OCA Landscape Photography - Project 4

Now comes the fun one! I love stitching but don't use it as often as I should! I realised that I haven't used it for 2.5 years since I did one in Granada, Spain at the Alhambra. So, here are 2 I did at West Bay, and there will be more to follow! I also need to think about using a tripod too. I need to try this from my roof in Dhaka!

OCA Landscape Photography - Project 3

This project was about panoramas. I used to have a camera that did this, but now rely on photoshop to create them! I did these by cropping rather than stitching, as that was something we did in the next project. I used the same pier in 2 of the photos to also think about perspective and view. One was taken from the cliff and one from the beach.

OCA Landscape Photography - Project 2

The next project required me to look at the same scene and try both landscape and portrait views, in order to challenge the way we usually take a landscape scene. I enjoyed this as it is something I like to do anyway and I found it challenged me to look at composition more closely. Luckily the advantage of digital is that we can now take both and decide later which is better! For some of these photos, ladscape worked better, but some surprisingly look better in portrait.....

From OCA Landscape Photography

OCA Landscape Photography - Project 1

After waiting ages for my pack to arrive (joys of BFPO) I finally received it whilst here in the UK. So, I wanted to get going immediately! Luckily the weather has been amazing here since I got here a week ago. The first photo trip was to West Bay and then Lyme Regis (despite road closures and other things that seemed to conspire against me going out that day!).

The first project asked us to take photos varying the position of the horizon. I tried this several times, on both landscape and portrait style photos. This certainly made me think a lot about the 'rule of thirds' and other such things we are encouraged to think about when composing a photo.

Personally I like the one here with the most sky and am not keen on the one with more grass in the foreground. I have always liked photos showing a lot of sky and have a fascination with clouds.......

For more photos, look here

OCA Landscape Photography

The town, the lake, and cows on the line

Srimangal was fairly quiet during the day. We finally managed to get lunch (not an easy task in a small town during Ramadan) and tea!

Then it was off to the lake - which after a 3 hour walk in the rainforest left us a little unamused when we had to start walking again - at least the forest gave us some protection against the blazing sun.

We made it back to the train station in good time to the sight of cows on the line....imagine the former British rail "we apologise for the delay which is due to cows on the line....." No such delays here the cows either move or become someone's dinner......

The Rainforest Village

The rainforest village was amazing. Usually in such 'tourist' villages you are surrounded by villagers who's only interest is to sell you things and make money. Here it was totally different. Yes they had jewellery but it was really low key, and the villagers were also exceedingly happy to pose for photos.

The three little kids were just hanging out, I'm not sure why one had a pomelo skin on his head! But as the camera approached they posed well.......

More tea, vicar? The Ramadan installment......

So we decided to try another weekend in Srimangal - this time I was with 2 different people who have never been there before. One met us there as she worked in Sylhet just before, the other got the train.

At the station, it was pretty overwhelming and people staring at you at 6.30am can be pretty tough. They then announced that there was no AC carriage on the train, and we had to change our tickets for normal seats....we got on and the smell of the toilets was gross! Luckily, we soon left Dhaka and because of the open windows and ventilation, the smell was no issue.

It occurred to us as we continued the journey just how much water there is in Bangaldesh!!!! As you can see from the fields, they are flooded and we were just on a slightly raised bank among this! On a bouncy, Bangladeshi train......safe or what?

Eco cottage looked like it was made of placemats, and this cow was eating just off our balcony! It was really clean and the food was pretty good, so we will be staying there again. Being Ramadan (even in a 60% Hindu town) there was a distinct lack of places to drink tea! So strange when you are surrounded by so much.

The monkey was hanging out in the rainforest by the train tracks.