ganesh H. Shankar
Wishing you best light,

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Fine Art Nature Photography


Ganesh H Shankar  Joined CNP On 24 Apr 2008    Total Image posts 973    -   Total Image Comments 7874    -   Image Post to Comment Ratio 1:8    -   Image Comment Density 38     -     Total Forum Posts 956

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Commentby Ganesh H Shankar on Wed May 04, 2011 6:49 am

Das, yes tinted gently with just a bit of warm tone..

--
Ganesh H. Shankar
Wishing you best light,

Image
Fine Art Nature Photography

Commentby S. Das on Wed May 04, 2011 11:27 am

Thanks Ganesh :) I curious to know your B&W conversion workflow .. Do you use Channel Mixer or other methods ?

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______________
Best Wishes
Subharghya Das
Jungle Moments

Commentby Ganesh H Shankar on Wed May 04, 2011 12:38 pm

Das, depending up on the image characteristics I may use Photoshop's channel mixer (if there is a predominant color) or SilverFX (when I have no clue) or just work on lightness channel and discard a & b channels in lab color mode (which some times gives best conversions). No fixed formula for conversion. Unfortunately B&W conversions are often a trial and error. But slowly one will get a grip on the workflow.

--
Ganesh H. Shankar
Wishing you best light,

Image
Fine Art Nature Photography



» Last edited by Ganesh H Shankar on Wed May 04, 2011 12:39 pm; edited 1 time in total

Commentby S. Das on Wed May 04, 2011 1:22 pm

Thanks a lot Ganesh :) I too like to take the Lumi channel and fine tune it. I use Black&White Adjustment Layer also which gives control on individual primary colors and lot of combinations. Would love to try SilverFX :)

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______________
Best Wishes
Subharghya Das
Jungle Moments

Commentby jayesh joshi on Wed May 04, 2011 3:13 pm

Truly inspiring work...as always !

On a lighter note....it seems that you clicked this image @ Madame Tussauds bird museum :)

Commentby ramesh_adkoli on Wed May 04, 2011 8:49 pm

This is an outstanding image, Ganesh. Loved every aspect of it. Kept looking at it. I am sure I will be revisiting this many times more. Thanks a ton for detailed responses. Helps a lot. Thanks again for sharing this.

Commentby Debiprakash Dass on Thu May 05, 2011 8:53 pm

Absolutely brilliant. . thanks for sharing.

Commentby dinesh.ramarao on Sat May 14, 2011 1:51 pm

Thanks Ganesh, I have used your idea of this image to re-process some of my images. I was not for a square crop untill now. I have now printed some images b & w on 12x12 and this image definitely helped me to get some decent prints. How do I pay the royalty ? :)
-RD

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- RD

Commentby Ganesh H Shankar on Sat May 14, 2011 6:44 pm

RD, :)

--
Ganesh H. Shankar
Wishing you best light,

Image
Fine Art Nature Photography

Commentby bharath on Tue May 17, 2011 5:38 pm

One of the best bird portraits I have seen Ganesh.. Just perfect in so many aspects.

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www.bharathphotos.com

Commentby nirlep on Sun Aug 28, 2011 11:38 am

Dear Ganesh,
Ever since “Vulture- A portrait” was posted by you on 1st may 2011, almost three months back, it kept disturbing me with its ambiguity. I was not able to place what was there about the shot which is so arresting. It was not just the lighting neither was the presence of detail and sharpness. One would broadly ascribe a mood to it but what mood? Why does it probe? I could find an echo in John berger’s lines "Yet it can happen, suddenly, unexpectedly, and most frequently in half light of glimpses, that we catch sight of another order which intersects with ours and has nothing to do with it………………..suddenly and disconcertingly we see between two frames. We come upon a part of the visible which wasn’t destined for us. Perhaps it was destined for night-birds, reindeer, ferrets, eels, whales……"
John Berger, “Opening a gate” in Why look at animals.

The drama begins with conversion into black and white. It mystifies the dark from which the vulture appears to emerge and places the image in the category of the un-familiar. Enough to hook on to the image the eye now travels across and over the body of the vulture. Everything is silent there. The feathers are in place, the gait is good and perch solid. And then comes the eye and the eye rests there. At once one perceives a distance between oneself and the bird. What is this distance? Why this distance when the camera has brought the bird so close? It’s here that JB’s lines begin to matter. Yes, we are looking at a different order. A bird of prey, rapacious, ruthless and powerful, this is what comes to mind while thinking about a vulture. These traits are contingent not endemic, coming to fore only to fulfill existential requirements of a vulture. There exists a vulture which when not answering calls for survival is a vulture abstracted as a bird without any of its peculiarities or traits which make it into a beast. Ganesh has captured the eagle at such a moment when it is, if I may say so, changing its robe. At this juncture, when the photographer is about to drop the shutter the bird looks back. It is watching its back but it looks as if it is “looking back” from a different time. The silence of the frame is suffused with sense of departure. The vulture has departed. The bird remains.
Something about finding such moments; life goes on, things move, things depart. Not all of that registers with us except for moments which are existentially relevant. It’s like keeping the shutter open for a long exposure of a motion scene. Everything becomes a fuzz of activity without precipitates of life and meaning. But a photographer becomes an extended eye searching for life in between the interstices of time. This dark gem belongs there.

Nirlep Singh



» Last edited by nirlep on Mon Aug 29, 2011 10:04 am; edited 2 times in total

Commentby Deepak G Pawar on Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:55 pm

Good portrait with full aesthetics,a Visual Delight.

Lucks
DGP

Commentby Roshan.Panjwani on Mon Nov 10, 2014 10:02 pm

So hard to choose between the rich colour version with the lovely golden light and the sombre yet striking monochrome! I guess it's the brilliant use of light that makes it possible to have such beautiful renditions in both colour and BW. Would love to learn black and white conversion from you some time.

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Cheers,
Roshan
https://www.flickr.com/photos/roshsphere

Commentby rupankar on Sat Dec 27, 2014 10:21 pm

simply wow

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rupankar mahanta/www.rupankar.in

Commentby Rahul Parekh on Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:34 am

Truly love this. Side lighting & shades of black has made the image so captivating :)

Cheers, Rahul

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